The word ‘Support’ means to ‘give assistance to’ or ‘bear all or part of the weight of, to hold up’. It also means ‘to agree with or give encouragement to someone or something because you want him, her or it to succeed’. There’s no doubt about it, helping others - or being supportive towards another person – feels good.
Indeed, research has shown that having a strong support system, as we do at Southborough, has many positive benefits, such as higher levels of well-being, better coping skills and a longer and healthier life.
Matthew was only a few months into his first year at Southborough when he first joined the Librarian Club. Fast-forward a year and a half and Matthew manages the eager team of more than a dozen keen librarians within the school. He does this using an online timetabling system and through Google Classroom. Thanks to his great organisational skills, the library is always ‘covered’!
Indeed, our library is the busy, thriving hub of the school. It’s open to students first thing in the morning, break time, lunch time and then after school for Homework Club. Matthew pretty much is there every single day, supporting our Librarian in the successful running of it. With a natural flair for technology – he loves designing his own video games and has four already under his belt – he quickly mastered the library online system in Year 7 and is now an expert in issuing and returning library books and Chrome Books. He regularly analyses data to identify the most popularly read books and plays an important role in new book suggestions; he strongly advocates student voice /feedback!
Matthew is also highly adept at the inevitable ‘house-keeping’ side of running a busy library; he can re-organise and tidy the book-shelves like the best of them! He has a good working relationship with the librarian and is incredibly helpful towards students looking for help and advice on what to read. There has never been an expectation for him to work as hard as he does but he certainly manages to balance his school work tremendously well, too! As he happily admits “I just love it here and volunteer to do more tasks as time goes on. Luckily, our librarian supports my enthusiasm to get involved and I, in return, love to support the library in any way I can”.
We think Matthew is an absolute superstar and exemplifies the key value of SUPPORT at Southborough whole-heartedly.