“Planning for teaching” as “planning for place-making”
Julia Ellis, University of Alberta

Drawing on cultural geography, this presentation offers a framework and guiding questions for undertaking "planning for teaching" as "planning for place-making." Through everyday life in the classroom students learn or develop roles, ways of experiencing themselves, motivations, values, tacit knowledge, and common sense understandings. This can be understood as part of the pedagogy of place. The structures that teachers introduce in classrooms—rules, routines, resources, and available relationships (with individual people, institutions, or ideas)—have enabling or limiting consequences for the everyday lives students are able to shape for themselves and the identities that can evolve through their everyday lives.

Single and/or multiple paper presentation

Rev it up! Ready-to-use drama activities for the elementary and middle school classroom
Angela Chorney, University of Victoria

Have you been looking for fun and interactive ways to energize and engage your students throughout the school day? Could you use a few more “tricks” in that TOC bag of yours? Do you enjoy getting creative with your students and working with them to develop their own creativity, a sense of community and self-confidence? This will be a fun and interactive workshop; participants will engage in ice-breakers, trust activities, community builders and improv games. Come prepared to get involved, laugh hard and have fun!

Workshops and/or Symposium
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Story dramas: A resource to strengthen community
Carole Miller, Emily Evelyn Cooper, Erin Jamieson and Carmen Lalonde, University of Victoria

Story dramas provide a safe space for students to take on role, resolve conflicts, take risks and express ideas and opinions. The space created is inviting, comfortable, and non-threatening which allows for students to build relationships resulting in a strong sense of community within the classroom.

This workshop will guide you through a story drama and allow you to experience the unintimidating atmosphere of story dramas as well as explore how students will take risks, take on role, resolve conflicts, and express ideas and opinions in a safe and comforting space.

Workshops and/or symposium

Transformative space or transitory experience: Student teacher narratives of a global citizenship field experience
George Richardson and Lucy De Fabrizio, University of Alberta

Using the example of an undergraduate education course on Global Citizenship Education taught in Ghana through the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta, our presentation addresses the issue of what transformative impacts global citizenship courses have on students who take part in them.

Drawing on focus group data and individual interviews gathered over two iterations of the course (2007 and 2008) and transformative learning theory (Mezirow, 2000), the presenters (two faculty members and a student who took the course in the Summer of 2008), will review the results of their analysis of the effects the course has had on the ways the students imagine themselves as global citizenship educators. The presentation will conclude with a discussion of the implications our research has for the development of internationalization policies and practices in undergraduate teacher education.

Single and/or multiple paper presentations

Garage sale treasures
Jodi Dittmar, Amanda Cumming, Ana Gabriela Ardila and Professor Sandy Margetts, Brandon University

One of the greatest challenges facing beginning teachers is setting up a classroom on a 'shoestring' budget. A Methods Professor and a Team of Pre-Service Teachers will explore practical ideas in a hands-on workshop using treasures from garage sales, flea markets, dollar stores, etc. Participants will have an opportunity to create many inexpensive resources which enhance several curricular fields.

Workshop and/or Symposium
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Professional self reflection and journaling
Lindsey Marie Brown, University of Winnipeg

This session will highlight the value of professional self-reflection and journal writing.  It will explore the various forms of journal writing as well as the many uses and benefits.  It will provide practical ideas for getting started and finding the time to make journal writing a valuable experience.

Through reflection, we can take a closer look at our professional growth and how it has changed over time.  This can help to gain a better perspective of where we are at the current moment and where we might like to be in the near future.  The session ties in to the theme of Wcistenek by considering the individual's reflection on their own space and place.

Single and/or multiple paper presentation

Learning from the land: intergenerational mentorship on Quadra Island
Lorna Williams and Aliki Marinakis, University of Victoria

This presentation will showcase the learning experience of students within a teacher education program who participated in an experimental delivery of the course EDCI 372 Aboriginal Ways of Knowing on Quadra Island. The delivery of the course focused on Aboriginal language learning in a culturally relevant context, involving three generations. Teacher Education students were asked to mentor new language learners while being mentored themselves by elders or fluent language speakers. In a framework derived from traditional patterns of intergenerational transition of knowledge, two Master/Apprentice models were used: Model 1 used a one on one approach - 1 mentor with 1 mentee and Model 2 used a cluster approach - several mentors with several mentees. The language learning occurred during a 6-day land-based university course on Indigenous epistemologies. Participants ranged in age from 12 years old to elders in their 70’s.

Single and/or multiple paper presentations

Bringing aboriginal perspectives into the elementary music classroom
Stephanie Davis, University of Manitoba

To provide meaningful learning environments through multicultural approaches in the general Music classroom, students require an in depth understanding of cultures. This presentation will share ideas for how to truly integrate Aboriginal perspectives into the Music classroom using authentic, contemporary, community related, and cross-curricular sources.

Workshop and/or symposium

An alternative setting for student teacher’s to learn and become stronger and more well rounded future facilitators
Catherine E McGregor, Navi Bhatti and Carly Iacoviello, University of Victoria

The University of Victoria is raising the bar in teacher training by creating opportunities for students to experience alternative practicum placements in less traditional educational settings. Some people may call it revolutionary and others may call it enlightening. This panel discussion led by students and faculty from the University of Victoria will describe how the practicum was initially conceived and hear from two students who took advantage of this opportunity and travelled to a rural village in Ghana to teach. They will describe their experiences in Ghana as well as how the experience offered them new ways of conceiving of themselves as global learners and teachers.

Panel presentation

A school advisor inquiry group: Thinking differently about teacher engagement in teacher education
Wendy S. Nielsen and Anthony Clarke, University of British Columbia

We are cooperating teachers and university-based teacher educators collectively exploring the landscape of teacher education from the perspective of cooperating teachers--those who mentor student teachers during practicum. We entered this inquiry space out of a collective desire to develop practical and theoretical understandings of the role of cooperating teacher. We have challenged conceptions of ourselves as instruments of the public education system, uncovered assumptions, and discussed and dissected issues and practices through our monthly conversations. In this presentation, we share some of our understandings as well challenges that we have faced, and invite a wider conversation among interested others.

Single Paper and/or Multiple Presentation

Present as the professional speaker you are - or will be...
Teena Louise Cormack, University of Lethbridge

Teena Cormack is a student teacher herself who is also a Distinguished Toastmaster.  She has taught public speaking skills to over 200 people varying in age from 10 to 60 years of age. Their skill levels began at unable to speak at all to other speakers who wanted to have additional tips. This workshop will give the attendees an opportunity to have their questions answered and to do an impromptu speech. Evaluation skills will also be taught. Facing fears is often what teachers must assist their students to do every time they take students beyond their comfort zone; as student teachers we must do the same for ourselves.

Workshop and/or symposium

AB + C = DE; utilizing the latest in technology from Texas Instruments to enhance, rethink, and truly “N-Spire” mathematics instruction
John Y. Yamamoto, University of British Columbia

Rethinking ways to deliver mathematics instruction using the latest handheld technology created by Texas Instruments – the N-Spire.  Participants will be informed about the latest developments and offers provided by TI in the area of math and science teacher education.  Participants will also see how this technology is being implemented at UBC, primarily through assignments created by teacher candidates.  Finally, participants will get a chance to actually use the technology, working and experimenting with the handhelds in an exploratory lab-like setting.

Single and/or multiple paper presentation

Using a thinking strategy as a vehicle between the space of the classroom, the space of students’ mathematical thinking and our teaching
Rick Seaman, University of Regina

he student’s mind and the teacher’s mind are conceptualized as culturally diverse spaces nested within the greater space of the classroom. The thinking strategy is a vehicle by which educators can transfer knowledge and build cognition between these diverse spaces.

The material for this workshop explicitly supports the teaching of mathematics from a problem-solving perspective within the space of the student’s mind. One prerequisite of this perspective is the importance of students having a cognitive strategy when solving problems. The cognitive strategy (CS) is illustrated by a flowchart and represents the meta-cognitive behavior of many good problem solvers.  An important ingredient of the CS is the uses of individually meaningful representations that help students analyze problems and provides the vehicle to transfer problem solving into the space of the classroom and also receive direction from the educator when analyzing problems.

One way is to have students consciously look for the underlying structure of the problem in order to classify problems and to aid in retrieval according to deeper structure. These representation, classification, and retrieval strategies are important ingredients of the CS. Together with the CS form the foundation of the workshop.  While obtaining the answer to a problem is important it will take a back seat to these four strategies.

Workshop and/or symposium

Teaching as the practice of wisdom
David Geoffrey Smith, Jackie Seidel, Sandra Wilde and Dwayne Donald, University of Alberta

Four presenters will discuss efforts to orient their teaching practices around principles of Wisdom. Wisdom traditions move teaching away from purely instrumental/technical concerns to the question of what it means to live well with our students i.e. morally, with integrity, and guided by insight through reflective encounter. Aboriginal, Buddhist, and Western philosophical traditions will be considered. Each presenter is currently a teacher/professor who will provide examples from their practice. Themes to be considered include: The non-duality of the adult-child relation; the Time of teaching; learning from failure; the intrinsic weakness of pure power and the hidden strength of silence; the dynamic tension between life and death.

Panel presentation