The Decluttered Teacher | Chapter 3: In-Class Library

Storage in the classroom can be thought of in zones: an in-class library, teacher station, student supplies, teacher supplies, curriculum resources, backpacks/coats, and papers-to-go-home.

In future posts, we will also discuss optional zones, such as the technology zone, art zone, reading zone, science zone, music zone, etc.

If you’re teaching in the lower grades, you will very likely want some sort of in-class library (I would have one if my high school classroom, too). There is a statistical likelihood that your campus library is not next door, but in some obscure portable building off site requiring rudimentary orienteering knowledge or a smartphone app that tasks satellites in geosynchronous orbit to locate. Furthermore, in an age where librarians are no longer just the keepers and cataloguers of literature (as if that wasn’t job enough), libraries can often be closed while the librarian tends to his other duties.

For these reasons, I suggest a small in-class library. Now, if you are anything like me, you love the look, feel, and smell of books. Heck, you even like reading them! But, I urge you not to find a shelf or set of shelves so big that you need one of those old-fashioned, rolling library ladders to access books on higher shelves (even though that would definitely make your classroom most impressive). I encourage you to use a small shelf that will hold thirty to fifty books.

“But, kids are so picky these days. They need choices,” you protest.

Remember, the books in your classroom are just to tide them over until they can make it to the library to check out new books.

But, because we are not focusing on quantity, we must, of course, focus on quality. I have hand-selected all of the books in my classroom library. I have read every book on its three narrow shelves (And, I’ve read others too! Gosh! So judgmental!). Many of the books are hardbound, some have deckel-edged pages, one even has gilt-edged pages. My copy of James and the Giant Peach has had my name written on the inside cover since I was in fourth grade. I have The Chronicles of Narnia in Spanish (as many of my students come from Spanish-speaking households). I have the British version of the first Harry Potter. Bilbo, Frodo, Alice, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and other precocious characters bent on big adventure populate my shelves. There are also big coffee-table-sized books with beautiful pictures and non-fiction books about classic cars and submarines (high schoolers love picture books too!). I also have several Calvin and Hobbes comic book collections for kids who crave witty banter, both brash and tongue-in-cheek humor, and high vocabulary.

These are the books that remind me of my love of reading. If I do not enjoy the book or have not read it, it is not on my shelf. I have lost a couple of my books and some of them have been handled a little roughly, but better a well-worn or lost book than one carefully preserved in a dark box, un-held and un-read.

So, with this in mind, choose the appropriate piece of furniture.