One by one, the Mt. Sterling Elementary School students dash over to the bay window in the library. They scope out the space. It’s important to pick a good spot for story time.
Wendy Rogers, 44, the librarian, isn’t far behind. She plants down in a rocking chair in front of them and moves gently back and forth.
“I need everyone on a step,” she says. “Show me how you sit.”
The group is instantly silent. Backs and shoulders straighten into cleaner postures.
Wendy dives into another chapter of a Magic Tree House book.
On the wall above them are older, slightly faded posters with celebrities that say “Read.” They include faces from a past generation, such as Yao Ming, Ice Cube and Brenda Song.
“I really need to take those down,” she reflects.
Wendy has worked in the library for 19 years. She’s taught and guided multitudes of faces shaped by Mt. Sterling’s evolving socioeconomic and cultural climates. In her eyes, books are a gateway to soaking in all the world can offer beyond Montgomery County.
“The more cultures I teach them, the more they’ll see we’re more alike than we are different,” she says. “This is my second family. I try to make the library someplace everyone wants to be.”
Education is a family affair. Wendy’s mother, Terri Back, 61, was an assistant to children with physical disabilities at the school when Wendy was in kindergarten.
For Wendy, treating students like family extends beyond the library. She recalls former students who lived by her home and occasionally visited, sometimes seeking food.
Away from school, “they’re not worried about projects,” she says. “They’re worried about heat, if they have food. I have 450 kids. I may forget your name, but I never forget your story.”
Life moves like chapters for Wendy. It happens week by week as she goes hiking in the Red River Gorge; when she cracks open a book from her personal library at home, perfectly ordered in the Dewey decimal system; or in a planning period when she feeds the fish in the tank or the birds outside.
Each face she sends off with a checked-out book is another name on the long string of lives she touches. The children are still mostly untouched slates that can be opened to paths she helps inspire.
Each school day they gather in her realm, as energized as ever to see what stones can be turned over today. They chitchat excitedly among themselves as they wait to begin.
Wendy snaps her fingers again, drawing the rowdy voices and eager eyes back to her.
“We’ve got to finish this chapter. Focus.”
