Identity and Diversity

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Plenary (1:00 p.m. to 1:50 p.m.):

Erin Gruwell, Educator and subject of movie Freedom Writers

Becoming a Catalyst for Change
Erin Gruwell helped 150 of her students—many of whom were written off by the education system—to use the power of education to write a book, graduate from high school, and attend college. The journey of this teacher and her students is chronicled in the book The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World around Them. Gruwell tells the story of this extraordinary journey—from poverty and despair to hope and promise. What can our classrooms provide in order to make our children safe, educated, and productive people? Erin Gruwell shares how we can become “catalysts for change.”
Freedom Writers Foundation

Student Sessions (1:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.):
  • 1:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
  • The afternoon will begin by engaging students in a group activity that will offer participants the opportunity to mix and mingle. Students will have the chance to learn more about one another, while sharing interests and other facts about themselves.
  • 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
  • Scott Hill will lead an interactive workshop on student voice in preparation for the divisional team meetings at 3:45 p.m.
Keynote Sessions (2:15 p.m. to 3:45 p.m.):

  1. Erin Gruwell, Continuing Conversation with Erin Gruwell

  2. Sam Baardman, Rhian Brynjolson, Bob Haverluck, and Deborah Schnitzer—River on the Run
    Scenes from Lake Winnipeg. The Red River is still running and Lake Winnipeg is lovely, reflecting changing weather and light, yet both are damaged, showing signs of harm and harm still being done. Through image, poetry, story, and song, River on the Run will take you to the shores of Lake Winnipeg to witness the water system’s brokenness and to celebrate its resilient beauty. Learn how art allows us to experience and reimagine our relationship to ecosystems that we live within and depend upon.
    3. River on the Run (Website)

  1. Shauna Sylvester, Canada’s World
  2. Why is it important to teach global issues? What are the links between our domestic and international policies on human rights and democratic development?
    Shauna Sylvester will lead an interactive session on Canada’s role in the world in promoting human rights and democratic development. This workshop will enable participants to reflect on why it is important to teach global issues and provide educators (particularly those who address controversial issues) with a series of deliberative tools that they can use in the classroom. Participants will have an opportunity to explore the history of Canadian policy and actions and to identify the interests, values, and assets that should motivate our efforts locally and globally.
    3. Agenda (114 KB)
    PowerPoint Presentation Canada's World: An experiment in democratic development ( 2.2 MB)
    Canada’s World (YouTube video)
    Canada’s World (Website)

  1. Wilton Littlechild, The Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Presentation sponsored by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.
  2. Aboriginal People of Canada: Human Rights and Education
    As the emphasis on human rights education increases in Canada, there is an opportunity to develop an Aboriginal perspective in the curriculum, benefiting both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students alike.

  1. Michael Bach, Canadian Association for Community Living
  2. Building Inclusive Education Systems and Outcomes: Do we have an adequate theory of change?
    The recently adopted UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities makes inclusive education a human right for the first time in international law and establishes an obligation on governments to “ensure an inclusive education system at all levels.” Most of the efforts in inclusive education to date have focused on skills of teachers, teaching methods, classroom practices, and some policy and program development. This session will explore how we might think about systems-change strategies that are up to the task of building inclusive education systems—strategies that do justice to the realities of exclusion that learners with intellectual and other disabilities have faced for decades.

  1. Enid Lee, Enidlee Consultants
  2. Reality Check: Educational Opportunity and Achievement for Aboriginal and African-Canadian Students
    If we are to close the achievement gap, we must pay attention to the opportunity-to-learn gap. This interactive session will explore lessons learned from an anti-racist professional learning initiative at Dufferin School in Winnipeg and findings from a recently conducted study on opportunity and achievement for African–Nova Scotian learners. Participants will identify approaches and practise strategies from both contexts that can assist educational leaders in closing the opportunity-to-learn and the achievement gaps.

  1. Cynthia Nambo, Greater Lawndale Social Justice High School, Chicago
  2. Social Justice Alive: The Story of a Chicago City High School
    The Little Village Lawndale High School Campus was born out of a hunger strike that moms, dads, students, and other community members organized in 2001. Today one of the high schools, Social Justice (SOJO), takes on the legacy by integrating community and social justice in an academically challenging environment. The first graduating class had an 85 percent rate of college acceptance. SOJO constantly works to keep students on track, and the curriculum integrates college preparation with social justice issues.
    3. Humanity for All: Social justice ALIVE! (Presentation 336 KB)
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  2. Alysha Sloane, Manitoba School Improvement Program
  3. Peaceful Resistance in Public Education: Courageous Democracy in Action
    In this session, participants will explore how peaceful resistance is integral to the development of a courageous, democratic citizenry. Stories from the Hugh John Macdonald and Gordon Bell school communities will be shared in order to discuss how schools can be powerful sites for democratic renewal when peaceful resistance is embraced as an aim of public education.

  1. Kathleen Gould Lundy, York University
  2. Teaching Fairly in an Unfair World
    Understanding and celebrating diversity are necessary processes in contemporary Canadian classrooms at all levels—elementary, secondary, and post-secondary. The goal of the session will be to help participants envision a learning environment that reflects, affirms, and validates the diversity and complexity of the human experience. Participants will learn how to build a community of learners in classrooms so that students’ interests, racial and cultural backgrounds, family relationships, special needs, and unique abilities are honoured. Find out how to co-create classrooms as places where there is respect, not just tolerance; where there is community, not just group process; where there are relationships, not just connections; and where there are empathy and compassion based on mutual understanding, not just on superficial encounters.

  1. Nadine McCaughan and Roland Dion, Manitoba Association for Rights and Liberties
  2. Take Action on Human Rights! Incorporating Human Rights Lesson Plans into All Subject Areas Grades 9–12
    The Manitoba Association for Rights and Liberties (MARL) works to facilitate the inclusion of Human Rights Education within the existing Manitoba curriculum. This includes a Youth Leadership in Human Rights initiative and the creation of educational resources for teachers. This presentation will exemplify how educators can integrate human rights education and fulfill learning objectives.
    3. The Manitoba Association for Rights and Liberties (Presentation 236 KB)
    The Manitoba Association for Rights and Liberties (Website)
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  4. Harold Neufeld, Project Peacemakers
  5. Creating a Culture of Peace in the Senior Years
    An initiative of Project Peacemakers of Winnipeg, Creating a Culture of Peace (three volumes for Early, Middle, and Senior Years) is a set of curricular materials designed to assist classroom teachers in integrating themes of peace and social justice into their regular courses in language arts and social studies. The lessons help students explore the scope of conflict as a personal, social, and political phenomenon, and the principles and structures upon which a just world might be built.

  1. Cameron Cross, Pembina Trails School Division
  2. Brush Out Poverty
    The potential for arts education and social justice to create wonderful opportunities for learning has sparked considerable interest among educators recently. Cameron will describe how the Brush Out Poverty program in the Pembina Trails School Division provides an artistic, cultural, and social awareness exchange between children in the developed and developing worlds, raising awareness about the reality of children orphaned by poverty and AIDS and providing a means to support orphanages in Africa.

3:45 p.m. to 4:15 p.m.:

All members of each divisional team are asked to return to one of the four ballrooms, find a table, and share highlights of the day and ideas to take back to schools and divisions.

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