Madeline Horan, MA

Madeline Horan came to Great Books Summer Program in our initial years at Amherst.  She shared with us that is was here at Great Books that she found her tribe.  Writing to us recently, she shared,  “It was the first time my Arkansas self met fellow odd ducks – literary ducks, silly ducks, soulful ducks – who loved reading and storytelling and enacting the transcendent stories of yesterday. My weeks there were the highlight of my teenage years, full stop, and the only way my father bribed me to prom was by flying in my Great Books soul friend to be my date.”

Through Great Books, Madeline found her path to become a liberal arts college student, then a Program Assistant at Great Books, now an international school literature teacher.  Madeline noted that she still considers her teaching at Great Books as her first and best teaching job. She noted, “Teaching in school is so different…focused on quotation integration and timed essays and transcripts and grades and competition. There is so little time to love stories. My best teaching is always when I have a chance to glimmer in the world of Great Books – a world of meaningful dialogue, of play and acting, in love of language, of exchanging stories for wisdom and delight.”