Athens, Ga. – University of Georgia adult education student Linda Martin has received a $4,000 grant through the Louise Seaman Bechtel Fellowship to spend a month or more studying at the Baldwin Library at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Fla.
Martin, of Gainesville, Ga., is a second-year doctoral student in the College of Education’s department of lifelong education, administration, and policy. She was named Georgia’s Library Media Specialist of the Year in 2007 for her work at Sugar Hill Elementary School in Hall County, where she has been employed since 2002.
In addition, she is a professional storyteller, and her dissertation is on the professionalization of storytelling, a topic on which little research has been done.
“Sugar Hill has a majority English language learnerspopulation, so I use storytelling as a multiliteracy approach to teaching,” said Martin. “We memorize facts, but we learn through story.”
During her study at the Baldwin Library, Martin plans to examine stories that illustrate national standards in math, science, language arts and social studies. She hopes to use her research to create a professional development course for teachers and librarians as well as publish a book on the subject.
Martin received her master’s degree in library sciences from Vanderbilt University and an Ed.S. in instructional technology from UGA. She received a B.A. in history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
The Louise Seaman Bechtel Fellowship is awarded annually to fund a qualified children’s librarian to study at the Baldwin Library, a part of UF’s George A. Smathers Libraries. The library contains a collection of 85,000 volumes of children’s literature.