This week we begin two new Books@Work programs for Chautauqua’s employees, partnering with a wonderful group of faculty from Fredonia (SUNY). We are excited about the beginning of this partnership — one that we hope to strengthen through collaboration on Chautauqua’s exploration of 21st century literacies this summer, and in many other ways in the years to come.
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As we consider our highest priorities – program growth and reaching more community settings – our most important measure remains the experience of the individual. Learning from the stories of our participants, we aspire to focus much of our work next year on assessment and evaluation – to improve the program and begin to gauge its results along the three dimensions we care most about: personal growth, company outcomes and community impact.
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Books@Work has undergone tremendous change and growth over the past year. In 2014 we offered 27 programs (up from 12 in 2013 and 5 in 2012) serving nearly 500 participants across four states, various sectors and in a number of community settings. We feel so grateful to our partner companies, community institutions, funders, colleges and universities and, of course, the professors and participants who make the Books@Work experience what it is.
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Hearing isn’t the same as listening, but it is a start. Mastering the art of listening can help produce better comprehension and understanding for individuals, and civility and informed dialogue for society as a whole. Alongside K-12 institutions, higher education, workplaces and lifelong learning programs have an important role to play in articulating the value of listening, and in shaping how it is taught.
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A work of literature enabled people from different backgrounds and with different interests to engage intellectually and socially in a way they might not have otherwise. And great mysteries like Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep are especially suited to that type of engagement, as the genre requires them to be highly believable while also allowing for wide speculation. Four months later, I still find myself returning to their reflections.
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Professor Lisa Safford and the participants in her Books@Work seminar reflect on how images brought to life Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. As Lisa describes, “Wharton wrote a subtle, but very rich tale of love, lust, duty, reputation, internal conflict, choice, limitations, and resignation. Along the way, she paints a vividly detailed picture—with sardonic wit and tender nostalgia—of the life and times of the era of her youth. As we discussed the story Wharton tells, I used images to guide readers toward the poignancy of Wharton’s writing within the context of the times in which she lived.”
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What really happens when employees participate in Books@Work? While participants tell us that getting to know their colleagues and sharing perspectives is the number one reason they enjoy the program, what exactly does this collective reflection have to do with work? New research suggests that not only is collective reflection relevant, it just might make your employees more productive!
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Athletic victories do not come easily, as we all know. Performing requires countless hours of practice, conditioning, and hard work. In his 1854 Walden, Henry David Thoreau made an impassioned plea for what we might call the athletic reading of challenging books. For many people, Thoreau is remembered as the lone cabin-dweller enjoying direct contact with nature. If we remember Thoreau only for his ecological consciousness, however, we miss one of the most compelling defenses of active literacy in American literature.
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Happy New Year from all of us at Books@Work. As we close the books on 2013, I cannot help but reflect back on the prior year. Nothing has occupied my thoughts and energies more this past year than Books@Work. 2013 was intended to prove that the program works in multiple industries, with diverse participants and a wide array of reading materials. And prove it we did! As we embark on 2014, we are all excited to take the program to the next level.
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In our recent discussions at Books@Work, we have been tossing around the term “ecosystem” to help us understand the many interconnected ways our program can make a difference. We are learning to see that every partner in a Books@Work program, from the individual participants to the companies and faculty, is connected to a whole network of relationships.
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