Free Piles

 

                I have always been a fan of the Free pile. I can’t walk by one without peering in, rummaging around, evaluating. You never know. In fact, most of my classroom supplies came from free piles. So, last Monday, as I was clearing out my space, I pulled a table from the staff room and began piling stuff on it. Art supplies. Props.  Yarn and knitting needles. A very fluffy black and pink prom dress (a couple of boys had to try it on). The electric kettle and a glass tea pot….My neighbor, who was also clearing out, added some games and play dough, but most of it was mine. Students swarmed over it. Items disappeared rapidly. It was amazing.

                Then, something else happened. I began to hear where the items had landed. One girl was thrilled to find the oil pastels because she wanted to try them out over the summer. Another found the Juliet dagger (plastic, retractable, a perfect prop of the end of the play). The wooden swords went down the hall. The skulls became a prop in a final video, and then went into a backpack. The unbelievably ugly Christmas t shirt showed up the next day on one of my most creative dressers, complete with the required furry tail attached to the belt. Everything that I had collected was moving on, finding a new home.  High school may be the perfect place for a Free Pile. By Friday, all that was left was a very ugly polyester green jacket, the turn in basket, and some knitting notions. Even high school students have standards.

                My books joined the table on Tuesday. During slow days last winter, I pulled out the few I wanted to keep, then I told Green Club they could sort through them and take books home. For the last two weeks, books have been leaving by the armful. Two boys stayed in my room after I left for a meeting one afternoon and left gaping holes in the science fiction shelves. My OSU student observer took several boxes that would work for middle school. And there were still piles of good books, so we carried them out into the hall and lined them up on the second table. Again—swarms of students, slowly picking through the collection. I bribed my juniors with five extra credit points on their final to drop an armful into their local little free library.  By Friday, I was down eighty percent, with some good reads left on the table. I left some for summer school and bagged the rest up.

                Friday afternoon, I took the last two bags of books on my bike downtown. The Rotary club has transformed some of our old trash containers into little free libraries-- which is a cool idea, but little libraries need love and decent books. They take more effort than you would think. Most of them are empty and a bit dirty. I looked around, found one by a coffee shop window, and pulled my bike over. Totally empty. Kneeling down, I loaded it up with books, tucked the canvas bags into my bike basket, and headed off. When I glanced back, two guys who had been waiting in line had exchanged glances, moved over, and opened the door.       

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