SEQUIM – There’s this place where teenagers aren’t allowed to enjoy food, drink or cell phone conversations – yet they can’t wait to get in.
That’s largely thanks to Nancy Woolley, the irreverent, no-topic-is-taboo face of the Sequim High School Library.
“They get in by 7:15; I get here at 7:25, 7:30,” said Woolley, who’ll retire this week after 33 years at the school.
“One thing they refuse to read,” she added, “is the ‘Closed’ sign” on the library door.
So despite the explosions of YouTube, MySpace and instant-messagespeak on their computers, teens still relish a good face-to-face exchange of ideas, especially with “Mrs. Woolley,” who, after 16 years as librarian, shushes no one.
“I have lots of conversations with them about every subject you can imagine,” she said.
“My room is like a counseling office.”
She talks with teens about whatever comes up: political cartoons in newspapers; the moral of a manga story; The Book Thief, Markus Zusak’s novel that has Death as its narrator; Beloved, the Toni Morrison tale of a woman who killed her own children rather than see them be taken back into slavery.
What else?
“Sex. Creationism, evolution,” Woolley said.
Whatever it is a student wants to discuss, she doesn’t freak out.
This Wednesday, Woolley will get out of school.
At 59, she’s closing the book on her career as an educator, the past 17 years of which she’s devoted to the students who use her library’s 16,000 volumes and 30 computers.
