Presenters
Opening Keynote
Dr. Steven Van Zoost
Tuesday 7:00pm Charles Keating Millenium Center
Biography
Steven Van Zoost, PhD
Steven loves to teach. Sure, he loves to travel, create music, and eat good food; but above all this, he loves to teach. Steven teaches at Avon View High School (in Windsor, Nova Scotia) and also teaches students in roughly thirty-five schools across the province with Nova Scotia Virtual School. His side-hustle in academia has him teaching graduate students in four provinces for Mount Saint Vincent University on the weekends and throughout the summer. His work is characterized by the understanding that students are current and future citizens, and that teaching is a means of creating social change. Steven is also a writer of student textbooks, provincial curricula, academic research, and more than twenty years of professional writing for the Nova Scotia Teachers Union. He is excited to share teaching stories with you! For more information, visit www.stevenvanzoost.com
Keynote description
A Vision Check for Educators: What can you see?
Are you seeing clearly? Do you need a progressive lens? New contacts? Dr. Steven will guide you through your vision check-up! He will ask you to consider what's important in schools today? Who is important in our schools? How can we meet the changing needs of today's learner? Using a vision chart for 2020, Dr. VZ will help you examine changing classroom practices that respond to the current generation of students in our schools. His self-assessment tools will help you envision your professional learning path ahead as well as identify the strength in your own eyes. Using frames of reference from his classroom practices, Steven will offer ten stories to check your vision for teaching in 2020. He will also try to avoid making a spectacle from using too many puns!
Concurrent Sessions A B C D
Wednesday am/pm & Thursday am
You will be able to attend three of the four concurrent sessions. Choices will be made on Tuesday night.
From the host province, Nova Scotia Teachers Union (NSTU)
Presenter: Meg Ferguson
Session A
Biography
Fascinated by culture and leadership in education, Meg Ferguson has been exploring both throughout her career through personal study, attending conferences, application (experimenting) in her workplaces as well as a certificate in Engaging Stakeholders and Leading Change from St. Mary's University. This instrumental music educator taught junior high for 10 years and high school for another 10 years, during which she took a 4-year hiatus as President of Halifax County Local, NSTU. With seemingly constant changes in education, how do we empower those who are having the greatest impact on student success? Ferguson has been endeavoring to do so as an active union leader, colleague, workshop facilitator and conference coordinator. Seminar categories have included leadership planning, goal setting & team-building; empowerment & engagement of teachers; pedagogy & classroom management; as well as working with other people. Meg is looking forward to connecting and learning at CONTACT 2020! Twitter: @MegFerguson1 Email: mmferguson@nstu.ca
Session description
What if educational professionals treated each other with the same individuality, compassion, understanding and care with which we strive to approach our students? Is anyone else frustrated when being told to differentiate our teaching practice via PowerPoint PD? We know that students are more successful when they can get excited about and see the relevance in the materials they are learning, as well as when their social identities are considered, and understood. Imagine if every staff member in a school community was treated with the same respect and consideration. We will explore "CRP" to create "CRL" together, and then find ways to accomplish this professional coup in our own educational settings.
From the New Brunswick Teachers Association (NBTA)
Presenter: Adam Trider
Session B
Biography
In 19 years of teaching, Adam has spent most of his career at Bernice MacNaughton High School in Moncton, NB. After a short stint as an Educational Support Teacher for STEM, Adam returned to the classroom with a renewed focus on inquiry, problem based learning and providing space for student voice and choice. When not at school, Adam can be found playing squash, volunteering or spending time with his wife and three children.
Session description
Focus on Skills! – Integrate STEM into your classroom
This hands-on, minds-on workshop will explore strategies and activities that incorporate communication, creativity and critical thinking into your classroom regardless of what you teach. STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) activities will be used to engage participants in problem-solving, experience design challenges and make connections across disciplines.
From the Prince Edward Island Teachers Federation (PEITF)
Presenter: Lori Gard
Session C
Biography
Lori Gard is a current school counsellor, and was formerly a kindergarten and elementary school teacher, as well as an instructional literacy coach working with teachers from K-9. Over the past number of years, she has been writing a blog as a means of reflecting on her teaching practice, as well as doing such for personal enjoyment. In December 2013, she wrote a letter which was published on the Huffington Post--- a letter written as support to a newly hired teaching colleague. That note was initially read by just a handful of people, but at the end of January 2014, it started to grab the interest of teachers all over the world. To date, it has been read by close to 2 million readers worldwide. It continues to be read on a regular basis by readers at her personal blog, Pursuit of a Joyful Life. Lori has also co-edited a book with University of Prince Edward Island’s Dr. Sean Weibe called “Inside the classroom: stories of curriculum and creativity”.
Session description
Who cares?
Understanding ethic of care and its role in the classroom
Who cares? An idiom used to show indifference and uninterest.
But, who really cares? Well, teachers do. And we care far beyond the confines of subject matter and content area. We care for the kids and further care about the kids. Our care ---for our students academic and educational needs, as well as for their personal and social lives, their circumstances, their emotional needs, and their human development--- leads teachers down uncertain pathways into obscure, grey areas. This all encompassing care was not what we signed on for.
Or did we? Did we always know that this is what good teaching is all about?
As teachers, we often seek out ways to teach more effectively, but perhaps more often than not, we do not have time to examine the deeper issues affecting our students, or to pursue the complex and complicated affairs of the heart. Teachers can feel torn between prioritizing caring for students educational needs as opposed to caring about their individual needs. But what if care, an ethic of care, was the mechanism for learning and the linchpin for effective teaching?
This presentation leads an initial investigation into the role care plays in the classroom, asking teachers to consider multifaceted care to be the foundation on which good teaching is established. Not just a virtue, care is best exhibited through a reciprocal caring relationship, as experienced between a carer and cared-for. Caring relationships are themselves educative (Nguyen, 2016). From there, care stretches far beyond the interpersonal, reaching out to all aspects of living and learning. We care about the kids, as well as care about their world in its totality: that world the kids and we are living in together.
From the Newfoundland Teachers Association (NLTA)
Presenter: Leigh Border
Session D
Biography
Leigh Borden is a passionate advocate for school libraries and teacher librarians. She is a K-4 teacher-librarian and President of Teacher Librarians of Newfoundland and Labrador. Over the past decade, she’s worked to advocate for school librarians and teacher-librarians across Newfoundland and Labrador, and has served on a variety of committees and working groups intended to grow the school library learning commons movement in the province. Leigh completed a BA (Hons) at Memorial University of Newfoundland, an MA in English literature at the University of Toronto, and a Master of Teaching at OISE/UT. When not happily working in her school library at Holy Trinity Elementary School Torbay, NL, Leigh loves to read, run, hike, and camp.
Session description
Creating a Collaborative Vision for Student Success at Your School Library Learning Commons
Session description:
In this session, Leigh will help teachers envision a team approach to adopting a learning commons model that benefits all teachers and learners, share top tips for building powerful collaborative relationships, provide guidance on creating cross-curricular learning experiences, and introduce a variety of authentic tools and opportunities for student and teacher collaboration. Participants will explore and learn to integrate quality children's and young adult literature in every learning experience. Leigh will demonstrate the benefits of flexible library scheduling and provide lots of ideas for creating an awesome school library learning commons, even in small schools with limited space and/or teacher librarian time. And, interwoven through it all, Leigh will help you become a passionate advocate for that critical hub of learning and exploring in every school — the school library learning commons.
Closing Keynote
Deborah Goreham
Friday 9:00am Charles Keating Millenium Center
Biography
Deb is currently an Associate Professor at St. Francis Xavier University, where she teaches elementary assessment and the principles and practices of teaching in the B.Ed. Program and principles of learning and other courses in the M.Ed. Program. Before joining the faculty at St. F. X. she was a public school teacher and board-wide administrator for over 30 years. During her teaching career, mainly as an elementary teacher, she was a recipient of various awards including, a Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. In her role as a regional administrator, she led over 30 teams to advance literacy in schools through Active Young Readers, Writer’s In Action, and other initiatives. Her research interests include shaping teacher identities and the power of stories to conceptualize practice. Deb lives in Judique, Cape Breton, with her husband Tom of 41 years. They have three grown children and four grandsons. Deb considers herself a seeker and enjoys reading books on spirituality and wellness. She has also attempted to write two children’s books. She likes to jog, bike, and take long walks in the summer on the Celtic Trail in their village.
Keynote description
Seeing is Believing: Envisioning a Positive Pathway for Teaching in 2020 and Beyond
By way of consolidating key learnings, Dr. Graham will engage you in an activity to help you realize more fully what you now see as important as you embark upon a new school year. Through guided visualization, she will invite you to imagine possibilities that will help you foresee and thus manifest the kind of teaching year you desire for both you and your students. To achieve this, you will journey down an imaginary path filled with images and questions to ponder. Drawing from her own experiences, Deb will infuse stories and other anecdotes along the way. Athletes and other individuals have used visualization to improve their performance tasks and manifest the results they want to achieve. This virtual workout will help you solidify what you hope to attain in the upcoming school year and embrace a growth mindset through the process.