Ontario ASCD Conference – Guelph, Ontario

I will be giving the morning keynote presentation on Parent Engagement and Student Success.

Ontario ASCD Conference Brochure 2009

I will be presenting a paper entitled, Living and telling stories of parent engagement that lead preservice teachers to create new narratives of parent teacher relationships. This paper will be part of a larger symposium, When the story turns back on itself … Living, telling, retelling, reliving: Educative curriculum for teacher educators.

Living and telling stories of parent engagement

Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) at San Diego, CA

I will be co-facilitating this doctoral seminar with Dr. Janice Huber from the University of Regina. The seminar is an opportunity for doctoral students from across North America to share and discuss their narrative inquiries in a response community.

The term “essential conversation” comes from the work of Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot (2003). While Lawrence-Lightfoot uses the term to describe the kind of conversation which occurs between parents and teachers in conferences about children, I use the term, in this context, to capture a kind of important conversation that occurs between colleagues about our identity as educators, about learners and their families, about what schooling is and can be, and about why we do what we do.

At the end of term, in lieu of a final exam, teacher candidates in my two undergraduate courses, ECUR 370 and ECUR 401, will schedule a half hour essential conversation with me, instructors in other courses, and partners from our community schools. In this conversation, they will be asked to talk about shifts in their identity as a teacher which occurred during the term; to make connections between and among topics discussed and researched in the course; to synthesize what they have learned from their experiences, relationships, course readings and discussions; and to consider what significance their experiences and their learning will have for their future practice as educators.

I will be presenting a motivational talk to Heritage Language Teachers, Student engagement: Bringing students’ lives into the classroom.

In this conference for Aboriginal Headstart and daycare staff from all 77 First Nations in Saskatchewan, I will facilitate a half day workshop on beliefs and practices in engaging parents in their children’s early learning and childcare programs.

READ Saskatoon Conference

See the World: Literacy and Our Community at Travelodge – Saskatoon, SK

In my keynote session, I discussed parent knowledge and the ways in which parent knowledge can be honored and used in family literacy programs.

In my follow-up workshop, Engaging parents and community: Valuing their knowledge, I demonstrated practical ways, through the reading, sharing, telling and writing of birth, name and family stories, parents and family members can be invited to play an integral role in literacy curriculum and programming.

Within the College of Education, we held a full day, interactive literacy event in which over 400 teachers and teacher candidates learned about culturally relevant literature and practices from renowned Aboriginal authors and local children’s and youth authors. The event featured our keynote speakers, Michael Kusugak from Rankin Inlet in the NWT and Richard Van Camp who is a member of the Dogrib Nation. Ten local authors (Mary Harelkin Bishop, Rita Bouvier, Penny Condon, Peter Eyvindson, Dave Glaze, Shelley Leedahl, Iris Loewen, Alison Lohans, Candace Savage and Arthur Slade) offered hands-on, practical workshops which provided a venue for learning, intensified by the smaller format.

A keynote video for use in 7 regional symposia in Ontario, including 6 regions and the French language boards. With each school board, participants will include the Director of Education/Superintendent, 2 principals (elementary and secondary), 2 teachers (elementary and secondary), 2 parents (minimum) – one from the Parent Involvement Committee (PIC) and one from a school council.

The focus of the regional symposia will be to build a partnership between parents and educators and to provide strategies to cultivate positive relations for the benefit of students/children.