My passion for learning

I have been a passionate reader and learner all my life. My role as a teacher librarian has always been more than just a job. Do something you love it is said and you will never work a day in your life and it’s quite true in my case. I have been committed to school libraries for over twenty years. I think the school library plays a vital role in developing young people to become literate and discerning information seekers.

The St Martin’s Resource Centre is a place of welcome and offers a place to learn, to study, to read and to relax. I am excited every day to help staff and students become lifelong learners and to discover the pleasure in reading. Putting the right book in the right hand at the right time is something I love to do. I believe that students who say they don’t like reading have just not met the right book yet. Reading plays such an important role in educational success and is a gift for life. Aside from the sheer joy of exercising the imagination, research shows reading for pleasure improves literacy, social skills, health, and learning outcomes.

Fantasy is a favourite genre of mine because I think it manages to get to the heart of difficult questions in ways other more realistic fiction can’t. The Narnia books by C. S Lewis and The Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper were childhood favourites. I continue to read Young Adult Fiction and love discussing it with young people. I am also an avid reader of adult fiction and enjoy sharing that passion with the staff of Damascus College. I love the classics and especially like Jane Austen, Tim Winton is my favourite Australian writer. There are books I first discovered at university that I love including ‘Anna Karenina’ by Leo Tolstoy and ‘To the Lighthouse’ by Virginia Woolf and I have read these several times. Poetry is becoming something I increasingly read, again going back to poets studied at university. I’m most happy and at peace when I can sit and read for hours at a stretch uninterrupted.

My husband and I moved to Ballarat with our disabled daughter Georgia in 2019. Our son Thomas stayed in Melbourne for work and study. We made the move to get Georgia into McCallum Disability Services. It has been a great move and we have all settled in well and love the friendly people we have met in Ballarat. I started at Damascus College in 2020 as Resource Centre Leader. Although a challenging time to start a new job I have been grateful for the welcome from the Damascus Community. I am enjoying my role especially the interaction with students and love the beautiful bush surroundings.