Meet the Teacher: Kathy Matesic of Woodland Hills Junior High School

Kathy Matesic of Hampton Township is the librarian at in . She has been working in the for 13 years as a librarian in various locations. She’s been at Woodland Hills Junior High since the merger.

What do you like most about your job?

What I like most about my job is working with the students. I have a group here called the “Library Likers”—this year I have a lot of them who help me with shelving books, creating displays and processing. They are my volunteers and they only come during their lunch period or when they have finished all of their classwork. They have to have good grades and behavior and also get a recommendation from a teacher. It’s almost like a job.

We also have a monthly lunch bunch gathering and that is a book club that meets during lunch period. They don’t all read the same book but what they do is — whatever they are reading for fun—they come in and eat their lunch, have a healthy snack, activities and prizes. It’s to encourage reading.

We also have our Battle of the Books coming up. What that is is a Jeopardy-like friendly competition in conjunction with the in . We select about 10 books, the students create teams and the teachers volunteer to be coaches. They meet weekly to discuss the books they’re reading. C.C. Mellor helps us obtain 10 copies of each book, they get to know the books and their team members. Then, we take a field trip to C.C. Mellor and we give them 30 questions about all of the books to answer. We get buzzers from the high school and one member from each team comes to the buzzer table. The answer is always a title of a book. Then, the winning team gets a gift card to Half-Priced Books. No one goes home empty handed. 

What’s the most rewarding thing about your job?

Helping students to become independent information seekers is the most rewarding part of my job.