Collecting Insults

Last week, I received a very nice form letter thanking me for my contribution to an important project. I printed it and saved it. It will be a nice artifact to add to my annual scrapbook and/or as a reference in my library annual report.

Speaking of annual reports, in July, I created my annual infographic and I'm pretty pleased with the result. Every year, I tinker with the layout and the key items to include. This year, I included some more testimonials.

Big shout-out to Canva - not only do I design my library infographics in Canva, I have them printed by Canva and their 9" x 4" format looks great (as long as you don't make the font size too small).

All these accolades could give me a swollen head, but that doesn't happen. Take this post of mine from 2012, entitled "10 Good Things, 1 Bad - Guess What Sticks in My Mind?"; I can't help but remember the failures and wrong steps. People recommend you have a "pick me up" folder containing cards and notes filled with praise and encouragement from others, for when you need them to lift you up when you are down. I agree. I don't possess an actual folder of the opposite type: one because those incidents already live rent-free in my head, and two because my husband made me throw out the letter I received from my ex-best friend in which she listed at length all the faults she found with me as a human being. I thought it would be an interesting thought exercise to examine the various times that I was told I was a terrible teacher.

Teachers' College - Letter to the Editor

I used to write for the York University Faculty of Education newspaper. One time, I wrote a satirical article about my dislike for Barney the Dinosaur. The newspaper editor, which I think at the time may have been my friend Angela Dawson (who is now Angela McCabe - fellow York U Fac of Ed grad Wendy Kaell - do you recall who was the editor at the time?) received a letter of complaint from a reader. The reader said something like I wasn't fit to be an elementary school teacher with my negative attitude and hard heart towards such a beloved icon like Barney.

Teachers' College - my Host Teacher

I participated in the concurrent program of the Faculty of Education at York University. That meant that it took me three years to earn my Bachelor of Education degree, with three separate, year-long practice teaching placements. One of my host teachers, who will remain nameless, really made me question whether I was cut out to be a teacher. She insisted that I keep my lesson plans right on my lap because I had to say exactly what I had planned to say because she said I was not good at speaking without notes. Unlike the letter to the editor, this kind of criticism was hard to brush aside, because it came from someone that had experience and had first-hand knowledge of my teaching methods. I have to say, it took me YEARS to stop myself from having my lesson plans right next to me so I could refer to them to ensure I was saying and doing "the right thing". The ironic thing about my experience with this host teacher is that she would laud the other teacher candidates in the building (and I wasn't even allowed to sit in "her" rocking chair) but when it came time for our final teaching block, she was a lot more critical of the others, whom she observed because she was the adjunct professor (aka university liaison in the school). 

First Ten Years - Principal Comments

After a number of years at my first school, I moved on to a different one. The principal who hired me chose to retire, so in the fall I met the new principal. She was quite different than the administrator I was expecting to work under. It must have been quite challenging for everyone because there were six new people on staff that year, including the principal and both chairpersons. (I also served as the primary chair, in addition to being the teacher-librarian.) The principal didn't always have a kind or sympathetic approach to any of my struggles. I remember one time that both the principal and vice-principal were away at some board event. I was in charge and they had arranged for a supply teacher to cover my teaching duties so I could be free to deal with office issues. It was a disaster. Other teachers got sick and had to leave mid-day, so I gave away my supply teacher to cover a class. I think we had a lock down and I definitely know I had to make a Children's Aid Society report. I had to deal with an irate grandparent who was incensed that a kindergarten teacher made a comment she didn't like, and tried to make me smell a child's underwear to prove a point. When other teachers got word of the absolute circus erupting outside their classrooms, a few started to send down chocolate bars as sympathy gifts for me. I phoned the principal to ask her to return to the school, because I was totally out of my league, and she refused. When the principal returned and I told her about all the problems, her comment was something like "Well, you want to be a principal, so you may as well get used to it.". Let me clarify: I was only the primary chair person because the last teacher-librarian was also the chair, and I never had any aspirations of becoming a principal. I only stayed in that school for a year and on my last day, after putting in countless hours weeding the entire collection that hadn't been touched in decades, the principal's final comments to me focused on the "messy" professional resources collection and what a shame that I was leaving the library in such poor condition for my successor.

First Ten Years - Forest of Reading Selection Committee Member

I've always been pretty active in participating in learning opportunities that support my teaching in the school library. For many years, I volunteered on the Forest of Reading Silver Birch Selection Committee, helping to select the nominated books for the Forest of Reading. In 2006, Three Wishes by Deborah Ellis was one of the nominated books. There was a lot of controversy around the book - you can read about it here on the Freedom to Read website. What this summary doesn't mention is that there were several letters written to the Ontario Library Association and to various school boards calling for all the individuals who were part of the group that selected the book be fired from their jobs in education. Thankfully this call for my termination was not taken seriously.

First Twenty Years - Trainer Criticism

Sometimes adults, especially educators, can be the worst kind of students. I used to be a trainer for a program that used to be known as Tribes, and have had to deal with several negative experiences related to the training. I used to do school-based trainings for the board and trainings for Faculty of Education students as part of their university experience and I've had some pretty awful comments directed at me or reported to my superiors. Some of those comments stopped me from training for five years (from 2008 - 2013) and Moses Velasco encouraged me to try again. (It wasn't exactly smooth sailing on the return voyage; Moses, you probably don't remember this, but I will always treasure the way you helped me deal with comments that was unreasonable instead of constructive.) I no longer have any dealings with what is now known as the Peace Learning Center approach, even though I appreciate the things I learned in terms of attentive listening and building community.

Most Recent Years - Teaching AQs

You'd think that after what's coming on 27 years of teaching, that I'd be immune from the impact of receiving these kind of negative reviews. No such luck. I've been teaching Additional Qualification courses since 2018. My first couple of years as an AQ instructor was through a blended model of ten days in person and the rest online. I was blessed with the opportunity of revamping not one, but two different Teacher Librarianship AQ courses for two separate universities. Part of the arrangement was that I would be the first person to teach the revised course, to determine if there were any changes that needed to be made to the content or approach. When I did this for a new-to-me organization in 2021, it was completely online and with a different Learning Management System. I was nervous and rusty, and a particular course participant made it extra difficult. Right from the very first moment we conversed, she made her discontent quite clear. I kept copious notes and documented all our interactions. I wasn't surprised by her course evaluation at the end of the session but the words still hurt. She told the university that I was unfit to continue as an instructional leader in any capacity. Thankfully, the university took this feedback with a grain of salt, and compared it to the other complimentary evaluations I received. They continue to employ me, as does another university on a regular basis, to facilitate their Teacher Librarianship AQs.

So, are there any lessons to learn from these examples? I'm not sure. What about one of these points?

• you can't be everything to everyone
• you can't make everyone like you
• take criticisms within context; don't let them destroy you
• try your best to do your job
• never give up
• stay humble

Blood, Sweat, and Toil

 Don't read this the wrong way. I am not suffering this summer. I am grateful that I can sleep in. Just this past week alone, I have been able to book medical appointments and have lovely lunches with friends (thanks Michelle!). The title of this post refers to three other things I did this past week.

1) Donating Blood

On Friday, July 21, I went to the new Scarborough location of Canadian Blood Services and gave blood. It was only my third time doing it. I'm not a big fan of needles, but I'm O positive, which is nearly the universal donor type, so my blood is very useful. I'm inspired by my Peterborough pal, Lisa Noble, who has donated dozens of times over the years. The recent radio commercials asking for donations may have also encouraged me to book an appointment. Here are some photos of the commemorative charm I received as a thank you, and some selfies. 

2) Sweating at the Gym

I'm still going to my Cross Fit "box" three times a week. On Friday, I used a GHD (glute ham developer) to perform sit-ups. The first time I tried this machine, it was rather uncomfortable. I felt like my feet would slip out and I'd fall. This time, I was able to do my sit-ups on the GHD with more confidence. I asked my husband to film me as proof. This is not the most complimentary angle, but don't focus on the size of the performer; check out the flexibility and use of the abdominal muscles!

3) Working on Projects

In addition to the ongoing weeding of the school library collection and the Additional Qualification courses I'm teaching for Queen's University and York University, I am back to working on a major project that I started in the fall of 2022. It means many hours sitting in front of my computer but I really hope that my contributions will be useful. I'm also continuing to work on our home gardens that we began in May. I've been able to eat some lettuce from my vegetable garden and the strawberry plants produced a single berry I was able to taste; the other fruit was consumed by furry interlopers, despite having chicken wire protecting them. My cucumber plants are spreading and I may get a sizable harvest. On the weekend, we bought three large lilac bushes and now we have to prune and trim the overgrowth at the back of the house to make room for the new plants. The nursery said that they can grow up to 12 feet, with an average of 2 feet of growth per year.  

I'm looking forward to going to the Hibachi Teppanyaki and Bar location in Scarborough on Monday July 24 with my husband, daughter, and her boyfriend for lunch. There may be a lot of blood, sweat and toil but there's also food and drink to enjoy as well!

Weaponizing Therapy Language

 There are times, especially in the summer, when I don't "promote" blog posts for various reasons. This is one of those "quiet posts" because I'm going to be a bit critical and mention an incident involving several people. I will try to "disguise" it as best as I can so that I'm not libeling anyone.

I'm not big on celebrity news, but I've heard recently about Jonah Hill. The American actor has been criticized because of some excessively-controlling texts sent to his now-ex-girlfriend.  Guardian writer Martha Gill explains it thus:

While dating a former girlfriend, he allegedly sent her a string of texts asking that she remove bikini pictures from social media, stop “surfing with men”, and avoid female friends “in unstable places” who had not been first approved of by Hill. What particularly caught the eye, though, was the language he seemed to use. His supposed list of unreasonable demands were rebranded, in the texts, as “boundaries”, a word typical of therapy-speak.

CBC radio discussed "the pitfalls when therapy-speak seeps into our everyday lives" and The Guardian ran a piece called "Not all therapy is a force for good". I thought I had coined the term "weaponizing therapy language" until I saw a reference to a version of the phrase in the CBC piece. (Hope it's okay that I still used it for the title of this post.) It reminded me of something that happened at school that, months later, still irks me.

To maintain a small level of confidentiality, I'm going to substitute one topic for another. Those on my staff will probably know exactly what I'm talking about. 

There are certain tasks that people at a workplace have to undertake that aren't enjoyable. People don't want to volunteer to do it but it still needs to be done. We have a job like this (and for the sake of this blog post, I'm going to call it "taking care of the staff dishes / dishwashing" - but let me reassure you, this was not about dishwashing). It had been avoided for so long that an external individual came in to plead with the staff to get this dealt with properly. After this plea, all the staff members met together and we came up with a plan. The plan was that three people would share the duties related to this job for a single year, with the guarantee that they wouldn't have to do it for longer than a year. The following year, another group of three people would take over, for just a single year. Then, a different group of three people would be responsible. That way, it didn't burden a single person and we knew that we just had to "grin and bear it" for one year with 1/3 of the work.

When the staff first agreed that this was the way we'd handle dishwashing, we made a list that lasted about four or five years. The initial trio served for a bit longer than a year, since the dishwashing situation was a bit unstable. It worked out. Sure, in some of the trios, the work was unevenly distributed, but at least if someone felt unfairly put upon, he/she/they could turn to the other two members of the group to try to help out. This year, it became time for us to reassign the groups of three for dishwashing duty. We met as a group to determine the trios. If you hadn't served on the dishwashing team in the past four years, the expectation was you'd sign up with two other people sometime in the next four years.

Someone at the meeting immediately objected. She said it was impossible for her to be a part of a dishwashing team. I can't recall her exact words, because I was so taken aback with her demand. However, I do remember that she used therapy words as part of her rationale. She said that participating in dishwashing duties was too traumatizing, and/or that being involved in dishwashing was bad for her mental health. Despite all the explanations, and reminders that this was a shared job that benefited the entire staff, and that she wouldn't be asked to do anything that she found particularly heinous (be it "load the dishwasher" or "put clean dishes away"), she absolutely refused to be involved. Other people eventually stepped up to fill the holes, and some individuals volunteered to re-enter the rotation even though they didn't get a four-year break from their duty.

The extra-frustrating thing about this whole situation is that, long ago, we used to have a single, regular "dishwasher". However, the individual in question actually complained about the quality of dishwashing to the regular, so the regular pretty much said "If you think you can do a better job, go ahead." After a time of dishwashing, the new "designated dishwasher" complained that it was just too horrible of a job that took up too much time, and stopped doing it. This is why we had a long period of time with no one doing the dishes. 

How did she get away with it? There are a few reasons. One, "dishwashing" is not part of our job description. Since it's a volunteer task, no one can be forced to complete it. Even though "dishwashing" is something that benefits everyone in the whole worksite community, it's practically impossible to stop someone from reaping the benefits even if they didn't contribute. Two, educators are trained to take people's feelings into consideration. What kind of monsters would we be to force someone to do something that would be detrimental to his/her mental health?

So, where do we go from here? Sadly, there aren't a lot of options. I'm glad that news outlets have begun to examine the excessive / casual use of therapy or medical language. Therapy can be a very good thing. I know of several people that see a therapist and it helps them. Unscrupulous people will still find ways to get out of work using any and every excuse available. I'll end with an address I keep posted to a corkboard in my basement. The paper I have credits these words to Bishop Muzorewa from Zimbabwe.

If you do good, 

people will accuse you of ulterior motives.

Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness

make you vulnerable.

Be honest and frank anyway.

People are unreasonable, illogical

and self-centered.

Love them anyway.

The biggest people with the biggest ideas

can be shot down by the smallest people with the smallest minds.

Think big anyway.

People really need help

but may turn against you if you help them.

Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have

and you may get kicked in the teeth.

Give the world the best you've got anyway.

What you spend years building

may be destroyed overnight.

Build anyway.

Deselection in 15-20 Simple Steps

 Just a side note - for those that keep track of these things (probably Aviva or Doug), I am posting later than my regular time because I am participating in a "Family Writers Club", where for an hour, everyone logs onto the voice chat of the family Discord server and commits to writing together. I don't tend to have issues with finding time to write or writing for extended periods of time, but that's just me.

Back to our regularly scheduled blog post ...

I really liked reading the recent Toronto Star article on what teachers do during the summer. One reason was because I recognized the three teachers interviewed for the article. Matthew Morris is in my school board and is a great connector and speaker. His website is https://www.matthewrmorris.com/ Kimiko Shibata is an educator I've followed for a long time on Twitter. Her handle there is @ESL_fairy. The third educator quoted was my friend from PDSB (and OSLA days) Beth Lyons. I nodded my head frequently as I read about how they are cleaning their school spaces, taking AQ courses, and reviewing the new language curriculum in preparation for September. 

I'm doing similar things. Instead of taking AQs, I'm teaching them. In addition to the Queen's University Teacher Librarianship Specialist AQ that I started in late June, I'm co-leading the York University Teacher Librarianship Part 1 and Part 2 AQ courses. (I plan on taking my Media Part 2 AQ as a student in the fall.) For almost every day in that first week of July, I was in my school weeding my everybody book collection in the library in anticipation for an inventory of the entire school library collection in August. 

Weeding, or deselection, is an important part of a teacher-librarian's duties. I like the term "weeding", even though it is slowly falling out of favour, because it attempts to describe the process of nurturing a collection of resources like a garden. It's not meant to disparage the items that get removed, but just like dandelions are valued in some instances and resented in others (see this article from the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners group), some books are treasured in a collection while others are trash (or trashed). That's why it's important to know your school community before embarking on a large-scale weeding of a class library or school library. Another friend has spoken to me often of the zeal of newly minted teacher librarians who want their very first action in their new-to-them school library to involve deselecting books. My friend cautioned me so frequently about this practice that one of the assignments in one of the TL AQs involves asking participants to give examples of books that should or might or might not get removed from a collection. In the spring, when someone offered that a single title could fit in all three of these categories, I was delighted. That person realized that deselection is not as easy as it might first appear.

In the Toronto District School Board, Operational Procedure 531 governs the way we approach the selection and deselection of learning resources. The document is public and can be found here. Regarding deselection, PR531 states,

Deselection or selective weeding ensures that the school library collection contains only those resource materials that are accurate, current, and relevant to the curricular needs of the school. The development of an effective collection of resources requires periodic weeding to ensure balance, reliability, and comprehensiveness.

There are many other factors to consider when deciding whether or not it's time for a book to be retired from a collection. This Toronto Star article from 2023 (sorry, it's behind a paywall) explains some of the complexity.  

There are many other helpful resources when undertaking a project like this. TDSB has a pamphlet with guidelines, as well as a step-by-step flowchart of decisions to make through the process. (I wanted to clip an image from this guide, but today the TDSB Library and Learning Resources site is inaccessible.) Canadian School Libraries produced this awesome guide to Equity-Informed Weeding. The CSL website is particularly rich and meaningful. It does a wonderful job of explaining that what I am doing does not count as censorship. Here are a few important quotes from the document.

Resource selection is based on sound educational criteria unbiased by personal, political, social, or religious views. As selectors and weeders, library professionals are faced with difficult decisions when it comes to literature in particular. Literature offers a window into the diversity of human and social experiences and values, past and present. It is those very complexities that make literature appealing and relevant. It is sometimes those complexities that draw the attention of censors. Resources should be chosen because the balance of positive qualities far outweighs potential negative qualities, and this should be the primary consideration when making decisions about weeding. It is very important that the school library continue to provide access to a wide-ranging fiction and literature collection, and that the weeding process not be used as a vehicle for censorship.

Making decisions about whether or not to weed classics of children’s literature may come down to the purpose for these resources being in the collection in the first place. If they are included in picture book or fiction collections for the purpose of engaging our youngest readers, then it is clear that some beloved classics may be past their glory, and are candidates for removal from the collection. If, on the other hand, they are part of a secondary library collection for the purpose of literary study, as examples of the changing nature of children’s literature, for example, then it may be appropriate to keep them. A considered choice to keep the resource fosters students’ critical thinking capacity through the exploration of controversial issues and materials.

 

I regularly remove books that I find during the day-to-day operations of the library but sometimes a focused intervention is required. I examined my fiction collection in 2019 and my non-fiction collection in 2022, both as part of a school library space revitalization. I think it may have been 2017 that I last looked in-depth at the everybody book section. (This is what I call my picture book collection, so that it's clear that these books are for everyone, not just the youngest readers.)

I joke in the title of this blog post that it takes 15-20 steps, but there really are a lot of questions that have to be answered before a decision is made about a book.

I took some photos to illustrate the process.

The photo below is of the hardcover "R" and "S" sections. (In the school library where I work, we keep things pretty simple. For the Everybody books, they are sorted by the authors' last name, and then divided into hard cover and paperback, mainly because the paperbacks tend to get lost among the hard cover books.) In this photo, the books are jammed so tightly into the shelves that it is difficult to actually pull a book out. How would this be inviting?

I open and skim every single book. Then, I ask myself a ton of questions, based on the guidelines for deselection. I check out the publication date. How old is it? If it's old or older, is it a classic? If it's a classic, do I have another copy of it? If it's a classic, is it a timeless classic or one that just has nostalgia among readers of a certain era? Is it still relevant or useful to have on the shelves? Does it help with curriculum delivery? Which subjects would benefit from using this book? Are there offensive stereotypes present? I look at the physical condition of the book. Are the pages discoloured? Are there scribbles inside? Are the pages ripped? If the pages are ripped, how badly ripped are they? Is it possible to repair the rips? Is it worth the time and the cost of the book tape to repair? Will the repaired book still be attractive and alluring for students to continue borrowing? Is there water damage? Before weeding, I ran a report of the most popular books borrowed in the school library. I ask myself, when was the last time this book was borrowed by a student? How likely are students to borrow this book now? Are they not borrowing this book because it no longer holds appeal, or that it was too difficult to find or not promoted enough by the teacher-librarian? If it wasn't promoted enough, should it be a title or an author that needs more promotion? What if, in my case because my library actively participated for years in the OLA Forest of Reading program, I have multiple copies of the same title? How many titles of the same book should be kept? What if the book is autographed? What if the book is autographed but in bad condition? Which factor takes precedent? This is what the R and S sections looked like after I had finished my deselection process.

Sometimes when methodically deselecting, you find books and wonder how on earth they remained in the collection. Here are a few of those WTH titles I found last week.

I didn't agonize over removing these books; it was easy. Gus Was a Real Dumb Ghost was published in 1982 - 41 years ago. On the first page, Gus uses a typewriter to compile his memoirs. I last used a typewriter in high school, and I'm old. The title character is mocked for not knowing how to spell and is failed by his teacher. "Dumb" is currently not a recommended term to use to describe people, as explained in this Thesaurus article. (Controversy has surrounded the Dav Pilkey series Dumb Bunnies for similar reasons but the term there is used as satire.)

The Christmas Strangers was published in 1976. We have plenty of Christmas-themed books and this one didn't add to the collection in a significantly positive way. My Puppy is also similarly old, battered, and the illustrations no longer hold appeal. As the CSL guide says, "it is important to consider the quality and relevance of the illustrations and design elements that either increase or decrease the appeal of the book". 

I was looking for the oldest book still on the shelf and the image above might be it. Emmett's Pig was published in 1959, 13 years before even I was born. Apologies to author Mary Stolz, but we didn't keep this title after I took the photo. 

I have finished A-F and M-Z, so I still have G-L to go, plus the graphic novel collection, and after that, the guided reading room that isn't attached to the library, but to my knowledge has NEVER been weeded. There is also a huge list of things to consider about dealing with these books once they are deselected. That's a topic for another blog post!

Pen (or Type) That Note

 It's the first week of July. School is now officially over for the 2022-2023 year. My scrapbook album is a testimony to the number of amazing moments that occurred. I still haven't completed it with all the photos and it is so large that I've had to transfer the pages out of a traditional photo album.

The last week of school was busy. Remember Stephen Tong? Mr. Tong's school retirement event went very well. Instead of a whole-school assembly, each class prepared a mini-putt course. On June 27, he was escorted by a caddy to each room where he could play some golf, chat with the students, and experience some of the other presentations they planned, such as tribute songs. After school, parents, colleagues, and former students gathered in the staff room to socialize.

As part of his "parting gift", he received another memory book, one filled with letters from current and former students. You can see the huge white binder on the table in front of him.

I'm not retiring this year but I received several heartwarming letters and emails from students and parents.

Their words mean so much. Thank you, especially Grade 8 grads HL, ES, AI, and FR. You are too kind.

I encourage people to take pen to paper or keyboard to screen and compose notes of appreciation for those special folks in your life, whether it's for a significant milestone like a retirement, a year-end moment, or "just because". You never know the impact it will have.

One of the other reasons I suggest this is that recently I saw a comment posted to my blog from an entry I wrote back in 2012 (yes, eleven years ago). I moderate my blog's comments so I am not inundated with spam. Imagine my surprise when I saw that the comments were from my former Grade 12 and OAC English teacher! He finally saw my open letter to him. (You'll have to read the comments from the bottom up.)

I will have to ask people who know more about Blogger than I do about how to figure out how to keep in touch, since he didn't leave an email or phone number that I can tell. 

There's no "rest for the wicked", as I'm working on one - soon to be three - AQs, weeding two sections of the school library in preparation for my inventory, and preparing my SLLC annual report, along with the scrapbook review. At least I'll get to sleep in a bit.

P.S. This is the half-way point of the year and I peeked back on my #OneWord focus. It is LIFT. Today's blog theme matches that goal nicely. The advice to celebrate others with words and actions is to lift, to raise upward, to elevate. I hope this post does that, for my colleague Steve, for those students (while still respecting their privacy) and for my former teacher, Mr. Sturm.