SWATCA2018

Ours is a species of builders. Since our evolutionary ancestors tamed fire and fashioned the first stone tools, humanity has been driven to construct increasingly elaborate and ingenious solutions to meet its needs and address its problems. Simply put, ‘we were made to make’. But we shouldn’t forget that we are also a species of storytellers. If we were to trace any one of our collective accomplishments back to its point of inception, almost immediately we would find a group of individuals gathered around a campfire, a meal, or a drawing on the wall talking. In this presentation, the ATA’s expert on innovative learning spaces will explain how you can tap into your inner builder and storyteller to bring curricula to life in your classrooms. In this time of significant change, meaningful teaching may not require the latest technogadgetry, but may draw instead on our ancestral urges to build stuff out of sticks and talk about it.

No time here for theory! Just 97—or more—simple, cost-effective tools and techniques to recognize staff. Guaranteed! There may even be a few minutes left over to answer your questions (and maybe, just a little bit of theory).

Does gender impact culture or is it the other way around? This interactive session allows participants to consider media influences on constructions of gender and think about ways to challenge gender role stereotyping and heteronormative society. By exploring the connections between gender and culture in these ways, students and teachers can move from perpetuating current forms of culture towards cultural transformation.

A Tool Kit For Success resource offers a process to support schools in working with youth at risk of not completing high school. At every point along the continuum of risk from prevention, to identification, to intervention and specialised supports, this resource guides schools and school teams in the collaborative process of supporting students as they work towards high school completion. For many students, the path to High School Completion is not a linear one. The Supporting High School Completion: A Tool Kit For Success resource offers a process to support schools in working with youth at risk of not completing high school. At every point along the continuum of risk from prevention, to identification, to intervention and specialised supports, this resource guides schools and school teams in the collaborative process of supporting students as they work towards high school completion. With tools and processes to support your work, the Tool Kit centers on 4 guiding questions: 1. Empowerment: Can the student’s choice to stay be empowered? How? 2. Supported Exit: How can the student be continually supported if an exit from high school is necessary? 3. Reconnection: What steps will help reconnect to the student if they have exited? 4. Reentry and/or Continued Engagement: What is the best way to support successful reentry and continued engagement? Shift the lens in your school from ‘What supports are available?’ to ‘How can we leverage the resources we have to remove the barriers preventing successful high school completion for this student?’

There is a question that, once answered, will guide you to hire the right new people, recognize existing staff for the right reasons, and focus your efforts to improve staff retention. Participants will learn to identify the behaviours that make top performers successful and be able to use this information to guide their hiring decisions and know when to recognize staff.

Attending school on a regular basis is fundamental to the positive development of children. In Alberta, over 150,000 students are impacted by school absenteeism and are at significant risk of negative future outcomes, such as economic disadvantage and incarceration. Recognizing the prevalence of absenteeism, Rocky View Schools launched the Attendance Innovation Campaign which aimed to educate communities as to the importance of attendance, empower schools to utilize data to monitor and improve practice, and eliminate barriers to student attendance through a system of tiered interventions. The techniques, resources, and preliminary results will be shared during this presentation.

This popular, interactive session addresses a variety of issues on which school administrators have sought advice from ATA Member Services staff. Based on the time available, up to 25 issues will be examined in addition to supplemental questions and issues raised by those in attendance.

Some school administrators dismiss hiring decisions that don’t work out as the result of bad luck. It turns out that luck doesn’t have much to do with it. Most unsuccessful hiring decisions can be traced back to errors or omissions that occurred during the hiring process and which could have been avoided.

All work and no play makes teachers boring and burnt out. Join Joyce Sunada for an active session full of challenging and fun team building activities for you and your staff. According to the Alberta Education Framework for Wellness, "Social Wellness"is: relating positively to others and is influenced by many factors including how individuals communicate, establish and maintain relationships, are treated by others and interpret that treatment. This session provides activities and experiences that challenge participants to communicate, work together cooperatively and reach group goals. (Skills that are necessary to create a positive, healthy work environment) My hope is participants take the activities back to their schools and recreate them with their staff, thus enhancing their social connectedness and wellness. "Playing together" and having fun as a staff fosters "Social Wellness" thus enhancing the overall wellness of the Educator. The impact - improved wellness of the students and whole school community.

With new Teaching Quality Standards comes questions of teacher growth, supervision and evaluation for principals. This session will help principals understand their role in implementing the new TQS and will provide valuable information, resources, and contacts that will be instrumental in the coming months.

Tried and true approaches to embedding wellness within a school culture and resources to keep moving forward from local teacher health champions. Are you the lone health crusader in your school? Part of a covert wellness alliance – resisting the unhealthy food choices, inactivity insurgents and smart phone zombies in your hallways? Whether you are just starting the epic journey of creating a healthy school environment or are a battle-tested health champion looking for new ways to “keep the flame alive”, this session is for you. Come trade ideas with like-minded teachers dedicated to fighting the good fight toward healthier school communities. Hear from local teacher health champions on their current road to wellness. Leave with a renewed sense of hope and tactical strategies to support your mission nutrition, movement militia or war for mental wellness. You are not alone.

Teachers are concerned about the well-being of children and youth. The Alberta Teachers’ Association and the Canadian Mental Health Association are partnering to promote the mental health of children and youth and to provide support material for teachers dealing with mental health issues. This session will discuss common mental health concerns for children, recommend resources and references, and inform teachers about how they can promote awareness and discourage stigma.

A strength-based approach shifts the focus from the prevention of specific problems to a more positive, holistic view of child and youth development. This approach involves a different way of thinking about students and of interpreting the ways they cope with life challenges. It allows one to see opportunities, hope and solutions, rather than problems and hopelessness. A strength-based approach focuses on building resiliency, enhancing social-emotional learning and supporting recovery. Through this session we will work to develop shared understandings around mental health language, the impact of mental health on brain development and learning and how strength based approaches in schools support an overall culture of wellness.

Classrooms in Alberta are ethnically more diverse every year, giving us new challenges and opportunities. This workshop will provide participants the opportunity to strengthen their cultural awareness and competence, deepen their understanding of the challenges immigrant families face, and learn classroom and schoolwide strategies for working with immigrant students and their parents.

This workshop will develop ideas around how innovation happens (looking at things differently), how innovation can harm (waste and environmental degredation) and how we can support students to consciously decide to innovate productively and lead humanely to heal ourselves and our world. Participants will leave with self-discovered, tangible ideas to take back to their schools to support developing positive leadership in their students and classrooms developing a 'growth mindset.' This is presentation was created for and originally presented at the 2017 Canadian Student Leadership Conference.

Unfortunately the Coaching to Support Inclusion speaker is unable to make it due to family illness. Sorry for the inconvenience. The participant guide for this session is available at http://l.ead.me/CoachingToSupport.


This workshop introduces school leaders to Coaching to Support Inclusion: A Principal’s Guide, a new Association publication designed as a self-paced program to explore the use of coaching to support inclusive practices. Coaching is defined as a professional development strategy in which coaches work with teachers to meet the diverse learning needs of students within an inclusive school environment. Coaching to Support Inclusion reflects the collegial and collaborative culture of Alberta schools and encourages principals to work with their teachers to consider the academic and social needs of students with exceptionalities in an inclusive learning environment. This session will prepare school leaders to facilitate the activities included in this resource intended to engage the school staff in the dialogue, design and implementation of coaching to support inclusion.

B.A.C.A. (Bikers Against Child Abuse) is a non for profit organization made up of Bikers with big hearts! Our goal is to empower children to not be afraid of the world in which they live! Our Mission is very narrow, we empower children of abuse! We don't take care of the elderly, we don't take care of the sick, we don't raise money for causes, we empower children (Of abuse) so they are not afraid of the world in which they live! We do however raise money for our B.A.C.A. hero's so they can go to therapy, take riding lessons, dance classes, take Karate lessons, anything that will empower that child to not be afraid of the world in which they live. There are many ways we will empower that child, but one of the first and most gratifying ways is by escorting them to court. A child is 4 times more likely to testify in court if they are part of our B.A.C.A. family. Children should and need to be children! What a great world we would have if we allowed them to grow up in a normal, or non-abusive world? We are now in 22 Countries worldwide and growing. We will be speaking to the teachers about the Canadian statistics of abuse and how we help our wounded friends.

Educators will come away with an understanding of bullying and harassment prevention education. Lessons will include exploring the base fundamentals of healthy schools (what do we see, hear, and feel in these places), what is power, types of power, what powers do youth have, and how youth can use them to help others. We will look at the dynamics of bullying, the four different types (verbal, physical, social/relational, cyber), and labels and stereotypes. We will touch on the topic of harassment before considering the impacts of hurtful actions and promoting ally and pro-social behaviors. Educators will learn a range of interactive activities that they can lead in their classrooms to promote respect in their school and will be able to take away a sample of the curriculum outlines for teaching some of these topics. We will end the session by sharing information about how you can bring a Bullying and Harassment Prevention focused peer-led facilitation model to your school. *All content shared aligns with Alberta Education Curriculum in Health and Life Skills or CALM.