Canadian School Libraries is pleased to announce
Leigh Borden
Rabia Khokhar
Rebeca Rubio
Jonelle St. Aubyn
as recipients of the Angela Thacker Memorial Award 2022
The Angela Thacker Memorial Award has been established in memory of Angela Thacker, teacher-librarian, library coordinator, and school library colleague, mentor, leader and advocate who served the Association for Teacher-Librarianship in Canada (ATLC) and the Canada School Library Association (CSLA) in many capacities. This award honours teacher-librarians who have made contributions to the profession through publications, productions or professional development activities that deal with topics relevant to teacher-librarianship and/or school library learning commons.
Leigh Borden is a K-4 teacher-librarian and President of Teacher Librarians of Newfoundland and Labrador. Over the past decade, she’s worked to advocate for school librarians and teacher-librarians across Newfoundland and Labrador, and has served on a variety of committees and working groups intended to grow the school library learning commons movement in the province. Leigh completed a BA (Hons) at Memorial University of Newfoundland, an MA in English literature at the University of Toronto, and a Master of Teaching at OISE/UT. When not happily working in her school library, Leigh loves to read, run, hike, and camp.
Leigh Borden’s contributions to the advancement of teacher librarians includes a lengthy list of positions and activities. Since 2008, Leigh has organized and/or facilitated a wide range of professional learning sessions for teacher librarians through Teacher Librarians of Newfoundland and Labrador (TLNL), the Department of Education, and the Newfoundland and Labrador English School District including membership on the writing team of the new curriculum support document Extending the Classroom, NL Department of Education, 2016-18. Leigh is currently Teacher Librarian at Holy Trinity Elementary School, Torbay NL.
Leigh is the epitome of what the Angela Thacker Memorial Award is about, particularly in her publications, advocacy, and professional development for Teacher Librarians… In her role as President of the TLNL Special Interest Council she works hard with her Executive to offer TLC – Teacher Librarians Connect, a yearly provincial conference for Teacher Librarians (TLs) and people in Teacher Librarian (TL) positions. In the pandemic, Leigh has been instrumental in providing a conduit to the professional development that is available to us virtually. She facilitated access for all Teacher Librarians in the province to online sessions available during the OLA Super Conference. She added many new features to our TLNL website, including an area for TLs to share documents and library programs they have developed, including digital choice boards and a series of webinars. Further evidence of her advocacy and professional development efforts can be found on Twitter and in her podcasting activities.
Heather Godden (Former President, TLNL) and Beth Power (Communications, TLNL)
Leigh is a passionate advocate for equitable access to school libraries across Newfoundland and Labrador and beyond. In her role, Leigh has grown her Professional Learning Network; provincially, nationally and internationally. Her 2020 article in the Canadian School Libraries Journal provides a glimpse of the passion she brings to the Teacher Librarian (TL) role and highlights the vital parts the TL and the LLC play in education. She is involved with The Canadian School Libraries Association and has contributed to their journals. She explores current research and resources. Her professional learning has been invaluable in supporting the recent growth in both the TL role and the transition of the School Library to an LLC throughout the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Belinda Loder (Program Specialist for Reading, Newfoundland and Labrador English School District) and Darlene Tilley (Program Specialist for Reading, Newfoundland and Labrador English School District)
In March 2015, Leigh was awarded the Newfoundland Education Foundation Educator’s Innovation Award in recognition of transition from a school library to a learning commons. Leigh is a driving force behind the current success of the transition from Library to Library Learning Commons in Newfoundland and Labrador. It is through her relentless efforts and advocacy that our province is well positioned to be a leader, nationally and internationally, in this area…It is, indeed, our great privilege to endorse Leigh Borden as an ideal candidate for the Angela Thacker Memorial Award.
Rabia Khokhar is a teacher and teacher-librarian with the Toronto District School Board and a PhD student at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education and an equity and educational consultant at Rabia Teaches. She is passionate about ensuring schools are inclusive spaces where all students with their multiple and intersectional identities are reflected, represented, included and seen through an asset-based lens. Rabia is a strong advocate for the school library and believes it plays a central role in raising students who are critical thinkers and committed to issues around equity and justice. Rabia is passionate about books and the role libraries can play in creating positive change.
Rabia has made an impact in the school communities where she has taught. Rabia reflects on her own experiences as a racialized Muslim teacher-librarian to advocate for diversity and equitable representation in book collections. Her work focuses on carefully curating and selecting book collections and library school programming based on equity, diversity and inclusion. Rabia has made a significant difference in libraries at the local, provincial and national level. Rabia has contributed articles and worked on projects with Canadian School Libraries Journal, The Teaching Librarian, and Treasure Mountain Canada, and continues to make book recommendations to the Toronto Star. She has presented workshops at the Ontario Library Association’s Super Conference as well as presented to teacher-librarians and library professionals nationally. Through social media like her Twitter platform, Rabia continues to reach a wide audience locally and nationally. She shares her thinking, passion, learning, ideas, experiences, book recommendations and current research with teacher-librarians, teachers, library professional and community members.
Her (Rabia’s) presence at our school has been incredible. Ms. Khokhar has transformed our library space, previously more of a computer lab, into a true diverse and inclusive Library Learning Commons, a safe space for all students through her lessons and carefully selected culturally relevant and responsive books. Her lessons to students, from Kindergarten to Grade 6, explore issues of truth and reconciliation, anti-oppression, anti-black racism, and equity in general with thought and deep caring. Her work with our students has moved our school along the Equity continuum in terms of diversity and inclusion.
Andreas Ghabrial, Retired Principal, Indian Road Crescent Junior Public School
Rabia was the teacher-librarian at my children’s elementary school, where she worked tirelessly to build up the school library with books that featured a broad representation of cultures and communities. Her curriculum reflected essential questions to encourage children to consider the ways representation matters. Her hard work instilled an important baseline for what a school library should focus on, and it is exciting to see her continued work on inclusion and representation through story.
Stacy Lewis, Parent
Rebeca Rubio is the Coordinator for Libraries and Information Services in SD38 Richmond, where she supports teacher-librarians in developing programs, managing spaces and developing learning commons spaces. She supports teachers and schools with resource acquisition, database navigation, digital literacy and other literacy initiatives. She also manages and maintains the District Resource Centre, acquiring and circulating valuable resources for all SD38 educators. Every year, Rebeca coordinates, plans and executes a full district conference for all 50 SD38 Teacher Librarians. She manages the District Resource Center (DRC) focusing on creating quality kits that support equity and diversity. Through her leadership the DRC has a robust Indigenous collection and she is currently working on Righting Canada’s Wrongs (focus on Japanese internment, residential schools etc.).
Rebeca has brought Diversity Audits (DA) to her district. Last year all the secondary sites completed a robust DA, and this year she discovered that DAs have been written into the district’s Strategic Plan. Rebeca works with schools undergoing seismic upgrades, by supporting with visioning and creating flexible learning spaces in libraries and labs.
Rebeca has done presentations and published locally, provincially, nationally and internationally on many subjects related to library learning commons including involvement with the CSL Diversity Toolkit, travelling to South Carolina in July 2022 to present it at International Association of School Librarianship (IASL). Rebeca is a contributor to the Canadian School Libraries Journal and to TM Canada Symposia.
Her work as a teacher librarian in her district, the province and nationally on diversity, anti-racism and mental health has been incorporated in many schools in BC as well as nationally…With a changing world and the recognition that diversity is an important component of our societal values, Rebecca has sought to educate teachers and teacher librarians in evaluating their collections and diversifying the content to recognize the diversity of our population and the students attending our schools… I can’t think of a better recipient for this award based on all the work and advocacy she has done on our behalf since she became a teacher librarian.
Richard Beaudry, Teacher-Librarian, Coordinator of the Teacher-Librarian Diploma and Certificate Program at UBC
Rebeca works tirelessly to promote libraries and teacher librarianship in the Richmond School District. It is very hard to describe Rebeca’s role as District Coordinator for Libraries and Information Services: while working closely with senior staff on issues connected to or involving LLCs, she also directs the development of district level resource sets, the acquisition and maintenance of district wide resources (such as study sets, on-line databases, and cataloguing programs), co-ordinates with the BC Teacher Librarian Association, and provides front line TLs with support in their daily challenges. For the past several years, a consistent focus for theses conferences has been on developing our awareness of the role LLCs can play in supporting, some might argue in fact driving, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the school community.
Tom Morley, Teacher Librarian RC Palmer Secondary School
Perhaps one of the most important journeys Rebeca has brought teachers on is the undertaking of a Diversity Audit…Rebeca’s work with Diversity Audits has moved beyond the Richmond School District. In addition to being the Keynote speaker and presenting her work to the British Columbia Teacher Librarians Association annual professional development day in 2020 and leading the BCTLA’s work on the area of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Rebeca just presented at the IASL in South Carolina (2022). Moreover, the Sooke School District has also reached out to Rebeca for support with their first steps in this direction.
Jonelle St. Aubyn has been teaching for 21 years with the last 7 being in the School Library Learning Commons (LLC) as the full-time Teacher Librarian at Louise Arbour Secondary School in the Peel District School Board, Ontario, transforming the space and programming from a traditional library to an LLC, making it a focal point and educational hub of the school. Recently, she was one of the team members that revised the Teacher-Librarianship Additional Qualification course guidelines for the Ontario College of Teachers (OCT). She has presented at numerous conferences, events and workshops, including nationally at the Quebec Library Association (ABQLA) Conference, provincially at the Ontario Library Association (OLA) Super Conference and locally at various PDSB workshops and Family of Schools (FOS) events.
Jonelle is a published author, contributing numerous education packages, resources and articles to Treasure Mountain Canada (TMC), Hot Docs – Docs for Schools, and TEACH Magazine. She is currently the chair of the Peel Fiction Review Committee which reviews books from local vendors and determines their suitability for secondary schools in the PDSB. In 2020, she was a recipient of the OSSTF District 19 Inspiring Moments Campaign Award and the Teachers Life Exceptional Educator Award. In 2022, she was a recipient of an OSSTF District 19 Teacher Recognition Award. Passionate about social justice, equity and human rights, Jonelle has been curating resources for staff, students and community members to move this work forward at Louise Arbour Secondary School and beyond.
Jonelle demonstrates incredible collaboration skills and often brings together a variety of stakeholders to guide the work. For example, her transformation of the Library Learning Commons Spaces always includes gathering ideas from students, in addition to a great deal of research and collaboration with colleagues. When she embarked on the Human Library initiative, she worked diligently to secure a variety of diverse presenters who had stories to share that would engage and inspire the students of Louise Arbour Secondary School. Jonelle’s innovative experimentation and research have provided her with insights that she has been able to share with other Teacher Librarians through articles or papers that she authored for publication, as well as through presentations at professional conferences, such as the Ontario Library Association Conference, where she was a presenter in both 2020 and 2022. She has also been invited to present at the Manitoba Library Association’s SAGG Conference in 2022 and to participate as a panelist for the OLA’s 2022 Freedom To Read panel with Deborah Ellis.
Sharron Kuhl, Principal, David Suzuki Secondary School, Peel District School Board
Jonelle is an exemplary teacher-librarian, and has made a positive impact on her school. She has also significantly contributed to the field of school librarianship beyond her school and her school board. She was part of the team that revised the Ontario College of Teachers guidelines for Teacher Librarianship AQ courses. She was a podcast guest for Read lnto This, was consulted for the article about Taming the Library Dragon: Mission, Ethics and Library Routines, ran a podcast about marketing the school library (as well as other podcasts for ONEd Mentors), sat on the Collection Diversity Toolkit writing committee for CSL, and has written papers for Treasure Mountain Canada. I had the pleasure of presenting a session with her called “Agency and Equity: Students Shaping School Library Collections Pre- and Post-COVlD” at the Manitoba School Library Association’s conference in 2020.
Diana Maliszewski, Teacher-Librarian, Agnes Macphail Public School, Toronto District School Board
Canadian School Libraries is delighted to honour Leigh Borden, Rabia Khokhar, Rebeca Rubio, and Jonelle St. Aubyn as the 2022 recipients of the Angela Thacker Memorial Award. The awards will be presented as part of CSL’s TMC7 Symposium Kick-Off Dinner, Friday October 21, in New Westminster, BC.