TMS' Val Graybill Wins 2024 Librarian of the Year Award

During their annual conference, the Oregon Association of School Libraries (OASL) named Val Graybill, library manager at Thurston Middle School, the 2024 Classified Library Employee of the Year! The award is given to library staff who demonstrate exceptional performance in their school libraries.

OASL stated that Graybill stands out because she is a leader among her peers, she facilitates a library full of innovation and makerspace activities for students, and her superpower is fostering positive relationships with students and staff.

“It means the world to me to know that they see the hard work that I’ve put into everything,” said Graybill. “Their recognition also means I am doing all of the right things; it makes me want to keep creating and finding more innovative things for the kids to do!”

Graybill has been at Thurston Middle School for a year. She and her family moved to Eugene from Siuslaw.

Originally, Graybill was a meat cutter at Fred Meyer for 17 years, until a back injury forced her to quit working altogether. After some basic observations and reflection, she decided to go into education, just like her husband, who is a teacher.

“I started my education career as an eighth-grade aide at Siuslaw Middle School. On occasion they would ask me to sub at the library and I started liking the space and interactions with kids, it was just different than in the classroom,” explains Graybill. “When a position opened-up, I applied and stayed at Siuslaw for four years, three of those years at the library.”

One of Graybill’s key accomplishments at Thurston Middle School this past year was organizing the entire library in genres, helping students more easily identify books in areas of interest.

Next year, Graybill plans to launch a reading program called Read the World. Students are given a reading passport and encouraged to read books from different countries and cultures. Participants get stamps for every book completed. Students with full passports get to enjoy a special field trip at the end of the year.

Graybill is also working with many language arts teachers throughout our district to engage students who have high interest in reading, but maybe some reading and interpretation challenges. Graybill tries to host what she describes as Book Tastings, which are simple book displays that allow students to peruse carefully curated and accessible books. The effort is a small way to advance literacy efforts at Thurston Middle School and throughout the District.

Congratulations Val on the award.