YUNYI DAI / NEXTGENRADIO
What is the meaning of
home?
Beayonie Washington speaks with Antuan Hawkins, a librarian who provides “Sensory Storytime” for adults with special needs at the Greensboro Public Library. Sensory Storytime allows people with disabilities to engage with a variety of storytime activities that are not typically offered at most libraries.
Through storytime, Greensboro librarian makes a home for adults with special needs
Through storytime, Greensboro librarian makes a home for adults with special needs
Click here for audio transcript
I make people with special needs feel right at home by treating them like people like adults.
Even though they may have a special need. They just want to have respect just like anyone else. So you treat them with respect. Don’t treat them any differently than anybody else. Just treat them as a person. And they really, they really respond to that.
My name is Antuan Hawkins and I live in Greensboro, North Carolina, I’m 47 years old.
I’ve had a lot of jobs, okay. I’ve been a restaurant owner, I’ve been an actor, a singer. I’ve been a school teacher, know many different professions. But I looked in the newspaper. So that tells you how long ago it was, it was in a newspaper, I looked at it and there was an ad for a Children’s Services Librarian.
And it said, they had a preference for someone who had worked with children before someone who had a background in the arts, preferably. And so I applied, you know, I didn’t think anything of it. I said, you know, I will probably work at that job for like three months, two months, or whatever.
So I got hired, I would spend long days planning, I would spend long days just hanging out with the kids, shelving books, pulling books and doing reader advisory where we, you know, give recommendations for books and titles and things. So then fast forward to several years later, I became a Children’s Services Manager.
Well, then the opportunity came up, and I saw a special needs librarian. And that’s how I kind of started and transitioned into being a special needs librarian.
There’s different types of special needs special populations, because it could be cognitive disability, it could be marginalized, like the deaf community, it could be, you know, the elderly.
The way I pick my books is, I just have to feel the book. So I have to just, you know, get the list of books, I just look up the subject matter. And then I just pull a ton of books, and then I just sit down and I read through all of them. I just have to make sure that it’s something that speaks to me, and so I can deliver the best program.
‘Sensory Storytime’ sounds just like any other regular storytime but there’s very specific details that we have to pay attention to, just to make sure we don’t over stimulate or under stimulate. Because with that, you have to make sure that you have something for everyone.
This is Miss Regina. She is one of the Children’s Services. Ms. Regina, hey, I’m going to look at a storytime room for a minute)
(Sound of the doors opening)
So this is the storytime room at Central Library. And so I’ve done special needs storytimes here.
The last book I read was probably Pete the Cat.
That was…a that was a fun book. It’s about this, this cat that has on white shoes, and he loves these white shoes. And so it goes um, you know, Pete the Cat is walking along singing a song. He loves his white shoes so much that he sings “I love my white shoes. I love my white shoes. I love my white shoes. Womp womp womp.”
But then he steps in something, and it’s a large pile of strawberries. So his shoes are not white anymore. His shoes are a different color. But did he care? No, not at all. And so it goes like that. And with Pete the cat. It’s all about just taking life as it goes and not being worried about it.
The first time I held a special event, an event for the special needs population. I was nervous because I was so used to just catering to the children. So going into a program where I had to plan for adults that had special needs. It just made me nervous. But at the end of it, I felt very rewarded. I felt that I had a great sense of purpose. And I felt like I was helping a community that needed… the that needed that support.
When Antuan Hawkins performs storytime at the Greensboro Public Library, he doesn’t just read for children, he also presents for the elderly, adults with autism and other folks with special needs through the “All Abilities” programs.
Hawkins, 47, has lived in Greensboro for the last seven years. At the library, he has created a home for adults with differing abilities through a series of activities that include Sensory Storytime.
“Sensory Storytime sounds just like any other regular storytime, but there’s very specific details that we have to pay attention to just to make sure we don’t overstimulate or under-stimulate,” said Hawkins, who works as the special populations librarian. “Because with that, you know, you have to make sure that you have something for everyone.”
During Sensory Storytime, adults who prefer Accessible Resources not only listen to Hawkins read from books, they also play with musical instruments, engage in movement games and make crafts. Hawkins said these kinds of services aren’t available at most libraries. He offers a variety of different activities to allow people to engage with different senses.
For example, there is a sandbox activity in which a patron will go through the sandbox and find different items that stimulate different senses. In another activity, a patron might wear headphones that can muffle the sounds around them to create a quiet environment. Hawkins is conscientious that he’s working with a variety of people with differing abilities — from people with cognitive disabilities to the Deaf community to elderly folks.
“I make people with special needs feel right at home by treating them like people — like adults,” he said. “They just want to have respect just like anyone else. When you treat them with respect, don’t treat them any differently than anybody else. Just treat them as a person. And they really respond to that.”
For Hawkins, becoming a librarian was an accident. Prior to that he worked for corporations, taught school, and performed as an actor and singer on Broadway stages. The skills that he developed have been useful in his work as a librarian.
One day in 2008, while reading the newspaper, Hawkins saw an ad for a children’s service librarian at Neuse Regional Library in Kinston. It mentioned that they wanted a candidate with a background in the arts and experience working with children.
“I checked all the boxes,” Hawkins said.
He was hired for the position, which he didn’t imagine would last beyond a couple of months. But as he dove into planning programs and spending time with children, he committed to the job.
“I would spend long days planning, I would spend long days, you know, like just hanging out with the kids, shelving books, pulling books, and doing reader advisory where we, you know, give recommendations from books and titles and things. I would end my day very exhausted,” Hawkins said. “But it was a good kind of exhausted because I felt completely rewarded.”
After nearly eight years at Neuse Regional Library, he then worked at Alamance Public Libraries in Burlington as a children’s services manager, and then eventually was hired as a special populations librarian at Greensboro Public Library in 2017.
Hawkins recalled the first time he organized an “All Abilities” event for adults.
“I was nervous because I was so used to just catering to school-age children,” he said. “But at the end of it, I felt very rewarded, I felt that I had a great sense of purpose. And I felt like I was helping a community that needed that support.”
After about seven years in Greensboro, the city has become home.
Antuan Hawkins, a librarian for special needs adults, stands in front of the mural painted at the entrance of the children’s storytime room at the Greensboro Library on July 31, 2023. Hawkins hosts a storytime for adults with special needs once a quarter, in which he encourages his audience to engage in the stories using crafts and musical instruments.
BEAYONIE WASHINGTON/ NEXTGENRADIO
Antuan Hawkins said he uses books in his storytime that pull him in, which helps him present stories that resonate with his patrons.
BEAYONIE WASHINGTON/ NEXTGENRADIO
Hawkins uses the supply closet in the storytime section of the library to store stickers, ribbons, paper and various craft supplies for use in All Abilities programs such as Sensory Storytime.
BEAYONIE WASHINGTON/ NEXTGENRADIO
Antuan Hawkins stands in the supply room at the Greensboro Library. The instructions on the door behind him teach participants to make a paper they can use in storytimes.
BEAYONIE WASHINGTON/ NEXTGENRADIO
But at the end of it, I felt very rewarded, I felt that I had a great sense of purpose. And I felt like I was helping a community that needed that support.
“One of the things that I found comfort in is good coworkers. My team … we have developed this rapport, we always support one another, and we hang out even outside of the library, you know … a lot of times you’ll have a team that you work on and at five o’clock or six o’clock when you go home, you don’t want to be bothered with anything dealing with work. But we have such a rapport that all of us, you know, we just hang out, we go to different events together. And so it’s really made Greensboro feel more like a home because I have the work family and then I have the other friends and family, and then sometimes it’s both and we all get together.”
For Hawkins, the meaning of home has changed a lot over his lifetime.
“I would always think of home being a place where everyone was welcome to a place where you could always stop by to get a hot meal,” said Hawkins.
Hawkins was born in Kinston and raised by his grandparents, who ran Cozy Cafe, which is now closed. His great-grandfather opened the restaurant in the 1950s and also ran a nightclub at the same location. When he died, Hawkins’ grandmother, Annie Whitehead, inherited Cozy Cafe.
“My grandmother was a cook. She always cooked no matter what,” Hawkins said. “It was always filled with our soul food at the restaurant. The main thing was fried chicken but she always cooked things from scratch. There was no, you know, cutting any corners or anything. So she would always have cakes and chicken pastry.”
Chicken pastry, Hawkins added, is an eastern North Carolina dish. His grandmother didn’t have a rolling pin, so she’d use a Coca-Cola bottle to roll the dough.
“The best representation of home would be a nod to my home growing up,” Hawkins said, “a place filled with love, a place that could be a refuge for some of my friends if they need a couch to sleep on. Or if they need a meal, they could come by, we could just hang out, you know, no pressure for anything other than just having good company.”
The best representation of home would be a nod to my home growing up…a place filled with love, a place that could be a refuge for some of my friends if they need a couch to sleep on. Or if they need a meal, they could come by, we could just hang out, you know, no pressure for anything other than just having good company.