CWDHS teacher wins award for her dedication to libraries as educational tools
January 31, 2020
FERGUS, Ontario – Centre Wellington District High School teacher-librarian, Alanna King has been named the recipient of this year’s Angela Thacker Memorial Award.
The Angela Thacker Memorial Award was established in 2001 to honour the memory of teacher-librarian Angela Thacker and is presented to teacher-librarians who have made positive contributions to the profession through their work.
According to Canadian School Libraries, King was named the recipient of the award because her “expertise and leadership in the field of school libraries, school library learning commons, and teacher-librarianship has been continually demonstrated in schools, the school district, province, nation and internationally including contributions to the Canadian School Libraries Research Archive.”
When speaking of the honour, King believes that she was nominated for this award by some of her peers and said, “It feels very satisfying to be recognized for the work I’ve done for the last decade. Although it wasn’t my intention to achieve award status, it is really nice to hear that my peers thought of my work as exceptional. I can’t wait to work in the school library again someday but for now, I will continue to work hard to reform literacy programming in my online and face-to-face English classes.”
King said that since 2009 she has been trying to expand the education system’s understanding of how we navigate all types of media. Working in a school library has allowed her to see the entire curriculum as interlinked and has tried to create possibilities whenever subjects can overlap. King believes since education systems all over the world are recognizing the importance of libraries for students, much of her work has been to advocate for teacher-librarians to become leaders in their field.
King said that, “In the Upper Grand DSB, we are primed for this work as our board values qualified staff in these places, and we need to continue to value our library staff and spaces as essential to learning.” She said, “School libraries are safe spaces for students to learn, experiment and grow and they are reliable places to innovate or learn in non-traditional ways. Through collaboration and cross-curricular thinking, school libraries can also be the hub of design-thinking transformation for staff and students.”
King will be presented with her award at the Treasure Mountain Canada Research Symposium and Think Tank on January 31 in Toronto.
Congratulations Alanna!
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