I know I bang on with the phrase, 'the happy life of teacher librarians'. I have of course all sorts of agendas for this, but one is to say, look, it can be HEAPS of fun to be a teacher librarian. An article by Charles Waterstreet in the Sydney Morning Herald on the weekend had an apt section quoting Kahlil Gibran:
...when pursuing a career, one should always choose one that coincides with passions, and not just with convenience, the wishes of parents or perhaps even financial security. If you have a job, then love the one you have.
The great Lebanese-born philosopher and poet Kahlil Gibran said it best:
Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
If you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.
And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.
If we show by our actions and words and the atmosphere we create in our libraries every day that we are happy to be there, it cannot but make our libraries better places to work, better places to visit, more effective in our schools (and it kills off the disappointingly persistent cliche of the cranky librarian). One of the most important things any teacher brings to a classroom is their enthusiasm for being there. I know I'm not perfect on this - it's something I have to remember every day.
And thus one can continue working on the happy life of teacher librarians.
(Here endeth...)
Cheers
Ruth
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