Facilitator bios
Hugo Aboites
Hugo Aboites is a professor at the UAM—the Autonomous University of Mexico. He has been engaged in opposing the imposition of testing after NAFTA and has researched education policies around Latin America.
Donna Allen
Donna Allen is a second-term school trustee and currently sits as board chair in SD#68 (Nanaimo-Ladysmith). She also chairs the district’s Multicultural and Race Relations Committee; is a member of the Education Committee and the Teacher-Trustee Liaison Committee, and chaired the Ad Hoc Committee on Class Size and Classroom Composition.
A retired high school counsellor, Allen has had a full career of working to “set students up for success.” She held the positions of secretary, first vice-president, and second vice-president in her local, and chaired the Rights of Children Committee at the BCTF.
Carol Arnold
Carol is a secondary school teacher and member of the Charter for Public Education. Before moving to Salt Spring Island eight years ago, she served on a variety of Public Education Works committees for Alberta Teachers’ Association in Edmonton. She is Metis and has served on the Aboriginal Education Advisory Committee of the BCTF for four years.
She is actively involved in providing workshops to locals and universities that deal with a variety of Aboriginal Education topics. Carol is a passionate advocate for strong, quality public education because it has provided all opportunities for success in her own life; something she wants all children of Aboriginal ancestry to enjoy.
Dr. Robin Barrow
Professor Barrow is a graduate of Oxford and London Universities. He moved to Canada as Professor of Education at Simon Fraser University in 1982. From 1992–2002, he was Dean of Education. He is author of 24 books and a hundred or so papers in the field of educational studies. Professor Barrow is listed in the Canadian Who’s Who and in 1996 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
David Chudnovsky
David Chudnovsky is a former president of the BCTF and was a Member of the BC Legislature from 2005 to 2009.
Gloria Cole
Gloria Cole is of Tlingit, Kwakiutl, Haxwamis, and Scottish ancestry. She is a member of the Tlowitsis First Nation and lives in Alert Bay, BC. Cole has taught in Surrey and Vancouver Island North. She has two beautiful children who she is very proud of. She is currently a TTOC for the Vancouver Island North School District. Cole has a bachelor of education degree from NITEP/UBC, a master’s degree from SFU, and is currently a doctoral student at UBC. She has taught K–12, and university courses at SFU and UBC. She enjoys reading and gets quite stressed at taking and giving tests!
Derek DeGear
Derek DeGear is a 13-year teacher from School District 68, Nanaimo/Ladysmith area. A keen interest in assessment practices has led him to lead numerous workshops on the theory of Assessment for Learning. He is an elementary specialist who has spent at least a year at each elementary grade from Kindergarten to Grade 7. After spending two years as Bargaining Working Learning Conditions chair on his local executive, he is now a full-time released vice-president for the Nanaimo District Teachers’ Association. DeGear sees himself as an advocate for public education and enjoys discussions with education partners in protecting education as a common good.
Maureen Dockendorf
Maureen Dockendorf is currently assistant superintendent for Coquitlam School District with responsibility for numerous areas including district assessment and the district’s Staff Development Department. Jill Reid, Heather Daly, Martine Duby, Nancy Carl, and Don Gordon are staff development co-ordinators responsible for a variety of areas in Coquitlam School District including, between them, the coordination of Coquitlam School District’s district assessments. Coquitlam School District’s staff development department has the purpose of improving learning and teaching for all. Members of the department have an unwavering commitment to public education and to success for all students.
Marlene Eccles
Marlene Eccles is president of the ESL PSA, a long-time classroom teacher, student advocate, and ESL/D district co-ordinator, currently living and teaching in Williams Lake.
Moira Ekdahl
Moira Ekdahl is currently the teacher-librarian consultant for the Vancouver Board of Education. She was a teacher-librarian at Gladstone Secondary School. Prior to becoming a teacher-librarian, Ekdahl taught social studies and English in Vancouver, Williams Lake, and New Westminster. She has no hesitation in saying that being a teacher-librarian is “the best job in the system.”
Kadriye Ercikan
Kadriye Ercikan is a professor at the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia and is the director of Assessment and Student Learning Alliance (ASLA). She teaches educational assessment, measurement, and research methods courses. Her research focuses on design, fairness, and validity issues in educational assessments and inferences and generalizations based on assessments and educational research in general.
Rick Ferguson
Rick Ferguson has been teaching in Merritt since 1980 and taught at a junior high school and presently at an alternative school. He still loves Mondays! “Going to work is not just a job, it is an adventure. Each day offers some new surprise.”
Sylvia Helmer
Sylvia Helmer, ESL PSA M-A-L, adjunct professor, UBC Language and Literacy Department, long-time classroom teacher, student advocate, teacher trainer, and district ESL consultant.
Iglika Ivanova
Iglika Ivanova has worked as an economist and public interest researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives since January 2008. She investigates issues and trends in healthcare, education, and social programs, and examines the impact of public services on quality of life. She also looks into issues of government finance, taxation, and privatization and how they relate to the accessibility and quality of public services. Ivanova holds an MA in economics from the University of British Columbia and a BA in economics from Simon Fraser University.
Carol Johns
Carol Johns is a kindergarten/student services teacher in Cranbrook. She has taught for over 30 years in three districts. Johns worked on both the initial Primary Program Steering Committee and was a writer on the current Primary Program. She has served as Primary PSA president, on BCTF Learning Conditions, WLC/Bargaining Advisory, Professional Issues Advisory, and numerous local, BCTF and ministry committees, including the All-day Kindergarten committee.
Seth Klein
Seth Klein is the director of the BC office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and a former teacher.
Dan Laitsch
Dan Laitsch is an assistant professor with the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University, where he teaches in the Educational Leadership programs, the director of the Centre for the Study of Educational Leadership and Policy, and co-editor for the International Journal for Education Policy and Leadership.
Karen Langenmaier
Karen Langenmaier, on leave from the Comox Valley School District, has been working in the area of health and safety since 1994. She started her activism for healthier schools while serving as PAC chair in her sons’ elementary school. Understanding health and safety issues both as a parent and a teacher gives her insight into what to look for in a working and learning environment and the processes available to improve them. While much time is devoted to curriculum, budgets, fundraising, and services to students, the principles of a healthy and safe environment that are fundamental to students success are rarely mentioned. Parents need to know what potential hazards they are exposing their children to.
Irene Lanzinger
Irene Lanzinger is president of the BC Teachers’ Federation. She is a secondary physics teacher on leave from School District #39 (Vancouver). Irene has taught in Vancouver, Abbotsford, Japan and Saudi Arabia.
Lillian Lincoln
Lillian Lincoln is a member of the Nisga’a First Nation and a teacher at Nisga’a Elementary Secondary School. Lincoln is a member of the Aboriginal Education Advisory Committee, an aboriginal parent presenter, and local activist for the issues and concerns that are obstacles to success for the Aboriginal student and parent.
April Lowe
April Lowe is a Grade 2 and 3 teacher at Garibaldi Highlands Elementary School in Squamish. As a BCTF facilitator, she travels the province giving this workshop on Assessment for Learning to other teachers. Lowe has a masters degree in educational practices from Simon Fraser University and her paper/work was on assessment practices.
Fiona MacNicol-Clark
Fiona MacNicol-Clark has been teaching French Immersion Primary classes in Richmond for the last 25 years. Previous to that she taught in her homeland Scotland and in Germany, before arriving in British Columbia.
She received her teaching degree from Aberdeen, Scotland, her masters of education in imaginative education, and a post-masters diploma in the works of Vygotsky, both from SFU. MacNicol-Clark continues to mentor, support teacher candidates, and run study groups in Richmond as well as teaching her primary class.
George Martell
George Martell is currently working with Education Action: Toronto, which is working with parents in immigrant and working class families. He was founder of This Magazine is About Schools and Our Schools, Our Selves, two publications about progressive ideas in education.
Tim McCracken
Tim McCracken is a teacher at HJ Cambie Secondary in Richmond, vice president of the BC Science Teachers’ Provincial Specialist Association, and member-at-large with the Richmond Teachers’ Association. McCracken has been teaching Chemistry 12 and general sciences since 1994.
Charles Menzies
Charles Menzies has been a parent volunteer with experience as a member of school planning councils and parent advisory councils, and as an executive member of the Vancouver District Parent Advisory Council. Menzies is also an associate professor at UBC where his research and teaching focuses upon contemporary First Nations issues, natural resource management policy (with an emphasis on fisheries), and collaborative research directed at ending social injustice.
Charlie Naylor
Charlie Naylor is the senior researcher in the BCTF. He completed his undergraduate and teaching diploma in the UK, his master’s at SFU, and his doctorate at UBC. Much of his work with the BCTF has focused on inclusion through projects with teachers, provincial specialist associations, and community organizations.
Susan Ohanian
Susan Ohanian is a long-time teacher and prolific writer on education topics. Her website against high-stakes testing was awarded the National Council of Teachers of English George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language. She is now leading a campaign against the federal imposition of national standards in the US.
www.susanohanian.org
www.StopNationalStandards.org
Rich Overgaard
Rich Overgaard is the BCTF media relations officer.
Jinny Sims
Director: Professional and Social Justice Issues Division, BCTF. Teacher/counselor for over 30 years. Long-term activist. Former president of the BCTF.
Keynote speaker bios
Sue Montebello
Sue Montabello is well known as a passionate teacher and administrator who honours the interests, passions, and diversity of her students. At the heart of her work is an attention to ways that community can help us learn and thrive. Montebello has worked at Simon Fraser University as a faculty associate and co-ordinator and continues to teach courses with field programs. She has worked as a principal in the Burnaby school district for the past 17 years and is currently principal of Maywood Community School.
Ted Riecken
Ted Riecken is the dean of education at the University of Victoria and the current chair of the Association of British Columbia Deans of Education. He has been a faculty member at the University of Victoria since 1989 and before that completed graduate study at UBC and the University of Saskatchewan. As a former elementary school teacher before teaching at university, Riecken taught on Vancouver Island in Gold River. His research interests include the use of new media technologies as learning tools in alternative settings and community-based research.
Sue Spalding
Sue Spalding is from Kitsumkalum (six km west of Terrace), one of seven communities of the Tsimshian Nation. She is of the Killerwhale clan belonging to the House of Lagaax. Spalding graduated with a bachelor of education in 1990 from NITEP/UBC and received a master’s degree of education with SFU in 2002. She teaches English and social studies at Skeena Junior Secondary. Spalding considers herself a social justice activist. She has served in leadership for over 10 years and only recently has stepped down to focus on improving her teaching practice. She has worked with the Ministry of Education in Victoria as an Aboriginal education co-ordinator as well as a field services contact assigned to the Northwest. Spalding served for 10 years on the Kitsumkalum Band Council. She is committed to striving for improvements within public education and is passionate about issues affecting Aboriginal peoples.