ATA workshops offer another avenue for professional learning

Teachers’ convention season is nearly here, but the ATA offers professional development (PD) opportunities throughout the year and in various forms. ATA workshops give teachers a chance to delve into a particular topic. Check out what’s new below.

• ATA workshop addresses crisis in boys’ education
• Males account for 75 percent of suicides in Canada.
• Boys are more likely than girls to drop out of high school.

Fewer boys are pursuing post-secondary education.
These statistics indicate a deep issue with boys’ education, which is the focus of a new workshop offered by the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA).

Rethinking “Boys will be Boys” — Gender Bias and Boys’ Education is the creation of Teresa Fowler, an assistant professor at Concordia University in Edmonton. Fowler has gained national prominence through her work on gender bias with Hockey Canada and the National Hockey League. The new ATA workshop is an adaptation of a presentation Fowler has delivered to standing-room-only crowds at teachers’ conventions in recent years.

“The problem, especially with boys as they get older, is they do things like get really tall and their voices change, and so we tend to adultify young boys and think that they don’t need help,” Fowler says. “The danger in that is ... it leaves them alone and it leaves them to find their own connections.”

In the absence of healthy examples of masculinity that meet their complex emotional needs, boys tend to gravitate toward social media, where influential figures like Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate portray narrow, unhealthy images of masculinity that are rooted in unbridled power, outward displays of material success and disrespect for women — in short, a “boys-will-be-boys” mentality that downplays poor behaviour. In contrast, research shows that boys are really craving permission to express a full range of emotions, Fowler says.

“Boys are just really kind of getting glossed over with respect to some of the social–emotional learning that they would really benefit from,” Fowler says.

When boys are not heard, like all children, they will find other ways to express themselves, Fowler says. With boys, the data shows that this expression tends to come in the form of bullying and violence, since the “boys-will-be-boys” mindset says that is acceptable. In school, this can lead to boys being disciplined for their behaviour rather than receiving the social-emotional support they need to address their problems.

“We’re not really connecting the dots,” Fowler says. “That leaves boys to swim these waters by themselves.”

In the workshop, participants examine the complexities of masculinity; the impacts of gender bias on boys’ mental health, learning experiences and career pathways; and strategies for fostering inclusive classrooms.

“There are different ways to be a boy, and there shouldn’t be one specific sort of mold that we fit our boys into,” Fowler says. “I think our role as educators is to really ensure we give all students the opportunity to just become who they want to be without a script.”

Workshop helps teachers meet the needs of new English speakers

As new English speakers continue to flock to Alberta, a new ATA workshop is available to help teachers meet the needs of diverse learners in their classrooms.

Entitled UDL Meets EAL: Empowerment for All Learners, this workshop aims to help teachers develop strategies for weaving language instruction into any and all content instruction. The workshop takes the principles of Universal Design Learning (UDL) and applies it to the needs of English as an additional language learners (EAL), says workshop creator Jacqueline Werstiuk, an EAL consultant with Edmonton Catholic Schools.

“Any teacher can take their class profile and the UDL guidelines and start to build in ways to address barriers to learning,” Werstiuk says.

UDL is a framework developed by the Center for Applied Special Technology, a U.S.-based non-profit education research and development organization. Embraced by many school jurisdictions, the UDL framework is based on the principle of designing lessons to include multiple means of engagement, representation, action and expression.

In this workshop, participants will explore how to use UDL approaches to support students who are new to English, consider learner variability and potential barriers to student learning and examine UDL strategies that can help address barriers and enhance student learning. 

The workshop is designed to be relevant to teachers at all grade levels, Werstiuk says.

“I would hope that educators would begin to weave language development throughout any and all content instruction to ensure that all students have the opportunity to access the curriculum with rigour and experience success in both content and language progression.” ❚