Friday, November 7, 2008

An Evening with Donald Leu


The next BCLCIRA event will be a dinner at the Italian Cultural Centre on February 3rd with IRA board member, Donald Leu, who will be speaking about The New Literacies and how we can prepare our students for their demands. Learn more about Donald's work at this website! For registration information go to BCLCIRA's website on the sidebar.

It's about time!


I seem to have difficulty with one blog let alone keeping two updated. In my last post, BCLCIRA executive member Honey Halpern commented that she would like me to mention that if you have gently used paperback children's books we have a project to send them to Uganda. If you comment here I will be happy to send you her contact information. Honey has done a great job in her travels finding us schools that need our books. Books have gone to Ghana, Borneo, and now Uganda.
Last year, I was privileged to meet two museum curators form Malawi and BCLCIRA with our local council, LOMCIRA, sent them back with a new laptop computer to help with their projects to educate the world about Malawi and to help with their use of traditional culture to educate people about Aids.
By joining the International Reading Association or a local council like LOMCIRA you can really get involved and make changes and give hope.
Two weekends ago, I gave a session on teacher study groups at our provincial conference in Kelowna. It was great meeting with enthusiastic teachers from different communities in British Columbia. Teacher study groups have been around for awhile but in our school district we have had lots of success with this in the last couple of years so it was great to share what we have learned (what not to do as well as what to do.)
The conference was great. Keynote, Terry Small, made me think more about how my brain works. I haven't yet tried having a meeting standing up but having a meeting while going for a walk sounds like a good idea to me!