For several weeks before our holiday break, a group of 4-5 middle school students volunteered in our Early Years Library for 30 minutes at the end of the day on Wednesdays. They would arrive halfway through kindergarten’s weekly library lesson and book exchange. They would sort out the returned books and reshelve them and some of them also read with students.

Today none of the volunteers showed up (I guess I probably should have sent them a reminder…)

However, completely independently, one of the kindergarten students asked me if he could check out his books straightway and then sort books. (The Tuesday MYP student volunteers hadn’t been able to make it either this week so the return boxes were overflowing.)

He got straight to work making piles of picture books sorted by letter and nonfiction by Dewey number. He even came to ask me for clarification about an early reader that didn’t have a letter or number label on the front because they are shelved differently. As the table filled up, he started putting piles on chairs.

I had no idea he had even taken note of what the student volunteers were doing when they were sorting the books. What an incredible example of student initiated action!