I much prefer working with kids whose life could be completely upended by a reading of a book over a weekend. You give them a book to read - they go home and come back a changed person. And that is so much more interesting and exciting.
Interpretation
Books have the power to transform lives, especially in children.
This quote by Russell Banks highlights the incredible impact literature can have on young minds. He expresses a preference for working with children who are profoundly influenced and changed by the experience of reading, suggesting that the potential for transformation through a book is not only fascinating but also fulfilling as an educator or mentor.
In practice
This quote would be great to use in a speech about the importance of reading in schools.
Public libraries are the sole community centers left in America. The degree to which a branch of the local library is connected to the larger culture is a reflection of the degree to which the community itself is connected to the larger culture.
They were gone and I missed them but even so I was very happy. For the rest of my life no matter where on this planet earth I went and no matter how scared or confused I got, I could wait until dark and look up into the night sky and see my three friends again and my heart would swell with love of them and make me strong and clearheaded.
Motivations are too tangled and complex.
Lists of books we reread and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves.
Through writing, through that process, they realize that they become more intelligent, and more honest and more imaginative than they can be in any other part of their life.
There is no substitute for practical experience, and if you want to write about people you ought to put down that comic book and go out and meet some of them rather than studying the way that Stan Lee or Chris Claremont depict people.
I also feel I'm a positive role model by not putting my education on hold.
What children can do with the assistance of others might be in some sense even more indicative of their mental development than what they can do alone
Max Weber was right in subscribing to the view that one need not be Caesar in order to understand Caesar. But there is a temptation for us theoretical sociologists to act sometimes as though it is not necessary even to study Caesar in order to understand him. Yet we know that the interplay of theory and research makes both for understanding of the specific case and expansion of the general rule.
The kind of teaching that transforms people does not happen if the student’s inward teacher is ignored… we can speak to the teacher within our students only when we are on speaking terms with the teacher within ourselves.
The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-trust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciples.
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