So...we're back to school, and it has been SO good to see so many familiar faces in the halls of our new building these past couple of weeks, and wonderful to meet new ones! Everyone was so busy getting the new space ready for classes (what an adventure!), and then with starting school and getting acquainted with teachers, classmates, books, and rooms...but now we're a little more settled and we're ready for the library to be up and running at full speed. Many of you have dropped by our lovely new space, but it's time for everyone to get fully acquainted with our layout, our books, and everything the library has to offer. Back to the library we go!

Good literature and other engaging resources to feed curious minds are central to the CHESS philosophy of contagious learning, and we strive to make the library a welcoming place in which to collect and share those resources. We love having teachers and students visit and interact with our collection, but we also welcome our families to make good use of the library. In fact, we strongly encourage parents to familiarize themselves with what we offer in the library, and to set their own guidelines for their families in regard to its use. (Please see our Library Guidelines page for more information.) We work to curate a collection that supports a thorough and well-rounded education and that helps to develop and exercise a solid Biblical worldview, so we do our best to make sure that the books and materials we offer do not actively  undermine that purpose. Keep in mind, however, that ours is not an exclusively Christian collection and we do not guarantee that all of our books and materials will meet the specific standards of each family; in fact, we know that they will not! We discourage relying on the "Christian" label to assume a book is "safe," in any library, or to assume that not having that label renders a book unfit. Instead, we strongly encourage our students to use the critical thinking skills and the worldview lens they are developing in their CHESS classes to examine and evaluate any of the books they encounter, and we encourage their parents to be participants with them in that process. Above all,we encourage all of our readers, young and old, to look for how a book promotes the understanding of truth, beauty, and goodness, whatever its source.

We believe our growing collection contains a wonderful assortment of books and materials that do just that, and we invite our students and their families to come see for themselves. And this week, there will be a extra reason to visit, as we're launching our first reading program of the year - Chipotle Reading Rewards! Our goal for this program this year is just to get students into the library, and to give them a bit of encouragement for the reading they're already doing, so it's really the easiest one we've ever done, and everyone can do it! You can find the details on our Programs and Events page, and you can pick up materials in the library any day next week. (If your student will be absent next week, no worries! Email Mrs. Meester at library@chesschristian.com for info and supplies.)

We look forward to seeing every one of our students in the library soon, and we're excited about a great year of reading, learning and growing. (And some Chipotle is a nice bonus, too!)

-Mrs. Meester