Monday, May 6, 2013

The student is the teacher.

People often assume that you develop closer relationships with readers working in smaller branch. The likelihood of this happening is probably higher at neighborhood libraries where the staff tends to know more people on a first-name basis. Still, I really enjoy the avid readers who visit the Central Library. One gentleman who comes in frequently reads a lot of gay literary fiction, and I usually make a few comments about what he's returning or checking in. We've had so many great, impromptu discussions about books over the past year or so. This morning, he returned By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham. As he handed me the book, I immediately started gushing. He had never read read anything by Michael Cunningham and was blown away. This opened the door to discussing Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize winning novel (and one of my all-time favorites), The Hours.
Hillary, librarian

I don't have much to say, except that I love this story not, surprisingly, because of its emphasis on books (and not just books, but literary fiction, which I heart!), but because of the metaphors Hillary uses to describe this interaction: it's a conversation between two passionate readers, and it's also a door onto future and further conversations.

Double-Heart!

Do you know those horrible Lifetime kinds of movies about teaching where the tag line is something like "She was the teacher, but her students taught her as much as she taught them"? (Cue massive eye-rolling.) The idea, if not the expression of the idea, is valid. In the best educational interactions, teachers are also students and students are teachers, and, labels aside, everybody comes out ahead.

Well, librarians are also readers and, sometimes, readers act as librarians, and the sharing that happens is priceless.

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