While students enjoyed a mid-week day off school after Halloween, Timmins teachers were in the classroom for a Professional Activity Day.
Dr. Jean Clinton, an education advisor to the Premier of Ontario, is an advocate for children’s issues and engaged an auditorium of teachers from the District School Board Ontario North East for a morning session. Teachers at schools outside of the city were able to connect via livestream.
In a two-hour presentation, Clinton talked about how building relationships and connecting with students affects learning.
“Spend time at the beginning of the year to get to know what they’re interested in, who they are as people, find out what their interests are and what engages them. And then work that into the teaching and learning that you do,” she explained.
With Ontario doing a refresh on the curriculum, the conversation about learning is changing.
“We’ve focused a lot recently on the curriculum and thinking what it is that children have to learn and now we’re thinking lots more about how do children learn,” she said.
While she doesn't have the answer for what the ideal system looks like in Ontario, she said it needs to be a system that supports the teachers and leadership.
"I think that’s huge, you have to work with the leadership first and then at the classroom level it will mean that the teacher is individually knowing each child, that the child contributing also to their own learning right from the start,” she said.
This focus, she said, is something that educators have known for a long time.
For Pinecrest Elementary School teacher Ryan Braden, the session is affirmation that the school is heading in the right direction.
Braden has seen examples of students on edge because of their home life.
“Until that gets rectified and they feel that they can exhale at our school then we’re not going to be able to get through to them,” he said.
While the Clinton’s talk resonates with Braden, it does take an adjustment.
“You’re taught to memorize the curriculum because that’s what you form all of your lessons from, but really you should be memorizing the traits individually of your students so that you can adapt the curriculum so that they’re going to be able to engage in the curriculum. If you don’t do that, the curriculum is just words that they won’t understand,” he said.
