Classroom Library

It was rewarding to hear so many positive comments about my classroom at the end of the summer, when all I had done was dump two dozen boxes of books onto the old Borders shelves. (I wonder if I ever bought any books from those actual shelves? When Borders was still on State Street, I used to make sure I stopped there in my visits to Ann Arbor, because I knew I would run into some friend or other there.)

Anyway, books are books, even in a Kindle age. My classroom shelves are not yet organized. Many of the books will come back home with me--in our move, we brought them all in here for the time being, but we have bookshelves in our house, too. The categories will include African Studies, American Studies, Foundations of Civilization, Soccer, World Literature, Karl's Binders, and others I haven't yet identified.

This is a lending library. Look for a sign-out sheet, which I will probably hang to the right of the shelves lining the north wall of the room. Any visitor is welcome to come in and browse, even borrow, at any time; if the class is deep into something at that moment, I'll say so. But these books are not for decor, even if they look nice. They are meant to be read. A treasured colleague and friend of mine, Nigel Whittington, once said, When you learn to read, then you really join the rest of the world--you really become a person. Stop by our classroom and play in the fields of adventure with the rest of the human race.