Summer Institute (Summer Conference)

"It takes courage to be reflective and change how we do things!"-- Cindy Giffen

            The Summer Institute encouraged us to look at our courses from a very different perspective.  Dr. Micheal Corbett's words were that of encouragement.  He reminded us that a lot of the negative thoughts that teachers have are merely a reflection of the fact that we have been given so many changes from the government and are constantly told that our education system is broken.  When in fact Nova Scotia who has a small population, is only 9% below the average for Canada.




             Dr. Greg MacKinnon told a story about a girl who wanted to show him a computer game and she let him try it, but she kept taking it back again to show him how.  She kept telling him that he was pushing all the wrong buttons.  Finally, she took her game back and said,...

 "So, you don't have a computer, do you?"

             I thought that this just goes to show that it is easy to make assumptions about people.  I think that we need to keep in mind that;

"Just because someone does something differently, it does not mean that they are doing it wrong."

        This connects both to our recent work on presuming competence, and also to what Cindy Giffen was saying about collaboration.  We want and need to confidently and decisively present our points in Team meetings, but we have to also remember that there are many perspectives and ways of achieving our goals.

              Johanne Syms spoke about the need to support all students.  She reminded us of the power that we have in affecting these children.  She talked about LGBTQ.  There is a high rate of suicide among our youths who are marginalized by dominant gender roles that have been pushed on them. It is our responsibility to use our collaborative skills to stand up for these students.