This year, we’re honoured to be exhibiting at the annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Vancouver, BC from May 31-June 4, 2019. We’ll be joined by some of the inspiring educators and authors we’ve worked with over the past year.
If you’re unfamiliar with the event, it’s an annual gathering of over 70 scholarly organizations organized by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. ‘Congress’ brings together some of the most brilliant minds across Canada, and invites attendees to engage in workshops, panel presentations, cultural events, and more.
Each of our authors below will be speaking at the event as part of the educator strand. If you’ll be attending the event, you won’t want to miss out on these talks! For now, we’re excited to introduce you to these inspiring individuals.
Dr. Jennifer Katz, PhD
Dr. Katz has been spent 16 years as an educator for 16 years and has published 28 titles, each striving to support teachers in creating an inclusive learning environment. In 2016, Dr. Katz received the MCEC Outstanding Achievement Award for Leadership. Her most recent release, Ensouling Our Schools: A Universally Designed Framework for Mental Health, Well-Being, and Reconciliation, is a road map for educators to nurture mental, spiritual, and emotional health in diverse learning environments.
Ensouling Our Schools aims to dismantle systems of marginalization within our educational environments to create nurturing, meaningful learning experiences for all students.
Dr. Leyton Schnellert, PhD
Dr. Schnellert is an associate professor in UBC’s Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy and Eleanor Rix Professor in Rural Teacher Education, with a background as a middle- and secondary-school educator. He has also been a learning resource teacher for grades K-12. Dr. Schnellert has developed books, produced films, and written research articles that have been used around the world to inform a more inclusive approach to pedagogy. His most recent title is Creating Pathways for Learners in the Middle Years, part of the It’s All About Thinking series.
Dr. Schellert also wrote the foreword for One Without the Other: Stories of Unity Through Diversity and Inclusion by Shelley Moore, also featured.
Dr. Sara Davidson, PhD
Dr. Davidson is a Haida educator and scholar of Literacy Education. She has worked as an educator with adolescent and adult learners in British Columbia and the Yukon Territory. She has spent most of this time working with Indigenous students transitioning from rural communities to larger urban centres to complete their education. Today, she’s an Aassistant pProfessor in the Teacher Education Department at the University of the Fraser Valley, where she works with teacher candidates to introduce Indigenous content and perspectives into their classrooms. Dr. Davidson has spent a large portion of her life researching the writing process as a means to explore one’s identity, and how to combine Indigenous and non-Indigenous teaching practices to create stronger curriculums. She collaborated with her father, Robert Davidson, to produce the book Potlatch as Pedagogy, which underscores how Haida traditions can be integrated into contemporary educational practices.
Davidson and Davidson offer readers an important exploration of how one nation’s culture, knowledge, and protocols can inform pedagogy for the better.
—Dr. Frank Deer, Canada Research Chair and Associate Professor, University of Manitoba
Shelley Moore
Ms. Moore is an inclusive-education consultant, speaker, and educator. Currently a PhD student at the University of British Columbia, Ms. Moore’s research focuses on the combined impacts of inclusive education practices, curriculum, and teacher professional development. She has developed courses at Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia, and has worked in elementary and secondary schools supporting students of all abilities. Her book, One Without the Other: Stories of Unity Through Diversity and Inclusion, uses stories from her experiences in the classroom to guide conversations about what an inclusive classroom looks like. The book addresses real challenges educators are facing, such as the difference between integration and inclusion, inclusion as a philosophy and a practice, and ways to extend inclusiveness to students with diverse needs.
Shelley Moore is a gifted storyteller. Her willingness to be vulnerable and share the moments she has experienced inclusion, and exclusion, power, and need, allow all of us to see the connection between our own lives and the experiences of our students. Shelley is passionate and inspirational— – she will cause you to think, to cry, to laugh, and to dream.
—Jennifer Katz, author of the Teaching to Diversity series
