2024-2025 Abigail Anderson recipient: Patricia Blackett
This year’s recipient of the Abigail Anderson is Patricia Blackett, who has been in the educational field for over 25 years. Prior to her current position, she coordinated the education program at Tyndale St. George’s in Little Burgundy, and taught for the Kahnawake Education Center and the Lester B. Pearson School Board. For the last four years, she has been at the Head Office of the Lester B. Pearson School Board as an Antiracist Pedagogical Consultant in the Educational Services Department.
In this new role, she:
○ advocates for the anchoring of dignity in EDI work, hence the acronym EDDI at Lester B. Pearson School Board,
○ consults and provides training on antiracist education with a particular emphasis on anti-Black racism, equity, Courageous Conversations, and joy as resistance,
○ developed a K4- gr. 7 “Becoming Antiracist” literacy workshop program where she facilitates courageous race based conversations in the classroom using children’s literature,
○ ran a two-year study group, DARE (Developing AntiRacist Educators at Lester B) to provide teachers space to address race in themselves and their classrooms,
○ led antiracist book clubs,
○ established the LIT group, a group of Black and Brown Lester B. language teachers, to curate, recommend, and promote literary diversity.
The ATEQ Board wishes to congratulate Patricia for receiving the Abigail Anderson Award. We are honoured to showcase the work of an important leader within the educational space in Quebec and know that Patricia’s work will have positive impacts for years to come.
2023-2024 Abigail Anderson recipient: Emily Langevin
This year’s recipient of the Abigail Anderson is Emily Langevin, a Cycle 1 ELA/Math teacher at Heritage Elementary School in Huntingdon, Quebec. She has been a classroom teacher for about 10 years, having taught from Pre-Kindergarten to Grade 11. Emily holds a B.Ed from McGill University, as well as a Master’s in Education focusing on Literacy, Languages and Cultures from University of Ottawa.
Literacy has been a major focus in Emily’s studies and professional roles, more specifically the impact of low-income households and communities on literacy; how can families access and promote literacy affordably and effectively? Her passion for providing accessible literacy inspired her to create Raising Young Readers. Raising Young Readers spreads the joy growing up being a reader and embracing literacy at all ages and showing parents creative, engaging ways to be active readers with their children. In the classroom, much of her teaching is centered around finding stories that spark inspiration, communication, and classroom community. She believes there’s a story for everyone, for every life milestone inside and outside the classroom. In her free time, Emily is at home with her daughters riding horses and having fun with her book club friends!
The ATEQ Board wishes to congratulate Emily for receiving the Abigail Anderson Award. There’s no doubt that her commitment to literacy and the power of reading is inspiring not only to her young students but to her community at large, as well.
2021-2022 Abigail Anderson recipients: Jessica Hand and Lise Kuhn
This year’s recipients of the Abigail Anderson Award are Jessica Hand and Lise Kuhn, ELA teachers in the EMSB Outreach system. Lise and Jessica also volunteer their time to serve on the 2021-2022 ATEQ Executive.
Their commitment to the ELA community is longstanding: Jessica and Lise have worked tirelessly to celebrate and promote the knowledge of ELA teachers. Their outstanding work in organizing professional PD for teachers during an especially challenging time demonstrates their understanding of the kind of support that works best for busy teachers.
Despite facing numerous challenges with regards to delivering the 2022 edition of ATEQ’s annual Springboards conference, Jessica and Lise organized and delivered one of the best lineups in years, offered fully on demand to suit teachers’ current needs. Jessica and Lise have also been integral to the design of ATEQ’s new website and its teaching resources. They are currently working on plans for 2022- 2023 that include an ATEQ book club and several workshops at the 2022 QPAT conference.
Committed to pursuing official recognition of ATEQ by the Quebec Ministry of Education, including the federal funding to which it is entitled, Jessica and Lise have also been working in coordination with other Quebec professional teacher associations to secure fair and recurring funding, since most have no stable source of funding to carry on their important work.
About the Abigail Anderson Award:
Abigail Anderson is an outstanding Quebec educator and pedagogue. She began her career as a high school ELA teacher and replaced Marjorie Gawley as the Coordinator of ELA Programmes at Quebec’s Ministry of Education. In the twenty seven years that she held that position, she used her networking skills and intuition to set up a community of teachers to make classroom knowledge and practice valued and shared. She has always believed in the grassroots power of teachers working together, of transparency in terms of the policy and protocol at the Ministry, and of the importance of encouraging professionalism in teaching: whether it be to read professional books, to attend conferences, and/or to be involved with ATEQ or other committees at the school or provincial level. According to Ms. Anderson, the professionalism of teachers is defined by their commitment to their students and their professional growth and development. To that end, she has guided teachers in the development of the Teachers Teaching Teachers series, spearheaded numerous classroom-based projects around the province such as The Rainbow of Dream series, supported the educational programmes offered by Blue Metropolis and, most importantly, directed a team and collaborated with them to produce the three ELA programmes for the QEP as well as the the Progressions of Learning, cited for their excellence by the Superior Council of Education.
This award goes to an individual teacher or a group of teachers for an outstanding contribution to the field of English Language Arts in Quebec. The individual or group may not be particularly well known, but may have been working quietly and steadily to encourage different facets of English Language Arts education. We invite you to make these efforts known so that those individuals directly involved may be recognized and honoured.