Jennifer Casa-Todd is a Teacher-Librarian in Aurora, Ontario Canada, and author of the book, Social LEADia, published by Dave Burgess Consulting. Before this, she spent six years at the District level as a Program Resource Teacher for Literacy and Literacy Consultant, respectively.

Jennifer guest hosted the #rethink_learning Twitter chat that I co-host with Shelly Vohra @raspberryberet3.  I was able to learn so much about Jennifer in the chat along with reading her book and connecting to her on social media. I am so honored that we had this conversation and even learned some things about her that I didn’t know. I hope you take time to enjoy her story!
 
You and your family
I am a mom and wife. My husband, Stewart, is a principal. We have two children, my daughter, Sydney, just started university in a marine biology program. That is what she’s always wanted to do since she was a little girl. My other daughter, Kelsey, is in grade 11.

I loved being on Parent council and was for over 10 years beginning when Sydney was in Kindergarten. I even ended up being co-chair of the council because I wanted to be involved and have never looked back since. I had nothing but positive interactions with other parents that are now lifelong friends that I developed as a result of being in the council. We definitely need to create an environment where we are not judging each other. This environment is where we can be there to support each other.
CUEByte Speaker:
 
What is what like for you as a student
Here is something a lot of people don’t know about me. When I entered school when I was four years old, I didn’t speak a word of English. I spoke Sicilian. No one could understand me so they chalked it up to a lack of mental ability. The first formative years in my learning were very tough. I was a nonreader. Learning English while learning to read and all those things that many people had already when they come to school. It’s kind of ironic that I’m a teacher/librarian because no one read books to me when I was young. When I started to learn to read, it opened a whole new world for me. In elementary school also, I was severely bullied. I was cross-eyed, had very thick glasses, and had several operations. I was called four eyes. My mom made my clothes because we didn’t have a lot of money.
Those were very, very challenging years. Books were my reprieve because I didn’t have any friends. I lacked self-esteem so I made a lot of poor choices in high school. As a student, I realized I needed to get good grades so school became important to me. In grade 11, I had a teacher, James Stewart, who absolutely enthralled me because he was so passionate about literature. At one point, I had to make a choice between becoming a teacher or expand my part-time job at McDonald’s that I really enjoyed because of the social aspect. I was offered a company car, benefits, and the opportunity to go to the Hamburger University in Chicago. That’s when I decided that I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to give opportunities to kids who are disadvantaged in a way that I kind of felt I was. I was a good student from then on and went to university and teacher’s college.
Coffee with a Geek Interview with Jennifer Casa-Todd https://youtu.be/xT2pBrKihvU
 
Your journey as an educator
I started teaching at a young age, 23, and the first class I taught was a grade 12 media literacy class. I wasn’t much older than some of my students. In fact, one student was 21 who asked me to the prom. That didn’t happen. I also taught ESL, English, religious education, cooperative education, and special education all at the high school level at a variety of different schools. When I was at St. Theresa’s where I taught English and Special Education, an opportunity for a program resource teacher came up and worked at the district ...