Belonging is a basic human need. It is important that a student feels a connection to the educational environment but equally important is the sense of belonging for faculty and staff. People who can bring their authentic self to the workplace are more likely to be engaged and thus contribute to the success of the organization and the individuals therein.
Our 16th Annual LCEEQ Conference will take the importance of “belonging” to the next level with the theme, Enriching a Culture of Belonging.
In February 2024, we agreed that our educational institutions need to be places where all people, young and older alike, belong. We wish to continue to pursue such to support both student success and improved wellbeing for all.
Keynote Speakers
Kristin Anderson
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Dr. Kristin Anderson is an educator, researcher, founder, and CEO of The Brilliance Project. Through her research and consultancy over her 20-plus-year career, Kristin has helped thousands of educators, leaders and aspiring world-changers transform their potential and unleash their personal power through the lens of education. Kristin’s early career was spent working with students from marginalized and disadvantaged backgrounds, often outcast from mainstream school systems. This formative experience exposed the duality of education in both its capacity to fortify and lift the human spirit, as well as isolating the oppositional factors that actively disable it. These insights invoke the redemptive themes of her current-day work, such as building trust, hope, and belief through personal efficacy, and a specialized focus on adult learning that embraces the lifecycle of the whole educator along with their wellbeing. Kristin has worked within instructional and leadership roles across a diverse range of K-12 settings. She has developed professional learning programs for Edison Schools, The Leadership and Learning Center, and Corwin, and is known as the person who brought Visible Learning to North America. In parallel, she has completed advanced degrees from Sterling College, the University of Denver, the University of Colorado, and Vanderbilt University. In recent years, Kristin has collaborated with global leaders to design, implement, and evaluate professional learning frameworks, and has led large-scale development initiatives for sustainable impact through education. Kristin’s approach is anchored in her understanding of behavioral and decision science, balanced with her practical and humanizing implementation of research in real-world settings. She has delivered keynotes, workshops, and extensive professional learning on various topics in teaching, learning, and leadership across the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Africa. Kristin is the author of Data Teams Success Stories Volume 1, Real Time Decisions, Getting Started with Rigorous Curriculum Design, and a soon to be published book on Educator Wellbeing. She currently resides in Thousand Oaks, California with her family. |
Gail Markin
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Gail Markin is a counsellor, consultant and coach who supports school districts with health and wellbeing. She has a particular focus on embedding well-being into the education workplace. Gail is the author of Beyond Self-Care: Leading a Systemic Approach to Well-being for Educators where she combines learning from both research and practice to support leaders with practical ideas to create well-being in their schools and districts. When she is not writing and speaking or podcasting about well-being, Gail is working on an Ed. D. in Leadership and Policy at UBC. You can find out more about Gail on her website: https://www.gailmarkin.ca/ |
John Tyler Binfet
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John-Tyler Binfet is an associate professor in the Okanagan School of Education at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Dr. Binfet is the Director of Graduate Programs and the Director of UBC’s long-running canine therapy program titled Building Academic Retention through K9s (B.A.R.K.). As the founder and director of B.A.R.K., Dr. Binfet oversees on-campus interventions and community programming that see 60+ therapy dogs brought to campus to reduce student stress. Dr. Binfet’s insights into therapy dogs and the role they play in supporting student well-being are captured in his co-authored book titled “Canine-Assisted Interventions” (Binfet & Hartwig, 2020; Routledge Press). Responding to the need to reach remote audiences, Dr. Binfet’s new co-authored book “Virtual Human-Animal Interactions” (Tardif-Williams & Binfet, 2023; Routledge Press) illustrates how to create virtual opportunities to connect with animals. When not covered in dog hair from work in the B.A.R.K. lab, Dr. Binfet’s second research stream sees him exploring how children, adolescents and teachers understand and enact kindness within the school context. Along with Drs. Gadermann and Schonert-Reichl, Dr. Binfet developed the School Kindness Scale, the first measure of its kind to assess perceptions of school kindness. His new book “Cultivating Kindness: An Educator’s Guide” (Binfet, 2022; University of Toronto Press) showcases findings from surveys and interviews with over 3,000 children and adolescents around how kindness is conceptualized. An informal look into Dr. Binfet’s research can be found in his blog for Psychology Today titled “Canines, Kids, and Kindness.” |
Featured Speakers
Deinera Exner-Cortens
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Dr. Deinera Exner-Cortens is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair (Childhood Health Promotion) in the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Work, and is jointly appointed to the Department of Psychiatry, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary. She is also the scientific co-director of PREVNet, Canada’s healthy relationships hub. She holds a PhD in Developmental Psychology and a Master of Public Health. Dr. Exner-Cortens' research focuses on 1) evaluating healthy relationships resources in school and community settings, 2) developing and evaluating implementation support tools for school-based mental health service delivery; and 3) prevention of adolescent dating violence and suicide. In her work, Dr. Exner-Cortens collaborates with a number of community and research partners both provincially and nationally. |
Mélissa Villella
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Mélissa Villella, Ph. D. is an Assistant Professor in school administration at Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue and an Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Education at University of Ottawa. She specializes in transformative leadership and the inclusion of minoritized communities. Not only is she a former teacher and school principal in Ontario’s French language school system, Mélissa is also a former teacher in Québec’s English language education system. |
Vivett Dukes
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Vivett Dukes is a first-generation American of Jamaican ancestry who has a long history of disrupting the status quo. Deeply committed to upholding the dignity of our children, she works to eradicate the school-to-prison-to-deportation pipeline that disproportionately impacts Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities. A career educator as well as a wife, mother and grandmother, she has taught English Language Arts in urban middle and high schools within the New York City Department of Education and across Long Island. As an educational consultant, a curriculum specialist, and a community organizer, she has traveled across the country giving voice to the overharmed, yet underserved. Vivett attends Columbia University, Teachers College where she is a doctoral student in the English Education program and a Zankel Fellow with Cyphers for Justice in the Institute of Urban Minority Education. |
Lesley Trudel
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Dr. Lesley Eblie Trudel has been successfully involved in public education for over thirty years. She has held positions ranging from instructional to administrative, working with diverse populations in both urban and rural settings. Lesley ended off her career in K-12, as an Assistant Superintendent of Schools. Currently she is the Associate Dean in the Faculty of Education at the University of Winnipeg. Lesley is a kind and collaborative leader with a keen interest in organizational learning and systemic change as it pertains to diverse and inclusive educational communities. |
Phyllis Dalley
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Phyllis Dalley, Ph.D., is a professor and researcher at the University of Ottawa. She is an educator and sociolinguist invested in basic and didactic research in education. As a sociolinguist, she is interested in the role of language(s) as a tool of differentiation and subversion in the processes of inclusion and exclusion by the school. As a pedagogue, she is actively working on translating sociolinguistic and critical theory into inclusive pedagogical practice. She is currently completing province-wide research on identity construction and oral communication in the classroom. Professor Dalley is also the principal investigator for a study of the relationship between community homework clubs and public schools. She is also the Director of the Educational Research Unit, A School for All, located in the Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa. Phyllis Dalley directs the research group " Les Chantiers d'Actions et de Recherche pour des Ffrancophonies inclusives (CARFfI)." |
Paul Zanazanian
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D |
Ainsley B. Rose
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Ainsley has over 49 years as an award-winning educator. He began as a high school teacher and progressed to be an Elementary and Secondary Principal, finally a Director of Education in Quebec, Canada. He was awarded the Outstanding Achievement Award for Demonstrating Outstanding Leadership in Education by the Association of Administrators of English Schools of Quebec. He has served as chair of most of the provincial educational committees in Quebec and named to be on the Advisory Board for English Education by the Minister of Education in Quebec. Now he is an author consultant, Keynote presenter, and facilitator of an extensive range of professional learning topics. He is President of Thistle Educational Development Inc. and professional development consultant with Solution Tree, Marzano Research, The Core Collaborative, Inspired Education. He is a contributing author for several educational publications and is currently working on his first book on the topic of Influence. A second book is also on the way co-authored with two colleagues. Ainsley is married with three adult children and six grandchildren all living in West Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. |
Session Descriptions
View or download here
Evaluation Results & Handouts
View or download full conference report here
|
General Question |
Average Score |
|
The conference met my expectations |
4.4 / 5 |
|
The Conference will be of value to me in the future |
4.4 / 5 |
|
The Conference had enough variety to maintain my interest |
4.2 / 5 |
|
The Conference facilities were satisfactory |
4.6/ 5 |
|
Keynote Speakers |
Average score |
| Kristin Anderson - The Catalysts and Inhibitors of Workplace Wellbeing |
4.8 |
| Gail Markin - Belonging: Why we need relationship-based workplaces and how to create them |
4.3 |
| John-Tyler Binfet - Kindness as a Social Catalyst: Uniting Students Within and Beyond the Classroom |
4.8 |
|
Workshops Block A |
Average score |
| Kristin Anderson - Unleashing Your Personal Power |
4.6 |
| Farm to School - Food Sovereignty & Outdoor Education |
4.7 |
| BEE-longing {The Arts Hive} |
4.5 |
| Finding Balance in Building Community |
3.6 |
| Ainsley B. Rose - Are we a group or are we a team? |
4.3 |
| Lesley Eblie Trudel - Well-Being in the Post-Pandemic Workplace |
3.0 |
| Mélissa Villela - Identity, Language and Diversity |
3.5 |
|
Workshops Block B |
Average score |
| Courageous Conversations about Race in our Schools and Classrooms |
4.4 |
| Unlocking Potential: Supporting Non-Legally Qualified Teachers |
3.9 |
| Phyllis Dalley - Supporting student language resilience |
3,8 |
| Better Ensemble |
4.5 |
| Fostering Inclusion to Support the Wellbeing of Students with Exceptionalities |
4.3 |
| Lesley Eblie Trudel - Between Meaningful Interventions and Good Intentions |
2.8 |
| Paul Zanazanian - History teaching at a crossroads |
3.7 |
|
Workshops Block C |
Average score |
| John-Tyler Binfet - A Kinder Classroom: Practicalities and Considerations in Fostering Kindness |
4.9 |
| Vivett Dukes - Creating Care Culture & Safe School Spaces |
4.5 |
|
J'ai MON plan! I have MY IEP! |
4.6 |
|
Motivation, Modification and Expectations |
4.0 |
| Gail Markin - Beyond Self-Care: Leading a Systemic Approach to Well-Being for Educators |
4.3 |
| Teacher and Facilitator Interactions During Collaborative Professional Development |
3.6 |
|
Workshops Block D |
Average score |
| Vivett Dukes - Leading Restorative Practices |
4.3 |
| Deinera Exner - Promoting Belonging in Middle and High School |
3.7 |
| Why including families in your school matters |
3.6 |
|
Fostering an Inclusive Culture |
3.8 |
| Ainsley B. Rose - Developing People-Cultivating Success |
4.5 |
| Where do accessibility and inclusion fit into a culture of belonging? |
4.0 |