By Maddie Luebbert

January 30th, 2025

SDP Action Meeting

Good evening. My name is Maddie Luebbert. I’m a community member and substitute teacher. I taught in SDP for eight years, at Kensington Health Sciences Academy, a neighborhood school.

A couple weeks ago in the Inquirer, there was a piece about the student government from KHSA and their mission to create the DreamEscape library. The students worked with their advisors to earn a $10,000 grant and scrounge for other resources to create a collection of books available to and managed by KHSA students. They rightfully noted that they had never had access to a proper school library as students in the School District of Philadelphia.

I was overwhelmed with pride: Children were solving problems caused by the neglect and mismanagement of adult “leaders”. Their story inspired many like well known activist and librarian Mariame Kaba, but it also left a bad taste in my mouth. Should we “celebrate” when kids have to hustle for a facsimile of something they have always deserved? Let’s be honest, the DreamEscape library is amazing, but it’s nothing compared to a school library in a dedicated space staffed by a full-time, certified school librarian.

When I taught English at KHSA, we worked tirelessly to promote reading. In a section of 9th grade English, I had 25-35 students. Many came to high school far below reading level. Up to half had IEPs and many of them were English learners of varying levels. I’ve had students that struggled through school on a second grade reading level in the same class with students that would eventually attend universities like Penn and Drexel.

We implemented daily silent reading time focused on student choice. My classroom had the “Luebrary,” hundreds of books I had begged for and spent thousands of my own dollars on to stock it with culturally relevant and recent work that students would want to read.

Eventually I realized that it was impossible to manage my classroom library. I couldn’t help each student select books at an appropriate level that they wanted to read. Not on top of being responsible for individualized reading instruction for each student. Not in addition to teaching rigorous grade level texts, and trying to manage the complex academic and behavioral needs of dozens of students. 

This is part of why I left teaching full time. An English teacher cannot also be a librarian. School libraries and certified school librarians are essential for supporting students and their academic growth.

As always, our students (and their teachers) deserve better.