The Shadow
SHARON — Lia Fisher-Janosz’s boundless energy and enthusiasm are garnering statewide recognition for Sharon Elementary School in Alleghany County.
Fisher-Janosz has served as the school’s librarian for four years, and she was recently named as Librarian of the Year for the Roanoke Region of the Virginia Association of School Librarians.
“When I learned about this recognition, I felt like Miss America, as far as a librarian can,” she said laughingly. “I was floored. I was tickled pink.”
VAASL selects one outstanding librarian from each of its seven regions to be the Regional Librarian of the Year. She will be one of the candidates for VAASL’s Virginia Librarian of the Year, which will be announced later this year at the association’s annual conference.
“Lia exemplifies the best of the best as a librarian and leader in her school,” said Judy Deichman, president of VAASL.
Fisher-Janosz is the second local school librarian to receive the Roanoke Region honor in recent years. Barbara Jean Childs, the librarian at Edgemont Primary School and Jeter-Watson Intermediate School in Covington, was named VAASL’s school librarian of the year for the Roanoke region in 2020.
Additionally, a $3,000 grant Fisher-Janosz obtained from the American Library Association helped place Sharon on the map by drawing attention from Virginia Living — a statewide lifestyle magazine that is published bimonthly. Virginia Living featured Sharon Elementary in the State of Education section of the magazine. This section, included in Virginia LIving’s latest edition, recognizes nearly 200 public and private schools in the Commonwealth.
Fisher-Janosz received a $3,000 Libraries Transforming Communities grant from the ALA in 2021 to fund a yearlong resilience program at Sharon. The program is designed to teach students how to bounce back from personal challenges.
“There are children who are struggling, and then you had the COVID-19 pandemic on top of that. I wanted to teach our kids to be flexible and to be resilient, to bounce back. Resilience is not an innate skill you are born with … you have to learn it. That was the catalyst for me in seeking out this grant,” she said.
Libraries Transforming Communities grants enable libraries in rural areas to reach out into the school community and the local community and establish collaboration, in this case to help foster literacy and resiliency.
Fisher-Janosz and the staff at Sharon Elementary have coordinated dialogue with the community about building and fostering resiliency through reading and related activities. Conversations with the Sharon community have been held virtually and in-person.
The grant funds have allowed Fisher-Janosz to expand the library’s materials and resources. Resilience-developing materials, such as books and digital programming, have been added.
In addition to the ALA’s LTC grant, Fisher-Janosz also secured funding via DonorsChoose, a respected nonprofit organization that allows individuals to donate directly to public school classroom projects, in order to purchase new chairs and tables for the school library.
Fisher-Janosz has added furnishings and other decor to create a small Hygge Hub in the library. Hygge is a Danish concept related to creating an atmosphere of coziness and comfort.
“It’s an oasis of comfort and coziness and has proved popular with students and faculty alike. I’m so glad that I was able to bring the project to fruition, as I know it will prove truly beneficial to our school community,” she said.
“One of the main reasons I got into education was to make a difference in the lives of kids. “Many children are facing great challenges,” she said.
“I just want to show kids that it can be different, or things can be better than what they have experienced, up to this point. I just want to show them how they themselves can be part of bringing that change about, and that is one of the reasons I am doing the resilience program here at the Sharon library,” she added. “Children, along with adults, are having to adapt to the stressors of COVID.”
Fisher-Janosz enjoys providing unique opportunities for her students. For instance, in March, fifth-grade students participated in a virtual author visit with Jarrett Lerner, an author and illustrator who produces graphic novels for children. Fisher-Janosz plans to provide similar opportunities to each fifth grade annually.
Fisher-Janosz taught in Tennessee and New Jersey before joining Alleghany County Public Schools in June 2018. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the State University of New York-Purchase College and a master’s degree in elementary education from New York University. She is working toward a master’s degree in school librarianship at Longwood University, which she will receive this May. At Longwood University, Fisher-Janosz was named as the recipient of the Lancer Award, which honors an outstanding graduate student.
Since coming to Sharon, she has served as director of a drama club, which was derailed by the pandemic with hopes of restarting in the spring of 2023. She currently oversees production of the school yearbook and has served on the technology committee, while also co-directing the STEAM (science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics) program, slated to return in the fall of 2022. She has also been seeking input for new clubs and has plans to offer more of these in the fall as well.
“This school is a really special place,” Fisher-Janosz said. “We try to make it a learning community, with an emphasis on community. While a tremendous amount of learning does happen here, it’s a place where we try to help each other out a lot, and that goes for the faculty, too, and how the faculty interacts with the students.”
“I had to apply to be considered for the school librarian recognition from VAASL, but I applied not necessarily for my own sake, but for the sake of the kids. People can see these things and say, ‘Oh, look. You can really do some amazing things in a small place like this.’ I want the kids to feel special, and I feel like they deserve it, because they do,” Fisher-Janosz said.
