April 5, 2024 – WestCAST2024 Conference

Love it!! Just embrace what is. When students take a photo of you (in action). Just reached the end of the WestCAST2024 Conference in Calgary, AB with the University of Calgary Werklund School of Education. It was a small conference, but the first step to in-person gatherings with teacher candidates, graduate students, and teacher educators. As you can see from the image, I presented at the conference on behalf of the research team I am a co-investigator with on the Climate Education in Teacher Education (CETE) in northern BC. What I loved the most about this conference was to work with four teacher candidates (aka. curling team) from my program to help them plan, prep, and present for this conference.

The group of teacher candidates who went to WestCAST2024 to present were AMAZING!! We spent many hours dialoguing about their presentation and it evolved into a lesson study and something worthwhile to share with others. And so they did. I can only imagine how many hours they spent as a curling team to collaborate and create content for their presentation. They were meticulous. The presentation had two parts: (1) an indoor PowerPoint presentation that spoke to BC’s Curriculum (i.e., Core Competencies), First Peoples Principles of Learning, and wellness; (2) going outside to facilitate a sit spot lesson plan they each did during their practicum as a lesson study that tested their hypothesis on wellness.

We bounced many ideas, used various resources, and developed an outline that captured their intention and interest. They rehearsed, got formative feedback (from me), and made appropriate revisions where it was needed. Despite the snow and a bit of nerves, they presented as if they were experts in the work they created. The learning intention was clear and the workshop was seamless. They got lots of interest at the end of the workshop (from those who stayed until the end) and got lots of positive feedback such that some participants will take on the challenge of the lesson study, reach out to ask for the lesson plan or PowerPoint, or contact them to engage in further discussion on topic of wellness and learning with and from the land. Their workshop was extremely effective and engaging.

Back to my presentation, I opted to springboard off the presentation that preceded me on Climate Action. It was an inquiry project done by a teacher candidate from another university in BC. Their inquiry was completely aligned to the CETE research project and so I opted to read a few parts that I needed the exact quote or idea, then I referred the PowerPoint and previous presenter. I was more myself and did not feel limited to the speaking notes created for the presentation. That said, all speaking notes were achieved during my presentation, but our project just seemed to connect to the Climate Action presentation. It was almost like it was an exemplar of one of the outcomes we hope for in our project.

It’s so great to teach and learn with teacher candidates. In this case, we were working with teacher candidates and teacher educators from teacher education programs from western Canada. It was an awesome opportunity to coach the teacher candidates from my program and to see them present a topic that was meaningful to them, but also it became meaningful to others. That’s how you impact others to create change in their practice and pedagogy. In the end, it’s the wholeheartedness and passion behind the project that made it so meaningful. This foursome was an excellent “curling team” with different strengths and points of view that were cohesive, coherent, and collegial. I am grateful to work with this crew and I feel hearted by the quality of these future educators in K-12 schools.