Routman (2003) emphasizes, at length, the importance of having a good classroom library. She even promotes owning books and how it makes her happy to own books. Unfortunately, not all of our students can afford to own their own books, nor can teachers who are just starting out afford extensive classroom libraries.
Classroom libraries are expensive for the teacher, difficult to amass, and unfair. Why should one class have the benefits of an extensive and expensive classroom library, with high quality books on any and every subject, while another class suffers because their teacher is a first-year teacher who has not had the opportunity to amass a collection? It seems elitist, and it shows students that some people have all the advantages when it comes to learning, while others don’t. Forget classroom libraries. As much as it may benefit students to organize their own books, in the long run, it will benefit them more to know how to use a library.
Instead of a classroom library, all teachers and students should become more familiar with the school library. All schools receive a budget to buy books for the school library. There is always a large collection of books, and it grows every year. School libraries have fiction and non-fiction books on many topics, more than could ever be present in any one classroom library. School libraries are fantastic resources that are altogether too often underused.
There is often a problem, when classroom libraries are available, that students will go back and forth from their seats to the library, switching books five times in a half hour, and never actually reading anything. Instead, if students went to the library to find a book, they would have to select one and bring it to class. They would then not have the option of simply skimming pages only to switch books five minutes later. There would have to be rules and restrictions of course. The protocol could be outlined so as only to allow students one trip to the library per week, unless they can show that they have finished their book or explain why they are not interested in reading the book. After all, we all start books that we don’t have any desire to finish, not every book is for everyone.
Most libraries have a librarian. Though the librarian is not at the school full time, it is still someone that the students should get to know. Most school librarians are very familiar with their collections, and are experts at helping students select books that they will want to read. Librarians are also fantastic at finding books on a specific topic of study—both fiction and non-fiction. Most libraries are also available to work on projects outside of the scheduled “library” period, so long as there are not other classes there.
In my ELA class, there will not be a large classroom library. There will be regular class visits to the school library and individual opportunity to visit the library to select books.