By Joseph Jeffery
If you read the introduction to the board in the last CSL Journal you will have seen the graphic above and may have wondered what it was all about. As we begin our journey as a board we have been reflecting on what we do and how it is interconnected. At the centre of our web we have Canadian School Libraries as an organization. Our four core pillars right now are the Leading Learning Standards of Practice and the Foundations and Frameworks document underpinning that work on one side and our action research through CSL Journal and the biannual TMC Research Symposium. Additionally we have two support toolkits at the moment – the research toolkit and collection diversity toolkit – that augment this work.
Beyond this are the efforts in building a connected community of practice, we have semi-annual liaison meetings with representatives from provincial and territorial organizations, TMC, our newsletter and our social media accounts which are all designed to bring that connection together. Leigh Sanger recently created a Slack group to further connect people and provide another outlet for communication for those who want to ask questions or connect with others.
Why bother, though? Education, and thus school libraries, is under provincial jurisdiction. What’s the point of a national organization for a purely provincial matter? Education may well be a provincial matter in terms of policy, however, in terms of Canada it is a fundamental right that we all share. Canadian School Libraries believes that as part of that fundamental right there should be a baseline of expectation in what services students can access no matter their province or territory. Those baselines can be found in Foundations and Frameworks, as well as in CFLA-FCAB’s position statement on the status of school libraries in Canada, but broadly can be categorized into – every student deserves access to a school library, staffed by a qualified professional, with time for collaboration with classroom teachers and a collection crafted for that school’s community.
To this end we have four ongoing projects in various stages:
- Update to appendices and glossary of Leading Learning to match Foundations and Frameworks
- Digital and Media Literacy Toolkit
- Inclusion and Anti-Abelism Toolkit
- Advocacy Toolkit
If any of these projects catches your eye and you’d like to be involved let us know. We may have room on the core writing team or on the review team when it comes time to move into a beta read.
Joseph Jeffery is the Chair of Canadian School Libraries. He has been a major contributor to several CSL projects, including the Collection Diversity Toolkit, the updates to Leading Learning, and the Foundations and Frameworks document. Additionally, he helped write the BC Teacher Librarian Association’s School Library Design document. Joseph is the District Learning Commons Teacher-Librarian in School District 57 – Prince George, BC where he supports teacher-librarians in creating and maintaining information literacy rich library learning commons programming, designing participatory and flexible learning spaces, and developing culturally responsive library learning commons. Outside of school, Joseph is an avid gamer of all types from card to tabletop to video games and enjoys being transported to imaginative worlds of science fiction and fantasy as a reader.