Podcast - Learning at Lely - School Culture

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Our New Book Vending Machine: How Did That Happen?

I first saw the idea of a book vending machine a few years ago. I thought it was an amazing way to get kids fired up about reading but the possibilities of getting one were daunting. Those things are expensive. Worth it, but expensive. I put the thought out of my mind for a time, until Paul Holimon, a colleague from my middle school days, sent me an article about a school in Oklahoma that was able to get a book vending machine. Sooooo, I started thinking that maybe this was possible after all.

 I took the article and some preliminary research about specs and pricing to the principal (at the time, Tammy Brown). She loved the idea but, like me, didn't know how we could pulls off something like this. After all, it is a huge deal. We stewed on the idea throughout our virtual year. I mentioned it to every staff person I saw, hoping to brainstorm some ideas about how to pay for something like this. We had tentative approval to get a book vending machine...if we could pay for it. I thought of a Donors Choose grant but that is one heck of a steep grant that would probably not get funded. There really was no money to do this.

Then one day, I was talking to two of our superstar teachers, Jamie Sebold and Megan Noe, who floated the idea of using walk-a-thon money to pay for it. Over the past two years, we raised a lot of money through our walk-a-thons and we had never decided where we wanted to use that money. They suggested to Tammy Brown that we should use some of it to buy a book vending machine. Suddenly, we had secured funding!

After contacting Global Vending Group, I picked our model and we paid a bit extra for a custom wrap that would make our Lely machine stand out. After some snags arranging payment for this (there is a lot of red tape and processes to pay for something like this), we were ready to formally place our order. Global Vending Group had our order. Now, it was time to wait. And wait we did.

In the brochure, they say the wait is between three and four months. It was a bit longer for us because of supply chain and labor issues at the company. However, last Monday, we got the email that our machine had shipped! It would be in Naples in three days' time. Now, our only worry was if it would fit through our media center  door. On the literature from the company, it said that the shortest side was 35" and our door was 34.5". I had emailed with the company this past summer to make sure it would fit and was assured that indeed it was only 32-34" on its shortest side. We held our breath, hoping that that information was accurate. 

The truck pulled into the parking lot and it was time to jump into action. The driver would deliver to the curb and we had to take it from there. Yanka Ruiz, our amazing facilities director, was ready. She had our pallet lift and moved that machine to the media center door. But, it would not fit through the door opening on the pallet. We had to take it off the pallet. After getting a few staff members involved to help, we lowered the machine on its side and tried to get it through the door. No luck. The door push bar was in the way. Yanka had a solution. She took the door off the hinges and we set it aside. The machine coasted through the opening smooth as butter. At that moment, we all let out a collective sigh of relief. Our machine fit through the door to the media center. We were home free.

We got the machine upright and unwrapped all of the plastic and cardboard to reveal a beautiful, fun, kid-friendly book vending machine. It is striking! After we got it into place, we were finished for the day. Kids came by to see what all of the hubbub was about. After all, we had blocked the hallway while getting the machine through the door and they had to take a detour, so they knew something big was happening. As kids walked by, we heard lots of gasps and comments about how cool the machine was. It was having the desired effect. 

Now, we have the machine turned on and everything tested out perfectly. We still have to load books into the machine to get it ready for our new reading incentive program. More on that later. We have a special day of events planned for October 20 to celebrate our new book vending machine. We think this will inspire many kids to read, find "their books", and have a fun and festive environment around the idea of reading. Needless to say, we are so stoked to have this book vending machine in our school and plan to use it to increase the reading among our kids. Stay tuned for updates! 

I Recommend...

We talk all of the time about student voice and choice. We aim to hand over the decision-making responsibility to our students as they go through our school system. We coach them in what makes a good decision, ramifications of those decisions, and then we let them begin making more and more decisions. One of the things I love to see is when kids start making decisions about their learning. There are so many ways we can incorporate student decision-making into the everyday lives of kids at school. I see teachers everyday giving kids opportunities to choose learning experiences, collaborative teams, and ways to meet their curricular standards. 

In the media center, we also want to give kids a voice in their learning. One of the ways we have decided to give students voice is to have our kiddos make book recommendations. As adults, we make book recommendations to kids all of the time. However, a lot of times the books we recommend do not resonate with our kids because we read them from our perspective as adults, not as kids would read them. We mean well, but we often miss the mark. There are also times that kids will reject recommendations from adults because they consider them "teacher books" and not books that they would want to read.

We started incorporating student recommendations this year by creating a gallery in the media center windows. When students pass by, they see pictures of our kids with a book that they recommend in their hands. Kids can identify their schoolmates and see what books they love. They may be more inclined to pick up those books if they know that their friends have read them. One of the most powerful ways to get kids reading is to have peers recommend books. It helps build a culture of reading when we all talk about our reading, and over time, kids learn to be proud of all of the books they have read and their future reading goals. Our student book recommendations are a hit. We knew they would be. Our kids are using their voices to celebrate their reading. We could not be happier about it.