Teachers Week ONTARIO

Held in southern Ontario in August, Teachers Week Ontario provides an opportunity for new and experienced teachers to participate in workshops and breakouts designed to increase their effectiveness in the classroom.

Teachers Week Ontario is planned and sponsored by Faith Builders Educational Programs Canada, a sister organization of Faith Builders Educational Programs (USA). Many speakers participate in both Teachers Week Ontario and Teachers Week  PA. The event includes content for new and experienced teachers. Content-focused workshops and breakouts discuss history, science, math, literature, spelling, Bible, and more.

Registration for Teachers Week will close on July 31.

Sessions in 2023

GENERAL ASSEMBLIES

I Corinthians 13 for Teachers   Melvin Lehman

•  Growing Our Capacity to Love
•  Charity Empowers and Enables
•  Charity Never Faileth
•  But What About Faith and Hope?

SPLIT SESSIONS: NEWER TEACHERS

   Role Models   Keith Brubacher

• In Speech
• In Conduct
• In Love
• In Faith

SPLIT SESSIONS: EXPERIENCED TEACHERS

Identifying and Developing Your Strengths as A Teacher   Howard Lichty

• The Complete Teacher
• Who Are You? To Accept or Change
• Traits of Effective Teachers
• Embrace Diversity. Encourage Change

BREAKOUTS WILL INCLUDE

• Classroom Management   Laura Conley
• Physics Demonstrations    Tanner Brubacher
• Building Vocabulary/Spelling   Cherie Horst
• Practicing Math Facts   Michelle Gerber
• Building Background Knowledge   Esther Bean
• Strategies for Success   Andrea Sauder
• Complexity of Differences in Learning   Stephan Gingerich
• Teacher Relationships with Parents and Board   Ryan Martin

… and many more!

INTERACTIVE WORKSHOPS

Grading for Student Success  Sharon Martin

In this workshop, we will look at some principles of assessment, focusing primarily, but not exclusively, on marking and grading summative assessments and creating and using rubrics effectively. We will examine the concepts of validity and reliability as they relate to assessment and try to determine what it means to grade fairly and with integrity. We will also examine some of the concepts and possibly misconceptions that our students, parents, and perhaps even we teachers have about grades.

Essentials of Teaching Chemistry   Melvin Lehman

Chemistry can be a difficult subject for high school students. What are the basics that high school students should know? We will focus on the Periodic Table, Acids and Bases, and Bio-chemistry. We will look at ways to bridge from the theoretical to life applications.
I have taught in high schools for 43 years. For 20+ years I taught chemistry to high schoolers and during those years also taught 5 years at a post-high school level. One area of special interest is calibration of lab instruments to ensure accurate results in testing or experimentation.

Term Projects   Steve Weber

Creating projects for my students has sometimes been visionary, but also sometimes just a survival tactic to accommodate multi-grade teaching and/or academic abilities in the classroom. In this workshop we will try to address the purpose, challenges, and tips for Term Projects, as well as providing some examples that have been used. Please feel free to bring examples of projects and outlines that you have used in your classroom! We also plan to work together to help you create or adapt a project for you to use in your classroom in the coming year. Most of my experience in the classroom has been with Grades 7-10 but we will try to make the workshop applicable to Grade 5 and up.

In Search of Truth: Analyzing several major worldviews   Joey Shantz

Everyone holds an opinion on the biggest questions of life--questions about God and man, about truth and right and wrong, about the meaning of existence or the question of whether anything exists at all! In this workshop we will take a sweeping overviewing of what a worldview is, how one is formed, and what some of the major ones are; we will spend time engaging with other worldviews and identifying problems within them; and finally, we will wrestle with some of the biggest questions and apparent problems that followers of Christ get challenged on about the Christian worldview. I have enjoyed the opportunities I have had to read about and take classes on this topic and am privileged to teach a Worldviews class in the Grade 11-12 class at Countryside Christian School.

New Teacher Orientation   Esther Bean

Ready to teach? Effective teaching requires preparation, and this workshop is intended to help prepare you for your first year in the classroom. It will include such topics as motivation, a typical lesson, teaching methods, and the learning process. New teachers should also take a pertinent classroom management breakout session in conjunction with this workshop.

Beginning Writing   Laura Conley

They should write right. Right? Does spelling matter? Should they use 'good' and 'big' and 'nice'? This workshop will supply the lower elementary teacher with ideas for what to do when you hear this: "I don't know what to write!" "I can't think of any more to add." "I can't write poems!" We will discuss a vast variety of inspiring and attainable techniques for getting youngsters to produce pleasing compositions, many of which I have used in the past 21 years in my classroom.