Presenting at CSSE

June 1-4, 2025 – Canadian Study for the Study of Education

I am so grateful for my friend who took a photo of me presenting at CSSE 2025. I presented 4 times and I only had photos taken of me from my first presentation at CAARE (Canadian Association for Action Research in Education). I also presented at CNIE (Canadian Network for Innovation in Education), CASIE (Canadian Association for the Study of Indigenous Education), and CATE (Canadian Association for Teacher Education). I have images of the title page of each PowerPoint presentation I gave at CSSE 2025. I’ve gone to a few Congresses in the past handful of years and just realized that CSSE is embedded into Congress. They are not the same thing!! Makes sense. Congress is the opportunity for different Canadian Associations to come together and meet at the same time and CSSE is part of that. Thank you to George Brown College for hosting is HUGE event. Of the 4 presentations, I managed to present in each of the 3 campuses of the college. What a beautiful campus and overall, Congress, venue, transportation, and volunteers… the experience was AMAZING!! And, I was able to find my way from the airport to the conference and navigate the area with some ease. I am also grateful for my aunt (one of my mom’s sisters) who opened up her “newly renovated” condo and have me stay there. I was only a 20-minute walk away from the college. It was super convenient. I loved walking to the conference every morning. The weather was great, and the place!!

The first presentation was created with 3 former teacher candidates and the work we did together during or concurrent to the teacher education program at UNBC about a Lesson Study we engaged in called “Sit Spot and My Senses.” We’ve presented this several times before with the teacher candidates facilitating and engaging workshop participants in the lesson study. This time, my three co-presenters are now early career educators and approaching the end of the K-12 school year. So, it was me to present about our work as a paper presentation. The presentation was mainly descriptive with images of past experiences during the lesson study. I was nervous because it was my first presentation (and I added a few slides… content contributed by the team), so I might have gone over time. ACK. That said, the presentation had a positive impact on folks in the room and I appreciate their kind words and inspiration. Our team is planning to submit a proposal to write a chapter for the next CATE book.

The second presentation was co-presented with a couple of my colleagues from the Climate Education in Teacher Education (CETE) research team. We presented on how we have “redefined togetherness” (aka., the theme of CSSE) and at a high level, described our research project and research methodology. I think the presentation went very well. It was well attended and well received. We have really mastered the planning process and presentation to tell our story as CETE that is representative, meaningful, and authentic. We may have recruited some folks to be a part of our design team. The third presentation was later that day (Day 2) in a RoundTable presentation. It was late in the day, so there were very few of us at this session. We combined the two tables into one and each presenter shared their work. I presented on some of the work done by myself and my friend on “uncolonizing assessment.” I did a small pilot in my EDUC 421 (Assessment and Motivation) course and learned from student reflection how the teacher candidates defined the Four R’s from Kirkness and Barnhardt (1991) in context to assessment, teaching, and their self-assessment. It was really powerful and I was taken aback as to how the teacher candidates used the Four R’s to guide their assessment plan and practice.

The final and fourth presentation was with CATE and I was presenting about a program evaluation of “in-situ” learning as part of my EDUC 421 course I teach with elementary teacher candidates. When I wrote the proposal, I was reflecting on the 3-years of which I had implemented a version of “in-situ” learning as part of my practice. And, I wondered if the learning experience was still worthwhile to continue even though I thought it was worthwhile to do. In response to proposal feedback, I went back to review the blog and page posts made by the teacher candidates as part of the course that commented on the “in situ” learning experience that reflected on their teaching at the elementary school or as a part of the course summary reflection. As usual, the reflections ranged in content and depth, but I was so overwhelmed by the articulation by these teacher candidates on their support, enthusiasm, and gratitude for the “in situ” learning experience to bridge theory to practice. I am so encouraged by their words such that I will return to this content again to do a thematic analysis to then formalize this program evaluation for publication.

I feel very grateful to do this work. Although I felt that the pandemic re-started my motivation to create a research program, the more I am understanding that I am deeply engaged in the SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING and ACTION RESEARCH. I am deeply invested in the practice as well as working with teacher candidates. Much like many of my reflections in this blog and the other with OpenETC, I am ALWAYS learning from my students. I feel so inspired by the gifts I receive from this work, but also how it fuels my love for the work that I do… and get to do. To conclude this blog reflection, I also want to share my love and joy for the connections I’ve made during the CSSE conference. Some connections are reuniting with folks (i.e., a former student in one of my graduate level classes, a new colleague and listening to their poster presentation of their dissertation, a mentor and friend to share their insights on effective teams, and giving a big hug and hello to another mentor who sought me out to say HELLO). Some connections are new ones (i.e., a professor and educator during my 4th presentation who is also a CATE dissertation winner, folks I met at a poster presentation, at roundtable, and in the hallway). I love these connections!!!