We spoke with Reagan Morris (she/they) about her experiences in the Faculty of Education!

Tell us a bit about yourself.

Hi! My name is Reagan and I am a second-year Elementary Education student. I am hoping one day to be a guidance counselor and to focus on 2SLGBTQ+ youth. I am the faculty rep for both Student Council and General Faculties Council. I have been a volunteer this past year on the Education Students’ Association’s professional development committee. I am extremely excited to become a teacher and part of that is because of this Faculty!

The Diversity, Equity and Respect (DER) Committee is proud to present a series of profiles to share the experiences of students in the Faculty of Education. It’s particularly important to connect with students given the challenges of teaching and learning remotely.

The Diversity, Equity, and Respect (DER) Committee is pleased to introduce a new initiative we are calling “Have you met students in the Faculty of Education?” DER graduate student representative Jane Sewali-Kirumira spoke about the value of sharing student experiences as a part of the Dean’s regular meetings with Black and Indigenous students. DER wondered how we might further share the experiences of students in the Faculty of Education. It’s particularly important to connect with students given the challenges of teaching and learning remotely.

Danielle Allard and Tami Oliphant, professors in the School of Library and Information Studies, characterize patron-perpetrated sexual harassment of library workers as an invisible problem—so invisible that when they conducted an environmental scan of research on the topic, they found almost no research about it in their field.

The pandemic has caused many education jurisdictions to pause their large-scale assessment activities, which provides an unprecedented opportunity to reimagine how assessments and accountability are undertaken. A summer course presented by the Faculty of Education held in conjunction with the annual Educational Leadership Academy sponsored by the Alberta Teachers’ Association, invites school leaders and classroom teachers to reimagine assessment practices at the school and system level by looking at case studies from around the world.

We asked Faculty of Education alumni to reflect on their teacher journeys, offer advice to their younger selves, and salute the educators who had an impact on them professionally and personally. Here’s what they told us.

The iconic image of a student staring out the classroom window daydreaming of anything but the lesson at hand might be a reality that teachers try to avoid. David Lewkowich, a professor of Secondary Education, doesn’t see these moments as a distraction but as an important part of what is happening in the classroom.

“Every student and every teacher, while we are all focusing on a lesson, a topic or a concept, there is still so much else happening in that classroom,” explains Lewkowich.