I’ve always personified objects. I grew up on a farm, and on those stifling hot summer days baling hay, I would beg my father to give the tractor a break. “It’s hot and tired,” I’d plead. “Let it rest.”
He’d laugh. “Honey, it’s a machine. It doesn’t feel like you do.” I was certain he was wrong. The tractor groaned and ached, its bones and tendons cracking. It sounded exhausted and half dead. Other things, too: When it snowed, I worried that the roof of the barn was cold, that the corn was shivering. When an enormous sugar maple cracked in a lightning storm and my father chainsawed it into firewood, I imagined the tree’s flesh like the flesh of an arm, and clenched my ears to hide from its cries. I hated the screams of the chain saw, gleeful and furious. I believe objects feel like I feel, even today. When the remote gets lost, I feel sorry for it. When a plate breaks, I apologize to it.
And books! The feelings of books! I’ve always wanted to protect them, hide them, keep them from any sort of difficulty. So imagine how I felt when we found a way for the leveled texts in our elementary school to have a brand-new, safe, spacious place to live.
The Story
For the first five years I worked in my current school, we were overcrowded. Not in the a-few-extra-kids-in-each-room way, but in the way in which we had about 200 extra students and no seats for them. We didn’t have enough classrooms or working spaces, and our Master Schedule was so complicated, it would have taken a stranger four weeks, a slide rule, and a TI-81 to figure it out.
The last two years were the worst. We had to problem-solve and make creative plans to make sure all students had a place to learn. One year, several classes had to traipse across a parking lot to the adjacent middle school, commandeering three classrooms for instruction; another year, our district gussied up a former preschool building down the hill from our building to house support staff servicing kids.
There wasn’t enough room for the students, and there certainly wasn’t enough room for the books. Our literacy room, where we house all the leveled texts, was cornered into a back storage room, with books shelved so high, there was a real risk of a tub overturning and bonking someone on the head. It was windowless and dark. In addition to the books, the room housed a laminator, a microwave, a mountain of boxes shoved full with ancient technology headed for the old-computer graveyard, and several filing cabinets of crumpled folders and assessment materials. Searching for leveled texts was like going into a dungeon and searching for a pebble.
It was necessary. There quite literally was no other option.
But! Guess what? This past year, my district completed a massive redistricting, and a large number of our students were given the chance to attend a brand-new elementary school. Suddenly, there was room in my building. Empty classrooms and work spaces. I could almost hear the walls exhale.
I spent the pandemic summer remapping our whole building. I whooped when I realized we had an entire extra classroom to make into our literacy resource room. Some of the furniture budget money went to buy brand-new bookshelves, and the custodian assembled and arranged them in a neat configuration. Several teachers masked up and came in over the summer to schlep books and tubs and clothespins down the hall. Every single book was taken from its dungeon and moved to its new room.
I found myself thinking of these books as little people. Hundreds of little people, lined up in a new living space, waiting, eager to be chosen and used. Teachers came and marveled at the space, the clean and clear system for checkout, and the possibilities for use in their classrooms. It only reinforced my sense that the books need the same care and accommodation that people need. Here’s what other literacy leaders might consider to humanize their books.
Give them space. Books need space, just like people do. I love the idea of having all the books in one place, pooled together so everyone can look at them, peruse them, admire how pretty they are, and find ways to use them.
Give them a person. Someone needs to be in charge of all these books. Not in a dictatorial way, but the way a mother keeps an eye on her child at the pool, just watching. This person might be the one to keep an inventory, to recommend when it’s time to replace books, to send a kind email every now and then reminding people to put things away nicely.
Give them attention. “Have you checked out the literacy resource room?” I ask teachers when brainstorming ways they might connect with a reader. “Swing by and see if there might be a book for that.” I try to remind staff frequently about the rich and varied resources available to them. Additionally, I’ve added comfortable seating and work space in the room, and anyone can go in anytime they need a quiet place to work. It’s like an additional private library. Drawing attention to the room triggers a reminder of what it holds.
Give them a system. “The person” can oversee a checkout-and-return system. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, just so it gives some idea of what books are being used by whom. Clothespins or barcodes or a clipboard—anything to account for books and their locations will work, because, as honest as teachers are, the honor system doesn’t work. It’s not that leveled books get stolen, exactly. Teachers might steal sticky notes or a lone Diet Coke from the staff refrigerator, but they don’t tend to steal leveled literacy books. I mean, why? They do, however, tend to de-prioritize their return. An accounting system will help minimize loss.
Give them a break. Even with the best accounting system, some books will be lost, and some teachers and students will not know where they’ve ended up. No need to sweat this one out. I budget money to replace books every year or two. It’s not that I think of these books as disposable; I just don’t fret when they get lost. I’m happy to replace them, especially knowing that some get lost because they were being read.
My lifelong tendency to personify objects has certainly seeped over into how I think about books. I’m so proud of the lovely home we’ve built for the leveled texts in our literacy resource room. It’s the kind of environment all people would love to have: safe, warm, dry, and full of possibilities.
