On a windy October afternoon, Courtney Ferrell’s English IV class headed towards Coppell’s Cozby Library and Community Commons, a small detour that marked many students’ first field trip in two years.

By now, students have spent nearly two years as online students in the pandemic, which means they’ve missed out on fully experiencing the normal graduations, field trips, projects and yearly traditions that many teachers and students alike look forward to.

This year, continuing the third year of the class’ tradition of traveling to the library, the library worked with Coppell High School to provide the over 300 seniors in the English IV class with more information about the public library. Morgan Green-Griffin, a librarian at the Cozby Library for three years, organizes the event with the school yearly.

“This trip is a chance for our seniors to get into our community,” Ferrell, who has been a teacher at CHS for a decade, said. “It’s important for our seniors to know what they have available to them even after leaving CHS.”

After a 15-minute walk, the students arrived at the library and were met by Green-Griffin.

The students observed behind the scenes of the library during a small tour and received free library cards afterwards. After a quick presentation about the resources available to them as CHS students, they were released to check out books and explore the library’s different facilities.

“The library has allowed exceptions for our CHS seniors,” Ferrell said. “Students under 18 can get library cards without their parents being present, and students who are not CHS residents can also get a library card.”

The library takes initiative to provide the soon-to-be graduates with what is available to them for free even after they leave CHS. Many seniors don’t learn about the opportunities the library provides them with, causing them to miss out on facilities that could be of use to them.

“Our goal is for our seniors to know of all the resources their library has for them,” Green-Griffin said.

From reservable study rooms to a metal detector that library patrons can borrow, the library is more than just a library. Resources such as the reservable rooms and teen room are infinitely valuable for students who cannot afford to buy books or students who need a safe place after school to study and relax.

William Sharpe, a senior in the English IV class, was surprised to learn about a few resources at the library.

“I didn’t know about the study rooms before the trip, so I’m more likely to come in and use them now,” Sharpe said. “I was surprised by how many resources and books the library has.”

Outside of educating seniors about the facilities the library provides, the trip to the library can also push more students to read.

“A lot of our students haven’t been fond of reading,” Ferrell said. “They’ve always been forced to read books, so they never had the choice to read what they wanted.”

With numerous aisles filled with books of all different genres and themes, Cozby Library offers patrons a wide variety of choices in books. The main goal is to give more students options so that they can get into reading what they enjoy and not feel that reading is being forced on them by books they aren’t interested in.

To continue in the initiative to help seniors graduate with a greater love of reading, students in the English IV class will be completing a choice reading assignment where they get to complete work based off of books they select for themselves.

“Even if this trip influences just one or two students to read more, it will have been worth it,” Ferrell said.

As seniors face their future as graduates and move out of high school, reading may not be at the top of their list of priorities, but Ferrell and Green-Griffin hope the students learn to enjoy all the benefits that reading can provide.

“I hope that the students develop a love for reading even when they go to college,” Green-Griffin said. “Even if they move to different states, we hope they visit their nearby libraries and pursue reading more often.”

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