A Classroom Library

My name is Roger Williams (that's me on the left, with musician Gavin DeGraw) and I am currently a Freshman at IUPUI in the School of Education. My personal education goal is to become a high school Social Studies teacher in the Indianapolis urban area. A Classroom Library is a blog that I have created for my W200 Using Computers in Education class. The blog is currently designed to be a portfolio of sorts for the work I am doing in the class. But I have a longer range goal for the blog after I am done with this class. Below is what you will find on the "about" page of the blog. It will describe why I created this blog, what I intend to use it for, and how my readers can participate in the future education of my students. If you are a current member of my class, a friend or someone that just happens across this blog, I will do my best to delineate what is for my class and what will be on the blog once it is launched in January of 2011. Please give me feedback on what you find here and I hope you enjoy it.





I had never known how important source material was in the role of a young person's education until my daughter came home from school on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and shared her experience with me. At the time she was in seventh grade at Zionsville Middle School. I asked Emily about her day and what they had done to celebrate the life of  Dr. King. She said to me, "It was fine, but why do we only hear the 'I had a dream' part of the speech? I want to hear the whole thing." After hearing this, I walked towards our families bookshelves and began to beam with pride. I was proud, that with this question my twelve year-old daughter had taken ownership of her own educational process. I was even prouder of my wife and I for raising children in a home that had multiple books with transcripts of that speech in them, ready to be read.

Not all children are this lucky. I was not. I can remember during the summer months of my youth that my mom would take my sister, brother and me to the local library for the annual summer vacation reading program. But, I do not remember ever seeing my parents read books. I did not have instant access to volumes and volumes of books. So, although I may have been encouraged to read I was not given the tools. Today's young people have all the information of the world at their finger tips through the Internet, but there is no substitution for reading a book.

I want to teach more than historical dates and geographical names. My goal is for students to immerse themselves in history. Whether it is through visiting historic Williamsburg on an educational vacation or delving into the actual source documents from the Salem Witch Trials, reading is essential. To encourage this in my classroom I have set a goal of taking a 1000 book library with me wherever I teach.

My hope for this blog is that you will follow my next four years as I return to college as a middle-aged student. I will share funny stories and challenging times and hope that you will feel inspired to help add books to my future classroom library. Here are the things that you can do to help:

1. Purchase books found on the Wish List page from my Amazon Wish List. I don't care if they are new or old copies of the book, and my address is already preset for shipping.
2. Suggest books to be added to the list by commenting on the List Suggestion page. My goal is to keep the wish list to as much source material as possible. Meaning, straight from the subject's own words. Feel free to suggest whatever you like as long as it deals with U.S. or World history.
3. Read and comment on my blog postings and book reviews. Comments are very welcome. It will let me know I'm not out here on my own.
4. Share this blog with anyone you think would enjoy it. "It takes a village!"

As we grow this library together I hope you will be inspired to take on a project of your own that makes a difference in the life of a young person.