Presidential Site Visits—AERA 2019 Annual Meeting
 
Print 
2019 Annual Meeting 
Home
 
Registration
Housing | Travel
 
Program Information
 Meeting Services 
Exhibits | Sponsorship

Presidential Site Visits

Friday, April 5 
​
​How to Register or Add an Event to Existing Registration:
  1. Log in to register and make a hotel reservation or view and add events to your existing registration for the 2019 Annual Meeting.
  2. Once you are logged in, click ‘My AERA’ at the top of the page.
  3. On the ‘My AERA’ page, scroll down to the 2019 Annual Meeting and click ‘Register and Reserve a Hotel Room Now’ or ‘View and Add Events to Existing Registration’.
  4. Once you are in registration, click on the 'visits/tours tab' or the ‘events tab’ and add these events to your cart.

Site Visit 1: The Laboratory School at the Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study (EJICS) at the University of Toronto, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE)

Time: 9:15-11 am (on site, not including transportation)  
Address: 45 Walmer Road, Toronto, CA

The Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study (EJICS), near downtown Toronto, supports research across the lifespan with a particular focus on imagination, curiosity, wellbeing, and culture and education by faculty from the Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development at OISE at the University of Toronto. The tour will highlight the integration of EJICS’s component elements to support child development, learning, teacher development, and the integration of practice, theory, and research.

EJICS is the home of OISE’s award-winning Laboratory School (grades Nursery through 6th Grade), which contributes to research and highlights excellence in teaching.  The school’s mission is to provide excellence in elementary education, teacher education, and research in an intentionally diverse environment. From its earliest days in 1925, the Laboratory School has been an engaging and exciting learning environment for young children, their parents, graduate students, and researchers to work together toward deep understanding. All students in the Department’s graduate teacher education program have a practicum within the Lab School, and Lab School staff contribute to graduate courses and engage in research and research based practices. Since the school’s inception, it has made a noted contribution to understanding of strong educational practices in elementary schools and faculties of education throughout the world.  The school develops a link to educational theory and practice in order to benefit teacher education in the MA CSE program, throughout OISE and the University of Toronto, and the wider educational community in Canada and around the world. 

This site visit will include a one-hour tour of EJICS’s physical space, which integrates a historic mansion and modern classrooms (for OISE students and the Lab School), research labs, faculty offices, and meetings spaces. The tour will be followed by a Q and A session with Director of the Institute and the Principal of the Lab School.

EJICS Contact Person for AERA: 
Sim Kapoor, CFRE
Director, Advancement & External Relations
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
University of Toronto
416.978.5047
Sim.kapoor@utoronto.ca

Participants:
Richard Messina, principal and a teacher/researcher at the Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study Laboratory School, OISE/UT.
Dr. Rhonda Martinussen, Director of the Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study, Associate Professor of Adaptive Instruction and Special Education in The Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

Site Visit 2: Jarvis Collegiate Institute 9th Grade Art: Expressions of First Nations, Metis, and Inuit Cultures

Time: 12:30-3:00 pm Friday, April 5th (on site, not including transportation)
Location: 495 Jarvis Street, Toronto, Ontario

Jarvis Collegiate Institute was founded in 1807 as the first public high school in Toronto and has a long-standing tradition of academic excellence and student involvement.  Jarvis has a reputation of preparing the next generation of community and world leaders.

Situated in the 'heart of the city' of Toronto, Jarvis Collegiate serves students from over 100 countries of origin, integrated into one unified, vibrant community in which diversity is seen as a strength. Among its many strong academic programs, including an emphasis on STEM curriculum and project-based learning, Jarvis is a leader in the effort to implement the Toronto District School Board’s 9th grade art curriculum that centers Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Site visit participants will tour Jarvis art and Native Studies teacher, Alison Lott’s, 9th grade art class to learn how she implements several key interdisciplinary topics into her curriculum to enable her students to explore and reflect upon First Nations, Mètis and Inuit perspectives and cultures. Units in this curriculum include “Identifying the importance of animals to the Indigenous,” the history of Treaties and Wampum belts, the ways in which Indigenous communities heal, respect Elders and center storytelling within art.  

This site visit will include a brief tour of the historic Jarvis Collegiate building, which includes an auditorium that features murals by famed Canadian artist, George Reid, a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. In contrast to the 9th grade art curriculum on Indigenous ways of knowing and being, the murals depict the Settlers portrayal of the colonization of Canadian lands.

Known as a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (S.T.E.M.) school, with an emphasis on project-based learning and an inquiry method of teaching. Students partake in independent and collaborative studies within the S.T.E.M. fields. Jarvis is committed to providing a rich and varied program encouraging higher order thinking as well as research and communication skills.  Over 85 percent of Jarvis graduates attend university, including top schools like University of Toronto and Ryerson University.  

Jarvis Collegiate Contact Person for AERA:
Michael Harvey, Principal; (416) 393-0140
Michael.Harvey@tdsb.on.ca

Participants:
Michael Harvey, Jarvis Collegiate Principal
Alison Lott, Teacher in the Visual Arts and Native Studies Department 

Saturday, April 6 
​
Site Visit 3: Urban Indigenous Education Centre (also known as Aboriginal Education Centre) and the First Nations School of Toronto

Time: Saturday, 1:00 - 4:00 pm (on site, not including transportation)  
Address: 16 Phin Avenue, Toronto

This Site Visit will allow AERA participants to learn first-hand about the culturally relevant professional development work within the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) to support the teaching of Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Growing out of the recommendations of the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission report and the curricular reforms that followed, the Urban Indigenous Education Centre was formed to serve educators in Toronto who seek to face the history of cultural genocide that Indigenous children endured in Canadian government-run schools for generations. In addition to providing professional development, the Center conducts research, engages community members, and advocates for children. Through this work, the Centre helps to infuse Aboriginal perspectives across the curriculum for all students enrolled in Toronto District schools as well as provide direct wrap-around supports to enhance the overall achievement of First Nation, Métis and Inuit students. Staff at the Aboriginal Education Centre include a Program Coordinator, an itinerant Student Success Teacher, a Child and Youth Counselor, a Social Worker, an Instructional Leader and Community Liaison Workers who collectively offer a wide range of services for students, educators and parents, including connections to community resources; one-on-one and group itinerant support; and student networking within the Aboriginal community.
           
The Centre is also the home of the First Nations School of Toronto, a K-10 school that follows the Ontario Curriculum while centering Indigenous knowledges, perspectives and cultures. Thus. the focus of the First Nations School is to offer a tradition-based curriculum that meets the requirements set by the Parent Council, the Toronto District School Board and the Ontario Ministry of Education while teaching Native values, spirituality, culture and Ojibwe language throughout the school curriculum. The goal is to ensure that urban Native children will have the opportunity to learn about their heritage and the traditional Anishinaabe cultural perspective while acquiring the skills necessary to survive in today’s world. The curriculum includes Native Second Language program, Native traditional singing and drumming, Native dance and movement, Native tradition and community feasts.

This AERA Site Visit will include a tour of the First Nations School and a presentation by the educators at the school. In addition, the Centre’s staff and affiliated community members and members of the Council of Elders will provide an overview of the professional development and community based work they do and its impact on Native children and the public schools in Toronto. Participants will learn about the relationship between the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission report and the resulting reform efforts implemented by the Toronto District School Board to support the work of the Urban Indigenous Education Center. 

Contact Person:
Tanya Senk
Centrally Assigned Principal, Indigenous Education
Urban Indigenous Education Centre
Tanya.Senk@tdsb.on.ca

Participants:
Tanya Senk, Centrally Assigned Principal, Indigenous Education
Urban Indigenous Education Centre
Principal, First Nations School of Toronto/Wandering Spirit
Antonino Giambrone, PhD, Centrally Assigned Vice-Principal
Indigenous Education
Sunday, April 7 
​
Site Visit 4: Education research at the intersection of art and design: A site visit session at OCAD University in downtown Toronto

Time: 1:00 pm – 2:45 pm (on site, not including transportation)  
Location: OCAD University, 100 McCaul Street, Toronto

This site visit to OCAD University, Canada’s largest art and design university, involves a series of linked presentations from the fields of Material Art and Design, Design History and Drawing, bringing traditional academic and emerging practice-based research projects from diverse art and design disciplines into conversation with one another. All presentations take up student learning artifacts – for example, visual work, sketchbook assignments and writing assignments – as both a source of evidence and a space of critical inquiry into pedagogical questions and concerns that engage, affirm and intervene in wider scholarly debates and practices of knowledge production. By bringing together a group of educators, scholars, artists and designers conducting educational research across diverse art and design disciplines, we hope to showcase the possibilities of collaborative, cross-disciplinary educational research in reflecting upon inherited understandings of best pedagogical practice and shaping new relationships between pedagogy and knowledge production. The session will be led by a moderator/curator who will begin with a traditional land acknowledgment, including opening remarks locating OCAD University’s history as an art and design university within its wider social, historical and pedagogical contexts, before guiding participants through different studio classrooms as a way of acknowledging the embodied and emplaced practices of creativity in art and design education. By locating the session at OCAD University, in the studio learning environment in which the research has been taking place, we hope to ground our presentation in the embodied experience of studio learning to both highlight its particularities for audience members who may not be familiar with art and design education and unsettle those conventional academic understandings of what university education and scholarly practice look and feel like.

Contact:
Emilie Brancato: ebrancato@ocadu.ca
Cary DiPietro: cdipietro@ocadu.ca
Susan Ferguson: sferguson@ocadu.ca

Participants:
Emilie Brancato, ELL Specialist, Writing & Learning Centre
Dr. Cary DiPietro, Senior Educational Developer, Faculty & Curriculum Development Centre
Susan Ferguson, Director, Writing & Learning Centre and Faculty & Curriculum Development Centre
Travis Freeman, Educational Developer, Faculty & Curriculum Development Centre
Dr. David Griffin, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Art
Dr. Lynne Heller, Adjunct Professor, Associate Member, Graduate Faculty, Co-director, Data Materialization Studio
Dr. Caroline Langill, Interim Vice President, Academic and Provost, OCAD University (Moderator)
Dorie Millerson, Chair and Associate Professor, Material Art & Design, Faculty of Design
Dr. Marie-Josee Therrien, Associate Dean, Research and Outreach, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences and School of Interdisciplinary Studies