The Olathe West Library held their annual “Cafe Owle” event Feb. 5 that featured live entertainment by several students, as well as staff members.
“I just love that coffee shop feel where people could just come and chill and hang out,” librarian Esther Myers said. “And that’s what I want the library to be – this space where people feel welcome and loved and like they belong. And I feel like this helps us reach that goal. And whether it’s people listening to the music, or if they’re just hanging out and playing games and interacting with their friends or looking at books and checking out books, I just want them to know that this is a space where they are welcomed and that they will love.”
Students from a variety of grade levels and activities signed up to provide music for those attending the coffee house. Senior Caleb Sramek and freshmen Ellie Gramkow both played guitar and sang separately.
“I did it last year,” Sramek said. “And it’s just a good way for everyone, especially the people who aren’t in theater or aren’t in any of the performing arts classes to showcase their talents and show that they do other things besides show up to school.”
The opportunity provided a way for students to learn more about their peers and participate in an event that many different people were involved in, and also try something out of their comfort zones.
“I always loved singing and I just wanted to be brave and sing for the people,” Gramkow said. “I said that I wanted go at the beginning and get it out of the way. [Mrs. Myers] said I was going to go first, and I was like, ‘I’ll just go for it.’”
Food was provided, as was decorations and space for students to play games or even work on homework.
“It takes quite a bit of planning and collaboration,” Myers said. “I work with a lot of different teachers through different subjects and disciplines. So we have culinary, and they made the cookies for us, and the art teachers helped provide all of the decorations around, and Ms. Mitchell helped with our marketing and promoting the event, and those are some of the key pieces around and just contacting students and trying to reach out to see who would be interested in performing and helping out and being apart of it.”
Even staff members performed, like math teacher Ryan Krzykowski, who played guitar and sang the song “One” by U2. Myers herself also performed two songs on the guitar and sang towards the end.
“I think it went really well,” Myers said. “I love that we had a mix in variety of people and grade levels like freshmen through seniors and different instruments, we had band instruments and orchestra instruments and people singing and playing guitar and piano and it’s just so cool especially for the people that aren’t in performing arts to see them up here performing I think is just really kind of special and overall I feel like it went really well.”
