Just Like Mom

On Sunday evening, my daughter, husband and I finished watching some anime (the third last episode of "Assassination Classroom", if you are wondering which one). After the "watch party", I was playing with my shaggy hair and tugging it into goofy ponytails and tufts. My husband commented:

"Sometimes, there are things that you do or say that remind me very much of your mother. However, what you are saying or what you are doing isn't at all the type of thing your mother would do. It's so strange because you're at once so like your mother and so unlike her."

I wasn't sure how I was going to compile this week's blog post, but I thought that was a useful way to tie things all together.

Up until dementia robbed her of her abilities, my mother was a tornado of activity. She wasn't much into housekeeping, although she did teach me how to wash the floor on my hands and knees. What she enjoyed doing the most was volunteering for different organizations. She loved donating her time and talents to help others. At church, she was the Catholic Women's League president, helped with the Legion of Mary, taught Sunday School, ushered and read at Masses. In addition to this, she was a passionate volunteer in school libraries. She began by volunteering when I was in kindergarten at my public school, Birch Cliff Heights PS, and kept helping there long after I graduated. She also helped out in the first school where I was employed as a teacher-librarian as well as the school I'm still at. In fact, the reason why I ran my Scholastic Book Fair during Curriculum Night was because she was already committed to running the BCH Book Fair during Parent-Teacher Interview Night! She helped out in the extra-curricular activities that my siblings and I were involved in, from making scarves for the 6th Toronto Scout Group to working (for free) as the book keeper at our baton and dance studio. I'm sure I'm probably forgetting something else that she offered to do out of the goodness of her heart.

This is a photo of my mother and me during my second year of teaching (1998-99) at the Scholastic Book Fair at Warden Avenue Jr. P.S.

Maybe the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, because this week has been a blizzard of activity for me. By the way, this is an excellent metaphor considering that Monday, January 26, the day this blog post goes live, is a snow day, the second of 2026 - but I digress. 

• The first of my guest speakers for my York University Teacher-Librarianship Additional Qualification courses for the Winter 2026 session spoke on Tuesday
• Also on Tuesday, I was the notetaker for our school staff meeting
• ALSO on Tuesday, I participated in an interview with the CBC about how I use Generative AI critically in my professional practice
• The day before, Canadian School Libraries had a meeting to consolidate plans for the next Treasure Mountain Canada School Library Research Symposium
• On Friday, I attended an all-day meeting as a newly minted member of the Ontario Teachers' Federation Curriculum Forum Steering Committee, to help plan for our upcoming Winter gathering
• I also had an AML executive meeting, but I had to skip it

This list excludes the other, in-school events that have been happening, such as the second meeting of our K Pop Demon Hunter Club at school, the start of the Primary Division Minecraft Club, and the third meeting of the Forest of Reading Club. (As I like to remind the students, "I sometimes teach as well.")

If you are interested in reading or listening to the CBC article, called "Are librarians the key for teaching AI literacy?" by Jessica Wong, follow this link - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/librarians-teach-ai-9.7055661 

If you are interested in hearing a CBC Radio One piece (which I contributed to briefly) called "A.I. companions pose a risk to kids" by Manjula Selvarajah, follow this link - https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/audio/9.7049426 

What made this week extra busy was that on that very busy Tuesday, my mother was taken by ambulance to hospital. She is stable now but she is in the palliative care unit. I want to thank everyone who was aware of the situation for their kind words and patience as I juggled and coordinated visits to the hospital and to my parents' house to help keep an eye on my father (who has dementia like my mother, just not as advanced). Thanks to my siblings for all the work they have been doing to manage everything with both mom and dad. It's not easy but we are relieved that she is in a place where she can be monitored and cared for properly.

(Thanks to my sister for snapping this photo of me attempting to play my ukulele for my mom.)

My husband pointed out that I didn't really have a proper conclusion to this blog post. (I live in a household filled with professional writers, so it's par for the course here.) I couldn't exactly come up with a wise or insightful way to end this post. As with life, it's hard to bring things to an end in a way that does justice to the subject.

Bannock!

It's been a busy back-to-school time. Report cards are going to be due soon and I will have many different presentations happening. I wanted to write about my recent work with the primary division students on one of the Blue Spruce award-nominated books as part of my library program.

There are a lot of nuances in language in the library world recently and it's useful to be able to understand the differences. For instance, our school board is no longer advocating / prioritizing resources for the Forest of Reading program in the same way that was done in the past. It has to do with a policy on selecting resources and understanding community needs. This doesn't mean that we are prohibited from running the Forest of Reading program; it means that individual schools will be responsible for registering and purchasing the specific books. It can cause a lot of confusion when terms like "we are no longer supporting the Forest of Reading" are shared. "Library collection development activities" can also be a perplexing turn of phrase, but I digress.

I have switched up the way I run the Forest of Reading program for my older students. We don't have the budget to buy multiple copies of the same titles, so this year, instead of having it as an open activity that all students can dabble in, students had to apply to be in the reading club and we placed a cap on the number of students that could participate. Yes, it does mean that not everyone can be involved, but my hopes are to a) raise the percentage of students who are qualifying to vote (thereby increasing their "reading stamina"), and b) by its exclusivity, encourage students to want to join (FOMO?) instead of committing half-heartedly. Instead of using up all my lunch hours to conduct Forest of Reading chats, I have reserved Wednesdays at lunch for students to read and converse about the books. That way, I can run other clubs on separate days (such as K Pop Demon Hunter Club on Tuesdays at lunch. More on that in another post.)

My Blue Spruce program is mostly unchanged, although I will be using it more more thoroughly with the ESL students in addition to the K-3 classes.

Last week, a wonderful supply teacher was in for me and read Bannock in a Hammock to some of the classes. She emailed me afterwards to note that some of the students had requested that we make bannock in class.

When there is a request like that, how can you refuse?

The recipe that Masiana Kelly, the author, includes in her book uses lard. Even though that is the method that some Inuit people use to make their bannock, I chose a simpler recipe that substituted oil.

The students loved it! Here are some photos, followed by some tips if you choose to do this with a class. These photos are just the ones that don't show student faces. I took dozens more of the students in action.

1) Have another adult with you!

I was very lucky to have "Ms. Christine" present. Christine is the grandmother of one of our students and she has begun volunteering once a week in the library. At one point, with the kindergarteners, we had four adults in the room helping - and it was necessary! Christine monitored the oven and was the regular presence while I cycled different groups in and out of the staff room.

2) Bring more than you need!

I ran out of flour TWICE! The first time, I flew over to the neighbourhood store to buy more. The second time, thankfully other teachers had some in their rooms that I could use to powder the tables so it wouldn't stick as much.

3) Be realistic with your time.

I tried this with two classes on Monday, seeing them for 70 minutes each time. Then, I replicated the activity with three classes on Tuesday, seeing them for only 40 minutes. I would have loved to have done so much more with the teaching possibilities. Only once or twice was I able to:

• discuss why lard would be used in an Inuit recipe for bannock (think what's available in the local environment)
• have students examine equivalent fractions with the measuring cups
• have students do every step of the preparation themselves
• slowly read the recipe instructions (which Christine copied for me on chart paper) so students could consult the directions independently
• still have book exchange as part of their library period

4) Give students something to do while they wait their turn.

Little kids get restless. The best thing I did was spread flour on the table in front of them and ask them to touch it. The primary purpose was to avoid the dough sticking to their fingers but a secondary benefit was that they were preoccupied with playing with the flour.

5) Accept that it will be messy.

Christine and I cleaned the staff room on Monday but we still received feedback from the staff that it was insufficient. Flour, water, baking powder, salt and vegetable oil are incredibly hard to remove from surfaces. On Tuesday, I think we cleaned the table tops at least three times with a variety of different cleaning tools. 

The expense, and mess, and work was worth it. I know this because the next day, a Grade 2 student passed me a bannock cake she made at home with her older sister! She used melted butter instead of vegetable oil and it was tasty! We are also working on Indigenous education as part of our school improvement plan related to the Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It can be challenging to have students understand cultural practices and traditions that are not their own, but books such as Bannock in a Hammock as well as concrete activities such as cooking food convey information in a way that does not appropriate Indigenous culture, centering the voices of people from Indigenous communities through books they've authored. 

Overly Attached

One of the great things about being a teacher is that you get to develop connections with students. When you are a classroom teacher, you "belong" to your students, and they in turn, "belong" to you in a special way for that year that you are together. I've heard that some educators are reluctant to become specialist teachers because they fear that they will not have bonds as deep or as meaningful with students that they don't see every day. If any of you reading this blog house this worry inside you, let me reassure you that you can have meaningful connections with students who are not your primary responsibility. In fact, today's blog post considers the downside of having super-strong student-teacher relationships.

A goal for education is to allow students to develop social skills such as respect, collaboration, responsibility, resilience, initiative and independence. Sometimes, when students become overly attached to a teacher, they become dependent on their presence. When faced with other adults that aren't their preferred leaders, students can be rigid and resistant to taking directions or other ways of doing things. Decades and decades ago, when I first began teaching as an occasional teacher, I encountered this. As a supply teacher, you aren't surprised to hear the chastisement of "That's not the way OUR teacher does it!". Twice this week, there were incidents at school where students wanted to be in my class instead of elsewhere, and it let to some emotional outbursts. It's lovely to be loved, but how might I support these students in a way that helps them see that spending time with me isn't the sole answer?

Just as I've been in the shoes of both the adult that was wanted as well as the adult that wasn't wanted, I can also relate to the perspective of the students who really like working with a specific individual. I have to try hard not to become dependent on help from people - but it can be hard! For instance, I needed some assistance with a collaborative teaching unit for the Grade 7s in the Grade 7-8 class related to coding. (I mentioned it in this post from December.) My son initially helped me but I wanted to explore using Lego Spike Prime - the programmable robots we used for our First Lego League Robotics Team. (We just finished competing last month.) I turned to Matthew Malisani for help. Not only did he help me figure out the tasks that the students could do to lead up to using Spike Prime (he recommended to go from Scratch to Blockly Dash and then to Lego Spike Prime), he came and helped me teach the lesson! He even did a mini-lesson with the students on writing effective code. I scampered around, quickly taking pictures of the code they wrote and the Dash robots following their Keva-Plank tracks, so I wasn't useless, but I was impressed with how seemingly effortlessly Matt shaped the lesson and reinforced the concept of control structures (sequencing lines of code, repeating lines of code (loops), or selection to execute or not execute specific lines of code (conditional statements).

You'd think that I'd have an answer to becoming more independent and less reliance on the help of specific individuals because I'm experiencing it myself. Sadly, I don't. There are no nuggets of wisdom at the end of this blog post, just observations.

• I'm grateful for the affection and devotion shown to me by students.
• I promise to always keep it professional.
• I'll remind myself that no one is irreplaceable (You might be a student's favourite this year, but next year, they might not even say hi to you in the hall! Feelings change.)
• I will continue to build relationships with others / I will build communities of care involving many different people instead of a single entity / I can "diversify my portfolio", so to speak (this fits with advice I provided when I was recently interviewed by the wonderful Manjula Selvarajah for CBC Radio on what parents can do if they think their children are turning to AI chatbots for companionship - tune into your local CBC radio station to hear the short clip)

1st Post of 2026, New Word Included

 Happy New Year! I hope people who have had time off enjoyed the rest and rejuvenation. I've tried to combine my Christmas obligations with relaxation, while still devoting time to preparing for school and work - not an easy task!

Every year, since 2016, I've come up with a new #OneWord to use as my focus, instead of selecting a New Year's Resolution. The past words were:

• 2016 = continue
• 2017 = forgive
• 2018 = seek
• 2019 = enough
• 2020 = push
• 2021 = well
• 2022 = watch
• 2023 = lift
• 2024 = savor
• 2025 = refresh

My refresh goal went well. I wanted to continue doing some of the things I often do, but with renewed purpose and altered approaches. My ESL lessons improved, thanks to co-teaching with Connie Chan. My library space got a huge refresh with new furniture and a couple of indoor "trees". I didn't moisturize as much as I should have, but there's still time to take care of my skin.

My 2026 word was inspired by my upcoming obligations, as well as an argument I had with members of our school's First Lego League team! I'm not sure if the students were serious or just pulling my leg, but the students kept using the word "presentate". I guess they thought that if, in a celebration, you celebrate, then it goes to reason that in a presentation, you "presentate". No, no, no! It's present - PRESENT! Therefore my word of the year for 2026 is

PRESENT

Present is a wonderfully playful word to use. First of all, I can use it to mean to give a presentation. Between January and June, I will present eight times at five different conferences. I am going to spend a lot of time in 2026 presenting.

Present is also a synonym for gift. In 2026, I want to get presents and give presents! These presents don't have to be things bought in stores. They can be the gift of my time, talent, or treasure. I have a feeling that some people are having a rough go of things, and hopefully I can be the present they need.

Present also means being here, right now. It's neither the past nor the future. It's also the opposite of absent. I will try to be more present with others. I'll try to mindlessly scroll less on my phone when I'm at home and be engaged in conversations, even when the topics of discussion are hard to follow. I will try to keep my mind from wandering to plan for a pithy reply so I'm focused on what people are saying to me at that moment. I'm going to try and revise how I spend time with my parents, because with their dementia, the immediate present is all that they have. I suspect that my own children might have seismic shifts approaching and I want to be present for them and enjoy the present, before things change and I don't have access to them in the same way as before. 

So, wish me luck on my Word-of-the-Year.

P.S. Back in 2023, I deadlifted a personal record (PR) of 220 pounds. On Monday, December 29, 2025, I broke my record and lifted 225 pounds. It's not a huge improvement, but even slight gains should be celebrated (but not "presentated"). LOL