Serendipity35

The "third place" is a term used in the concept of community building to refer to social surroundings that are not the first (home) or two (workplace).

In The Great Good Place, written by Ray Oldenburg, he argues that third places are important for civil society, democracy, civic engagement, and establishing a sense of place.

So, Third Places are informal meeting places that share certain qualities: they are free or inexpensive, welcoming and comfortable, may offer food and drink, are very accessible (walking distance?), have a group of people who regularly meet there.

Okay, so what third places for learning come to mind for you? Coffee shops, bookstore cafes, recreation centers, malls, the student center, dormitory lounges? Oldenburg's book's full title includes his own quick list: "Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community."

How about the library?

All this came to mind for me after reading School libraries as a "third place" which Doug Johnson wrote on the Blue Skunk Blog last week.

Johnson passes on calling online game environments third places (me too) though there are those who disagree.

I also agree with him about libraries, especially if you consider new library design (perhaps more so in secondary schools). The idea of a "learning commons" is not brand new. Some schools call an area by that name, but it probably is not the same as the Third Place description, but closer to a traditional library with additional resources. Hanging out on the couches at a Starbucks might be closer. I am part of a group of irregulars who meet at a local Panera to talk poetry, drink coffee and eat snacks.

Johnson returns to a comment from a former student who said that the school library was his "home away from home."

I loved the children's section of my own public library and my fat, old leather chair in the corner walled with protective books. I will return to an earlier post of my own where I referenced a friend, poet BJ Ward's essay about his youthful home-away-from-home at his local library.

"During the internet-less, video-game-less, and seemingly endless summers of my childhood, I could ride my bike to the Washington Borough Public Library and within one minute be transported to the world of Dr.Doolittle; The Hardy Boys; and Babe Ruth, All-American Hero. Each book was a planet with a spine.The librarian was an organizing star, keeping all those spheres in their places for future explorers to discover. The library itself was a universe—a macrocosm between paint-chipped walls, below a roof paid for by bake sales, sandwiched between a tattoo parlor and halfway house. It was the most fecund place I knew—a greenhouse for my imagination, where fluorescence had to do with my mind’s branches spreading. O the joyful fire in the astronaut’s skull when divination led to apprehension."