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Loida Casares Ruiz

Wife, Mother, Writer, Advertising Manager

Loida Casares Ruiz grew up in Northeast Houston. She graduated from the University of Houston with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Minor in English. She received a Master of Arts in Communication in 2001. She works in advertising by day and is a mother, wife, and writer by night. She has al...

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My Son & Libraries

Update on my son.  My son is doing fabulous at his new pre-school.  I am so proud of him!  He still doesn’t love school, but he is doing 100% better.  He is engaged in class, he participates, and he gets along great with all his classmates.  I was amazed when after two weeks he came home and wrote his name.   He is more aware of his alphabet and he calls out letters to me when he sees them.   He doesn’t cry every day when I drop him off, like he did a lot of times at his old school.   He’s only cried a couple of times when he’s tired.

Funny, he does miss his old school in some ways.  He brings it up every so often, but it isn’t his class that he misses.  He misses his elective classes and the after school program.  One of his electives was library. The librarian at this school is so lovely.   She is everything you would think a librarian should be.  She’s kind and patient, and best of all she’s funky.  She has a very cute hip haircut and she wears cute clothes and shoes.  I especially love her clogs.  And her library! Especially her library!

My best friend’s nieces go to the same school and my girlfriend barely went into the library for the first time the other day.  She fell in love with it!  She said it reminded her of me and I told her that I love that library. I’ve loved it since the first time that I saw it.  It has all kinds of clocks, colorful comfortable chairs and a colorful rug.  It looks like a sanctuary for kids. 

I see it and I remember my own elementary school library.  I loved that library and it didn’t have a fraction of the personality in this one.  I wonder what it would have been like if my library would have looked like this one when I was a kid.  As it was I loved going to my library. I still remember my librarian very clearly.  Dear Mrs. Dearborn!  Maybe I have a soft spot for librarians because I have such wonderful memories of mine.

My son’s librarian is patient and kind because when she saw me struggling with my son she reached out and she helped me.  One day my son left class after I dropped him off in the morning, and the teacher and teacher’s aide either didn’t notice or didn’t care.  They didn’t even come after him and they didn’t try to keep him in class.  As I walked down the hall, with my son following me, the librarian saw me and she came and offered her help.  She took my son by the hand and led him back to class in a kind voice. My son responded to her.

 Later when we were having challenges with my son we had to go to a parent-teacher-principal conference and when we stepped out of the office we saw our son in the library.  He was well-behaved and sitting in a circle with the rest of his class, talking about the book he had checked out. I was impressed and it was the first clue that I had that things weren’t as bad in his elective classes as they were in his regular class.

I know that there are different personality types and that he wasn’t very happy about the Spanish curriculum, but that together with the change in environment has made all the difference.  He is happy now and he is flourishing.  I can see the difference in the instruction style and how he is responding to that change.  

Only thing is, I miss the library and my son tells me he misses all those other parts of his school that he did enjoy.   Hopefully next year he’ll join his sister at one of the best elementary schools in the district.  No, the library isn’t the same and the librarian, although very adept, is not the same personality type, but it is a great library and a great school.