Poutine!

 I wrote a similar title for a similar blog in January, discussing our experience cooking bannock. In March, we ate real and made pretend patties. In April, we read the Blue Spruce nominated book, The Girl Who Loved Poutine and, naturally, the students wanted to cook poutine. 

I took my own advice from my bannock experience and it paid off! I asked one of my adult volunteers, "Miss Christine", to help out and she came for two afternoons to assist all five primary division classes. I bought extra fries, used frozen french fries to save time, and cooked them in a deep-fryer while the students prepared the gravy and cheese. I couldn't make it as authentic as it should be, because cheese curds are expensive. We used white cheese and the students cut them into cubes. Here are some photos (without faces) of the experience.

Mentoring and Leading in Tumultuous Times

The unofficial theme of this past week was leadership. In addition to my regular teaching schedule, I conducted three demonstration lessons for my mentee, began the spring sessions of the York University Teacher Librarian Additional Qualification courses, and hosted a fellow teacher who job-shadowed me for the day. Two of my friends went through the process of becoming eligible to serve as a vice-principal and heard the results last Friday. 

It made me seriously consider all the factors associated with being a leader in times of uncertainty. 

(Note: this photo was taken by my primary ESL students for us to use in our shared writing story book. I don't have a ton of images to go with this blog post, so this "supposedly deep-in-thought" visual will have to suffice!)

What does it mean to be an education leader in 2026?

There's a difference between being a leader in an official capacity, as a principal, vice-principal, or chairperson (POR), and less formally identified leadership. I consider teacher-librarians to automatically be de facto leaders, by nature of their position and responsibility in the school. (The sad fact is that often, TLs feel more like on-call supply teachers than curriculum, teaching, or resource experts.) Our official education leaders have so many responsibilities foisted upon them, many of them managerial in nature, that makes it difficult for them to serve in other capacities. There are meetings to attend, statistics to gather, and reports to generate. It takes concentrated effort to prioritize the people in the building, be it staff, students, or families. I don't want to be overly critical of our teacher-training programs or the courses that shape future administrators; it's too simple to place the blame on these institutions or courses for "not adequately preparing" people for the realities of the job. To be an excellent leader, you must understand policies and procedures but it's also about "People Power", to name-drop one of the Learning Blocks from the York U TL AQ. Knowing how to defuse a conflict or help a teacher improve their professional practice involves delicate, diplomatic conversations that are often learned through experience. I want to thank both the official and unofficial leaders that surround me with making the time to have conversations about how to accomplish those human resource goals in compassionate and thoughtful ways. 

Why do we struggle with balancing the quantity and quality of teachers?

This past week, there was a press conference that announced the decision to change the length of the teacher preparation training time from two years to one year. You can read or watch about the announcement on The Globe and Mail, CTV, and CBC. (It's worthwhile to note that many press conferences filmed in schools are situated in the school library, despite the fact that many school boards are cutting their school library staffing numbers. The irony is not lost on me.) 

It was switched in 2015 from a one-year program to a two-year program to address the teacher surplus issue. Now in 2026, we are facing a teacher shortage. 

There is a constant shift back and forth between having too many teachers and not enough. Back in 1996 when I graduated from the concurrent Faculty of Education program at York (which was a three-year commitment), it felt impossible to obtain a full-time position. I was a supply teacher for several boards before getting an LTO and then my permanent position. 

Is a year enough time? Most would-be educators state with certainty that they learn the most during their practicum placements. I was a host teacher in 2020 and in 2021 and I learned a lot from having to articulate how and why I teach the way I do. It's unusual for a teacher-librarian to be a host teacher because most faculties want their teacher-candidates to be placed with classroom teachers. Host teacher placements are decided on a volunteer basis - if a school agrees to have student-teachers in the building, then it is completely up to present teachers to offer their class as a practicum training ground. Let me also address the "elephant in the room": there are some host teachers and/or some student teachers who aren't exemplary educators and it can be difficult to dissuade them from continuing along this path. Disqualifying a student-teacher (or even an "inferior permanent contract teacher") takes a great deal of effort and sometimes the battle isn't worth the result, but it does mean that sometimes there are teachers who don't have the disposition, attitude, or foundational skills to do as well as one might hope to learn the ropes or do the job.

Getting new teachers in is just half the battle. We need to be able to keep them and grow them as well. It takes time to develop into a competent educator. I look at some of the lessons I taught in the beginning years of my career and cringe a bit, although I also examine some of the things I did during that time and wonder how I was able to produce something so great when I was still so green. I know I sound like a senior citizen when I say this, but back in the old days, we used to have entire departments devoted to helping new teachers. Jim Strachan provided such wonderful resources. Now, we have to squeeze in time during after-school or lunch sessions. Heck, in 2016, TDSB hosted a Beginning Teacher Conference, during the day, with release time and everything. 

In addition to the large number of teachers about to retire, there are a lot of principals and vice-principals getting ready to leave the profession and we don't have replacements ready. We want to make sure that we aren't just placing a warm body in the role so we need to make sure the best candidates are selected. However, the process for moving from a teaching to an administrative role in schools is a grueling one and many potentially great aspiring administrators become discouraged. Vice-principals and principals shape the culture of a school in significant ways, and their impact on the teaching staff cannot be underestimated. 

How might we support our current and aspiring leaders in education? 

I'm a big fan of mentorship, and not just because I took my Mentoring AQ course. Spending time, in person with others to learn from them is such a powerful thing. I was connected with Salma Nakhuda for my Mentor AQ course and I continue to learn from her. She pushes my thinking and because are friends, she will tell me things that might be hard to hear but are important for my learning. (For instance, read a bit about what she says about representation in school librarianship in this article called Belonging in the Profession from Canadian School Libraries Journal).

I so enjoyed having Brenda come to job-shadow me on Friday. She saw the good, the bad and the ugly during the course of a single day. I didn't ask her which things fit into what category; in my opinion, the good stuff was the social studies lesson and seeing adult volunteers and student helpers in action, and the bad stuff was having to decide who was going to cover unfulfilled supply coverage (which partly meant making myself an OT). I was delighted to discover that Brenda is actually enrolled in one of the Spring 2026 York U TL AQ courses I'm teaching! This means that we can continue to talk and learn from each other, even after this visit (which was arranged through an ESL itinerant, before Brenda signed up for the course). 

It's all about relationships. Potential VPs need actual VPs to help them understand the nuances of the job and navigating the process for being chosen. New TLs need veteran TLs to turn to if they have questions. Doing this without burning out the people can be tricky. I know that the TL board facilitators have tinkered with different ways of offering support. This year, there's a list of potential mentors and new TLs can reach out to the mentor of their choice. This is nice because it puts the onus on the person who wants help to meet their needs.

I've written about this before, in my Treasure Mountain Canada research paper called Climbing Mountains: Methods for Mentoring Teacher-Librarians. In this report, I shared three wishes:

1) Encourage TLs to receive mentorship training (like in the Mentor AQ).

2) Get school board departments to find ways, via teacher-librarians, to support new teachers.

3) Diversify the types of mentoring opportunities available.

Unfortunately, ten years after writing this paper, none of these recommendations are close to reality, and there's even less available now for potential leaders or new teachers. I will continue to do what I can to help.

Spring Partner Units

 This school year, thanks to borrowing a bit from my guidance allocation, I have some slots open for collaborative teaching. The winter months weren't great for these "partnering" units, because of the demands of course selection, conferences, and other responsibilities. However, the scheduled cooperative teaching times seem like they will be quite fruitful. Here's a quick overview.

Grade 5-6 Language Arts - Biographies with Brenda Kim

All teachers have subject areas where they excel. For Brenda, it's mathematics. For me, I love language arts, media and social studies. I'm grateful that Brenda lets me into her class to support her with this latest unit on biographies. Ironically, I'm using an early years technique in this junior division classroom. We launched the unit by exploring my old Story Bag. The students pulled out objects and then had to infer how they all connected to a single person.

Based on the objects on the chair, can you determine the identity of the famous Canadian? It was Sir Fredrick Banting, who helped discover insulin as a way to treat diabetes. The groups brainstormed ideas and shared them, before we then read an excerpt from the Yellow Cedar nominated book Fred and Marjorie. 

After this group "Minds On" task, we then gathered into guided reading groups to read a bit about the person our school is named after, Agnes Macphail. This is where Generative AI was useful, because it made for me paragraphs at different reading levels. I still had to edit the final results, because Gemini decided to invent a term that doesn't exist (bronze ceiling vs glass ceiling), and the "easy" reading level wasn't easy enough for our multilingual learners. 

I'm relatively pleased with how this "unit launch" went, because I feel as if Brenda can carry on without me in the class. The students can continue to read in their guided reading groups, annotate their reading, and then generate a list of objects that they could use to represent Agnes Macphail. The students can do a few more guided reading passages like this before beginning to write their own biographies.

Kindergarten Social Studies - Indigenous Culture with Ms. Chiu

Ms. Chiu launched this unit in advance by sharing the book Métis Like Me with her students. I jumped in with a lesson where we co-created a physical definition of culture with the students. (Big thanks to Ethan and Nashmia for their contributions!)

Culture is "the sharing of a way of life of a group of people". (This definition was one I found that was the simplest, from this source, but is similar to this one from Time for Kids, or Britannica Kids.)

• For "sharing", our hands go back and forth, like giving and receiving
• For "way of life", our arms circle up like a rainbow
• For "group", our hands join together
• For "people", we wiggle our fingers

For little kids, it's always good to start with what they know and concrete ideas. We talked a bit about how we can be part of more than one culture. We talked about their teacher and ECE's cultures. Eventually, we will get them to look at their own culture and compare it to Métis culture.

As you can imagine, we couldn't talk about this for too long. Little bodies get restless! However, I was able to take a small group to play with a game that I originally did with a Grade 5 class. It actually does a nice job of visualizing aspects of Haida / West Coast Indigenous culture in a digestible way.

In this game, (Native Northwest Stacking Blocks Balancing Game) the object is to balance the salmon fry and eggs on the back of the adult salmon without falling over. The art is by Paul Windsor. Paul Windsor hails from British Columbia and is Heiltsuk/Haisla.

This game demonstrates what's important in Heilsuk / Haisla culture - nature, salmon, the relationship between the generations, and balance. Ms. Chiu, Mrs. Isidro, and I will continue to figure out the best way to use three adults in this learning environment.

Mentoring with my Mentee

In February, I was asked to be a mentor to one of our new teachers. We attended a Family of Schools Mentoring Evening. (During that event, even I learned about a new learning activity technique that I tried out with my Grade 6 social studies students, called "Quiz Quiz Trade". It was quite useful!)

(I didn't get permission to post his photo on my blog, so I blurred his face.)

Professional learning shouldn't be a "one and done". I realized that I needed to do more to support the professional growth of our beginning teachers. Thankfully, my mentee was willing to allow me to "insert myself". First, I observed some of his lessons. This coming week, I'll model some lessons, based on what he indicated he'd like to see demonstrated. The week afterwards, we will co-teach. 

Grade 1 Math - Coding and Robotics with Mrs. Hajiani

I haven't started to plan this lesson yet with Sheri, but I feel as if I've got a good foundation already because my Term 2 focus for STEM this year has been coding. Thanks to guidance from the primary teachers with EQAO students in their portfolios, I've been working on coding so that they can tackle that portion of the EQAO test with confidence and familiarity. I'm struck by how spiral many curricula are - parts about repeating loops in coding for Grade 3 are simpler versions of the expectations in Grade 7. 

I am keeping my fingers crossed that these learning opportunities go well. Happy Easter to those who celebrate. I'll use this time to prepare for these upcoming lessons (as well as the Spring 2026 session of York University's TL AQs - thanks Francis Ngo and Anna Jupp for arranging for time to improve the course content).