On Wednesday, July 22, 2026, I sat down with Jessica Wong, a reporter from CBC, to discuss critical thinking. The story went live on Monday, July 27, 2026 on the CBC News website. You can read the article at this link: https://www.cbc.ca/news/
When Jessica emailed me to let me know that the story had been published, she mentioned that she was required to condense things considerably to make the word count.
I thought it might be interesting in this blog post, where I am not limited by length caps, to elaborate a bit on some of the elements from our conversation. It might also be interesting to see another angle of media production in action.
Noble Purposes, Trusted People
I've had the pleasure of speaking with Jessica Wong prior to this interaction. In January of this year, I was one of the people she spoke to in her article about how librarians of all types can assist people with artificial intelligence. That article can be found at https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/librarians-teach-ai-9.7055661
When I first chatted with Jessica, she reassured me that her intent was not to make me or any of her interview subjects look bad. She is not a "gonzo journalist" and her goal is not to "catch you" with your own words. As a teacher, I have an obligation to conduct myself appropriately because, as an employee of a school board, I indirectly represent the profession. Our school board has a policy and procedures document that outlines how we are to interact with news media outlets. Back when the January news piece appeared, my school board viewed the content and, because I spoke well enough, the TDSB allowed me to appear in a CTV spot a few months later.
Having said that, it is still important to be very careful about what and how you phrase things. My daughter is a journalist of sorts; she works as a restaurant reviewer and food critic for BlogTO. She says that she tries very hard to respect and honour her interview subjects, and she will remove things that they object to her sharing in her articles, but the best course of action is just to not say it at all. Prefacing a statement with "off the record" or "don't mention this" does not automatically mean it will be forgotten. (I was going to mention an example of this in the most recent story, but that would bring attention to it!)
Name-Dropping vs Recognition
I am very big on giving shout-outs to other people and organizations who have shaped my thinking. I never want to give the impression of being an expert with ideas emerging, original and fully formed, like Athena from the head of Zeus. However, it can get rather clunky to include many references within a news report. It's not like an academic paper, where you could (and should) use in-text citations to point to the source of your ideas. This reflects the Media Literacy Key Concept #7 - form and content are closely related in each medium. To outsiders, it may look like I'm name-dropping, but my intent is to give credit, not take glory. Several names and references had to be omitted in the July 2026 article, but I wanted to take the moment to acknowledge them here.
1) My Employers = the Toronto District School Board and York University / Queen's University
In the most recent CBC piece, it mentioned I was "a Toronto educator at both the elementary and post-secondary level," - Part of the obfuscation related to my earlier uncertainty that I was permitted to speak with my job title and location attached to my profile, and I didn't want my words to be considered to be official statements from my employers, i.e. "the words shared are those of the participant and do not necessary reflect those of the TDSB". It's the classic saying, however, that "success has many parents but failure is an orphan". This interview went well and can reflect positively on the institutions that employ me. They honestly deserve some credit. York University, in particular, allowed me and my colleague, Francis Ngo, to revise the Teacher Librarianship AQs ahead of schedule to update resources and embed issues related to generative AI into the assignments, instead of as an afterthought. It just so happened that I was right in the middle of marking one of these revised assignments when I was contacted by CBC.
2) My Students = The July 2026 participants of the York U TL Part 1 AQ
Six of the candidates in this particular course agreed to share their name and work with Jessica Wong as examples of critical thinking. I had hoped that they might have been mentioned on the website, but there was just not enough room. I want to personally thank Victoria G, Lisa G, Jennifer C, Nadia P, Chris C and Hayley F for allowing me to highlight the insights they had as they completed this assignment for the course. To be honest, all of the educators (in the TL Part 1 AQ at York, the TL Part 2 AQ at York, and the TL Specialist AQ at Queen's) have been wonderful in the discussion forums, thinking deeply about issues related to school librarianship. It's been a lot of work for all of us, but I hope you've found it worthwhile! (For these sessions, the York U AQs ended on July 31 and the Queen's U AQ will end August 7.)
3) My Volunteer Organizations = the Association for Media Literacy and Canadian School Libraries
I am a co-vice president of the Association for Media Literacy. This non-profit group has done a lot to sharpen and grow my own thinking related to media literacy and critical thinking. Many of the concepts that I mentioned in the interview, such as avoiding labels, are ideas I've learned as part of my work with AML.
I also make a point of stating that I am a teacher-librarian. It's an important part of my identity. (That could sometimes be detrimental, but that's a topic for a future blog post!) Canadian School Libraries is partly about raising the profile of school library professionals across the country so I try to take every opportunity I can to bring teacher-librarians to the forefront.
4) My Conference Inspirations = Jeff Share and Joanna Marshall
The purpose of this interview was to provide examples of critical thinking in classrooms. I mentioned two examples that I heard about while at the most recent International Media Literacy Research Symposium. I talked about Jeff Share's #IfTheyGunnedMeDown photography work and Joanna Marshall's QOTD with her high school science students. I haven't taught these lessons myself, but I plan to in the upcoming year.
5) My "I Should Have Said"s = CIVIX and TC2
There are two Canadian organizations that, in my mind, are absolutely DRIPPING with critical thinking concepts and I didn't get a chance to mention them in my interview - sorry! The first one is CIVIX, particularly their Ctrl-F work. You can see it for yourself at https://ctrl-f.ca/en/ My AQ students absolutely adore the entertaining and current activities that help hone our critical thinking skills, with very teachable methods for honing our critical thinking skills. The second example actually has critical thinking in its name! The Critical Thinking Consortium has an online presence at https://tc2.ca/ and specializes in developing thinking habits. Their mission is:
dedicated to supporting critical, creative, and collaborative thinking. We provide professional learning and education resources for teachers, schools, school boards, school districts, education centres, and organizations with a goal of creating an environment that nurtures critical thinking.
Keeping to the Theme
I felt a bit bad for Jessica, because I suspect she was hoping for more support from me for her earlier interview with Louis Newman, formerly of Stanford University and Carleton College. Newman is a big proponent of explicitly teaching critical thinking skills. For me, I may teach critical thinking skills, but I don't label them as such in my lessons. I am too aware that people on the political extremes have borrowed phrases from media literacy and critical thinking (e.g. "don't be sheep" / "do your research") for their own aims and have warped these ideas. This phenomenon was reinforced by David Buckingham in his IMLRS 6 keynote.
When people make media, they create meaning from the world. The thinking that goes into media production cannot be undersold. There's a reason why it takes time for a reporter to conduct interviews, accumulate the information, and consider how to shape it all into a cohesive story. The internal debates and struggles and decisions are what teaches us and makes the process so important. I know Carol Arcus has waxed poetic about "the power of production-based media literacy education" in https://aml.ca/carol-arcus-notes-and-musings-on-imlrs-rome-2026/
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