CEN Teacher Conference
Had a major meeting today trying to finalize the details about CEN's annual teacher conference. I thought I would share some of the details we finalized:
Before They Vote: Engaging Young Citizens in School and Beyond
mid-November in the Toronto City Hall Council Chambers
Workshop 1: Teaching the (Fun)damentals of Civics
Workshop 2: Beyond Charity ~ focus is on being critical of raising money as activism
Workshop 3: People Power Participation ~ presentation by Dave Meslin
Lunch will be catered and the current idea is to seed the lunch with people who work at various non-profits around the city.
Instead of a keynote we're doing a panel to end the day on the topic of the conference. Our panelists will hopefully be:
Sarah McCoubrey ~ Executive Director of OJEN
Rudyard Griffith ~ founder of the Dominion Institute
Peter McLeod ~ of MASS LBP
For a moderator we're going to ask Steve Paikin and/or Mike Wise
Cost will be $40 and open to teachers around Toronto.
That's it. Not we just need to finalize it all.
Can a Student Wiki?
So, as both an experiment, (and I do say so myself) and amazing idea, I'm using a wiki as a teaching tool. I setup my own wiki on my home server and releaed it on my Grade 10 Academic Canadian History class. Their goal? Take on a topic related to World War II, and complete the wiki. Soon, we will have a complete WWII-focused, Canadian-slanted wiki! It makes a great teaching tool, since it not only gets them to investigate a topic in a new way (related to them), but it also forces them to edit other people's work and investigate the entire war.
Anyway, if you want to check out the site, it's located at www.ww2wiki.ca Right now it's locked down so that only my students can edit it, but perhaps I'll open it up in the future.
Remembrance Day at Rosedale
So I MC'd my school's Remembrance Day ceremonies today. I never realized just how much work went into setting up such a small (25 minute) production! There was a technical run-through Thursday evening and two more dress rehearsal this morning before preforming the piece twice, once for grade 9 and 10, once for 11 and 12.
I must say, it was a great performance. Everything worked wonderfully and the dance and drama pieces were well chosen and extremely well performed. Even my script, written by myself at midnight last night, went off great. The only thing that upset me was the overall tone of the presentation. Much like the 'white-poppy movement', the tone was decidedly anti-war. While there is certainly a place for the pacifist movement, Remembrance Day is not one of those times. Remembrance Day is a day to remember and commemorate the sacrifices that millions of young men and women have made to ensure our peace and security today. The day must, in my opinion, be focused on these people and their experiences, their heroism and their selfless acts of valour. When their country called they replied and their lives have never been the same. Questions about whether or not they should of been there, or if their actions were immoral, can be left to another day.
Thank you to every Canadian Veteran, your sacrifice is not forgotten.
Lest we Forget