School Author Visit Survey Request
We are seeking help with gathering information about author visits to schools in Maine. If you have hosted 20 authors or have never hosted an author in your school, we are interested in your response!
Who is conducting this survey and why?
The Maine School Author Visit Grant is conducting this survey. As we begin 2023, we are in the process of evaluating the impact of the author visit grant program. Several years have passed since we last surveyed the school community and we are interested in knowing if this grant is still meeting schools’ needs. To help with the evaluation process, we created a new survey and are gathering feedback from people involved with planning and organizing school author visits.
Some history about the grant
The Maine School Author Visit grant was created in 2016 following conversations with a group of school librarians and ed. techs and a few Maine authors/illustrators. To gather information from the broader Maine school community, we also created and conducted a survey. The 2015 survey received responses from 81 participants representing pre-k -12 schools from all 16 counties in Maine. Results were used to inform the grant guidelines and were also shared with MASL.
The Maine School Author Visit grant currently provides an opportunity for PreK-12 schools to apply for grants ranging between $500 - $800 to help host authors who will share writing processes, story development and research experiences. Although many authors are amazing inspirational speakers and have great messages to share, the grant’s intent is to highlight the writing connection for students. The hope is that meeting authors and illustrators will help inspire students to read, write and/or illustrate.
From 2016 - 2020, the grant was managed and hosted by the Onion Foundation. As of June 2021 the Author Visit Grant separated from the foundation and can now be found at Maine Literacy Fund. Over the past seven years, the fund has awarded 144 grants to over 75 schools across Maine. We are hoping to continue and expand this opportunity.
Link to School Author Visit Survey
The survey should take between 5 - 10 minutes to complete and will close on January 31, 2023.
You can help spread the work by sharing this survey link with other colleagues who are responsible for school library programming.
If you have any questions, please direct them to Susan@maineliteracyfund.org
We appreciate your participation with this data collection project!
~ Susan Onion, MLIS
(Grant manager: Maine School Author Visit Grant)
