• Not an unmarked journey. Lessons on teaching and learning from pandemic pivot to decision-based learning.
• Connections through content – creating a story that’s about all of us
• The Journey for my Cultural Identity (Sheldon Scow)
• Walking with History
• Story Through Song
• Seven Generations Forward: Help Craft a Rallying Story
• How can I be all things to all students?

• Student’s Online Expectations
• Developing Your Own Stories
• Games Room
• Bringing Spring-time into our Teaching
• Sanctuary: An exploration of the spaces that nurture us
• Teaching and Learning and the Stories We Tell Ourselves (Especially about Learning New Technology)

• The Living Library
• Great Drama Queen Clytemnestra
• Teaching with Stories: a History of Mathematics course by a Non-historian
• Storytelling is an art and a science…Leaving our footprints for others to follow
• Walking with History
• Games Room
• The Gifts of Teaching
• The Journey for my Cultural Identity (Hayden Taylor).

• Stories without Words

Come join CIEL in playing games that will help you get in a playful frame of mind for the celebration.

Amidst all the destruction suffered by too many during the pandemic, there emerged, for some, encouraging changes for the better. This is that story. This time, for me, was a journey which featured many joys of the road. To take liberties with the words of Bliss Carman, “…the joys of the road are chiefly these:.a comrade neither glum nor merry,…a calm observer of ought and must, a lover of books, but a reader of man, no cynic and no charlatan, who never defers and never demands, but, smiling takes the world in his hands…” This is a story of transition and transformation, away from many things once held dear, that no longer are fit for use. Finding the world changed and demanding a change in me; a gift of many dimensions and secrets.

My thinking around the content and what happens with the content in the classroom has gradually shifted (sigh, I wish it happened overnight – perhaps I would have been spared many years of deep introspection about teaching and learning). In my early days of teaching the content was knowledge that needed to be imparted to students.  Now the content has become a framework for creating learning sequences where students learn about themselves and each other, where stories emerge, and merge with my story. 

Please join me as I go through my journey to get to a place of higher education. It shows that no matter the mistakes you might have made to get here they do not define who you are. It just shows where you came from. Also it is never too late to get into your culture.  Gilakas’la (thank you).

Accompany Randy Fred, VIU Elder, on a walk at Morrell Sanctuary. Uncle Randy will lead with his drum and a traditional song and a prayer. He will speak about the history of the territory you are walking on, and share part of his personal story.  You will have the opportunity to share parts of your own story and a meal where story sharing continues. 

Lunch will be provided for Walking with History participants upon return to the Nanaimo campus in Building 210, Room 230

More information about this event including preparation and directions can be found in the InVIU calendar.

Musical theatre features songs to develop character, progress plot, entertain and provoke thought—in short, to tell stories. In this three-song singer-songwriter set, Eliza will share tunes from her original musical narrative ‘Concessions of a Wannabe Rock Star’ and discuss the poetic structure, metaphor and inspiration behind the ballads.

Attendees will help craft a twin story to the Norwegian story “The Seventh Father of the House.” In that Norwegian story, a traveller has to ask permission to stay the night from the seven fathers inhabiting the house, each one a generation older, the story thus being in large part about honouring ancestors. I am intrigued about the possibilities of a story that requires a traveller to ask permission to the seven generations ahead, our descendants and inheritors of climate impacts. In small groups, participants will co-create possible versions for this much-needed story.

Every student carries a unique story with them. This means that every class is filled with multiple perspectives and realities about life and about learning. What does this mean for our teaching? How can we value each student story while not turning our own teaching story into one of overwhelming stress? Join colleagues in a round table discussion to share and generate sustainable ideas for meeting students where they are in their learning journey. Topics may include Universal Design for Learning (UDL), promoting wellbeing and blended learning.

Teaching online pre, post, and during the pandemic has brought about many lessons that changed my outlook on online learning. Our online learning management systems, our students and our student expectations are not the same as they were pre pandemic. The sense of ‘let’s survive this’ during pandemic has gone and now we are at the forefront of setting the tone for what’s normal in regard to students’ (and departments) expectations for online learning. In this session we will explore questions around student expectations and potential tools and strategies to help instructors manage the load of online learning.

This is a ‘working session’ designed to give folks the chance to begin crafting their own stories (for teaching, for learning, for other purposes).

We’ll begin with several models that describe how good stories can be structured and told, then sketch a few stories for different contexts to get the ‘flavour’ of different functions of stories.  Participants will get to work drafting their own stories for the purposes they wish. These can be:

• Stories to be used in the classroom
• Stories for your discipline
• Stories from your own learning experience
• Stories reflecting on the teacher you are today
• Or??

The second hour of the workshop is flexible time set aside for working on your stories. We will be available as sounding boards!

We will be playing games that foster a shift in world views through active engagement in novel perspectives on what it means to teach in a diverse classroom. At the close of each game, there will be a discussion of lessons learned from the experience and reflection on how one might incorporate these lessons into the classroom.  

Join me for a reflective and metaphorical round-table discussion about the season of Spring in ourselves and in our classrooms. To start this story-telling session, I share these wise words from an Indigenous Elder: “we must walk alongside our students so they can bloom into who they are meant to become”. Many of us do this so beautifully, so fully in our work. We plant, nurture, water, and the energy flows. We hope for budding, flowering, seeking the sun, and much growth. How much of that nurturing is mirrored from within our own life stories, that have brought us to this Educator-place in our lives? Come, share, and move into Spring.

Everyone needs sanctuary but everyone experiences and meets that need in unique ways. Come share and hear stories of what sanctuary means and diverse ways of embodying or creating the sanctuaries we long for.

How do the stories we tell ourselves impact our engagement with learning new technologies or anything new in the world? Join in this round table discussion as I share brief stories of how my own learning is impacted by the story I tell myself when I try new things. Next we’ll hear your stories of how learning new things, such as technology, may be impacted by the story you are telling yourself? How can this inform how you teach?

Presenter: Louis Mattar, Kinesiology

Students can submit short stories, case studies, infographics, brochures, knowledge translation, visual abstracts, reflections, collaborative learning frameworks and more. I have experimented in my classroom and will share my experiences!

Presenter: Yoichi Mukai, Modern Languages

I’ll be telling about Linguistics, the scientific study of language, and will demonstrate interesting facts about how language works, and how we “do” language.

Presenter: Randy Fred, VIU Elder

Ways of sharing stories; the benefits of learning outdoors.

In the story of Agamemnon by fifth century Greek playwright Aeschylus, Clytemnestra is a female ruler who is both scorned for displaying womanly qualities and criticized for reigning too much like a man. Eliza’s re-worked script re-positions Clytemnestra as a power-broker, even if she was originally characterized as a pawn of the patriarchy. An original video adaptation re-tells this dramatic tale from a contemporary Canadian feminist perspective that celebrates this female protagonist’s attitude, angst, and authority.

This is the story of a new course designed to present the mathematical concepts that have made what Mathematics is today and meet the mathematicians that created them. Stories such as the mystery of Egypt’s Pyramids and what happened to the Maya Civilization are told to help students learn how and why those concepts arose. The course is great for future math teachers who will want to inspire pupils (Hey class: Do you know that this problem was solved by 26-year-old kid?). Or to create some relaxation during class (Hey class: Do you know the history of a blackboard?). To show the power of modern knowledge (Hey class: Now you could get this result in 5 minutes, but 200 years ago it took smart people years to get it!). Come see how stories can be used in Math.

Drawing from my experience as a registered nurse and professor, storytelling is used both as an art and a science. Storytelling in nursing is an iterative process. Clients share their stories with us about their own personal health and wellness journeys. Nurses use these stories to come to understand a client from body, mind, and soul. How we care for a client is guided by these stories. Nursing instructors also use stories to highlight the science of learning and reflection. Storytelling can also be used as formal assignments that foster creativity and voice. In this presentation, I will offer three different ways that storytelling can be used as an assignment in any course.

Accompany Randy Fred, VIU Elder, on a walk at Morrell Sanctuary. Uncle Randy will lead with his drum and a traditional song and a prayer. He will speak about the history of the territory you are walking on, and share part of his personal story. You will have the opportunity to share parts of your own story and a meal where story sharing continues. 

Lunch will be provided for Walking with History participants upon return to the Nanaimo campus in Building 210, Room 230

More information about this event including preparation and directions can be found in the InVIU calendar.

We will be playing games that foster a shift in world views through active engagement in novel perspectives on what it means to teach in a diverse classroom. At the close of each game, there will be a discussion of lessons learned from the experience and reflection on how one might incorporate these lessons into the classroom.  

Every so often a student or group of students will give me some sort of gift. I have saved every (non-edible) gift or card any student has ever given me because each one holds a special memory, story, or lesson. In this presentation I will share some of these gifts and the stories of the people behind them, and how they serve to remind me why I teach. If you have a received a gift from a student that has a particularly deep meaning for you, I would love for you to bring it!

Join me as I share my story of walking through both worlds. How I lost and found my cultural identity and how my story has allowed me to see my privilege as an Indigenous Person.

Using a shared music vocabulary, the VIU quartet will tell some stories without words and demonstrate how improvising musicians share stories with one another and with an audience.