This year marks the first year that no student attended the high school during the 2012- 2014 renovations, yet the question still stands: where’s the library?
English department chair Dr. Sheridan Steelman gave insight into the original process of designing the current library, which involved creating a coalition of teachers, students, and guidance counselors.
“We figured we might want to bridge [the gap] between high school and college. But we knew that in our changing world and educational climate, it might look different from anything we had done before. It was all about creative thinking, collaborating, comfort, and nooks and crannies for quiet thinking and reading,” Steelman said.
The coalition devised many ideas, from creating a coffee shop to a testing area for students. But the overall decision was to create a feeling of “alone togetherness”. This idea was based on GVSU’s then-new library.
“We had a 3-year plan for implementation to get the room with the same feel as GVSU. We ordered the furniture for phase 1. Then, budget cuts,” Steelman said.
Thus, the library sits as it does today. But, what is their current plan for the space?
“We’re now kind of looking at a career acceleration center,” Principal Mark Thomas said. “We have that beautiful collegiate fish bowl with the lecture hall. We’d love to be able to say we have these people from this legal firm or this engineering firm and, if you’d like to, come down and hear a talk about that.”
For many, the lack of a full library is confusing, but for teachers, it never made more sense.
“Our department believes this shift to classroom libraries has been a game changer. Students are all reading now – you rarely see someone without a book during independent reading time. Believe me, when we began, we could hardly get kids to read anything. So this is good. Amazing in fact,” Steelman said.
The lack of a library is not only a smart move on the educational side of things, but it makes other schools envious according to Dr. Steelman.
“I feel like we gave up one library that was outdated and replaced it with 12 vibrant and contemporary classroom libraries. It was well worth it and still is, despite the work,” Steelman said. “When other schools come to visit the second floor, they can’t believe it. They want what we have.”
