As the 2025-2026 school year progresses, Mrs. Peterson is excited to welcome students to the Coal City High School library, which has multiple workspaces that are flexible, mobile, and modular. These spaces are available for students to use independently, as a whole class, or in a group setting. This has been particularly useful already, as Student Council students are in the library during CCT and Mrs. Peterson, Mrs. Vucsko, and StuCo spent the first part of the school year preparing and executing Homecoming 2025.
The library has also welcomed all freshmen English classes for an overview of services the library can offer as they become more independent in their education and needs. They took a quick tour of the library, then completed a scavenger hunt to test their knowledge. Teams raced each other, and winning teams received the ultimate prize—candy.
Mrs. Hayse’s freshmen English classes are coming in every few weeks to check out books and enjoy the library space. They get recommendations and continue to learn how to navigate the library. Most recently, Mrs. Hayse’s classes started their library time working to “Escape the Haunted House” in small groups-winners receive candy bars!
We are always working to diversify our collection with works by minority and LGBTQ+ authors and non-mainstream formats, which includes expanding our graphic novels collection to include anime and manga publications. We’ve moved all of our manga/anime to its own section, using bins to house larger series to make browsing more intuitive. Our graphic novels collection is continuing its nonstop growth, and we have moved larger series to bins for browsing here as well.
As we continue to work on dynamic shelving to appeal to students and maximize space, we are hoping to eventually use bins for browsing larger series in our fiction section.
With the ability to change and adapt as necessary, the CCHS library is always working to meet the needs of our students and staff however they need us.