It was the end of the school year, and we had just received an email from our principal containing next year’s school map. Changes in teaching positions and class sizes meant we had to reconfigure classrooms. I just knew there were teachers down the hall groaning at the thought of packing up their classroom to shift two doors down. I wasn’t groaning. I was excited. I had just accepted a new position as the reading interventionist for the following year, and I saw that I would be working in room 108.
Wait, room 108? Wasn’t that a closet?
I walked to the other side of the building to investigate. I peeked into room 108 and saw that it wasn’t actually a closet, it was more like a storage . . . space. It was bigger than I’d thought. I remembered that it had been a learning space many years ago and most recently had been the room where the music teacher taught remotely during the pandemic. Now it was filled with shelving units that housed boxes and boxes of intervention materials and other . . . stuff. It wasn’t pretty, but at least it wasn’t a closet.
When I returned to room 108 in the late summer to set up our new intervention room, I brought a friend with me ready to lift heavy boxes and move bulky shelves. He was eager to jump in. “Wait,” I said as he bent to move a box. “I need to think.” I needed to consider my priorities. How did I want this space to feel? What mattered most when thinking about this learning space? I realized I had two goals: to make kids feel welcome and to have a functioning space.
Making Kids Feel Welcome
There is something to be said for a shared community space in a classroom. Something about a carpeted meeting area that is large enough to fit everybody that just says, “We are a community. We learn together. Everyone belongs here.” I knew I wanted that feeling despite the fact that this was an “just the intervention room.” So I unrolled the colorful carpet from my classroom and placed it front and center. It took up almost the entire floor, but I didn’t care. The room already felt like home.
I didn’t do much to the walls because I am a believer in blank space in the classroom—space for kids to showcase their learning through co-created anchor charts and finished work. I hung a few pieces of kid-created artwork and a couple of inspirational canvases to brighten up the space, but then I left the walls and bulletin boards mostly blank, ready to be filled with evidence of our learning.
I made sure the room was dripping with books. Throughout my teaching career I have noticed that sometimes intervention rooms are curiously devoid of actual books and instead are often filled with intervention program materials. I couldn’t imagine having a learning space without books, because books remind students of two important truths: We are readers, and you are welcome here.
I filled the shelves with books I thought the kids would love. I put some books front-facing behind the small-group table so kids could see the beautiful covers. I bought little magnetic ledges and stuck them to our whiteboard so they could hold more books. I made sure the faces on the covers looked like the kids I would be teaching—beautiful brown and black and white faces smiled back at me from the covers of the books. Yes, this feels right, I thought.
Have a Functioning Space
The room was taking shape. It no longer looked like a storage space but instead looked like a place for kids. It was inviting and bright. Okay, I thought. What do I need to make sure this room functions as a learning space? I sat down on the carpet and looked around the room. I certainly didn’t know what the school year would bring, but I had a general sense of what reading interventions would look like. I thought through each component of the intervention programs I would be using and made a list of the materials I would need to make the space functional. I made sure I had the following:
- easy access to dry erase boards and clipboards
- a small-group table with five seats
- plenty of pencils, markers, and sticky notes near the small-group table
- accessible bins to house reading notebooks and leveled books
- my beloved tabletop easel to create anchor charts during small-group gatherings
- plenty of flexible seating: the carpet, an old leather armchair I repurposed from my house, stools
- open access to wall outlets to charge Chromebooks
- chart paper and markers near the carpet to capture our learning
Anything that wasn’t welcoming to kids or adding to the functionality of the room was tucked away in a hidden corner, out of sight for the average visitor. It was unlike any intervention room I had previously seen. It wasn’t sterile, and it wasn’t filled with teacher materials. As teachers came into the school building in the following days to set up their classrooms, many popped their heads into room 108 to say hello. “Whoa. This place looks amazing!” many of them said. One colleague said, “Wait, I thought this used to be a closet.”
Not anymore. Room 108 had been transformed into a welcoming space for kids. Yes, you are welcome here, readers. Come on in.
