Meet Taryn

In May of 2015, I found myself three weeks postpartum on maternity leave and going to another job interview.  I was working as a School Librarian at a local elementary and I liked my job, but I always felt strapped for time...teaching, shelving, buying and weeding books and often taking home work as I designed research, library organization and literacy lessons for PreK-6th graders.  Now, with my first baby girl in tow, I thought, what if I worked my forty hours and then came home and spent it doing what I wanted to do and not worrying about work.

As I drove home from the interview, replaying my answers to the interview questions in my head, I was pushed back into reality and suddenly there were more serious dilemmas on hand.  I had to get home to breastfeed (I hadn't started to pump), I had to soothe my little baby who wasn't sleeping very well and on top of that I was feeling rundown and feverish.  A day later, it was confirmed, I had mastitis.  Long story short, I was offered a job as a public children's librarian.  It was a job that I knew I wanted, but they wanted me to start immediately.

I couldn't see myself leaving my baby with my parents when I wasn't quite sure how to best take care of her myself.  You know regular feedings and sure fire ways to quickly soothe her and stop her from crying as well as formulate a nap schedule in some way, shape or form.  Needless to say, I turned the job down. 

As fate would have it, I received a call with a counter offer.  "How about you start when you were scheduled to return from maternity leave at the end of July (the start of the new school year)."  I accepted and the rest is history.

​The next nine years were exhilarating.  I dove head first in building lessons for a new audience (new students).

These students were two-years old and I was expected to read with them in a group for half an hour?  Now, that's a challenge, but I was up for it. 

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I had several tools in my toolbox:

1. I managed classes of kids on a daily basis for my last job.

2. I had backfiles on a flash drive as well as filing cabinets full of storytime ideas that seemed to work just fine for my incumbent.

3. I had a young one!  I read to her from birth.  I understood the trials of a caregiver with a young child and I was slowly understanding and recognizing developmental levels, group attention spans and that when they said read to a child, they really meant sing, play, talk with children and most importantly get the caregivers on the same page.

It took me years to perfect my craft and I'm still learning.  I read professional development books, I attended early literacy workshops, I signed up for different parent participation programs and I implemented what I learned into new curriculum that I designed and tweaked and redesigned.  Early on in my career with the library, I attended a workshop that highlighted educating caregivers during storytimes on the importance of pre-literacy practices to increase early literacy benefits for their children.  Far beyond a weekly storytime, if we could support, inspire and speak with caregivers, the reading and singing in storytime could be practiced at home and the child would reap the early literacy benefits on a greater scale, not to mention family bonding and a whole lot of fun. I began messaging to parents and including them in the structure of my storytime.  My Keiki Storytimes (2-5 year old with a caregiver) brought in crowds of 100+ people on a weekly basis.  Storytimes for young kids are not meant to be a 100 people (among other things, it's too hard to see the pictures, lol), so I implemented two storytimes a week. When I noticed babies in the audience, not younger siblings, but single babies with a caregiver, I decided it was time to create a Baby Rhyme Time (storytimes for caregivers and their little ones under two years of age).  I felt there was so much more a caregiver and a baby could get out a program designed developmentally for caregivers with young babies.  After having my second baby girl in 2018, I launched Baby Rhyme Time at a local library.  My intent was to spread early literacy awareness and ways to play, rhyme, sing and read with your baby to stimulate brain cells and build healthy habits.  Reading aloud to a child is by far the best practice you can do to set them up for school success.  I want to share my knowledge with you, so that you feel supported, so you have a community that cares about you, and so as caregivers we don't feel alone and isolated.  Baby Rhyme Time has always been six-week sessions to set you up with tools for future success.  What I found was when the next session started up the same people were back and they brought their friends.

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Instead of doing what I love to do just once or twice a week, I opened up a Reading Nest and now we can read, talks, sing, play and write more often.  We can come together and meet in a supportive, comfortable and uplifting environment to take care of our keiki and have a grand old time.    

See you at the Nest,​

Aunty Taryn​​