By Lyndsay Moffatt, Allison Giggey, Katelyn Browne, and Janet MacDougall
Kwe and Greetings from Prince Edward Island! The last decade has been a challenging time for Teacher-Librarians across the Island, but we have been seeing some positive shifts and we are happy to share what we have learned, particularly if it gives people ideas for how to advocate for Teacher-Librarians in their own contexts.
Stormy Skies and Fierce Winds
Over the past decade and a half, PEI saw some significant losses in the struggle to maintain and improve Teacher-Librarianship and K-12 education on PEI.
During this time, PEI lost the provincial Department of Education curriculum leader who advocated for Teacher-Librarians and school libraries.The Teacher’s Resource Network (TRN), which functioned as a district-wide library filled with educational resources, also closed. This collection held useful items that schools could not afford on their own, or that they did not need all year, such as class novel sets. Who needs a novel set all year? Teachers could search the resources in the TRN using the online catalogue and then use the inter-school mail service to receive and return materials. They could also peruse the collection in person after school. That collection, and those services, no longer exist.
At the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI), our fearless advocate Dr. Ray Doiron retired in 2012. After his retirement, we lost the Certificate in Teacher-Librarianship at UPEI and even seemed to lose the Master’s-level coursework focused on Teacher-Librarianship (more on that later). These losses meant there was no formal professional learning available at our one and only university for those who wanted to develop their skills as Teacher-Librarians. People were free to go elsewhere and often did take online courses with UBC and UofA, but we lost the feeling that UPEI was a gathering place for local TLs.
Meanwhile, the Faculty of Education at UPEI lost their full-time Teacher-Librarian in their Education Learning Commons (ELC) around 2012 and saw a drastic reduction in budget for new materials. From 2013 to 2019, the ELC was sometimes staffed by part-time TLs. From 2019 to 2023, there was no Teacher-Librarian assigned to the ELC at all, which meant that Bachelor of Education students (and graduate students!) did not have the opportunity to collaborate with an in-house Teacher-Librarian on their lesson plans and other coursework, or to develop a robust understanding of the role of a TL within a school community.
Cloudy with a Chance of Hope
However, the last few years have seen a resurgence of interest and advocacy. We have seen evidence that many people across the province share our conviction that all students on PEI should have access to a trained Teacher-Librarian.
In some ways, our happy turn of events started with one little email from Allison Giggey, who was then the president of the PEI Teacher-Librarians Association (PEITLA). Allison reached out to Dr. Lyndsay Moffatt at the Faculty of Education at UPEI, who is a former Toronto District School Board TL and now an associate professor of education. They began to talk about what could be done.
Allison and the Executive of the PEITLA began by organizing some very effective professional learning opportunities and created a website filled with videos to help anyone who was just starting in a school library. A change in leadership and staffing at the Faculty of Education meant that Lyndsay could advocate for the ELC to be staffed by a trained Teacher-Librarian again, and for that person to have access to a budget for new materials.
Janet MacDougall, an experienced Teacher- Librarian, was hired to work in the ELC in October of 2023; as it happened, Katelyn Browne, who was trained and worked as a Teacher-Librarian before moving into academic library work, was hired at the University’s Robertson Library in November of 2022. Since Katelyn’s duties included instruction and liaison work with the Faculty of Education, there were now two more Teacher-Librarians for Lyndsay to brainstorm with. These hirings prompted more collaboration at UPEI and our first meeting with the PEITLA to work on strategy.
During this time, Lyndsay and Janet talked frequently about acquisitions for the ELC, and Lyndsay and Katelyn started writing research grants to study the state of Teacher-Librarianship on the Island. Janet worked hard to acquire interesting and pertinent resources that she could put on display when the PEITLA came to visit and when we had our bi-annual Faculty of Education retreats. Series with contemporary coverage of Indigenous topics, such as “Indigenous Life in Canada: Past, Present, Future” and “Indigenous Communities in Canada,” and books that featured local ecologies and occupations, such as the “Let’s Go Fish” series which includes various types of fishing including deep sea fishing and The Lobster Lady by Alexandra Hinrichs were helpful examples of things that many teachers on the Island (as well as faculty and students at UPEI) could use. Because the ELC catalogue is connected to the school library catalogues, librarians can see when the ELC is the only library on the Island to have such material. To help Teacher-Librarians make informed decisions about adding copies to their school collections, Janet has been working with the Dean of Education and the inter-school mail system on a pilot project that gives BEd students access to ELC materials while they are in schools on practicum. We hope to find a way for the UPEI ELC to do a proper interlibrary loan with schools across the Island.
In November of 2023, Allison was presented with the PEI Literacy Alliance’s Literacy Champion Award. She used her moment in the spotlight to advocate for Teacher-Librarians. Then-Premier Dennis King was in the room at the time and was apparently unaware of the situation of Teacher-Librarians in the province. The Premier and Minister of Education and Early Years have since both changed, and we continue to work to make them aware of our situation.
On the suggestion of Dean of Education Miles Turnbull, our next move was to draft a Letter of Understanding in which the PEITLA and the Faculty of Education pledged to work together for the next three years to advocate for Teacher-Librarians on the Island. Thinking of this letter as a symbolic gesture that needed witnesses and celebrating, we printed a poster-sized version of this letter and hosted an official signing at the PEI Teachers Federation (PEITF) Annual Convention in November of 2024 – complete with cupcakes and apple juice in plastic wine glasses!
At the PEITF Convention, the “poster letter” was on display and featured a paragraph from the Minister of Education’s Directive on staffing. This paragraph detailed the allocation of Teacher-Librarian staffing for every school on the Island. Allison had brought this directive to our attention as it outlined clearly that ALL students in PEI should have access to a trained Teacher-Librarian. Even the smallest schools should have at least a .25 FTE TL. The largest schools on the Island should have 1.5 TLs.
| ** MINISTER’S DIRECTIVE NO. MD 2025-05 Education Authority Staffing and Funding Program for the 2025-2026 School Year; 3(6) Instructional staff for Teacher Librarians shall be allocated to Education Authorities as follows: For schools with less than 200 students 0.25 FTE positions For schools with 200-299 students 0.5 FTE positions For schools with 300-799 students 1.0 FTE positions For schools with 800 or more students 1.5 FTE positions |
Lyndsay worked the table at the Conference, asking folks who walked by if they knew how much of a TL they should have at their school. She also handed out a postcard announcing a graduate UPEI course in Teacher-Librarianship in the Fall of 2025 – the first such course in 10 years! She collected names of people who were interested and handed out many postcards.
Around this time, the PEI Teachers’ Federation (PEITF) won an increase in preparation time for K-6 teachers to be implemented in the 2025-2026 school year. In the spring of 2025, knowing that principals would be trying to figure out how to hire for this increase, The PEI Friends of School Libraries (the folks already named above) created a postcard for principals outlining some of the research on the benefits of Teacher-Librarians. This postcard encouraged principals to think about TLs as they created their schedules for the next year. The PEITLA contacted the PEI Home and School Federation and distributed another printing of this postcard, helping to spread the idea to some likely allies. When hiring was completed for the new school year, we were delighted to learn that a few principals took our advice and increased TL positions to help provide the new prep coverage! We are hopeful that this trend may continue.
In the fall of 2025, Lyndsay had the absolute pleasure of being able to teach the first master’s-level course in School and Community Libraries that had been taught at UPEI in over ten years. The catalogue description of the course stipulated that it needed to address school and community libraries, so Lyndsay drew on reports about the benefits of public libraries as well as school libraries. The course was made up of MEd students taking the course as an elective as well as aspiring Teacher-Librarians who were already working in their school libraries or hoping to do so in the future. One of the students was Andrea Pickett, a teacher who had volunteered to revitalize her school library and was now working in that library after being closed for 6 years! The library was only open one hour a day, but the parent community had pulled together to help fundraise and Andrea was working diligently to try and secure more time.
Early in the winter of 2026, we learned about the process of putting forward a resolution of the provincial Home and School Federation and drafted a resolution to be presented at their AGM. Our resolution called for a provincial leader for Teacher-Librarians at the provincial Department of Education and Early Years. In discussion, we felt that without such a leader, we could not hope for the kinds of improvements that were needed system-wide1. In April of 2026, the Home and School Federation heard an impassioned speech by Andrea Pickett and voted to endorse the resolution. The HSF will now take this resolution to the Minister of Education and Early Years.
Encouraged by this experience with the Home and School Federation, we also contacted the Board of Trustees for the Public Schools Branch. In March of 2026, we presented a talk entitled Learning Commons as the Swiss Army Knife of Education, which seemed to be well received by the Trustees. This talk specifically identified the need for a provincial leader to help guide Teacher-Librarians in developing information literacy education for our current times.
In the past few years working together, we have come to learn more about the wide range of library staffing, facilities, programming, and collections at PEI schools.We have heard reports of schools where the teachers assigned to the libraries do not know how to use the ILS to check out books, and we’ve seen collections that have not been weeded or replenished in so long that there are 1970s textbooks taking up space on the shelves. It bears noting that the ILS used by schools across the province, Koha, is dearly in need of updating, we are several updates behind! Staying on top of systemwide updates is just one of the many things that fall off the radar when we have no provincial curriculum leader for school libraries.
To help fill the gaps, Allison and the PEITLA Executive field calls and continue to offer ad hoc support when they can. Janet has been visiting schools to provide support for teachers working in school libraries who want to actively weed parts of their collections while learning more about weeding/collection management. Katelyn has been able to accompany Janet on these visits occasionally.
Recently, we contacted the 55 English-language school2s on the Island that have a school library. (The 56th has a public library branch housed in the school.) Based on these contacts, we found that 72% of schools do not have a teacher assigned to the library for the minimum amount of time stipulated by the Minister’s Directive, and 15% of schools do not have anyone assigned to the school library at all. This is a far cry from the 2025-2026 PEI Ministers Directive on Staffing that tells us every school should have a trained Teacher-Librarian!
It bears noting that we do not have any data about the qualifications of the teachers assigned to school libraries, but anecdotal evidence suggests that very few teachers who have been assigned to school libraries on the Island have formal training as Teacher-Librarians. Anecdotal evidence also suggests that teachers are often assigned to school libraries for short periods of time, and they sometimes share the role with one or two other teachers. These kinds of assignments are often changed just as a teacher starts to feel that they understand the role.
We recognize that many people may be “getting by” without formal training, and some teachers have been assigned to their school libraries for extended periods without any formal training. However, we are concerned that few teachers assigned to school libraries on the Island have had the time, budget, access to professional development, and other resources needed to be able to transform their traditional school libraries into vibrant learning commons -regardless of how many decades this movement has been afoot.
We also anticipate that many teachers assigned to school libraries and Teacher-Librarians on PEI would appreciate more opportunities for professional learning on teaching information literacy, particularly in the age of AI. We believe that coordination by, and access to, a provincial Teacher-Librarian leader would help guide us through our own inquiries about how to teach information literacy and digital literacy today.
We are now looking to build a wider coalition for Teacher-Librarians and school libraries in PEI and Atlantic Canada. Katelyn and Lyndsay have been accepted to present at the Atlantic Provinces Library Association (APLA) conference in June and hope to find other allies in our region who understand the power of school libraries. We believe there are more people out there, and there is strength in finding each other.
Similarly, after reading about the ways that other teachers’ unions, such as the BCTF and ETFO, have advocated for Teacher-Librarians, we are making a date with our local teachers’ union (PEITF) to discuss the state of school libraries and teacher librarianship on the Island. We can’t know what is possible until we start the conversation, but we believe there are many good reasons for teachers’ unions to support Teacher-Librarians and school libraries (and vice versa).
Finally, inspired by work of former PEI Teacher-Librarian advocates Dr. Ray Doiron and Judy Davies, Katelyn and Lyndsay are currently working on developing a survey (much like the Canadian School Libraries Working and Learning Conditions Survey!) to try to learn about how school libraries in PEI are being used, which students have access to them, and what Teacher-Librarians need to flourish on the Island. We hope to report on what we learn in the coming year.
Stay tuned for further updates. We welcome any correspondence with ideas for advocacy.
- Fowler, C., Jeffery, J., & MacDonald, S. (2025). The crucial role of district-level teacher-librarians in enhancing BC’s educational landscape: Advocating for sustained school library leadership. In Proceedings, Treasure Mountain Canada 8/Canadian School Libraries, Toronto, Canada. https://tmcanada.blogspot.com/p/tmc8-fowler-jeffery-macdonald.html ↩︎
- French-language schools on the Island do not have Teacher-Librarians as such, but often have close relationships with public librarians. ↩︎
Katelyn Browne is the Instructional Services Librarian at the University of Prince Edward Island. Before working in academic libraries, Katelyn was trained in school librarianship and was a teacher-librarian at a K-12 school.
Allison Giggey has been an intermediate teacher-librarian for over fifteen years, and has served as a member of the PEI Teacher-Librarians’ executive committee for the last ten.
Janet MacDougall is the Education Learning Commons(ELC) facilitator for the Faculty of Education at the University of Prince Edward Island. Janet has a certificate in School Librarianship and was a teacher-librarian at various PEI schools covering grades K-12.
Lyndsay Moffatt is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Prince Edward Island. Before completing graduate studies at the University of British Columbia, she was a K-8 Teacher-Librarian with the Toronto District School Board.