EA Boot Camp, Session One: Foundations of Inclusion
On Friday November 25th, Parkland School Division (PSD) held the first in a series of five boot camp sessions for Educational Assistants. As PSD works towards creating inclusive learning environments, we are striving to create a common vision and a common language among our various stakeholder groups. One such group is our valued Education Assistants who support many of our diverse learners on a daily basis. It was a powerful and emotional day where participants engaged in structures and processes to guide their learning around our vision of moving from:
- The idea of fixing kids to fixing environments
- Dependence on staff (teachers and EA’s) to a focus on independence
- "Special Ed” to ALL kids being special
- A deficit model to a strength based model
- Having high expectations for some to having high expectations for ALL
We recognize that these vision statements are on a continuum, and that each of our schools are at different places along this continuum. The purpose of the session was to develop skills and understandings necessary to support ALL students in inclusive environments. A highlight of the session was our guest speaker, Katrina Stonoff, who spoke about inclusion from a parent’s perspective. Her honest and heartfelt vision for her daughter was extremely powerful and helped breathe life into our vision of creating inclusive learning environments. Read Katrina’s blog post What We Want For Our Daughter to learn more.
Staff who participate in all five boot camp sessions will receive a certificate of completion and may apply for up to nine post-secondary course credits towards certification within the Grant MacEwan Special Needs Educational Assistant Program.
We are looking forward to the remainder of the boot camp sessions held this year. Next year all five sessions will be repeated.
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