On January 12th I had the pleasure of attending the Building Futures professional development event at Brock. Described as “a day of learning and resources for teacher candidates”, this workshop did not disappoint. In total, I participated in three separate workshops: Safe and Healthy Schools, Teachers Engaging and Communicating with Parents, and Assessment, Evaluation and Reporting in Ontario Schools.

Overall, all of the speakers did a great job presenting relevant and useful information for teacher candidates. Most memorable, however, was the assessment workshop. Speaker Michael O’Gorman, a retired teacher, worked up a sweat (and looked intentionally ridiculous) as he clapped, jumped, and spun around in a “clapping test”. This demonstration drove home the importance of feedback in formative assessment and emphasized the need for clear success criteria to be shared with students early and often. Otherwise, assessment and evaluation are ineffective and will not fulfill their primary purpose: to improve student learning.

Me and Rebecca Menzies, the Safe and Healthy Schools Speaker.

Rebecca did a fantastic job of gearing her presentation to her audience; she had each of as write one safe school and one healthy school question on a post-it note so she could tailor the workshop content to our needs!