Librarian Learning

Having a group of librarians from across the state sacrifice their personal time and energy to come visit us and teach us a little bit about the many things they do to facilitate the learning process was a great reflection, and reminder to me, of their character and value.  Librarians are fantastic conduits to knowledge and resource as well as always being somehow able to stay one step ahead of the newest development in the information/research field.  They also, thankfully, seem to me to be some of the nicest, considerate and helpful people around town.  Between my hometown and the multiple facilities here on campus, I visit libraries on a near daily basis and can’t help but feel that the librarians who staff them must, just must, grow tired of seeing my face and answering my endless inquiries.  But they never show it.  In fact they nearly always do the opposite and demonstrate genuine interest and enthusiasm for whatever it is that I seek.  There is more than one life lesson there that I hope I’ll never take for granted.

Our tsunami lesson collaboration at the Brandon Center with Librarian Jeanna reconfirmed my feelings for librarians and their value to all those interested in learning what they don’t know.  I learned that four prospective teachers, each with different disciplines and interests, can come together with their own ideas to figure out a lesson plan that can span and tie them together in a global and humanities learning context.  Jeanna helped us see those broad crossover possibilities by pointing out the many database resources available to us as, such as MEL, as well as imparting a bit of specific experience wisdom by pointing to the more practical and realistic goal of getting students in different classes (e.g, English, Spanish, French) to learn and practice Skyping within the classrooms at their school before attempting it with a class in a foreign country.   At the start of our session I wondered how practical or feasible it would be to do a multiple language crossover lesson plan, but by the end of it I could see clearly the many cool and doable possibilities.  Librarians can facilitate this process and always, it seems, with a smile on their face.  I'll chalk this one up to another fine librarian lesson learned.