I recently spoke with Professor Homero Galicia about his experience leading the first bilingual Books@Work program in a Texas manufacturing plant – he and the participants read and discussed literature in both Spanish and English. A native of Texas and a graduate of Stanford University, Homero has worked to promote dialogue in a number of settings – and he found that using literature as a platform for a bilingual discussion provided a unique experience. How can a bilingual Books@Work program help colleagues share their personal experiences and ideas?
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I recently had the opportunity to talk with Lela Hilton, Program Director of the Clemente Course in the Humanities, Inc., about the element of surprise in our respective programs. Founded by the late Earl Shorris, Clemente brings free humanities education to people living in economic distress. The foundational ideas for Clemente may be found in Shorris’ powerful 1997 article in Harper’s Magazine entitled “As A Weapon in the Hands of the Restless Poor (On the Uses of a Liberal Education).” I was fortunate to speak to Earl Shorris before he died about Books@Work. He inspired me deeply and supported my then-fledgling idea of partnering with employers to reach working adults. When Clemente and Books@Work became co-grantees in the Teagle Foundation’s special initiative, Liberal Arts Beyond the Academy, Lela and I were introduced. What follows is a snippet of our ongoing dialogue.
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In a recent conversation, Professor Theresa Grupico spoke reflected on her experiences teaching with Books@Work: “There are these moments, especially when working with a complex novel, where you really see the lightbulbs going on. These are ‘aha’ moments, and they come from discussing a character or a passage from a novel. Reading alone, they think they get it – but as they start to have a conversation, they ask themselves ‘why didn’t I see that?’ They learn from each other and grow together. It’s a wonderful way to approach teamwork, and it shows why meetings are important, why colleagues are important. You get something from those interactions that you don’t get on your own. It is so neat to sit in a room with people and learn about what they are thinking.”
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Recently, I spoke with Gail Monahan, a Books@Work participant, about her experience in our programs. Gail is a Senior Applications Engineer at Fairbanks Morse Engine, an Enpro Industries company. Fairbanks Morse Engine has been a valued Books@Work partner since we first began offering seminars in their Beloit, Wisconsin facility in late 2013. In our discussion, Gail emphasized that Books@Work provides a valuable opportunity explore new subjects and cultures, to get to know your colleagues on a different level and to see things from their perspectives.
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“I was not sorry when my brother died.” So begins Tsitsi Dangarembga’s semi-autobiographical novel Nervous Conditions, the story of Tambudzai, a teenage girl in the former Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) who lives in two worlds: that of her parents, poor farmers who earn a meager living, and that of her aunt and uncle, whom the British colonists have chosen to receive an education in England and eventually to run the missionary school. I fell in love with Tambu in the first few pages, and as I introduce her to more readers, I have discovered that they take her to their hearts as well. This includes participants in a Books@Work group as well as college students in a “Questions of Identity” seminar.
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Last week, Karen Nestor wrote about her experience teaching in a Books@Work special program with Veterans living at the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center Domiciliary. Karen’s was an hour-long program for the entire residency—but, in partnership with Ohio Humanities and several individual donors, Books@Work has been serving this community with weekly seminars over the past six months. Each week in this program, a group of Veterans came together with a professor to discuss a short story. Recently, I had the chance to speak with Professor Peter Haas about his experience guiding these discussions. Peter is an ordained rabbi and served as a chaplain in the United States Army before entering academe. He retired in the summer of 2016 from Case Western Reserve University, where he was professor of Religious Studies and former chair of his department. Here, Peter talks about the power of the short story and the moving discussions he was able to lead and take part in at the VA Domiciliary.
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When it comes to teaching, I confess that I’m a sucker for iconic texts: Shakespeare’s Othello, Mary Godwin Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Frankly, it bothers me that these authors’ fame derives from ubiquitous cultural allusions so divorced from their work. Boris Karloff immediately comes to mind when people hear the name Frankenstein. People blithely characterize someone as a “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde-type” without knowing the original story. And they refer to a talented person as a Shakespeare without having read enough of the Bard to know why he’s a genius. With the mission of connecting cultural allusions to their sources, I have introduced these texts to Books@Work readers, and several anecdotes will tell that tale of how well my approach has worked.
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Teaching with Books@Work has given me an exceptional opportunity to learn about myself at work. It alters my understanding of what it means to teach literature well, enhancing my appreciation for literature, as well as for the artistry of teaching.
It also, not coincidentally, demands a fair amount of humility.
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I’ve been leading seminars at Books@Work for a couple of years now, and the book I always find myself using is Learning to Swim by Sara J. Henry. It is a great book, a rich book, and I’m teaching it for the third time. Depending upon who is reading it, the book prompts discussions about intimacy, friendship, trust and compassion—and each time I share it with a different group, I see it anew. In fact, teaching this book three times has been enlightening, as it gives me a fascinating glimpse at how our own experiences frame the way we read and interpret a story. As a result, I’ve been privy to remarkably different conversations each time.
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