Outstanding Researchers, Presenters and Professional Preservice Teachers!!

A full time program and many other commitments did not hold back over 100 students in the Undergraduate Programs in Education who participated in some unique professional development opportunities that included presenting at the Western Canadian Association for Student Teaching (WestCAST) 2018 conference, or presenting at the Palliser Teachers’ Convention.

The (WestCAST) conference took place in Winnipeg, Manitoba, hosted by the University of Manitoba. There were close to 300 delegates including a representation of 12 people from Werklund School of Education comprised of faculty and undergraduate students.

Our students and faculty provided a strong presence at the conference, presenting on a number of interactive sessions such as: “Community Growth from STEM: How mechanized gaming can enable learners to explore their communities pedagogy within teacher education”, “Interdisciplinary Studies and the Complex Classroom”, “Mathemizing – Making Math Meaningful”, “The Problem with Vocabulary Lists: Teaching subject specific vocabulary to ELL students through mapping”, “Comparative Analysis between the 1997 and 2016 versions of the Alberta Teaching Quality Standard”, “Applying and Assessment Framework for Skill Development in Makerspace Learning”, and “Teacher to Teacher: Sharing the Wisdom of Experiences”.

The WestCAST conference fosters opportunities for our students to meet students from other provinces to discuss ideas and share commons issues that they may face as pre-service teachers such as working with students with diverse needs, differentiating learning, and issues of accommodation. A number of our students in our delegation are the Steering Committee for WestCAST 2019 to be hosted by Werklund School of Education, February, 2019 and they observed the conference in Winnipeg in order to help as volunteers for WestCAST 2019!!

During the same week in Calgary, over 90 Year 1 and Year 2 students presented 24 poster sessions at the Palliser Teachers’ Convention! Some of the topics of the posters were: “Unshakeable: Designing for Earthquakes”, “Should Schools Go Green?”, “How to survive the zombie apocalypse?” and “What is Fake News?” The students interacted with conference delegates who came to view their posters and discuss their posters and the curriculum content.

Professional development, researching and presenting at conferences demonstrates an aspect of our students both academically and professionally that will lay the foundation for exemplary teaching qualities. They have seized these opportunities over and above their school commitments! Our students demonstrated professionalism and collegiality and were shining examples of who we would want in our teaching profession!