PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT SESSIONS
ASPIRATIONAL AFRICENTRIC EDUCATION
ETHICS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN SCHOOLS
CREATIVE WRITING
LEADERSHIP, PUBLIC SPEAKING, and more
ASPIRATIONAL AFRICENTRIC EDUCATION
INTRODUCTION TO ASPIRATIONAL AFRICENTRIC EDUCATION
Across Alberta, more and more students of African descent (hailing from Somali, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Jamaica, Trinidad, other Canadian provinces, and elsewhere) are in our classrooms. In Edmonton Public Schools, they’re 11 percent of all students. And, unfortunately, extensive research demonstrates they face a three-pronged crisis of under-achievement, down-streaming, and dropping out.
But what if schools had a simple approach that had the power to improve the lives not only of African students, but to give educational, career, and business opportunities that are—literally—worth billions of dollars, and which massively contribute to quality of life and community for all? The standard approach of “anti-racism” isn’t designed to do any of that. But aspirational Africentric education is.
Experience an innovative, data-drive discussion and strategy to increase belonging and boost achievement for students of all backgrounds. Emerge energized and empowered with practical tools you can use your very next class!
ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS and CREATIVE WRITING
HOW ASPIRATIONAL ENGLISH TEACHING CAN CHANGE LIVES:
How and Why Teaching English Africentrically Makes Better Human Beings, Classrooms, and Economies
Fiction allows readers—especially young readers—to dream of the places they wish to go, the experiences they wish to have, the deeds they wish to accomplish, and the people they wish to become. But in the name of “diversity,” some publishers push fiction about African-descent characters who go nowhere, experience nothing but pain, do nothing, and wish for mere survival.
But what if we all could do better? What if we could teach exciting, thrilling short stories, novels, and films about aspirational African-descent characters chasing dreams, transforming themselves, changing worlds, and triumphing? Imagine the impact on students who—perhaps for the first time—experience literature in school that expands their dreams to aim at greatness?
Research proves that:
1. Students of all backgrounds learn more--and better--when they have contextual variety
2. Reading fiction leads to measurable increases in empathy, and
3. The failure to act on Africentric knowledge costs the North American economy literally tens of billions of dollars annually--meaning that gaining Africentric knowledge will lead to major economic growth.
Discover the life-changing power of aspirational Africentric English teaching with practical strategies and resources you can implement the day you’re back at school!
HOW TO TEACH ESSAY WRITING TO STOP CHAT GPT FROM DESTROYING THE WORLD
Why on earth would we let ChatGPT and other large language models steal our students’ opportunities for growing as logical, fact-based, innovative thinkers?
How can we teach students to edit “work” that ChatGPT generates if they don’t even know how to write yet? How can you choreograph dancing without knowing how to dance? How can you be a head chef without knowing how to cook? How can “experts” teach teachers to teach if they’ve never taught?
Join an engaging session on how to pivot to coaching writing, bypassing digital plagiarism altogether and helping students grow their minds and their skills to achieve their best! Learn the approach you can use the very next day you’re in class!
THE HERO'S JOURNEY IS JUST A MYTH:
WHAT JOSEPH CAMPBELL GOT WRONG,
AND HOW YOU CAN GET IT RIGHT
Jospeh Campbell’s Hero’s Journey is such a provocative and fascinating model of mythology that English teachers across North America been using it for decades. It’s so enticing that Hollywood screenwriters have been studying it for nearly 50 years (since Star Wars) to build blockbusters, as MCU has done spectacularly.
But what if it’s wrong?
Not completely wrong, of course--but containing significant shortcomings and oversights that fail female characters and readers, while overstating the universality of key concepts and plot points?
Explore the Hero’s Journey, analyze its errors, and discover how to help students keep the best, throw out the rest, and innovate upon it with clearer understndings of literature and society.
RICHARD WRIGHT, THE AFRICAN-AFRICAN MASTER OF HAIKU:
Time to Reverse a Century of Teaching Haiku Wrong--by Returning to What's "Wright"
Have we all been teaching haiku wrong?
How can it get simpler than three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables each?
What if the traditional Japanese approach to haiku contains two major components that most North Americans have been missing all along—elements that transform the sadly simplistic into the simply spectacular?
Join this awesome workshop to witness a combination of stunning Japanese “death poems” and the work of brilliant novelist and pioneering African-American novelist, essayist, and haiku writer Richard Wright to write several of your very own haiku, and another form called “Raitaiku.” Then we’ll combine both with free imagery to make outstanding English and Art projects!
Experience the thrill of crafting perfectly poignant poetry to help your students engage with equal enthusiasm!
TWELVE WAYS YOU'RE SABOTAGING YOUR WRITING PROGRESS...
AND HOW TO FLIP THAT SCRIPT
Whether you teach ELA, Social Studies, Science, Art, or anything else, have you always been yearning to write a novel, or maybe even publish just one short story? So why aren’t you?
Trust me--it’s not about brains. If you have the ability to teach dozens or even hundreds of kids per year, create and mark their assignments, and handle their individual and group dynamics, you not only have proven you’re smart, but you’ve also got nearly unlimited material! All those personalities, minds, dreams, and drama are perfect for characterisation and plotting.
So why aren’t you writing that book?
Join an award-winning novelist and journalist, who’s taught creative writing across North America, and was writer in residence at the University of Alberta, to learn the twelve ways you’re short-circuiting your own writing … and how to overcome each one so you can write and publish your work like a pro! And because he taught junior high and high school English for a decade, you can use all his strategies with your own students!
SOCIAL STUDIES
CULTURAL APPRECIATION vs. CULTURAL APPROPRIATION
How to Slow and Solve Conflict by Adding Complexity and Nuance
MOORISH CIVILISATION
How African Muslims Led Europe's Most Advanced Civilisation for More than 700 Years and Created the Renaissance
ORUNMILA and SOCRATES
The Stunning Personal and Intellectual Parallels between an Ancient Nigerian and an Ancient Greek Philosopher
ZERA YACOB
The Ethiopian Philosopher from 400 Years Ago More Progressive than the Entire European Enlightenment
TEACHING PRACTICE
EARLY CAREER MADNESS: TEN WAYS TO MAKE THINGS EASIER, STARTING MONDAY
No matter how excellent your Education professors were, there’s no way they could get you ready for all the unending demands of being a teacher. Every teacher who does survive (!) the first few years of the job has to be lucky: the right school, the right colleagues, the right resources, and the right guidance.
But what if you aren’t lucky enough to be lucky?
What if you could really use some help right now so the rest of this year, and all of next year (and the years after that) feel 25%, 50% or even 100% better?
Join a ten-year veteran teacher and Project Saqqara educational consultant for a lively interactive session to learn (and even innovate upon) ten strategies for making your job easier so you can help your students succeed and become the teacher you want to be without working 50 hours per day!
INNOVATION LAB: (RE)DISCOVERING THE PATH TO BEST TEACHER YOU CAN BE
Join a dynamic session for reinvigorating your teaching practice as an individual, and as one colleague among many, in which you will answer the following questions, and creating action plans from your key ideas:
1. For teachers with five or more years of experience, what content, and what effective teaching strategies or techniques, that you loved early in your career, have you abandoned? Why did you let them go?
2. For new teachers, in what ways have you modified your early teaching approaches? What have you abandoned, modified, and added--and why?
3. If you could work with other teachers outside your department to cross-pollinate core and option subjects, for what topics would you do that? In what ways?
4. What are systematic ways (not accidental, but scheduled) that older teachers can share their best practices with younger teachers, and younger teachers can share their best practices with older teachers.
