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.