Sessions
TOPIC: Resiliency – Rob Zimmerman
Title: Resiliency: The Underlying R - Practical Resiliency Building Strategies for Schools
Session Description: The goal of this presentation is to introduce the participants to the foundations of resiliency from historical, research and practical perspectives. Beyond the traditional "intervention" model that labels, prescribes and focuses on “fixing” the problems and deficits of high-risk children and youth, this presentation will highlight the concept of resiliency, and offer a strength-based model of assessment and practice. This includes an exploration of the role of protective factors to mitigate risk, and outlines some practical strategies to develop preventive programming and build student, staff and school capacity. As part of this, participants will be asked to apply knowledge in identifying some practical strategies for developing resiliency in their school.
TOPIC: Self-Care Suggestions for Mental Health Professionals –Cheryl Chase
Title: Healing the Healer
Session Description: Individuals working with students experiencing a myriad of mental health issues need to understand how to take care of themselves emotional, physically and spiritually. How do we heal ourselves when we have secondary trauma?
TOPIC: Understanding Psychology Terminology- Cheryl Chase
Title: What does all this gobbledygook actually mean?
Session Description: Session will provide an outline of the psychology terminology found in psychology reports, including descriptions of DSM-IV diagnoses.
TOPIC: Stress Management for Youth –Kimberely Feist
Title: Help Student’s Address their Stress
Session Description: This interactive workshop with explore the foundations of stress, the reactions of stress in the body, mind, and behaviours. Participants will learn how to recognize the underlying signs of stress in their students, and how to assist students in developing healthy coping strategies. Participants will also examine their own stress levels and what strategies both positive and negative that they role model to their students.
TOPIC: Depression in Youth -Kimberely Feist
Title: Youth Depression
Session Description: When are youth just being youth, and when are they depressed? This presentation will examine the signs and symptoms of youth depression, allowing the participants to better aid youth struggling with depression to access help. Learn where and how best to access services throughout Alberta.
TOPIC: High School Mathematics – Course Selection – Christine Henzel
Title: Selecting Courses in the Revised High School Mathematics Program of Studies
Session Description: The revised Alberta Mathematics Grades 10-12 Program of Studies will being implementation in September 2010. In this session, you will learn about the changes made to the program of studies including the course structure and the implications for post-secondary studies.
TOPIC: Relational Aggression ( 2 Sessions Friday- Repeat Topic) Karen Hobbs and Colleen Soetaert
Title: My Friend, Your Friend, No Friend.
Addressing Bullying Behaviour—Focus on Relational Aggression
Session Description: Concerned about gossiping, alliance building, malicious rumours and other forms of relational aggression in your school? Come be a part this presentation to increase your awareness of relational aggression and learn practical strategies of how relational aggression can be addressed in your school. Humorous anecdotes and video clips are part of this valuable presentation.
TOPIC: Apprenticeship Changes and Guidance – Paul McNair
Title: Apprenticeship Horizons: New Entrance Requirements and the Post-WorldSkills Springboard
Session Description: Riding the Skills wave. WorldSkills comes to our province in September 2009 – the biggest international competition to be held in Calgary since the 1988 Winter Olympics. After WorldSkills took place in Helsinki in 2005, the city saw a 10 per cent increase in enrollment in trades and technology training schools in the first year, and another 10 per cent in the following two years. Learn how to direct students’ zeal for skilled, hands-on work towards a rewarding post-secondary path: a career in the trades. Upping the ‘ante’ on education. The workplace and processes in the skilled trades are evolving, and educational requirements for an apprenticeship must change to keep pace. Find out the who, what and when of these late breaking developments!
TOPIC: Refugee Children’s School Adaptation - Dr. Sophie Yohani and Ms. Novjyot Brar
Title: Educational Cultural Brokers and Refugee Children’s School Adaptation
Session Description: Collaboration between families and schools is vital when addressing the school needs of newcomer children. This is especially important for children with known histories of war exposure that increases the risk for mental health difficulties that impact learning. When faced with cultural and language differences, schools and families can enlist the services of third parties, such as cultural brokers, to assist and ensure appropriate service provision. This presentation will be based on the presenter’s clinical experience and a current study that is examining the role of educational cultural brokers in adaptation of refugee children. Findings shed light into the school experiences of refugee children and their families and the strategies cultural brokers use to facilitate the adaptation of newcomer children in school settings. Participants in this session will also gain information on how to best work with cultural brokers and ways of enhancing their work with refugee children.
TOPIC: Career Planning - Angela Haas
Title: This is Your Life: a Career and Education Planning Guide
Session Description: Meaningful, engaging, and personally relevant, this new resource developed by Advanced Education & Technology is designed to be used by and with youth in Grades 9-12 and beyond.
- discover how this resource can be used to engage students in the process of preparing for their futures
- discover ways to use the educator’s companion in the classroom
- find out how the resource can be used in conjunction with Learning Clicks
- receive a copy of the Student Guide and Educator’s Companion (includes a Learning Clicks CD-Rom)
TOPIC: Professionalism
Title: Dealing with Difficult People- Marv Hackman
Session Description: Often teachers and counsellors are experiencing parental/public complaints and pressure which, if unchecked, can result in harassment against the teacher/counsellor. Increasingly, this harassment is taking the form of cyberharassment and cyber-libel. This session will focus on how manage facetoface interactions with aggressive or difficult people, as well as, how to address online harassment.
TOPIC: Technology Information for Professionals
Title: Technology—New Challenges – Marv Hackman
Session Description: Increasingly teachers are facing employment discipline resulting from their use of school computers, lap-tops, internet connections and cell phones. Also teacher’s postings on their own computers on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter or blogs are increasingly facing employer disciplinary action. How does one utilize these technologies without jeopardizing their career? Also this session will look at cyber-harassment or cyber-libel directed at teachers by students or parents, and steps to take in these circumstances.
TOPIC: Care of the Counsellor
Title: Retiring: Who Me? What Next - Dr. Sharon Crozier
Session Description: Are you considering (facing) retirement yourself in the next few years? Does this fill you with joy or panic or both?
This interactive session will help you consider your own transition into retirement and look at possible new directions your life may take in this next phase. Will you work part-time, start a private practice, volunteer, take up a new hobby, travel…. What might life hold for you… come and find out.
TOPIC: Career Planning
Title: Climb Every Mountain: Facilitating Students Finding their Dream – Dr. Sharon Crozier
Session Description: Facilitating students to climb every mountain (as Julie Andrews sang to us in the Sound of Music) until they discover their dream or passion will result in great insight and learning as well as amazing career fulfillment. Choosing a passion-based career path is a complex, lifelong process, but practitioners can play an important role in assisting clients to gather information and attend to clues about their own career passion. This interactive workshop provides an overview of recent models of effective career decision-making, focusing on right-brain or intuition-based strategies for finding meaningful career possibilities. It will cover specific models and strategies professionals can use to support clients in discovering their own passion-based career paths.
TOPIC: Health & Careers; Sexuality; GLBT Youth
Title: Queer Youth Voices: Hearing the Needs of GLBT Youth
Session Description: A bird’s eye view of issues on the landscape for gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans-identified, queer, and questioning teens and young adults. The content is mainly aimed at Junior High and High School aged youth, but the material could also be applied to college students. A few topics that will be discussed include: safety, queer-friendly facilities, school drop-out, isolation, academic advising and vocational counselling, pink triangle ghettos, identity development, community resources, sexuality information, choosing colleges and universities, choosing employers, and spirituality.
TOPIC: Self-Harm
Title: Recovering from Self-Harm - William Hanec
Session Description: This session will present treatment techniques used in helping adolescents recover from self- harm. Many of the strategies used are from the work of Barren Walsh and the S.A.F. E. program based in Chicago.
TOPIC: Closing Keynote-Saturday a.m. – Andrew Brash
Title: Lessons From the Heart of Mt. Everest
Session Description: The session is a multimedia presentation that explains the events that took place on Mt. Everest in 2006 and 2008, including the death of English climber David Sharp and the rescue of Australian climber Lincoln Hall.
