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player ready...If you’re old enough, you no doubt remember school librarians telling you to “shush” and library rooms converted into computer labs filled with towers and large monitors.
Now that you remember, Devonshire School says to forget when regarding its new library.
Well, “library” isn’t exactly the right word, which is why Devonshire leaders are not calling it that. The new 21st century learning center at Devonshire, which was unveiled Sept. 22 for the first time, still has not been named, but it soon will be with the help of the school community, officials say.
What is certain is that Devonshire’s transformed library is not your father’s and mother’s school libraries. It has been re-imagined and reassembled from the ground up.
The idea, said Devonshire LMC Director Katie Connelly, was to “(transform) the space from the traditional all-about-books library into a more elevated space of innovation, collaboration — not just about checking out books and circulating books but about making it more of a learning space.”
Books are still on view at Devonshire, which educates students from kindergarten through sixth grades. But the space no longer revolves around all-things-books; different areas inspire collaboration and imagination, technology and research, reading on comfortable couches and other seating, making videos in an area near a green wall and viewing a map wall with multiple clocks set to different times around the globe.
Devonshire eliminated a computer lab in the library — yes, even computer labs are now passe, according to educators — and made the “D Lab” or “maker space,” a collection of stations where students can create, build, draw, make music using a computer and more.
Principal Hal Schmeisser said that with new iPads recently handed out to each student for day-to-day learning, a computer lab was expendable.
“The way we want our school to operate, and the way it is operating, is that space (for computers) is no longer necessary anymore,” Schmeisser said.
When Schmeisser first came aboard last year, he, alongside Connelly and Devonshire Instructional Coach Cathy Lannert, accelerated the ambitious idea of transforming the traditional library.
Teachers, parents and community members all weighed in on what they wanted to see happen with the space, Schmeisser said. Devonshire sent out surveys and conducted interviews with small groups before a committee took about three months to plan and design it.
While more educators have started to rethink their school libraries in this way, Schmeisser said he believes Devonshire is toward the front of the curve.
“We went to Wilmette, we went to Winnetka, we went to Lake Forest,” he said. “I think in a lot of affluent communities, you’re seeing spaces like this because it’s best practice, it engages kids, it’s exciting and it really meets them where they’re at and pushes them to expand their thinking and learning in new ways.”
Most communities in the country, however, have not taken such a bold step away from the traditional library, he said.
“I think that’s true particularly for schools that serve a large diversity of students whether that be economic, whether that be racial, ethnic, linguistic,” he said. “I don’t think these spaces necessarily exist that represent all students.”
And that’s a big goal of the Devonshire learning space — to be flexible enough to meet a diversity of students’ changing needs. Tables for research and work in the main section of the library, for example, rest on wheels and can easily be reconfigured as can other parts of the learning space.
The Sept. 22 opening night drew many Devonshire families alongside their children of varying ages; they played music using a computer, built things with Legos and cut and drew all in the D Lab; they filmed themselves using an iPad camera near the green wall; they tried out the comfortable cafe-like seating; they worked with new technology; and they visited with each other.
“This is very nice and very different,” said Adriana Montesinos whose daughter Emily, a fourth-grader, was creating music using a computer. “I’ve never seen a library like this. It’s very interesting. Feels like home in here.”
Fourth-grader Jayden Gonzales called the new space “awesome” and said he would be using it a lot.
Tone Stockenstrom, who came to the unveiling with her children, serves on the Devonshire Parent Teacher Association and was a member of the innovation committee that helped make the new space happen.
“I feel this is just what the school needed,” she said. “There are going to be more active participants, and learning will happen in new ways. It’s really the future of school libraries.”
According to Schmeisser, many schools that have converted their libraries in dramatic ways have spent as much as $200,000 or $300,000. The Devonshire project was closer to between $15,000 and $20,000, he said.
“Besides the cost, I think what this place encapsulates is the culture of the building,” he said. “This wasn’t about fancy construction and ‘wow, that’s shiny and really nice.’ This was about how people are using the space and how they want to use the space.”
Devonshire educators say the need for a different vision for library space was also necessitated by changes in the job world today.
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“When we start thinking about the jobs our students are going to have in the future, we don’t even know what they are,” Lannert said. “We still will be reading and writing and doing math as we’ve always done, but we’re also going to do things we haven’t even imagined.”
Even the students themselves will have to readjust their thinking about what a library is, said Connelly. For such a long time, they came here to “check out books and read stories.”
But just as the heralded Skokie Public Library has rethought its space in recent years, so, too, is it necessary for schools to do the same, she said.
“(The Skokie Public Library) is turning into a space where people can gather, collaborate, learn, build, and so I feel like that’s the path that libraries are taking and we’re just jumping on that,” she said.
@SKReview_Mike