Grade School Teacher Converts Garage Into Library For Kids In Their Community

• Jennifer Martin has always been passionate about books and libraries that she even traveled to different countries to learn more about them.
• The third-grade teacher is living in a community with about 40% of her students and they don’t have access to a library nearby.
• That is why she decided to convert her and her dad’s shared garage into a library that her students have since loved so much.

Jennifer Martin, a third-grade teacher from Austin, Texas, lives in a community with no access to a library — even with about 40% of her students living nearby.

The nearest library is about 15 miles away!

So she enlisted the help of her dad to convert their shared garage into a small library, so that kids can have access to books.

Jennifer has always been very passionate about books and libraries. She has even traveled to many countries to learn the different ways libraries, people, and systems help their communities.

One thing that she found out was how libraries gather people and create amazing connections. They also make children get more excited to learn things.

“It’s so important to establish the joy of reading, and that’s what you do when you have books in kids’ hands and books available,” she shared.

So she set up the garage library with her own books and other donations. She also purchased books from local stores for only 50 cents and took in books from Gilbert Elementary School.

“I would just go in and see so many titles that I knew my kids wanted,” she told GMA. “I don’t need to go out to eat fancy food. Instead, I can spend $20 and get dozens of books.”

Soon enough, she had around 2,000 books for her little library and her neighbors’ kids are loving it. They can check out two books at the same time and come back once they’re done and swap it for two others!

Her library is open on weekdays from 2:30pm to 4:00pm and on Saturdays from 9:00am to noon.

One student told her excitedly that he had finished reading a book on his own without being told or assigned homework!

Her little library has definitely helped many of her students!

“It doesn’t even matter what you’re doing or what you’re teaching if you haven’t helped bridge the gap between a student and the world of literature, and access to books is the first way to do that,” she said.

That’s just an amazing way to help students and give back to the community. Kudos to you, teacher Jennifer!

Source: Inspire More