We’ve had a wonderfully busy spring at ONE TO ONE and recently hosted two of our annual events for our volunteers. The first of these was our in-service training session: a professional development opportunity for our volunteer tutors offering a chance to learn together and also connect with one another socially. Guest speakers and experts in the field come to share new ideas, tutoring skills, and inspiration. The event is always a big highlight of the year.
This year, we gathered on Friday, March 6th, at the VPL Central Branch with a room filled with volunteers and our guest speaker, Lee Edward Fodi — a local author, illustrator, and specialized arts educator.
Lee has written several books for children, including Spell Sweeper, The Secret of Zoone, and the Kendra Kandlestar series. Calling himself a daydreaming expert, he has delivered presentations, craft workshops, and led residencies to thousands of kids, educators, librarians, and writers in Canada, the US, Korea, China, and Thailand.
His presentation was engaging, creative, passionate, and challenged our tutors to consider new approaches to keep play alive in their reading sessions and activate their students’ imaginations.
“From his experience as a writer and artist, [Lee] had a very unique perspective on reading and literacy. I wrote down many little pearls I plan to try and incorporate into my weekly reading sessions.”
On Wednesday, April 22nd, we hosted our annual signature Volunteer Appreciation Tea at beautiful VanDusen Botanical Garden.
At this event, we acknowledge volunteers who have achieved a significant service milestone; volunteers received 3-, 5-, 7-, 10-, 15, and 20-year awards. A big congratulations to all of them, especially Sarah Groves for an inspiring 20 years of service!
We also award two Volunteer of the Year awards–one each for our in-person and virtual reading programs– to tutors who have demonstrated going above and beyond for their students. Several worthy nominations were submitted by families and school coordinators. We were thrilled to acknowlege Cheryl Anseeuw with the in-person Volunteer of the Year award and have Mark Cormack, the coordinator from Lord Strathcona Elementary, with us to help present her the award.
Susan Wilkes received the honours for the virtual Volunteer of the Year award and one of her students and his mother were there to present the award and meet her in person for the first time. This was a very memorable moment during a lovely event. We want to say congratulations again to all our award winners.
We were honoured to welcome author and educator, Tanya Boteju, as our guest speaker at the Volunteer Appreciation Tea. Tanya shared her thoughtful perspective on representation in children’s literature, and spoke about her own journey from reader to classroom teacher to author committed to telling inclusive, affirming stories. She lead an engaging Q&A session, where volunteers had the opportunity to reflect on and connect more deeply with her work.
Both the in-service training and the Tea are important components to the ONE TO ONE program and the experience of being a volunteer tutor. We are incredibly grateful to everyone who serves the schools and families with the gift of their time, passion, and creativity.