Flying, Frozen and Furry

It was another busy week at school. Some portions happened like clockwork - our annual Volunteer Appreciation event and the TDSB TL Social. Others were unique to this year, so I will focus on those memories to analyze, in reverse order from the title of this post.

Furry, Four-Legged Friends: Our Pet Club Celebration with Biscuit

One of the clubs I ran this year was Pet Club. I started it based on a suggestion from a student, who wanted time to interact with our school skinny pigs. The students, chosen from applicants in Grades 3-5, had to check in daily on the pets to ensure they had food and water. They were also responsible for letting me know when the cage was dirty so that we could clean it. Technically, I did all the cleaning and they "babysat" the skinny pigs. The problem with Pet Club is that students were, to use a Caribbean figure of speech, either "8 or 80". They either completely forgot about checking on them, leaving them without basic necessities, or over-attentive, checking on them at every recess and free period (and even during lessons too). We had schedules set up and posted all over the library, as well as copies sent home with the participating students. I included a list of the things to do as part of Pet Club. Unfortunately, some students still had difficulty keeping up with the demands and they had to be demitted from Pet Club. To recognize and acknowledge the students that persevered with their duties, we hosted a dog visit with Biscuit, a canine who lives with the Miller family in the neighbourhood.

Mr. Miller was absolutely fabulous. He is a member of our school's Parent Council and an active volunteer. He also knows how to speak to students. It may be due to the nature of his daytime job, or because he has four children in his home, but for whatever the reasons, he was an excellent ambassador. The goal was for the students to know how to interact safely and respectfully with dogs they may encounter in the community. We talked inside the library and then went outside.

The students were fascinated by Biscuit and interested in everything Mr. Miller taught them. He explained about the need to ask owners for permission before petting dogs in public. He demonstrated how to approach from the side and let the dog get comfortable first. He had students empathize with dogs to help them understand why they might react in the ways they do. By the time we went outside, a larger crowd gathered to check out what was going on. He showed how to keep your palm open and flat when offering treats so that the dog can accept the snack safely.

As Mr. Miller brought around Biscuit for the students to meet, we realized that many of our students were quite uncomfortable around dogs. Some, even though they were Pet Club enthusiasts, showed quite a bit of fear and were very skittish around Biscuit. Mr. Miller was very patient and reassuring. Some students chose not to get near the dog, and that choice was honoured and respected. Others were eager but nervous and they received lots of support and Mr. Miller had Biscuit sitting in a way that gave students the confidence to interact a bit more.

Afterwards, Mr. Miller expressed some regret that he wasn't able to mention all the things he wanted to cover during his talk. I was so appreciative of his time and effort with this presentation and told him that the students left with important information. Thank you, Brian Miller and Biscuit, for ending the Pet Club duties with a woof!

Frozen Treats: Our ESL Ice Cream Inquiry

One scoop or two? Do you prefer chocolate or vanilla? Where is it kept? Oh no, it's melting!

Sharing ice cream with the Stage 1-2 ESL classes helped develop a lot of vocabulary. I had some leftover ice cream from the Quiz Bowl celebration last week. We researched different types of ice cream, which helped reading comprehension. We also wrote down some of these flavors. The class pre-set goals (write down 10 flavors) and when we achieved them, we trooped to the office where we have a freezer tucked away in the back.

As I've mentioned before, food is highly motivating. The students really enjoyed talking about ice cream and especially eating the ice cream!

Flying Up and Away: More Green Screen Magic in the Library

As part of my big library renovation and refresh, the school purchased a large green screen. I decided to try it out with the Kindergarten students as part of my library/media lessons with them, although I had a secondary reason. Their kindergarten graduation is coming up, and sometimes it can be hard to find photos of individual children doing school things. With the yearbook, I tend to prioritize taking group pictures. When preparing the Grade 8 and kindergarten graduate slide shows, we have to be so careful about only including images of the students in question, since we don't have permission to show the others. By taking these whimsical green screen photos, we can use them for their SK graduation and maybe eight years in the future for their Grade 8 graduation!

It's important to teach THROUGH and ABOUT media, so part of this lesson involved showing how the technology worked. I used the Do Ink Green Screen app and showed them how this particular shade of green is substituted in the app with whatever image I select. I also relied on the "problem solving and innovation" aspect of the kindergarten curriculum to get the students to figure out how we could make it appear as if they were flying. They quickly discovered that using one of the big block seats, covered with fabric in the same shade of bright green, would hide the support. 

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Students even had the chance to take photos themselves using Do Ink. 

Here I am showing them how we can look like we are flying.

We also had good conversations afterwards about whether or not they were really flying and they were able to say they weren't because it was just pretend, thanks to the green screen.  

This coming week will be filled with graduation and retirement celebrations. Hopefully there will be some time for teaching in between!

P.S. Sunday, June 15, 2025 was also Father's Day. Happy Father's Day to my own Popperino, Fred DeFreitas, and my husband (and a fantastic father himself), James Maliszewski! I probably should have called this post "Flying, Frozen, Furry, and Fatherly"!

When Finalizing is Frustrating vs Fun

 This past week was a four-day week with the students. Friday, June 6 was a report card writing day. I was extremely grateful to have this day, as I needed the time to consolidate evaluations and create these summaries.

Marking is not my favourite task. I've talked about this A LOT on my blog. A quick search of the term leads to posts on my desire to procrastinate, the reason why I tend to shun the use of AI with evaluation, and ways to make marking manageable as a classroom teacher. I talked about this with a colleague - when we were little and would "play school" or "pretend to be teachers", we happily placed checkmarks and crosses on tests, yet this is the least appealing part of our jobs now that we have them! 

It can be difficult to ascertain how much weight should be given to particular tasks, and whether this was an accurate portrayal of the student's abilities or if he/she/they were just having an "off day". One of my other colleagues reminded me about the guiding principles from "Growing Success" - focus on what's most recent and most consistent. 

Assessment can be frustrating. I like seeing the end result - but the process can be a bit bumpy. Seeing the "last chapter" sometimes makes me want to try to alter the conclusion. Is there anything else I can do to change things, or improve the conclusion? 

I provided a satisfactory conclusion to our Quiz Bowl event when we hosted a Quiz Bowl ice cream party on Tuesday, June 3 for the students who participated. A couple of weeks ago, we hosted the most recent Quiz Bowl competition and, to my surprise, my students won the Fiction event. As we were walking to the host school on the day of the contest, the students and I were chatting and I frivolously said that if they won, we would have an ice cream party to celebrate, never thinking that they'd be able to pull it off. These were words I were happy to have to eat. (I myself didn't eat any of the ice cream. I'm still on my Lean and Clean Challenge.) 

This was a fun way to follow-up and wrap up this significant portion of the Forest of Reading program. The students ate themselves sick and we examined the statistics that were compiled during the competition to see where we did well and where we could have boosted our numbers.

During our Quiz Bowl Celebration Party, we also took a photo for our Quiz Bowl Book Trophy. This was a bittersweet task. One of the schools that participated in the past, who shall remain nameless in this blog post, actually lost the fiction book trophy. I was really upset when I heard the news. The "book trophy" isn't worth a lot of money itself, but it is a historic artifact that cannot be replaced. The original pair of books, made by now-retired teacher-librarian Claire Perrin, had not only the list of every school that won the award since we began this tradition in 2009, but the names and signatures of every child that was on the winning team. (Below is a photo of the pair of books from 2019, when Agnes Macphail PS won the non-fiction category and C. D. Farqharson PS won the fiction category.) This information and these names are not recorded anywhere else, so with the loss of the book, this data has vanished completely.

My close TL friends that I first shared this disappointing news with advised me to insist that the school that lost the book make amends somehow, by replacing the book or at least informing the other participating schools that this has happened. In the end, I decided against these punitive actions, but I still felt the need to share the tale. I bought a new book and will record the schools that won, if I can locate those results somewhere in my scrapbooks. (Thank goodness for my own silly need to document!) Congratulations again to the team from my school for the incredible results.

Public Performances & Private Parts

This past week was our school's spring concert and the final high school performance of a treasured former student from our school.

Our school's music teacher was understandably a bit worried about organizing a concert six weeks after her return to work from her injury, for May 28. I helped out as much as I can, without trying to step on toes or take over. I had two acts in the show. My primary choir and ukulele club did a great job. 

Thursday, May 29 was one of the performances of "Clue" at Earl Haig Secondary School by the students in the Claude Watson Program for the Performing Arts. Tyler was fantastic. I saw him in his Grade 9 show; he was amazing then and he was marvelous now. 

These are some of my thoughts, post-concert, and post-play.

• People aren't used to live shows anymore, or how to behave. At my school, I could actually see and hear adults talking while the students were performing on stage. I was aching to reprimand them, but my focus had to be on conducting. 
• It takes so much time, effort, and energy to put on a show. What we witness at the end, in front of the audience, is just the tip of the iceberg. Hours and hours of rehearsals, practices, and planning goes into productions like this. Tyler's play was completely run by the Grade 12 graduating drama class. This included costuming, lighting, and stage direction, among other things.
• Everyone has a different approach to the performing arts, and it takes skill and diplomacy to find the perfect balance of suggesting changes that will improve an act without veering into shaping the performance into the version you personally envision would be best. I found it fascinating that Tyler was only Mr. Green at the Thursday performance. There was another student portraying the same character in the show on Friday. I'd find it nearly impossible to imagine someone else in the role because Tyler possessed it so thoroughly. 
• Family support means so much, and not just "at the finish line". It was so heartwarming to see so many people come out to see Tyler's last high school show. His arms were filled with bouquets of flowers to celebrate his accomplishments. Congratulations again Tyler, and all the students who took part in both the production of "Clue" and our school's show!

I called this post "Public Performances and Private Parts" because I wanted to make sure I talked about the other aspect of teaching that has taken priority for the past few weeks. As part of my collaborative teaching time, I've been working with four different classes to provide grade-specific health lessons on the "Human Development and Sexual Health" unit. I teach the Grade 3s and their focus is on healthy relationships, positive body image, and factors that affect physical and social-emotional development. For the Grade 5s, we are working on parts of the reproductive system, puberty, menstruation and spermatogenesis. I've talked about teaching this before on my blog. Now that I've done it a few times, I definitely feel more comfortable leading these lessons. In addition to the useful and accurate OPHEA lesson plans, and the giant sperm and egg toys (renamed Willie and Wanda by this year's students), I also used a book called "Where Willy Went".

This is actually an old book, published in 2004. It shows its age in some ways and is decidedly innocent in some ways. Some students, after having the book read to them, were unclear on how Willy actually got to the egg. (The process of sexual intercourse is obscured in the picture book and just described as "joined together".) It has a few hidden biases/presumptions that have been disproven by recent science. For instance, Willy has a name but the egg in the book doesn't. Willy has an active role and the egg has a passive one. However, (and I apologize that I cannot find the scientific study that references this), the egg doesn't just sit there and allows the first sperm that arrives to merge. The egg can secrete substances that encourages or discourages penetration by certain sperm. 

Another example of how media portrayals or methods to try to instruct students on this potentially-awkward topic can lead to some inaccuracies involves the internal female reproductive system. The OPHEA lesson plan has a diagram to label that looks like most diagrams on the subject. I drew a version of it on the board so the students could see and copy more easily. (I added the illustration of the sperm going in and the menses going out.)

In the interest of making things easier to label, these diagrams suggest that the organs are spread out. (One Grade 5 boy said, "It looks like a praying mantis.") In reality, all of these parts are packed pretty closely together. A similar issue can be had with diagrams of the male reproductive system, which are often shown in a side view, blocking the fact that there are two testicles. If we rely on just these diagrams without explanation, there is the chance that students may not realize certain realities. We definitely want to stick to diagrams rather than other means of visualization, but it's important to be aware of their shortcomings. 

In addition to using Willy and Wanda, I've also used, based on suggestions from the OPHEA lessons, a question box where students can write their questions that they may be too shy to ask. It also buys me time to find a way to answer them in the most sensitive and accurate way. Their questions help me understand that parts of the lessons they are having trouble grasping. For instance, these are some of the questions from my most recent check of the question box.

• When you have a baby, does the baby come from the vaginal opening?
• Why do girls have an organ just for baby? Is it called the placenta?
• Why do periods start?
• What happens if you don't feed the baby?
• How do people get pregnant?
• What are fallopian tubes?
• How do twins happen?
• What's the other egg for in a woman's body?
• When are we going to learn [about] boobs?
• Is the outer part boobs?
• Why do pregnant women have cravings?
• How is the sperm made?
• What happens when you have sex and pee? / What happens if the man pees doing sex?

I worry that we aren't going to have enough time to address all these questions AND ensure that I generate some evaluations so that the teachers will have marks to put on the report cards. (The designated day devoted to report card writing is this coming Friday, June 6.) 

My other concern is for the students that get permission to abstain from these lessons. Often, the objections are religious in nature. I respect families but I wonder when or where or how these students will receive this information, and why it is that this particular unit can be exempted but not other units in other subject areas. I hope that all students will get the information they need in a timely and age-appropriate manner. 

My Most Recent (Quiz Bowl) and My Last (Media AQ)

 This week marked the I-don't-know-how-many-times-we've-held-this annual Quiz Bowl. I blog about this every time we do it. 

In 2024, it was held at Macklin PS with five schools participating. 

In 2023, it was held at Chief Dan George PS with seven schools participating.

In 2022, it was held virtually with four schools participating. 

We didn't hold it in 2021 or 2020, because of the pandemic.

It was a bit of a concern that the Quiz Bowl would even happen this year. I nearly dropped out because I didn't have enough students reading the Silver Birch Fiction or Yellow Cedar nominees for 2025. To my horror, no one in my whole school qualified to vote in the Silver Birch Fiction category (an embarrassing fact I shared with OLA and it was noticed!) Instead, one keen Grade 5 student and I looked at the list of students that had read Silver Birch Express books and invited some students personally by asking them if they'd be willing to read some extra books in May so that we could field a team from Agnes Macphail Public School. 

This was not just an anomaly at my school. We had to alter the original rules to allow students older than Grade 6 to participate, so that some schools would have enough readers. We originally had nine schools sign up for the event, but it dropped to five by the time the day rolled around. Big thanks to:

• Chief Dan George Public School
• Milliken Public School
• Percy Williams Junior Public School
• Port Royal Public School

for participating this year. 

Our host school was Port Royal Public School and the day of our event was May 20, 2025 (the day after Victoria Day). Our guest author was George Chiang, co-creator of The Longest Shot: How Larry Kwong Changed The Face of Hockey.

All the teacher-librarians took turns fulfilling different roles. Salma Nakhuda handled the buzzer system. Alyson Walters was the host. Jackie Dixon and I took turns watching the audience. All of us read the questions we invented for our assigned books. Kim Davidson was primarily in charge of keeping score and she commented afterwards that this year was the first she's seen in a while where all the teams were evenly matched. She revealed that in the Fiction competition, coming into the final book and the last ten questions of the match, that there was a three-way tie for first place. Our eventual winners were:

• Yellow Cedar Non-Fiction = Milliken AND Port Royal (yes, a tie!)
• Silver Birch Fiction = Agnes Macphail

The irony is not lost on me. I was shocked and surprised that my school took first place. Even though we are one of the founding schools for the Forest of Reading Quiz Bowl, this is only our third or fourth win and the only time we have earned the prize for the Silver Birch Fiction competition. Congratulations to all the schools for their efforts. I know we are going to have to hold a serious conversation about how to sustain this event and what changes we might need to make to help it survive.

This past week was also my final class for my Media AQ course, where I am a student. It is my last one because I was in the Specialist Media AQ course, and based on the 3-part AQ structure we have in Ontario, there are no other classes available. To be honest, I was fortunate enough to be in this cohort, because the Association for Media Literacy is the only provider of the Media AQ course in Ontario and it doesn't run every season. 

I want to publicly thank both my instructors (Neil Andersen, Carol Arcus, and Michelle Solomon), and the members of my Part 3 cohort (Greta Smelko and Wade Blanchette). I can't say enough positive things about these folks. They are all so hardworking! Even though we all live in different cities, on Mother's Day, Greta and I drove to Wade's house in St. Catharines, Ontario, so that we could work on our group project.

When I mentioned to Neil about the number of potential projects we had under consideration, he explained that he started working with Carol Arcus on projects and over thirty years later, hasn't stopped! I don't mind taking a pause on assignments for the time being - I've got lots of projects on the go right now, like the yearbook, the grad slideshow, and all my evaluations for report cards - but I really, really hope I get to work with these amazing educators again in the future. 

Let's Get Loud! Science of Sound and Forest of Reading Festival

 May is a busy time of year at school. On Tuesday, May 13 and Wednesday May 14, I attended the Forest of Reading Festival at Harbourfront. It's an event that my students look forward to attending year after year. For the first time this year, I had groups of students watch the Digital Ceremonies for the Blue Spruce Award in the library. I know that the experience isn't the same - seeing the authors live on stage and being surrounded by hundreds of other children in a stadium-like atmosphere is different than sitting in your school library watching a screen - but the neat thing was that when the winner was announced, regardless of the location, there was cheering. The students clapped and made "a joyful noise".

 The Red Maple one still had applause, but it was a bit more subdued than the exclamations that emerged from the Grade 3-6 audience members, or even the ones watching from the comfort of the school library. 

Please forgive the quality of these video. This is a short clip of the announcement of the 2025 Silver Birch Express Winner at Harbourfront.

In this short video, they are still yelling with glee. (I can see the back of two of my boys, in grey shirts. One is holding up his copy of the book, that he bought with his own money.)

The great part was after the screaming subsided, it was replaced with chanting. "Lost and Found", the name of the winning book, was repeated over and over again by the enthusiastic crowd.

It gives me goosebumps to hear the voices all raised together, celebrating the author's win. 

The lineups to get the authors' signatures were long but the students were eager (and willing to wait)!

We don't want the learning environment to be noisy all the time, but this was a perfect and appropriate time for getting loud.

Noise can be useful at other times as well. In my STEM classes with the Grade 1-2s, we are looking at the science of sound. The students made a "sound detection machine" using sugar and balloons stretched over cups, to visualize the vibrations made by the sound waves.

I will print photos of them using traditional instruments, so they can annotate them with the sound waves emerging. Then, the students are going to make their own musical instruments.

On Friday evening, a piano tuner came in to the school to tune the pianos. He showed me the insides of the piano and gave me a brief explanation of how the piano actually makes sound.

This coming week might not be as loud but it will still be busy, with Quiz Bowl on Tuesday, my final Media AQ class on Thursday, and Track and Field Day sometime this coming week. 

A Lean and Clean Refresh

 My 2025 word of the year is refresh. This week, I'm beginning a six-week intensive focus on refreshing my approach to my physical wellness. 

I'm a member of a Cross Fit gym called Cross Fit Canuck. From May 12 - June 22, I will be participating in a Lean and Clean challenge.

This is not supposed to be a weight loss program. The goal is to develop healthier habits. We began with personal body scans to let us know where we are at, more than just the number on a scale. We attended a nutrition seminar on Saturday May 10.  There are five daily goals we have, related to: 

1) Exercise

2) Food Intake

3) Steps

4) Sleep

5) Hydration

Both my husband and I are going to participate. I know this is not going to be easy. I won't have any problem with the sleep goal (since I'm only required to get 7-8 hours per night and my preference is at least 9!). However, the other benchmarks will be challenging. I didn't take a "before" photo. (Classic "weight loss" images have a sad pudgy person as the "before" shot. Not me. I was actually pretty happy eating whatever I wanted. I just knew that, in the end, it wasn't exactly good for me.) We will see if it makes a difference.

Having a partner is going to help a lot. So are the plans. This is a photo of the schedule I've made of our workouts for May and June. It's taped up on a wall in our basement.

How does this connect to school? Well, it will impact the way I eat at school. I was inclined to skip lunch so that I could get things done, like running clubs or conducting Forest of Reading book chats. (The Forest of Reading Festival is this coming week. I will let you know next week how it went.) I'm also teaching a lot of health education with classes collaboratively, because it is part of the Human Development and Sexuality unit that most teachers struggle with. It will probably make me more attuned to body issues. I'm also going to have to use a bunch of tracking apps (which I dislike - my phone already knows too much about me, and now I'm allowing it and inputting data in it so there's more information about me available). It will force me to use real-life math, as I calculate percentages and weight as I pay more attention to my meal portions. 

Wish me luck!

Honoring the Finest and the Fallen

 "It's important to tell someone what they mean to you when you can, because you never know when you can't".

This is a paraphrased sentence from a conversation I had with Maria Martella from Tinlinds on Wednesday, April 30, 2025 during the Spring GTA Resource Fair. 

The GTA Resource Fair was a wonderful event, as usual. I took 17 students and a very supportive parent volunteer to the Queen Elizabeth Building on the CNE grounds to purchase books. Just like the fall of 2024 and the spring of 2024, our students took their responsibilities seriously and stayed within their budget.

Maria was one of the vendors at the GTA Resource Fair. She is also the newest (2024) recipient of the prestigious Claude Aubry Award  presented by IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) Canada. 

The news release by IBBY Canada gave this short biography about Maria:

Maria Martella is the founder and owner of Tinlids, a Canadian book wholesaler that sells to schools and public libraries across the country. She is widely recognized for her knowledge of children’s books. She frequently speaks at professional development events for teachers and librarians and gives book talks and workshops at Humber College and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). In 2020, Maria helped start the Save Our School Libraries initiative which she continues to champion.

Maria received her award virtually during IBBY Canada's recent meeting. When I received my CSL award in February at the Treasure Mountain Canada 8 dinner, not only did Maria attend the reception, but she sent me the most lovely email telling me personally what our friendship has meant to her. It left me speechless. When I chatted with Maria about her own award at the GTA Resource Fair last week, she humbly redirected the attention back to me, saying that she referenced my speech when contemplating her own. This is typical Maria - modest to a fault, with the ability to make everyone feel like they are the most important person in the world when in conversation.

Since this is a blog post, and Maria cannot place the spotlight on others, as she usually does, this is the perfect opportunity for me to talk about what Maria Martella means to me.

Maria Martella

I like searching back to see when significant people first enter my life. For Maria, I have to go waaaaaay back. I have photographic evidence of visiting Tinlids at the GTA Resource Fair in 2004, a year after Maria founded it, and I took my school's junior division students to the Children's Book Store in 1998, when she was employed as the manager there. I've listened to her present at many OLA Super Conferences (like in 2013). She's been a guest speaker for my Teacher Librarianship AQ course (2019 and 2024).

(This is a photo of me and Maria at the Canadian Children's Book Centre Awards Gala in 2016. The woman does not age! She is beautiful inside and out!)

Maria has shaped my teacher-librarianship journey in so many ways, and especially through the GTA Graphic Novel Club. This was an initiative that Maria spearheaded around 2010, where several teacher-librarians who liked and understood graphic novels would gather at Tinlids headquarters. Maria would feed us and lend us graphic novels from Tinlids stock for us to read. We'd reassemble a few weeks later and discuss the comics we read, appreciating the form and considering how these books could be incorporated into curricular areas or which grades and ages of readers would respond best to them. It was a magical time and fed me mentally after I had just finished my Masters of Education degree. Gail de Vos at the University of Alberta may have kindled my love affair with graphic novels, but Maria Martella made sure that the flame kept burning. Her incredible generosity, with the food, books, and time, cannot be overestimated. 

Maria is constantly doing things to put books into the hands of young people and advancing the cause of Canadian children's literature everywhere. I remember when she drove hours and hours up to a school on a reserve to run a book fair and donate a large amount of books to the school. There was no publicity, no advertising blitz - this was just how Maria typically gives back, without fanfare. Maria has many connections and uses those connections to protect intellectual freedom and help build the network of school libraries and school library professionals in Canada. It was Maria's efforts that led my friend Wendy Burch Jones to attend the British Columbia Teacher Librarian Association conference in 2024, and that led to conversations that led to the upcoming theme for Canadian School Library Day 2025. Without Maria saying to Wendy, "I think you should be at this conference" and bringing her along, this wouldn't have happened. 

Tinlids became the official sponsor of the Forest of Reading since 2014. Maria has done an incredible amount of work promoting Canadian authors and illustrators and defending books against shadow bans and censorship. She has spent countless hours explaining and justifying and protecting the rights of books to exist in school libraries across the province and country. She is a library hero.

On top of all of this, I feel incredibly privileged to call Maria Martella my friend. Despite being insanely busy, we try to scratch out a few minutes when at a conference or during the Forest of Reading Festival to chat about our recent trips or our offspring. A long, long time ago, I brought my two young children over March Break to Tinlids to buy books and introduce them to Maria. She remembers both Mary and Peter; they remember having a marvelous time searching through the shelves for books to buy and interacting with this friendly lady. My "other children", aka my students, know that if they have questions about books to buy, they can turn to Maria, who will treat them with respect and consideration, not as children but as fellow readers. 

(This is the photo from March 2009 when my children visited Maria at Tinlids over March Break. They were 9 and 6 1/2 when this was taken. They are now 25 and nearly 23!)

Congratulations Maria on this well-deserved honour.

Maria's kindness, civic-mindedness, and unabashed way of giving and receiving affection returned to my mind during my meeting on Friday May 2 of the North American and European chapter of the UNESCO Media and Information Literacy Alliance. During this meeting, the first thing on the agenda was to pay tribute to Tessa Jolls, a giant in media literacy circles, who passed away on March 31, 2025. This is what I said, as the Canadian representative. (This next section below will also appear on the Association for Media Literacy's website at www.aml.ca )

Tessa Jolls

The 4th IMLRS conference was held on June 27-28, 2022 in Madison, WI, USA.

Tessa is fourth from the right and I am on the far right.

I don’t remember when I first heard of Tessa Jolls. I knew I heard of her long before I had the fortune of meeting her. Canadians in-the-know are proud of their media literacy heritage, so it takes quite a bit to impress Canucks. Tessa was impressive. She’s been in the business of making a more media literate society for a long time, and possessed a zeal for the subject that belied her age. The Center for Media Literacy and the Consortium for Media Literacy were and are incredible legacies to leave behind. Carol Arcus, the most recent IC4ML Jessie McCanse winner, said of her fellow award recipient, “Tessa was a quiet, modest cheerleader for media literacy. She helped map out the history of global media literacy for UNESCO and was a great supporter of the Association for Media Literacy. She was, for want of a better, more eloquent term, a good person.”

At the Global Media Education Summit on March 4, 2023 in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Tessa is second from the left and I am second from the right.

Tessa was a globetrotter and knew how to navigate both the individual states within her home country with all their policies and legislation, as well as countries around the world. She made friends while making an impact. As Neil Andersen, president of the AML, remarked: “the media literacy community has lost a valuable warrior.”

As someone relatively new to the global media literacy network, Tessa welcomed me and made me feel like I belonged in these conversations, even though I am an elementary school teacher. She respected and appreciated expertise of all types. It is unfortunate that I did not have more time to interact with and get to know Tessa the person as well as Tessa the legend, but both will continue to reside in the hearts and minds of media literacy advocates everywhere.

An "Elevator Pitch" IRL

Usually in this blog, I write about things that have already happened. For today's blog, I'm writing about things to come.

The local news (such as The Toronto Star and CityNews) has shared that the province intends on auditing four school boards. There will be a huge meeting of the TDSB Finance, Budget and Enrolment Committee on Wednesday where some decisions will be made. To help trustees make their decisions, there is a special meeting the day before. I have applied to be a delegate at the marathon board hearing on Tuesday, April 29, 2025. Each delegate will only have three minutes to share their comments.

This is similar to an "elevator pitch". I am familiar with the concept. In fact, as part of one of the Additional Qualification courses that I teach, candidates are required to create an elevator pitch to promote school libraries. This specific task on Tuesday holds a lot more weight than a class assignment. I do not want to exaggerate the importance or impact of my words, but I want to do my part to ensure that, as the board scrambles to find savings, that school libraries are not included in the cuts. 

I am still waiting to see if a) I was accepted and b) when my allocated time slot will be. If I get a chance to present, then maybe I will post a copy of what I said here on my blog. 

In the meantime, if a picture is worth a thousand words, here are a few images (or $7000 worth ;>) to indicate the things that go on in school libraries in a typical week.

I improved my Forest of Reading Blue Spruce loose parts provocations. This one, for "Still My Tessa" invites the participants to explore "How do you show who you are?"

This is a sample from the "More Than Words" loose parts provocation: "How do we communicate?"

This student example is from "When The Stars Came Home" and the prompt, "Where are the stars? Where is home?"

This is part of a STEM project that some Grade 8 students are working on.

This part of a McDonalds Happy Meal was the fodder for lots of discussions with the ESL students.

I brought a new tent into the library. One student thought it was the perfect place to get work done. 

This close-up is from the Earth Day clean-up initiative. I took photographs of the action.

Wish me luck with this endeavor. (This coming week is also the Forest of Reading Voting Day and the GTA Resource Fair. Busy, busy!)

Minecraft & Media Moments

Minecraft endures.

I was an "early adopter" of Minecraft and used it extensively in my programming from 2011-2018. I loved playing it myself with my own children and marveled at all the fantastic curricular connections that were possible. I "backed away" from it for a while but slowly started to return it to my repertoire in 2022. (If you search my blog for the term "Minecraft", you will end up with pages and pages of results.)

Here we are in 2025 and Minecraft is still incredibly popular. At my school, I've seen renewed interest among the teachers and students. Our unofficial IT expert on staff and I spent a Friday evening removing extra account profiles on Chromebooks so that the Grade 4-5 students had enough space on their devices to run Minecraft. Their teacher, the talented Lexi Williams, integrated coding and Minecraft for a series of engaging lessons. The Grade 2-3 teacher, Kerri Commisso, organized some super provocations with only a tiny bit of help from me, as part of the final tasks related to our collaboration time together. I helped set up Minecraft on the Chromebooks and, after some initial exploration and self-directed inquiries, asked them to "make a fraction in Minecraft". Here are some of the results:

Even though Kerri doesn't have personal experience playing Minecraft, she saw how motivating it was for her students and incorporated Minecraft into her language and science program. She found a great Minecraft-themed poem to use for shared reading, and had students make connections between their study of solids/liquids (Grade 2) and forces (Grade 3) and Minecraft. What I admired about the way she used Minecraft in her classroom was how she did not leech all the fun out of the activity and allowed students agency in demonstrating their knowledge. It was playful and honoured all the learners where they were at in their learning journeys. She was able to document their discoveries to show that "serious play" was happening and that learning expectations were being addressed. Kerri, you are an amazing teacher and your students are lucky to have you!

Minecraft Mania isn't just happening in my school. The Minecraft movie was just released and McDonalds has Minecraft-themed Happy Meals for both kids and adults. My son, husband, and I made a midnight McDonalds milkshake run when Friday turned into Saturday, and we treated ourselves to the adult Minecraft Happy Meals. Check out the packaging and the toys!

I'm taking my Media Specialist AQ right now. I love how taking these courses causes me to think deeply about media in my personal and professional life. As part of the AQ, participants are required to keep a "media log", which is a reflection journal. These are some of the things I wrote about related to this Minecraft Happy Meal in my media log. (For reference, the KCs stand for the Key Concepts, which shape how media literacy education can be examined, according to the Association for Media Literacy.) They are:

1. Media construct reality.
2. Media construct versions of reality.
3. Audiences negotiate meaning.
4. Media have economic implications.
5. Media communicate value messages.
6. Media communicate political and social messages.
7. Form and content are closely related in each medium.
8. Each medium has a unique aesthetic form.

At first, my husband couldn’t believe these were adult Happy Meals. It took both a great deal of persuasion/explanation from me, as well as (Hello Doubting Thomas) for him to look up online to get confirmation that indeed, the target audience of this product are adults. If I decide to save all the paraphernalia related to it and bring it to school, I might ask my students:

• What does this Happy Meal tell you about McDonalds?

• What does this Happy Meal tell you about Minecraft?

• How can you tell this is a Minecraft Happy Meal? (KC #7 or 8)

• How much did it cost? How much does a “regular” Happy Meal cost? (KC#4)

• Can a grown-up buy a kids’ Happy Meal? Can a kid buy a grown-up’s Happy Meal? (KC#3)

• I got a card that lets me use a McDonald’s themed Minecraft skin in Minecraft, but only Pocket Edition (now called Bedrock Edition). Would I want to? Why? (KC#1 or 2)

• I looked at the toys for the adult meals vs the toys for the kids meals. Based on the options, what does McDonalds think is important to kids vs adults in their toys? (KC#5)

• What impact does media tie-ins have on movie sales? Will more people go to McDonalds because of Minecraft? Will more people go to the movies because of McDonalds? (KC#6 or 4)

There are so many more questions that I could have posed about this media text. 

I don't know if I'll ever be able to capture that exhilarating feeling of when I first got into Minecraft, and the thrill of my initial forays into that blocky world. It seems easier to set up worlds, and play together. Maybe I should revisit that idea I had about re-establishing a Minecraft Club at school. We'll see. In the meantime, I'll take my Minecraft Birdy figurine to school and listen fondly to the hallway conversations of the students commenting on their Minecraft experiences.