By Joseph Jeffery
As an out of province person coming to Toronto for the Ontario Library Association Super Conference, I’m there as much for networking as professional development. After all, the real treasure is the friends we make along the way. Arriving after a bumpy ride from Vancouver, where the seatbelt sign never turned off, just before midnight local time. I got to enjoy the pleasure of the Library Bar in the Royal York as it was open, in the hotel, and I was exhausted. Great cheese board. Quite expensive, but worth it for the tangy cheese, honey comb and soft brioche mixing in my mouth after a long and exhausting flight.
This would be my first presentation at OLA Super Conference, and I spent the day prior preparing before retiring to the Intercontinental’s bar for some networking with my co-presenter and, apparently, the rest of the library world. It was a veritable ‘Who’s Who’ of OLA luminaries. Then it was down to the opening keynote and a fascinating discussion between the current ALA president and natty dresser, Emily Drabinksi, and Librarian and Archivist of Canada Leslie Weir, in classic librarian chic. The discussion began by addressing the state of libraries south of the border, particularly the difficulties of a post-post-covid world as cases rise again, and the rampant book challenges and threats to librarianship. Emily bought humour and light into these dark topics and addressed the resilience and importance of librarians but also the institutions during these times. It was a truly fascinating look, and a reminder of where we are at compared to the USA and where we could be headed should things continue to trend towards the mistrust for public institutions fueled by misinformation that is seen to the south.
The next day began for me at the vendor hall. My role in my school district is District Learning Commons Teacher Librarian, a large part of the role for me is working in conjunction with our purchasing department on selection of e-resources, our library system, and other library vendors. As the biggest library conference, this is a chance for me to meet with vendors we have contracts with as well as learn more about other options. There are not many chances to find everyone together under one roof, to catch up, put faces to email addresses and learn about what’s new. This took up a lot of the morning.
I did manage to grab some signed books and meet some authors in amongst that, I Got You Babe by Paul Coccia is one I was highly interested in as we yearly choose an elementary appropriate and high school appropriate book focused on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) to gift to our schools to ensure they have appropriate books for discussing issues. Some of these books need to be serious, but we also want light-hearted ones as well to show the joy. This fit well into that light-hearted, joyous area and was a high interest, accessible novel (or Hi-Lo as they are sometimes known). So I really wanted to check it out and see if it would be the fit I hoped it would be. After a serious and mature book last year, Fullmetal Indigiqueer, we wanted something lighter and focused a little younger.
In BC, our government has launched a new school foods program called Feeding Futures. My principal in charge of Learning Commons also has this in her portfolio, so we were incredibly interested in the work of Kitchener Public Library, who were bringing food literacy into the library. Ilana Arnold and Laila El Mugammar detailed their program and how it worked, giving me lots of fantastic ideas to take back. From Taboo style games for while food is cooking, to kid-friendly videos for safety and knife handling, to the ways they’re making the program sustainable, Ilana and Laila gave us the lot. On return, my principal was thrilled by the possibilities and where we could take this melding of food literacy and the library learning commons.
After a quick lunch break it was off to MTCC 203A to get set up for my workshop with Anita Brooks Kirkland, Leading Into the Future: CSL Has Your Back. We would be exploring the changes to Leading Learning: Standards of Practice for Library Learning Commons in Canada as detailed here in the Fall 2023 journal, and introducing Foundations for School Library Learning Commons in Canada: A Framework for Success as detailed here in the Fall 2023 journal. As this was a CSL session this would be no passive sit and listen, as always there would be work to do at a session. In this case exploring and providing feedback. The notes from this feedback are here if you are so inclined. The big request out of this was to try and do some high level surveying of the national situation for school library learning commons. Watch this space for how we are going to try and tackle that down the road.
Following this we had the OSLA awards and celebration of the launch of OSLA’s new publication, A Guide to the Selection and Deselection of School Library Resources. Some great and deserving people were given awards and there was a lot of envy to be had, especially for the TL working in the school of the administrator who won Administrator of the Year. Then, dragging a gaggle of unruly TLs, it was time for a meet up at the Loose Moose for some continued conversations around teacher-librarianship. With representatives from Ontario, BC and Alberta, there was a lot of exchanging of what the situation is like in our different provinces, calling back to that ‘ask’ in our session. Education is a provincial jurisdiction, but there is increasingly a growing concern that the provinces are ignoring the benefits of school library learning commons. Is it time for a national strategy or call to action?
Friday morning and it was time for the Forest of Reading™ breakfast. I was invited to this to learn more about it as our district begins to embark on our journey with the Forest of Reading. BC has our Red Cedar book award, and our district has been a huge supporter of this, hosting a huge yearly competition for teams across our district. However, we are missing things for the other age groups and our French immersion schools. Then along came Maria Martella and Scott Miller, coming from Ontario to join James Saunders at our yearly district vendor fair, which is where we host vendors from out of town to show off what’s new and exciting. Maria and Scott suggested the Forest of Reading would help us fill those gaps we are missing and provide us what we are looking for in the other age ranges. We are excited to begin our Forest of Reading journey and integrate it with our existing Red Cedar structures.
Next up was the School Libraries Spotlight with School Library Journal’s 2020 National Librarian of the Year, Cicely Lewis, the “Read Woke Librarian”. In a truly moving and phenomenal session Cicely shared her programming and how she transformed her library during some awful times for her community. From the DACA repeal, Muslim Ban, Black Lives Matter and other issues swirling around, Cicely leveraged the power of diverse books and her school library to transform literacy learning and build a stronger community. Some of the ideas she shared included New Kid Book Club – every new kid to the school gets a copy of New Kid by Jerry Craft to keep; Audiobooks and Yoga before school in the library; Quinenera dress fashion show – Students model their quinceanera dresses and pair it with a book that they want to showcase. The focus is on the story of the book, but it gives them another chance to wear their dresses and get kids admiring their quinceanera interested in new books. There were more and more great ideas and heartfelt stories than I have space to share. Follow Cicely on Instagram to see her in action!
Richard Reid, and OSLA President 2023, Johanna Gibson Lawler.
After this was Best Bets, a whirlwind look at Canadian books. I appreciated having the lists for reference as there was so much information coming so quickly. Highlights for me were Mr. S, Salat in Secret, Salma Makes a Home/Writes a Book, Secret Pocket and Funeral Songs for Dying Girls. They were the books that I was either most excited about or in the case of Secret Pocket and Mr. S was already huge fans of and wanted other people to find out how amazing they were.
Unfortunately at this point lack of sleep caught up to me. My body had not adjusted properly to Ontario time or the hotel bed and I was running on around 9 hours sleep across 3 days. Heading back to my hotel I slept most of the rest of the day away, waking up just before the final keynote.
Eric Klinenberg shared his message around libraries found in Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life and how his new book 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed examined the failure of government infrastructure (pandemic management), policy (essential workers) and messaging (social distancing vs physical distancing) and how social infrastructure like libraries were forced to pick up the pieces. Much like our opening keynote with Emily Drabinski, we were shown a picture of New York City during the pandemic that reinforced both the awfulness of the US response to the pandemic and how public libraries were the ones who had to be the bastion of civilization during this time, continuing to offer services where possible to the most disenfranchised of people in one of the wealthiest cities in the world.
From Cicely’s stories, to Eric’s examination of New York to Emily and Leslie’s discussions, the theme of the conference came through phenomenally. It was time to Get Loud about our work and the fact that, during the most desperate of times, it was public libraries, school libraries, and academic libraries who stood up and built communities. Through all this misplaced anger at public institutions, they have stood strong and continue to be places trying to build better futures. So Get Loud and show your #SchoolLibraryJoy!
Joseph Jeffery is the District Learning Commons Teacher-Librarian for SD57 Prince George, BC. He has been a TL since 2013 at both elementary and high school. He is an immigrant to Canada and is Bangladeshi/English on his mother’s side and Ukrainian/English on his fathers’. He supports teachers and teacher-librarian’s throughout the district in resource selection and acquisitions, e-resources, and all types of literacy. Joseph is the BCTLA’s conference organizer, a lead writer for CSL’s Collection Diversity Toolkit, and a member of the writing team for Foundations for School Library Learning Commons in Canada: A Framework for Success.