Author: Colleen Elep

Having a trauma-informed approach can be vital in Ontario’s diverse schools. Many students, particularly newcomer students, arrive in schools having experienced traumatic events: first-hand experience with armed conflict, family separation, or losing one’s home – just to name a few examples. These students may also be in the early steps of learning English, which adds to the challenge of understanding their unique needs.

Newcomer students that have experienced trauma may show up in school in a variety of ways. For example, they may be dysregulated, have hard time staying focused in their learning, be sensitive to different stimuli, or may not display any indication that they are traumatized at all. There is no single way a child will respond to trauma, but research indicates that prolonged exposure to trauma has a significant impact on the development of the brain.

I recall having multiple students that experienced the death of parents as a direct result of war in their home countries. One student was eager to engage with his peers and was open to communicating about his life experiences right away. Another student was distant and reluctant to interact with her teachers and classmates, and needed frequent breaks from her busy classroom.

Because the impact of trauma in children shows up in so many forms, it is important for educators to understand how to support learners, especially when they are emergent English speakers. These students typically a difficult time communicating their needs, emotions, and are likely also experiencing the stress that comes with learning in a new language and school environment. Adding to their unique student portrait may also be significant learning literacy and numeracy gaps from having missed years of formal schooling.

As an educator, it is not uncommon to feel underprepared and under-resourced when welcoming newcomer MLLs (multilingual language learners) that have experienced trauma into school. It’s important to know how to support these unique learners effectively, who to turn to for support, and what resources will be the most useful and practical in the contexts we work in.

In the first part of this blog, we looked at how Nara, an Ontario educator, used the “Discover – Connect – Respond” strategy to calm a newcomer MLL who was on the verge of having a bad day. Now, let’s take a look at some practical, trauma-informed approaches that can be leveraged as a starting point for helping students in this unique group.

Build a Detailed Student Portrait

Gathering information about the learner’s family background, prior experiences, and journey is an essential starting point for taking a trauma-informed approach. Take note that much of this information is highly personal and confidential, so discretion is key.

Often the first place to find out about the background of a student is through family interviews. Some boards may have a process in place to welcome newcomer students where an interpreter and settlement worker is available at the time of registration, and guardians may share information about their child’s experiences, including those that are traumatic.

When a newcomer initial assessment and orientation report is not available, sensitive information might surface through conversations with the student or family interviews. If you discover information about a student’s previous trauma through such interactions, it is important to share that information with an administrator and support team so it can be documented appropriately in your board’s student information system or the Ontario School Record (OSR).

One useful tool for gathering information is the “7 Factors Impacting Student Learning” table. Use it as a guideline for building a student portrait, or adapt it to suit your own workflow.

Create Safe and Supportive Learning Environments

There are so many ways educators can take a trauma-informed approach to managing the classroom that are good for all learners. For example, establishing predictable routines in the classroom not only makes the learning environment feel stable and organized – it helps students to feel safe and secure. Having timetables posted, routines for entry and exit times, designated areas where supplies and notebooks are kept, and clear expectations for behaviour that are consistently maintained will help students to feel supported.

When possible, create spaces in the classroom or the school where students can calm down, get quiet time, or have an alternative space to simply be in. Teamwork in the school can be critical for making this kind of space available for students and also developing guidelines for how it might be administered.

Provide Opportunities for Students to Communicate their Emotions

Newcomer students who are just learning English may need scaffolds to communicate what they are feeling and what their needs are when they are feeling dysregulated. As educators, we can facilitate communication by making translation devices accessible, teaching social emotional vocabulary, and providing aids that students can easily use to show how they are feeling.

One day I had the privilege to spend the morning in a colleague’s classroom (let’s call her “Nara”, for anonymity), where her main focus is supporting students in English Literacy Development (ELD) programs. Students in this program have missed 2+ years of learning and may have significant gaps in numeracy and literacy. Because those years of school may be a result of coming from a country where there is political conflict, social unrest, or environmental disasters, these students may have experienced significant trauma.

Nara’s support classroom is cozy and neat, with literacy resources organized carefully on the shelves. As students walk into the room to receive support, they are full of excitement and smiles. It is clear she has built a strong sense of community in her learning space.

One student walks in and sits down quietly. Nara senses his mood and gives him some space to adjust to his surroundings. As the students introduce themselves to me, the visitor in the room, my colleague uses Google translate to let the student know he does not have to participate in the introduction. He still introduces himself to me, and it’s wonderful to hear him use the English he is learning.

At one point during the lesson, the student gets up and moves toward chart the teacher has on the board. The chart is laminated and has “Check-In” written at the top, and below it, “I’m Great”, “I’m Meh”, “I’m Struggling”, “I’m having a tough time and wouldn’t mind a check in”, and “I’m Not Doing Great”. There are hand-drawn emojis that add meaning to each phrase.

Beside the chart are magnets are student name tags and students can place their name tag to show how they are feeling. The student places his name beside “I’m Meh”. The bell rings and the other students exit the room. The teacher brings out the translator and starts “checking in” with the student.

I observe Nara ask some simple questions: did something happen today? Are you feeling well? Do you feel ready to go to your class? Do you want some time alone here?

As the translated conversation unfolds, it becomes clear that he was experiencing difficulty focusing and self-regulating that day. Though he had only been in the school for a short while, his complex family background was known to staff thanks to a detailed report from the board’s Welcome Centre and ongoing conversations with the family. The student had an incredibly traumatic and eventful journey to Canada, and was living with relatives while his mother was in the hospital. School staff and administrators understood that he expressed his emotions through outbursts and aggressive behaviour.

Working with students that come from complex, traumatic backgrounds is a major challenge for educators. Elise White Diaz, writer of Discover, Connect, Respond, provides a useful framework for educators working with students that, as she describes, “come from a hard place”. Nara, who expertly brought the student from a place of distress to a calmer mood uses some of Diaz’s strategies to create a trauma-informed practice that supports students in the ELD classroom. As the book’s title suggests, discovering is the first step: having an emotions chart or a “check in” system where emergent speakers of English can self-advocate is one way to do this. It can be frustrating for students to not be able to communicate their emotions as clearly as they would in their home language, so having a simple chart like hers can help educators to discover exactly what is going on when a student is having a bad day.

The next step, connect, is intuitive and easily facilitated with a translation tool on hand. With a few easy clicks, you can provide students with the opportunity to communicate without a language barrier. If the student is not literate in their home language, use the voice tool to translate or choose an app that has voice-to-voice translation, like Microsoft Translate.

And finally – respond. In this case, the student ended up wanting to return to class as lunch was happening soon. Knowing that the student was having a tough day, the teacher called the classroom teacher and administrator to let them know what had transpired so they could be prepared for a potentially sensitive situation.

Over the last 5 years, I’ve had the opportunity to work as a centrally assigned educator in my board. And while the job has certainly had its share of ups, downs, stressors, and successes, one thing I know I will walk away with is the ability to plan a professional learning session for staff.

If you are in the position of planning a staff meeting, lunch and learn, or professional learning activity for your school – and are feeling a bit nervous or unsure about it – keep in mind that it is completely normal. After all, you are presenting to your peers, who can sometimes feel like the most challenging audience to “teach” no matter how long you have been teaching in the classroom. These are the same people you probably not only work with, but have lunch with and perhaps even socialize with.

Here are some tips for getting your first professional learning presentation off the ground.

1. Focus on What Matters to Educators

While you may not always get to choose what topic you will present on, you should try to tailor the content you select to what matters to staff. Send out a survey, talk to your colleagues to find out what challenges they have in their classrooms, or connect with your administrator to see what they are noticing. What you want to avoid is presenting information that does not speak to their work, as they will disengage quickly from your session.

2. Avoid Reading off Text-Heavy Slides

This can be tough, but a presentation is always more engaging when you are speaking and connecting more with the audience than reading off a slide deck. A slide deck is there to provide a visual element that supports the information you are sharing, to highlight key ideas, and add a multi-modal dimension. When slides are overly text-heavy, the information becomes to overwhelming.

3. Drive Engagement through Interaction, when Possible

There are presentations where you may have to simply “stand and deliver”. However, building in points of interaction, however brief, can make the learning more engaging and memorable to your audience. Just as with kids, adults also benefit from being able to interact and engage with their learning in pairs or groups. If time does not permit for this level of interaction, do not hesitate to provide points of provocation or reflection that give learners an opportunity to “take in” and absorb what you are sharing.

4. Give “Real Life” Examples

When we are providing professional learning, we are often helping our colleagues to enhance their workflow or improve their teaching. Sharing authentic examples of student work or practical application goes a long way in getting your messaging across, since teachers can start to imagine how whatever you are sharing will look like in their classrooms.

5. Remember that you Don’t Need to Know Everything

It can be easy to feel stressed about not “knowing everything” about what you are presenting. Remember that you don’t need to know it all (in fact you will probably never know it all). If you get questions you can’t answer with certainty, you can always say you don’t have the answer. Someone else in the room may have the answer or a perspective, or you can always find out and share the information later.

6. Do a Run-Through of Your Presentation

If possible, do a practice run of your presentation before it actually happens. You will probably find that there are pieces that you need to practice parsing, or information you want to add on after you go through it. Even just one practice run can do wonders for your confidence prior to presenting, and you will feel less compelled to read off your slides and more ready to add emphasis and expression to your speaking.

Over the winter holiday break I had the opportunity to visit the NASA Space Center in Houston and naturally, I looked up the user reviews to see if it was really worth the trip. One review gave the centre a single star, largely arguing that most of the information could be found on the internet or in a Youtube video.

The review made me pause and wonder: why go and learn anything anywhere then, when you could just “Google it” or turn to artificial intelligence? What is the point of having an “in person” experience when you can learn from the privacy and comfort of your own home?

In the end, we did go to the Space Center and while there was certainly information that could easily be found online, there were experiences that were absolutely meant to be had in person. Walking beside impossibly huge rockets and engines made me realize the level of innovation and ambition it took to engage in space travel; touching one of the eight pieces of moon rock on display in the world was awe-inducing. In one exhibit, a volunteer was explaining how rockets work. A large crowd had formed around the speaker, who grew increasingly animated as he talked, using a model and a globe to support his explanation. Kids and adults listened with rapt attention, and though I had read much of what he explained in the exhibit, I think I learned so much more from listening to the speaker’s storytelling.

It occurred to me in that moment how special it was to learn in a human-centred way. School provides children (really people of all ages) with those critical moments of interaction and lived experience where curriculum content is not just received, but put into context through discussions, realia, and materials across the senses. And while it would be impossible to make every day of teaching a trip to the museum, it doesn’t take a whole lot of creativity and planning to make learning more real and visceral.

It’s hard to ignore the proliferation of artificial intelligence and digital technology in today’s world, and school is no exception. As technology compels us to re-think the way we teach and prepare students for an unpredictable world and economy, it is more important to remember that teaching is a human endeavour. Educators and schools bring so much more to learning than the delivery of curriculum content: they bring information and knowledge to life, and create spaces where authentic relationships and trust are built. one. When teachers build connections with students, they create conditions for risk-taking, curiosity, and persistence. Students are more willing to ask questions, attempt challenging tasks, and recover from mistakes when they trust that their teacher is invested in their success.

There has never been a more important time to recognize the human element of education – it is what we bring to the table as teachers in schools.

I really struggle to imagine a world in which knowledge and information is reduced to a Chat GPT prompt, or where teaching is rooted in artificial intelligence. It is painful, for me, to watch entire AI-driven dialogues occur on professional learning discussion boards, and to hear from other educators the extent to which students use AI to write their work. Losing sight of the power and impact of individual voices, complete with spelling errors, mistakes, and misconceptions, is something I hope we never devalue.

In an age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) platforms and large language models (LLMs) that generate clear and lengthy texts at the click of a button, it’s not difficult to see how the act of writing may be changed forever. For students, it is all too easy to turn to tools like Copilot or Chat GPT to create a research report, to analyze a poem, or to write a current events article assignment. Adults similarly turn to these tools to make their workflows easier, whether it is writing emails, presentations, or a report.

You may even be wondering if what you are reading right now is an authentic piece of writing, or generated by a prompt. To clarify, I wrote this article but also prompted an LLM to write an article about the topic – as I often do to support and accelerate the work I do as an educator and as a content creator.

To be transparent, the LLM gave me a ton of great ideas, summarized succinctly in seconds. It reminded me that AI has provided educators with “a huge opportunity: we can teach better writing and better research habits by showing students how to use AI as a thinking partner rather than a shortcut.” In fact, the prompt gave me so many good ideas it made me realize how little I really know about leveraging AI effectively in a literacy classroom. It made me realize that while I can’t truly write a fulsome article on using AI in the writing classroom, I can reflect on what human-generated texts really mean to me.

I have always considered myself to be a writer, and after reading so many AI generated texts I’ve really started to deeply appreciate the insights, mistakes, and voice that only us perfectly flawed humans can make when we write. And while I truly believe educators need to lean into AI (as my AI generated text encouraged me, “teach it” don’t “ban it”), I hope there is also a mindset shift toward valuing the very human action of writing as a function, an art, and process of learning and creativity that is unique and special.

Writing is hard work. It only gets easier when we write frequently, and become skilled at spontaneously applying verb tenses, drawing from text forms, and leveraging punctuation and sentence structure to add variety to a draft. It’s easy to see why many kids and adults dislike writing longer texts or being tasked to write a paragraph, and find AI tools so alluring.

As educators and teachers of language and literacy, I think we can play a unique role in helping students to become more aware of what makes human-generated texts so important as a source of enjoyment, a way to express creativity, and a valuable skill that helps us to become more effective communicators and readers. Through human-driven writing, we learn new information and how to use new words.

How can we teach students to use AI effectively in their writing? Here are a few tips that were generated by my Chat GPT prompt:

Create an “AI Use Policy” with students in plain language. Include:

• What AI is allowed for: brainstorming topic ideas, building question banks, outlining, planning research steps, language clarification, vocabulary support, examples of structures (e.g., thesis, counterclaim), and feedback on clarity.
• What is not allowed: submitting AI-generated drafts as one’s own, fabricating sources or quotes, bypassing assigned readings, using AI to misrepresent understanding.
• Non-negotiables: protect privacy (no personal data), verify facts, and always disclose when AI materially assisted the work (“AI Acknowledgment” note at the end).
• Equity check: ensure every student has access to board-approved tools for teacher and student use (in boards that have policies around the student use of AI) or school devices during structured time so policy doesn’t advantage only those with home access.
• Post norms as an anchor chart; revisit them before major tasks.

To be honest, these tips are actually much better than anything I probably could have created about using AI!

While we may be saying goodbye to “old” ways of communicating, I think its exciting to contemplate what the future of writing will look like with so many new tools at our students’ fingertips. It’s also important to remember that guidance does exist for us as we navigate this new and evolving realm: be sure to check the members section of the ETFO website for AI advice, in addition to your board’s own AI policies. And as educators, we should always try to remember that we have the privilege and responsibility of teaching students the value of human-centred writing.

“Burning out” is something I have become all too familiar with as an educator, parent, and person that tends to take on a lot of additional roles and responsibilities. It seems like there is always somewhere to be, an appointment to make, or thing to do. And while it can truly be a privilege to be in this position, it is hard to ignore the feeling of being exhausted and “finished” by the time winter break rolls around.

Recently I had an opportunity to attend an ETFO workshop on “Building Sustainability for Complex Lives”. During this workshop, we were encouraged to examine ourselves critically and think creatively on how we manage self-care. For me, the most important part of the learning was realizing my mind was too busy to truly slow down and not always think about the next thing I needed to get done.

In my experience, part of being an educator means always trying to get ahead: planning the next lesson, special event, or presentation, finding resources, marking, assessing, or getting an important piece of paperwork or report card comment in on time. There are endless tasks, and it becomes easy to “feel behind” or overwhelmed by the amount of things to do. Sometimes even the act of making time to relax, exercise, take a walk, or watch a movie or show can feel like another task, since there is inevitably something you want to get done before I practice “self care”.

It is no surprise when the “burnout” kicks in, and I start scrolling my phone endlessly for distraction (a way to feel busy but not necessarily productive), I start avoiding work, or start to panic over not having spent my time wisely. Everything starts to irritate me, and motivation to do anything goes out the window.

So what is the best way to get through burnout? How do we make life more sustainable?

There is no shortage of advice on the internet for how we can better practice self-care. Indeed, there is an entire industry and culture built on the need for wellness in today’s modern world. Here are a few practices that I find work well for me.

Remind Yourself You May Be Exactly Where You Should Be

In the never-ending quest to get ahead, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that you may have indeed gotten everything done that you really actually needs to get done. Reminding yourself that some items on the to-do list are better done the next day or week can do wonders for your outlook and free up some time to rest or turn away from work.

Cut Things Out of your Schedule

When life gets overwhelmingly hectic, it may be a sign that you need to take cut back or cut out unnecessary items. This can be hard, as sometimes the items you can reasonably cut out or pause on are things that you genuinely want to keep, like a book club or even a home improvement project. Remember that the pause is just temporary, and that you are simply re-prioritizing to make your life make sense again.

Become a Morning Person or a Night Person (but not both)

Historically, I have been a night person throughout much of my life. I absolutely love tuning into a good show for a few episodes or getting a few things done when the house is quieter. I’ve learned, however, that the very early morning is a great time for productivity or going to the gym without cutting into family time, plus I feel more focused when I arrive at work.

Whatever you choose, make sure you get all the sleep you need to be healthy!

Stop Everything and Walk

There is nothing like a good walk to distance yourself from your screens, your work, or to take a breather after the constant stimulation of teaching in a busy classroom. I always find that walking gives me a chance to think through different problems I need to solve or simply to clear my head. Best of all you can get some steps in and maybe even some vitamin D if it’s sunny!

Find your Wellness Indulgence

Health and wellness activities are abundant where I live (the Toronto area), but you can always do at home any activity that makes you feel both healthy and a little indulged at the same time. Perhaps it is a warm soak, a great massage device, or time in a special place outdoors. Whatever it is, carve out time to do that wellness activity that takes a little more investment of time and resources.

For me, my favourite is a trip to a sauna/cold plunge circuit. The heat and stillness, combined with the shock of cold water somehow always does the trick of making me feel relaxed physically despite however I am feeling mentally, and by the end of the session the world seems a lot more calmer.

Sustain Yourself in the New Year

As I look ahead to the new year, my resolution is clear: to prioritize self-sustainability and actively guard against burnout. Working in education can be deeply meaningful, but it is also demanding, emotionally intensive, and often relentless. Without purposeful self-care, even the most passionate educators can find themselves stretched too thin.

In part 1 of this article, I talked about the difficulties I had faced when it came to sharing information about ESL/ELD programming with families. In the community where I worked, ESL/ELD programming was often viewed from a deficit perspective by many caregivers and even some school staff. Widely held deficit perspectives about ELLs, combined with my own need to learn more about ESL/ELD programming, resulted in rather poor communication with MLL families.

In my current work as an instructional leader working in ESL/ELD programming, I talk to educators that experience similar issues regularly. How should teachers go about addressing ESL/ELD programming with families that may not be aware of what it is? How should educators re-start conversations about their child’s ESL/ELD programming with families when it has gone unaddressed for an extended period of time?

Recently I spoke to a middle school colleague about how she communicates with MLL families when they transition to grade 6 from the feeder elementary school. Her practice was to call all MLL families to welcome them in the early months of the school year, and share with them that their child would be receiving ESL or ELD support. In her experience, families were often happy to hear how their child would be supported in this way.

The teacher also shared with me that she also calls families when their child is no longer receiving program adaptations, or had completed STEP 6 of the ESL continua. In her experience, caregivers often responded positively; after all, becoming proficient in another language is something to celebrate.

Listening to these reflections on family communication and transparency made me think of how empowered we are as educators to shift thinking in our schools and communities.

Let’s take a look at some ways educators can build transparency and communication with families about ESL/ELD programming, while also re-casting the work we do as MLL educators through an assets-based perspective.

Make Information about ESL/ELD programming Readily Available to Families

In an age of endless information, there is no reason families should have difficulty accessing information about ESL/ELD programming. Leave an easy-to-read brochure that explains what ESL/ELD programming looks like in your school in the main office so families can build their understanding and know who to contact should they have any questions.

Make ESL/ELD Programming part of Regular Family Communication

When you make welcome calls or share updates to families of MLLs, take the time to reference the student’s growth in language and literacy. It’s a great opportunity to share what you are doing to support their growth as multilingual learners, and keep the conversation going about academic language development.

Leverage Curriculum Night, Open House, and other school Community Events to Raise Awareness about ESL/ELD Programs

The tools, terminology and resources we reference as educators, like the STEP Continua, accommodations, and modifications, may be unfamiliar to families. Have a short presentation ready that you can use (or share with staff) to explain to families what these terms and tools are, and how educators use them to enhance and adjust programming for newcomer students. If possible, invite a settlement worker or community member that speaks the same language(s) as the communities in your school in to help interpret whenever necessary.

Sharing information with families about ESL/ELD programming should never feel like a hard or difficult conversation. With the right combination of direct communication and use of digital information, you will find that it will get increasingly easier to make programming for MLLs a regular part of your communication with families.

Communication and collaboration with families is a core element in any educator’s pedagogical practice. When teachers share information with families about their child’s successes, and challenges in school, while also being transparent about our programming and pedagogical practices, we build trust with the community and create opportunities for family engagement.

When I started supporting Multilingual Language Learners (MLLs) years ago as a grade 7 teacher, transparency always seemed a challenging thing to navigate. Why?

In my own work context, there seemed to be an implicit assumption among educators and families that being an English learner was a stigma – a gap that needed to be closed, a deficit that needed to be corrected. As a middle school teacher, I worried that families would be unaware that their child was an ELL, or that they would be surprised that their child was still identified as one. I feared that talking about ESL programming would make families upset, so when I did bring it up, I tried to minimize its importance as much as possible

Secondly, I wasn’t even sure how to talk about ESL/ELD programming with families. Most of the support I was providing was happening “in the moment”: using a translation tool, changing an assignment or rubric, or providing alternative activities. I didn’t really understand what tier 1 support should look like for ELLs in my classroom, or if what I was doing “counted” as programming for ELLs. What could I possibly share with a parent or guardian without sounding inexperienced or unprofessional?

A third factor contributing to my discomfort about talking about ESL/ELD programming with families was that I didn’t feel equipped to talk about how the programming actually worked, especially to guardians and caregivers that were likely unfamiliar with the Canadian education system and perhaps even learning English themselves. How do I explain STEP? Modifications and accommodations? Interpersonal vs. Academic language? Many of these terms were new to me at the time, and I feared explaining something incorrectly and getting called out for it later.

As a much more experienced educator, I have realized how important it is to be clear and transparent with families about ESL/ELD programming, and what my own responsibility is as an educator to learn how to speak about the topic. When we don’t share information about the programming an MLL is receiving, or give updates on a regular basis, we perpetuate the  “stigma” that is often associated with being an English learner and the erroneous idea that programming for MLLs limits opportunities for students, when in fact it does just the opposite. When we avoid taking the time to share the richness of the programming we provide, we also miss an opportunity to acknowledge the work we do as educators to support students. When we see ESL/ELD programming from a deficit lens, we miss an opportunity to see language learning for what it should be – a challenge and journey that is both rewarding and joyful.

So what can we do to ensure that MLL families understand the ESL/ELD programming their child is receiving in schools? In the next part of this article, we will discuss some strategies and practices we can easily implement to build communication and transparency with MLL families.

Taking an additional qualification is something I have done many times both online and in person. I remember being a new teacher trying to take the ones that would help me land a new role in the school, like ESL/ELD or special education support. Juggling the demands of a course with work is no joke: between the assignments, readings, and discussion posts, AQs can really take up a good chunk of your evenings and weekends.

It had always been a personal goal for me to teach an AQ, though I wasn’t quite sure how to get started or even if I was ready. Serendipitously, my board put out a hiring posting for an AQ teacher pool. When the opportunity came up, I agreed immediately, especially since the course was in an area I feel particularly knowledgeable and passionate about – Teaching English Language Learners.

The experience of teaching an AQ for the first time was definitely one I will never forget. As someone who has primarily taught classes of children, it was a big shift to teach adults who also happened to be my colleagues. In many ways, I felt like I was a new teacher again, with all the anxieties stress that come with trying to plan an engaging lesson, getting all the assessments done in time, and doing my best to seem like I knew what I was doing.

So what is it like to teach an AQ for the first time? Here are a few takeaways I left with.

Teaching an AQ is a lot of Hard Work

When I started, I made the foolish assumption that the work would mainly involve teaching a curriculum that was already set up. But we soon discovered that we needed to adapt, change, and tweak the content to meet the needs of the class, and that some elements of the course were not working as planned. For example, the discussion boards that were set up could be confusing and redundant after in person sessions; the slide decks needed to be re-done to align with the alternating online/in-person format we were using.

Needless to say, it took hours of planning each week, and hours after class to assess and respond to student posts.

It is Daunting to Be Instructing a Course for your Peers

When you teach kids, there are clear and distinct differences between you and your students: being an adult, having a university degree, and being in a position of responsibility with children. Being a course instructor for your peers – fellow educators with a broad range of lived experiences and vast professional knowledge – is a completely different story!

Teaching an AQ is a great reminder that as educators, we facilitate learning and inquiry for students. Once I leaned into my own vulnerabilities as an instructor – embracing the idea that we could all learn a lot from each other – the course really became a joyful experience where everyone could share their strengths and areas of needs as educators.

Community Matters in the Classroom

Throughout the course, one thing we did intentionally from the beginning was build a sense of community with the group. Connecting over food, icebreakers, and discussions can go a long way, and as we all got to know each other the more supportive the class became of each other.  Our course curriculum involved a lot of presentations, which can be a bit of a nerve wracking experience for any person, including teachers. Creating a learning environment where classmates cheered each other on and held space for one another made the learning experience rich and rewarding.

The takeaway? Make time to build community in your classroom, whatever age they are!

It’s Inspiring to see New Teachers get Excited about Teaching

Our course had many new teachers in their first 5 years, which was fascinating for me as a pretty experienced teacher. Some of the students could have been in my own elementary school classroom years back!

I remember being a new teacher and how exciting it was to have a class, and also how exhausting and stressful it was. Spending so much time with teachers who were in that phase of their lives and also seeing the excitement that comes with learning new things was a good reminder of how much I have grown professionally and how great the teaching profession can be.

Co-Teaching is a Wonderful Thing

Being able to co-teach my first AQ with a colleague and friend was a great experience that took a lot of the pressure off planning, facilitating, and assessing a course while working full time during the day. It also really helped to have someone to debrief with after each session, discuss what was going well and what needed to be changed, and cover the class when one of us was running late or had to make an appointment.

Would I teach an Additional Qualifications Course Again?

After this first AQ, I am certain I would do it all over again. The work is rewarding, fun, and it amazes me to have the privilege of having a role in another teacher’s learning. It adds a new and rich chapter to my career as a teacher, and reminded me of the power of re-learning and rediscovering joy in work within an entirely new context.

Of course, hindsight is a gift – I know exactly what mistakes to not make, and what kinds adaptations to the course I can make to help it run smoothly. Unlike teaching kids, educators are not shy about telling you exactly what you can do as an instructor to be more organized!

Take an AQ with ETFO

ETFO offers an extensive selection of additional qualification courses that are facilitated by many of our amazing colleagues. Visit https://etfo-aq.ca/catalogue/ to find a course that aligns with your professional learning goals.