By Angela Monk
“Experience is a master teacher, even when it is not our own.”
Gina Greenlee (author, speaker, teacher, coach)
Most Tuesdays at lunch a crowd of students starts to gather outside the Fraser Heights Library Learning Commons. Soon a line-up forms and the library supervision aide is ready to let them in. Our guest speaker is in the library watching the eager students waiting outside. It’s time for Meet an Expert in the LLC!
Meet an Expert is a valued program organized by the Fraser Heights Career Department and run in collaboration with the teacher-librarian through our Library Learning Commons. Every Tuesday an “expert” from the community comes to the LLC to share their expertise and experiences, give advice, and answer questions.
Our presenters range from chefs, lawyers, actors, law enforcement officers, doctors, artists, pilots, and plumbers all the way to the Fraser Heights student who graduated last year and survived first year university! We have had advisors from post-secondary institutions come in to talk about their programs and nonprofit organizations to talk about great volunteer opportunities. There is something for everyone!
Over time we have curated an amazing network of former students, parents, teachers, friends, and other community members who come to the Learning Commons to share their story each year. The most popular sessions are given by former “Firehawks”. These are students who have graduated from our school and come to talk about a wide variety of topics; their experiences in medical school, at university, in a trade or profession or about their gap year and what they did.
Meet an Expert gives our students the wonderful opportunity to access the extensive knowledge and lived experiences of their fellow community members in the comfort of their School Library Learning Commons.
“We learn from each other. We learn from others’ mistakes, from their experience, their wisdom. It makes it easier for us to come to better decisions in our own lives.”
Adrian Grenier (producer, director, musician)
Angela Monk is a Library Learning Commons teacher in Surrey, British Columbia, the largest school district in the province. A lifelong learner, she went back to school after teaching French for 22 years and has been the librarian at Fraser Heights Secondary for the last 12 years. Angela is passionate about the value of the Library Learning Commons and its impact on student learning and the school community. Fraser Heights Library was one of the first libraries in Surrey to transition from Library to Learning Commons and became a model for many of the libraries in the district. Angela would like to thank all her wonderful colleagues in the Surrey School District as well as those on Twitter who have shared their ideas and have inspired her in so many ways! Follow her on Twitter @SD36Librarian.