Who says dramatic transformations have to be expensive? The popular television show “Trading Spaces” operates on just that premise. Allowing only minimal time and budget, the show forces designers and homeowners to use ingenuity and “elbow grease” and reuse existing furnishings to create improved surroundings barely recognizable to the owners.
My first day on the job at Urbana Elementary School, I saw the need to transform a chaotic maze into a positive and stimulating learning environment. Wasting no time, I shared my concern with the building principal and she told me I could rearrange the media center whichever way I thought would be best, but she had no money to help with the project. I assured her that I did not need a budget, just some help from the custodial staff. With her consent in hand, I began planning how I wanted the media center arranged. I consulted several articles in professional journals and reflected on the effectiveness of arrangements in several elementary media centers in which I had worked. I took measurements of the existing space and furnishings and sketched up six different plans before selecting the final arrangement. I scheduled the big re-arrange for just a few weeks away—Fair Day in September. With the meager pay of a few donuts, I arranged for some help from the PTA, and even a few teachers agreed to come in on their day off and help! By the end of the day, we had the entire library rearranged!
The artifact linked to this page shows the transformation of the media center in diagrams and before and after photos. Throughout the presentation, I point out the problem areas of the original arrangement and how they impacted student access to information. The presentation also illustrates the improvements of the new arrangement and highlights the improved access to information it allows.
This project was successful on many levels. Not only was the media center more attractive and inviting to students, but its new layout also allowed me to better teach and reinforce the media concepts of organization and access to information. Arranging the physical space into clearly defined areas for instruction, stories, and circulation made more efficient use of the space. My administrator later conveyed, “You not only envisioned what could be done, but you also had the determination and organization make it happen.” A little old-fashioned “elbow grease” and a dozen donuts truly can work wonders. |
PowerPoint presentation titled Trading Spaces