Summer Conference -

Summer conference is always a day of opportunity to continue learn and enhance ones teaching practice by taking the opportunity to listen to different perspectives of respected colleagues, professors and researchers.  I am always intrigued by this day as it is my second summer at Acadia and this year had its own spin on the content that was presented.

The sessions that I attended each held pieces that I could add to my teaching and leadership practice moving forward.  The first of these sessions was presented Dr. Michael Corbett, a well respected Acadia teaching alumni who is now in Tasmania.  His discussion focused on the improvisation of globalization and its impact on the rural countryside.  I find that this topic was very useful for me in that it highlighted some salient points of where I teach as well.  I teach in a rural high school on the outskirts of a bustling industrial city in Alberta.  My town serves a community of both the agriculture and oil and gas industries.  Although, we have much more economic prosperity than our cousins here in Nova Scotia, Albertans are still faced with same challenges with policy, as an example.  Dr. Corbett discussed the need to piece together a "third space" that was intersubjective, mutable, emergent and political in nature.  This statement is very prudent because as a school leader, the flexibility to deal with emergent situations is critical to the success of a school and how it serves its community.

I also found that Dr. Corbett's discussion about interpretive capacity and its inter-connectedness with neo-liberalism to be very fascinating as he discussed the need to break the mold and to "trust the learner to make something valuable."  This statement resonated with me in that one must be mindful of the community dynamics they serve and to make decisions that best serve the needs of the students.

The next session was led by Joanne Syms on "Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity in Schools".  The takeaways that I pulled from this session revolved around the concepts of gender expression where policing this expression has become an integral piece of department of educations across the country.  Alberta has something very similar to the Guidelines for supporting transgender and gender non conforming students and these types of documents are meant to build awareness and educate those who are resistant to the obvious changes within our society.  I found it very interesting about the following stats in that schools in Nova Scotia are more forward thinking than they give themselves credit for:

GSAs - stats...grade 7-12...164 schools in NS...104 have GSAs.  54/84 high schools have GSAs

I found these numbers although not perfect to be very enlightening.  The last piece I took from this discussion was the aboriginal piece of a two-spirited perspective when it came to transgendered students.  In my school, we have a significant lesbian population of first nations students and it is an accepted cultural norm of which I feel very fortunate about.  The acceptance that I see on a daily basis regarding gender identity is very refreshing, given my school is in a very rural Northwestern Alberta setting.

The last session dealt with a panel of individuals representing three separate intergovernmental agencies.  The topic of discussion was the importance of highlighting the work of these agencies to best meet the needs of the students, parents and communities we serve.  Areas of interest from this presentation was a discussion of restorative approaches in education whereby school boards, mental health and site based leaders can come together to serve our communities better.  Phrases such as collaboration, horizontal changes, navigating crisis to effectively support students were the three nuggets that I found to be the most salient points of this last session.

The day was filled with conversations and pieces that can be built into any school board and I found myself envisioning the steps that these organizations are taking and what my own equivalent organizations in Alberta are doing.  I feel that Alberta utilizes much of what Nova Scotia's DOE is embarking on now and its nice to hear different perspectives of other educational officers.

A great day of learning and reflection for me today.