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The Canadian Association for School Libraries is pleased to announce

Michele Farquharson

 as the 2009 recipient of the  

Canadian Association for School Libraries/Follett International Teacher Librarian of the Year Award

This award is presented to a school-based teacher-librarian who has made an outstanding contribution to school librarianship within Canada through planning and implementing school library programs, based on a collaborative model which integrates library and classroom programs. The award  is generously sponsored by Follett International.

Throughout her career as a teacher-librarian with the Vancouver School Board, Michele has engaged in many of the exemplary practices of teacher-librarianship of the 21^st century. From the earliest days of her career as a teacher/teacher-librarian, nearly 30 years ago to now, she has been steadfast in providing leadership within the profession. She is highly respected by her school community and professional networks for being a tireless, dedicated, visionary, and collaborative individual.

Michele completed her Masters of Education with a Library concentration at UBC in 1985. In the 1990’s, she was the Managing Editor for Emergency Librarian (since renamed Teacher Librarian). She continues to serve as a Canadian member of the Advisory Board for this publication. She has also been the editor of the BCTLA professional journal, The Bookmark.   She has written and co-authored a number of documents for the Vancouver School Board (VSB), the Critical Thinking Consortium, and VSB’s Knowledge Framework (ESL).

Michele developed her leadership role early in her career as one of four Area Teacher-librarians in the VSB,modeling the practices of cooperative program planning and teaching (CPPT) and technology integration required to build strong library programs.  Presently, on a once-a-month basis, teacher-librarians and teachers in the Vancouver School District convene in a “sandbox session” at Michele’s library where she guides TLs as they explore new Web 2.0 tools and consider ways these can be applied to teaching and learning in school library programs.

Michele is regularly invited to work at UBC with the Information Literacy Project , in which the annual intake of about 300 teacher candidates are shown collaborative planning and teaching and how to teach information literacy though first hand experiences with teacher librarians. Recently, Michele co-developed a video/DVD entitled “Guided reading and literature circles in the intermediate grades” for the Department of Language and Literacy Education, UBC. She has also developed a videocast as part of the initiative to demonstrate how to integrate information literacy into curriculum areas.

In her role as teacher-librarian at Kerrisdale Elementary School, Michele is highly valued for her work in the library resource centre. She goes above and beyond expectations with passion and energy by consistently working with teachers to develop units of study that integrate information literacy and information technology into the various curriculum areas. She continually grows in her own professional development while providing in-service to teachers and teacher-librarians, focusing on the development of students who are independent information consumers as well as information producers for the 21^st century.

Michele is an outstanding teacher-librarian in a myriad of ways, a well-deserving winner of the Follett International Teacher Librarian of the Year Award.

The Canadian Association for School Libraries is a division of the CLA/ACB. The Canadian Library Association/Association canadienne des bibliothèques is Canada’s largest national and broad-based library association, representing the interests of public, academic, school and special libraries, professional librarians and library workers, and all those concerned about enhancing the quality of life of Canadians through information and literacy.

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Media Contact: Richard Beaudry, President, CASL

Tel.: 604-534-4171, rbeaudry@ireland.com