How To Co-Plan When You Have No Time

When candidates in the Teacher Librarian Additional Qualification courses I teach learn about how teacher-librarians co-plan, co-teach, and co-assess with homeroom or classroom teachers, some of the main questions they have are "When?" and "How?" Today's blog post shines a spotlight on three of the fall partnering units I'm involved with and demonstrates a few strategies to pull it all together.

Side note: If you are interested in taking any of the courses that I'm facilitating, the Queen's U Part 2 TL AQ I'm leading starts today (Monday, September 28, 2026) and the York U TL Part 1, Part 2, and Specialist AQs start next Tuesday - you can still sign up if you are interested.

https://apps.edu.yorku.ca/pdis/course/teacher-librarian/teacher-librarian-part-1/yf26tl11/

https://apps.edu.yorku.ca/pdis/course/teacher-librarian/teacher-librarian-part-2/yf26tl21/

https://apps.edu.yorku.ca/pdis/course/teacher-librarian/teacher-librarian-part-3-specialist/yf26tl31/

1) Document the Scraps of Discussion

It's helpful to take notes about the plans you have, even if they are just half-baked thoughts from a conversation. I like having a collaboration planning template; it's better than random sticky notes, and it's handy to count at the end of the year to see how many collaboration endeavors I attempt during the school year. I borrowed this graphic organizer from someone in a past TL Part 2 AQ from York, because I loved the design and categories. These notes are from my plans with the Grade 4-5 (now Grade 4) teacher about our science plans. We are going to integrate it with language and the final task will be an I Spy book. (This year, I copied the plans on blue paper so they'd be distinctive in my day book.)

2) Asynchronous Plans are A-Okay

It's difficult to find the time to sit down during the instructional day to plot out what the collaboration will look like between a class teacher and teacher-librarian. I'd even go so far to say that insisting on this level or type of planning is detrimental. We have to be flexible with our methods for collaboration. For instance, I am working with a Grade 5-6 teacher, who is an experienced educator but new to our school and new to this grade. She's doing a fantastic job but she's got enough on her plate without having to worry about meeting me in person to figure out our health unit. She sent me a document with ideas over the weekend, and I threw in some comments and set up the topic launch in the library with three "mystery snacks". She created the small group jigsaw reading assignments, and I gathered the labelled chart paper for the discussion portions. It worked!

3) Expand your Notion of what Counts as Collaboration

There's a wonderful infographic published by the BCTLA on different ways to collaborate.

Sometimes I need to remind myself that it doesn't have to be 50-50 or "even-Steven" when it comes to planning. For instance, I felt guilty that I didn't feel like I was "carrying my own weight" in my collaboration with a Grade 2-3 teacher for our language work. She had chosen the book, the theme, and prepared all the handouts related to "Choosing A One-Word Focus". However, I was able to assist in other ways, from small group support, to helping with the display, to co-reading the book, to carrying on with the lesson when she had to leave the room.

4) Trust the Process and the People

There are days that the planning is less prepared than one might like, and we need to "wing it". There are times when one of the educators has an idea that they haven't elaborated on at length with their teaching partner, but if there's trust, you can do it. This happened with the Grade 4 Science partnering. Originally, I was going to create some electronic quiz for us to review habitats with the students. However, I know that my school board is getting more strict about which online tools we are permitted to use. I also wasn't sure how well the students had internalized their previous lessons on what constitutes a habitat and the various types.

I created a sorting activity where students would place certain plants and animals into their habitats. I did not use AI to help me make the activity, because the choices recommended as habitat representatives were sometimes unclear and/or inaccurate. (Question: When did it become harder to turn off the AI overview in a Google search? It used to be as simple as adding "-AI" to the query, but that no longer works!) My husband had flashbacks to the days when we were engaged and I was in teachers' college, because back then, he used to help me prepare some of the handouts or resources. He was kept busy cutting squares for me the night before the lesson.

Thankfully, my teaching partner was completely comfortable with the shift in plans, and the students did a decent job with the work.

It's a special gift to get to construct a lesson with another educator. You bounce ideas off each other. You get excited about the possibilities. You have a second opinion to steer you. Ideally, we'd have plenty of time to build these learning opportunities for students. This is the time of year for school and class reorganizations; our school is no different. We did not lose any teaching staff, but we had to make some shifts. If teacher-librarians can help other teachers with this turbulent time, as they readjust their class lists and long range plans, then it's another reason why teacher-librarians are important to keep around. 

Skulls and Ducks

 I have a remarkably large number of collaboration periods in my timetable this year, and I intend on using them to the fullest. I have three already booked for September - health with the Grade 5-6 teacher, language with the Grade 2-3 teacher, and science with the Grade 4-5 teacher. In today's blog post, I want to examine the Grade 4-5 partnership, as well as my Grade 3-4 STEM unit launch. The unifying thread between them is the use of personalized props to make the work hands-on and interactive.

Skulls (or More Accurately, Skeletons)

The Grade 4-5 class has a significantly larger percentage of Grade 4 students. There are only four Grade 5s in the class. Some may see this as a disadvantage; the Grade 5s have fewer grade partners to associate with for grade-specific topics. When I had a Grade 6-7 class in 2020-21, I only had five Grade 7s, and I used to worry that they'd be overlooked compared to the younger students in the cohort. The flip side is that this can become a tight-knit group and you can do special things for them that would be prohibitive with a larger team.

The introductory unit the classroom teacher has selected for science is the human body for Grade 5 and habitats for Grade 4s. In consultation with Ms. Paspalofski, the introduction of our partnering time ended up being an integrated language and science experience, as well as useful for student observations.

I wrapped our "surprises" in four large boxes and we placed them in the classroom before the students arrived. Who would notice? What would they say?

Victoria reported that there were a few questions and comments, but not a huge stir.

When I joined the classroom that Tuesday afternoon, we had a brief discussion on "educated guesses" (otherwise known as inferences). It turns out that many students already had theories about the contents of the boxes. The Grade 5s got to be the leaders and the "unboxers", while the Grade 4s gathered around in four equal groups (division - a math connection!) to record the big reveal. It was wonderful that those inferring conversations happened beforehand, so that any potential misunderstandings could be dispelled immediately. (For instance, students were adamant that there were no "real dead bodies" or "actual body parts" in the boxes, because they said they would smell.) (I should point out that, to align with trauma-informed teaching, I was very familiar with all the students and their backgrounds, so I was confident that no one was going to be triggered or upset by what was inside the box - plastic skeletons.)

The Grade 5s were absolutely delighted with their "presents". One student immediately added eyeballs to her skeleton. Another students accurately predicted that we would be adding other organs to the skeletons in the near future.

Even though these are dollar store skeletons, at $5 per body, it would have been a significant expense to purchase one for every child in Grade 5 in the school. Plus, if you recall, teacher-librarians don't qualify for the $750 school supply fee and we can only buy at Staples. I am excited to work with this small group to see what we come up with for our skeletons. (One student even started some linguistic contemplations, brainstorming what the skeleton names would be like if they used the first half of the word skeleton combined with the last half of their names!)

Ducks

Are you familiar with the concept of "rubber ducking"? I defined it on my blog in 2023. For my STEM programming this year, I was inspired by one of our York University TL AQ guest speakers, Larissa Aradj, who described some of her STEM and MakerSpace inquiries she does with her students. She 3D printed little ducks for each child and used them as part of their STEM provocations.

I don't own a 3D printer, but I loved the idea of having a duck of their own to use for different challenges, such as building a chair or constructing a house.

In our second class of the year, the Grade 3-4 students in Room 114 had to go on a "duck hunt". I hid 23 ducks in the library (one per child) and they had to find one that would become theirs for the school year. 

I still want their classroom teacher, Mrs. Commisso, to remain on good terms with me 😉 so the STEM rubber ducks will live in the STEM lab on the class-designated shelf, until they are required for service.

Thankfully, the ducks were just $1 each. I haven't decided if the students get to keep the ducks at the end of the school year - that's a June, rather than a September problem. 

My husband isn't surprised anymore by these personal purchases to boost my teaching program. He's just grateful that it doesn't get too out of hand. 

Charting Paths

 Ta da! The first week of school for the 2026-27 year is already complete. There are some new students and new staff members to become acquainted with, and new schedules to learn. It'll take time to get used to the new people and new routines.

This is my second year of being the main guidance teacher-counsellor (note, not a guidance counsellor; I don't hold any graduate degrees in psychology - I have my Guidance Part 1 AQ credit). Since my program is an intermediate division focus, I am in the middle of developing new methods to cover similar topics, so that students don't roll their eyes and say "We did this LAST YEAR." That way, I can rotate between my Year A and Year B plans, modifying as necessary.

Last year, I began guidance by looking at memes. This year, my introduction was a collaborative build that lent itself to metaphorical interpretations of my purpose in their classrooms. Small groups had to get a marble from one side of the desk into a cup pasted at the other end. They earned track by sharing some facts about their group members / classmates. When the period was nearly over, we discussed what each portion of the build represented (e.g. the cup might be high school, or their goals, or success / the marbles are the students).

The train tracks can represent many different things. They can be the teachers guiding students on their paths to success. They can be the long range plans and lesson plans for the year. (Speaking of which, I don't have my long range plans written yet for the year, because the board-provided versions aren't suitable for teacher-librarians or ESL teachers or other specialist educators. I look forward to helping shape the template to make it useful for these just-as-important-as-class-teacher educators.) The train tracks can be teacher and students actions. They can be examples of "curriculum fidelity" (to quote the latest education buzzword). There's no one set way to get to the end. Whatever the tracks represent, they are meant to be vehicles to help students achieve and thrive. 

The way we deliver library programming this year will involve some path renavigation. All of my library time will be collaboration, rather than prep delivery. This means that, for the first time for our primary division, homeroom teachers will be managing their own book exchange periods. I will support the classes as we transition, and it will probably mean that it will look different for every homeroom. I am trying to figure out if I should prepare some "passive programming" activities (i.e. tasks that are set up on the tables for students to explore before or after their book exchange) so that they continue to have library experiences like loose parts, library orientation, book locations, etc. Last year, I began the year by reading We Don't Eat Our Classmates. My "launch book" for this year was I Am Cherished by Onome Ako.

For those of you who mainly read this blog to see photos of my Fluevog shoe collection, I had a mix of old favourites and new editions in the lineup.

Day 1 (September 8, 2026) = Fellowship Sandra

Day 2 (September 9, 2026) = Thrillvog Tippi

Day 3 (September 10, 2026) = Ella Baker

Day 4 (September 11, 2026) = Baroque Cortana

Bonus: (September 12, 2026) = Queen Transcendent Elizabeth

I wore the new-to-me purple Elizabeths (my 38th pair of Fluevogs) to the Immaculate Heart of Mary Parish 75th Anniversary dinner. IHM is my childhood parish and I split my time between my home parish (St. Barnabas) and this church, when I used to take my mom weekly to Mass, before she moved into a long term care facility. It was nice to be able to reconnect with people and look back on some of the paths that have gotten me to where I am now. Congratulations on the installation of the new pastor and happy anniversary to "Immaculate". 

30 years, $750, and 15%

 There are a lot of numbers in today's blog post title. 

This is my 30th year teaching. It's hard to believe I've been teaching this long; the time has flown! This is probably the most positive number in today's blog post. 30 years in the profession has taught me that there are cycles in education. I hate to quote the motto from Survivor, but it helps to be able to "outwit, outplay, outlast". 

Being flexible is pretty important. Despite all the challenges, I am still glad I became a teacher. We are still fortunate that we have elementary teacher-librarians in my school board, but there's no guarantee that the position will continue to exist. For instance, in our latest round of cuts, in my school board, we lost a significant portion of our central library technicians in our school board. How will it be possible for one person to catalog for 600 schools? These job eliminations were supposed to "not impact the classroom" but this is incorrect. Our "Tippett Staff" may have located in a building outside our school, but they were essential to ensuring that in-school library staff focused on the students; I have no clue how we are expected to process books we purchase and teach simultaneously. (I brought this up in May 2026 when the cuts were first announced.)  We must continue to advocate for school library professionals in Canada and all over the world.

For instance, see this notification from the Australian School Library Association

Since this blog gets updated on Mondays, you won't see the actual "first day of school outfit", but I'm leaning into the library part of my portfolio with my outfit. This is what I'll be wearing. Big thanks to Justina at the gym for giving me this dress; I apologize that I didn't send this "testing the outfit" photo beforehand!

$750 is the amount that elementary school teachers were given to pay for their school supplies. On the surface, this looks like a generous offer. Don't be fooled. This comes at a tremendous cost.

1) The money was partly taken out of school budgets. I won't tell you how much less our school budget is now, but for a small school, it's a big hit.

2) The school board distribution centers were closed and the only option for using the $750 is Staples (an American company). As Kimiko Shibata, an elementary educator I used to follow on Twitter-when-it-was-good, points out in this interview with CBC, the prices are higher on the teachers' portal. 

3) The portal itself only opened on September 1, and with hundreds of thousands of teachers ordering supplies, it is unlikely that teachers will have these materials in time for the start of school.

4) The $750 only applies to "homeroom teachers". As a teacher-librarian, and ESL teacher, and guidance teacher, I "don't count". 

I understand that the Minister of Education is trying to fix problems, but these solutions are causing more problems. His suggestion to turn to your principal if there are issues with the new system is not helpful, because principals do not have the power to make changes.

The head of ETT, Nigel Barriffe, wrote to the TDSB Supervisor about this issue and received an automatic reply that made it clear that they answer to "clients" (parents) before "employees" (education staff), and the first suggestion is to talk to the teacher or principal.

It's a negotiation year, and I think it will be a bumpy ride.

The 15% is a nod to my secondary school colleagues. They have a different struggle they must endure this year - a new policy that insists that 15% of a final grade for courses for Grade 9-10 students must be for attendance. Again, it doesn't sound like much, but tracking students period-by-period in a passport, in addition to submitting their final exams to ensure they are "up to snuff", is a lot of new pressure in an environment that is already difficult. My friend Jonelle, who is a Peel DSB high school teacher-librarian, described her start-up like this:

Imagine starting as now the only librarian thanks to budget cuts, knowing I have to close the library for one period each day because we lost a staff member. And to add insult to injury, finding out all library spending has been "paused" for who knows how long and I can't buy new books for my students.

This makes it difficult for us to do our jobs well.  

Despite the critical, cynical tone of this post, I am looking forward to this school year. There won't be as many presentations or travel plans, but there will be more opportunities for collaboration and more media literacy outreach moments. I am grateful for the summer and the time to work on AQs, book medical appointments, socialize with friends, and attend IBBY World Congress. My own children are doing fine - we recently celebrated my son's 24th birthday at Chako (I like how the placement of the light in the photo below makes Peter look like a saint) - and we just keeping plugging away.

Home of the Knave

 I was originally going to call this post "Land of Misery and Home of the Knave", but I thought that would give away too much of the focus of this blog post. I also tend to shy away from overtly political posts, but neutrality is a bit of a myth. (Check out this Medium article by Susana Rinderle called "The Dangerous Myth of 'Neutrality' In a World Gone Mad" for an explanation, using the same topic I am, but from 2025.) It's hard to ignore current events, especially the news that Canadian-US trade negotiations have stopped (thank you CBC for this helpful overview). As teachers, we can't pretend that these events aren't happening - it impacts our students, and it's actually part of the curriculum (as evident by my Grade 6 Social Studies meme projects on Canada's Interactions with the Global Community). Forgive the long-winded preamble!

I dislike the current president of the United States.

This is a bit of an understatement, I'll admit. 

I don't like how his administration dismisses people with genuine concerns or disrespects reporters (especially female ones) or allows ICE to seize people (especially people of colour) on the street and throw them into detention centres without due cause and hurt/murder people who object. I don't like how the leader can say absolutely ridiculous things such as his bombastic declaration to rename Lake Ontario Lake America, and not be reined in. (Note: I started composing this blog post last week so I had to update it before it went live to recognize that DJT actually signed an executive order to make the name change official.) I don't like how all the checks and balances put in place to avoid situations like this aren't being used. (To compare, in 2013, Toronto City Council stripped the mayor of some key powers when he demonstrated that he was unable to govern appropriately at the time.) I don't like how this neighbouring country, where many of my relatives reside, has become a less kind, less considerate place. Don't even get me started on the Epstein files.

I know that there have been problems before. I know I have rose-tinted glasses about the way things were "before". Black people can point out, correctly, that discrimination didn't begin with the 45th/47th president. Indigenous people can remind society, accurately, that they had their own names for bodies of water that were brushed aside in favour of settler labels. It's ironic that, just after writing this sentence in draft, I saw a re-share of a post by Jesse Wente saying a similar thing. (See below.)

I know that Canada has a history of pointing out American atrocities while ignoring its own. This knowledge does not dismiss the current reality. 

So what can I, as an educator in the country next door, do to help? I found this article about "Seven Ways You Can Take Action for Immigrants" by HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), but it is focused on those living in America. My actions, or potential actions, feel like drops in a bucket, but these are my attempts:

1) Avoid travelling to the Unites States of America

As much as I loved attending the AASL (American Association of School Libraries) conference in Phoenix in 2017, and as much as I would have enjoyed attending IBBY's Regional 2027 convention in Kansas City, I cannot travel to the US at this time. Even when I flew to Colombia in 2025, my layover was in Bogota instead of an American city. I won't force this embargo on any other members of my family or friend group, but for me, I will just have to wait to enjoy delicious Maryland crab until things get better. Crossing the border was never fun and I suspect it could feel more stressful now.

2) Choose Canadian companies and products to support.

This is a hard one for me. I don't do the grocery shopping in general, and I admit to being used to certain brands (like McDonald's caramel sundaes). There are many places popping up that offer shopping list suggestions (such as thecanadalist.ca or farandwide.news or other websites - I didn't link these because I didn't check their authencity). You have to take some of these lists "with a grain of salt" because they might be out-of-date or inaccurate. Here were two related images I found on Facebook.

Buying Canadian is doable, with some effort. For instance, we just recently replaced our mattress and the one we selected was made and sold in Canada. Some of my recent speakers from the spring and summer AQs have talked about how the idea of focusing on promoting and purchasing Canadian books was "too aspirational" in the past, but with recent events, this kind of position is much easier to support.

3) Find ways to advocate

Speaking of guest speakers, on Thursday, August 27, 2026, I had my last guest speaker for the summer session of York University TL AQ courses. Melanie Mulcaster spoke about advocacy. This was my first time having Melanie as a guest and she was nervous (although I don't know why; she's a fabulous speaker) and appreciative of the fact that this talk forced her to review the updated version of OLA's Advocacy Toolkit. I liked her explanation of the difference between promotion vs advocacy, as well as her "spectrum" of advocacy. Maybe this blog post is a "little a" form of advocacy, as I make a social media post about standing up to bullies and loudly objecting when I see terrible things happening in the world. Maybe even following the Instagram account @catsonacouch is a fun way to be a conscientious objector to a corrupt regime. (For context, this Instagram is run by Amanda McGonigle "posts sarcastic political commentary and memes targeting JD Vance." I follow her because her goal is to have more followers than the US VP.) 

My stoic husband has warned me that I let my emotions get the better of my logic, so I wanted to ensure I fact-checked my references. 

• Does DJT insult reporters? = TRUE
• Does ICE unjustly detain people? = TRUE
• Did DJT say he'd rename Lake Ontario? = TRUE
• Is DJT mentioned in the Epstein files? = TRUE

Sometimes, when we look at history, we wonder how people can ignore situations that appear objectionable and we hope that we can be as brave as the people who behaved in a kind, compassionate, and moral way, even if it meant disobeying unjust laws or policies. (I won't use the term "the right side of history", because both sides of the political spectrum have co-opted this phrase as their own.) Even if this is close to the end of an era, in a time of great turmoil, I want to know that I did not pretend that bad things aren't happening, even though I did not always feel like I had the answers on how to address these problems.

PS - In order to lighten up today's blog post, I'll look at some of the fictional knavish / villainous characters that my beloved eldest wore during her four days at Fan Expo Canada. (Okay, technically only three of the four are villains; hopefully you can tell which one is not a bad guy.) If you would like to follow her, check out @cosplayquirky

Thursday's Cosplay: Aunt Gladys from Weapons

Friday's Cosplay: Carmen from Lobotomy Corporation

Saturday's Cosplay: Human Brook from One Piece

Sunday's Cosplay: Zamasu from Dragon Ball Super