BCTELA

Creating Thoughtful Writers

Rick Chambers
Jill McClay
Susan Montabello
Starleigh Grass

Join these four thoughtful educators and spend a day considering the ways our students write themselves into their world. Some of the approaches considered will be:

Rick Chambers
Literacy 2.0: Are we teaching it or learning it?
Literacy is a set of skills that reflects the needs of the time. This interactive presentation explores students' writing in the era of Web 2.0 and Literacy 2.0.

We would like to thank Pearson Canada for sponsoring Rick's visit to our conference this year.

Jill McClay
Composition Mashup: What's a good teacher to do with fan fiction, email novels, and other forms of contemporary storytelling?
New forms of storytelling are springing up: fan fiction, email novels, and wiki novels are just a few ways that people create fiction online. In this session, Jill will highlight several newer storytelling practices and suggest ways of bringing them into classroom writing.

Susan Montabello
Building a community of writers
The teachers, teacher-librarian and principal of Maywood Community School have collaborated together to develop and implement a school-wide structure for Writers' Workshop. The inclusive structure of Writers' Workshop supports the diverse learning needs of students from Kindergarten to Grade 7 by creating opportunities for each learner to experience success.

Starleigh Grass
Filling the page through the heart - Using emotion to write creatively and respond to literature.
Participants will learn a number of activities and strategies to tap into students' attitudes towards community, emotions, and adolescent angst in order to write creative works, academic works, and literary responses. Participants will experience a medicine wheel response sheet after reading poetry, and may write their own poem using the medicine wheel sheet.

Biographical Information

Rick Chambers has been:
High school English department chair for 26 years in Ontario schools
Program officer and Manager, Ontario College of Teachers
Coordinator, Teacher Continuing Education, OISE/University of Toronto
Chair of Conference on English Leadership, NCTE
Canadian consultant, Stepping Out literacy courses, Pearson Education Canada

Jill McClay teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in language and literacy education at the U. of Alberta. She researches writing and the teaching of writing, with particular focus on how young people engage with newer ways of writing.

Susan Montabello is well known in BC as a passionate teacher and administrator who celebrates and honours the interests, passions and diversity of her students. At the heart of her work is an attention to ways that community help us to learn and thrive. Susan is co-presenting with fellow Maywood Community School colleagues.

Starleigh Grass is the Aboriginal Resource Teacher for Gold Trail School District in British Columbia. She enjoys research on Indigenous education, initiatives for decolonizing the education system, and bad puns. If you have any of the above, please share generously.