Educators Educating Extra

My routine for planning and creating this blog post still remains the same - I reflect on the events from the past week and consider which moments were significant to my learning and worthy of re-examining. I realized that there was a consistent thread over the past two weeks that merited some public celebration and introspection - and I thank the two people that center quite prominently in this narrative for allowing me to speak about them.

Teacher have been extremely busy supporting their students during this extended period of remote learning - but who supports the teachers? After all, for some people, this has been a huge learning curve and despite reassurances that we will not be judged, instructors still want to try to provide the best lessons in the most engaging and pedagogically sound ways.

In my school board, professional development is taken seriously - if a workshop or webinar is being offered in an official capacity (i.e. it is being advertised and registration occurs on Key To Learn, our TDSB portal for PD), then it has to be vetted and the quality has to be high. As a teacher-librarian, I spend a lot of time paying attention the Library and Learning Resources Department. Andrea Sykes, our Program Coordinator, has gone above and beyond to play a part supporting the board's Remote Learning Team. During the first phase of implementation, the Library and Learning Resources Department had a four-prong approach: workshops/webinars to support the general population of educators, office hours to support individuals with specific questions, TL network meetings to support teacher-librarians professionally, socially and emotionally, and a site for teacher-created resources in addition to our existing Virtual Library. Andrea is amazing but she is a single person and appreciated/relied on the support of the staff of Library Technical Services, the Professional Library, and several volunteer teacher-librarians who offered to do more.

Two teacher-librarians that I've been blessed to work with quite intensively as of late are April De Melo and Wendy Burch Jones. They created an incredible webinar about Choice Boards, sponsored/supported by the Library Department, and I offered to act as the chat moderator. (For those reading this wondering what on earth is a chat moderator, it is the person or people who monitor the back channel or chat pod for an online workshop and field/sort questions as the presenters are talking. Tina Surdivall and I were moderators for April's workshops on Curating Resources from the Virtual Library and it is a support role but a useful one.)

April and Wendy have absolutely astounded me with their dedication, selflessness, and hard work.

This accolade comes as no surprise- I agree that @aprildemelo is one of the most generous and conscientious educators out there, having had the pleasure of seeing her in action semi-regularly lately. TDSB is lucky to have her. https://t.co/xYElIROF2B

— Diana Maliszewski (@MzMollyTL) May 13, 2020

I am just finishing my lunch break but I had to pop on here to say how much I admire & respect @oconnorLLC_tdsb & @aprildemelo - today they ran an incredible @TDSBLibrary session on choice boards with 116 participants and did a phenomenal job! pic.twitter.com/FGeLse5XTG

— Diana Maliszewski (@MzMollyTL) May 8, 2020

They have also turned me into a better chat moderator. After each webinar, we remain on the Google Meet to debrief and consider ways to improve. These conversations have led me to prepare for moderation by pulling up the frequently requested URLs and have them ready to copy and paste into the chat box (e.g. the Google Forms feedback sheet or the link to the Google Slides). This simple task has made my moderating duties so much easier. I've also learned how to record the meets and fix settings for sharing. (I am still horrible at creating Google Meet URLs but Francis Ngo has been very supportive and saved my bacon more than once.) April and Wendy are constantly updating the slide deck with the most current information at their fingertips. When those "virtual classrooms" became a hot new trend in choice boards, April and Wendy had examples in the presentation.

This photo above is an example of a virtual classroom. Thanks to Zélia Tavares for giving me permission to include the image of hers here on the blog. Zélia simply asked in return that I mention the educators that taught and inspired her: Andrea Payne (@schooledbypayne), Larissa Aradj (@MrsGeekChic) and (@misspanczner).

April and Wendy have been so generous with their time, their resources and their expertise. They have conducted the Choice Board webinar four times. Every time, the attendance has been around or over 100 people. Despite these large crowds, April and Wendy offer support that exceeds expectations. They stay after the hour-long webinar is officially over, to answer questions. Sometimes this means that they are online for nearly two hours helping out. During a recent Virtual Library Office Hours session, there were so many questions about choice boards that I sent out a "Bat Signal" - a quick text/DM to the pair of them to assist if they were available. Both April and Wendy jumped in within minutes of getting the "distress call" and were gracious guides, providing how-to videos they created themselves and offering emotional support as well that had me weeping when I thought about it afterwards.

I'm unsure if educators who have not themselves provided PD understand how exhausting the process can be. Facilitators have to be "on" in a way that differs from "regular teaching" because the audience consists of fellow educators. (Teachers aren't easy to teach!) Despite these added demands, Wendy and April have consistently delivered professional learning that differentiates for a wide spectrum of participants, from those who are unfamiliar with basic tenants to others who have attended the workshop (and others like it) multiple times and seek to "up their game". Wendy and April have decided to pause on delivering more live workshops on choice boards because we have several recordings of the webinar that interested parties can refer to, and because both of them still have other jobs to do. April and Wendy are parents of elementary-school-aged children that need attention. April and Wendy are also both teacher-librarians at TDSB schools that still rely on their experience to help with classroom and school support. It was due to this "ending but not exactly an ending" that prompted me to publicly thank them for all their efforts. April and Wendy - I'm not happy that this pandemic happened, but one silver lining in all of this storm has been getting the opportunity to work with you closely. You are both so very inspiring. In addition to these choice board workshops, you have both contributed so much to TDSB Library and TDSB as a whole (Google sites, other workshops, office hours, creating resources, etc.) and I hope you feel appreciated and valued.

Let me end by mentioning that April and Wendy are not the only extraordinary TDSB Library-related volunteers. I've had the pleasure of working with Jordan Graham, Susan Novak, Alanna Julien, my LC3 TL co-facilitators Tracey Donaldson, Moyah Walker, Kim Davidson and Francis Ngo, and many other individuals who have asked themselves "How can I help?" and found ways to go beyond. Thank you to those people, as well as those who have sought out professional learning to improve their practice. Ontario's current Minister of Education may not seem to appreciate it, but many do. Thank you!