Do you want to increase your awareness about what to expect when teaching in another country? If so, why not join university students, pre-service teachers, teachers, principals and other educators who are interested in learning more about teaching abroad by enrolling in the Preparing to Teach Internationally Program.

Offered over five days this spring, Preparing to Teach Internationally is a professional development initiative offered by the International Education Office in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Education.

Designed to help participants gain insight into education, as well as a better understanding of themselves as educators, the program provides the skills participants need to make informed decisions about what to expect when embarking on an international education role. At the end of the program, successful candidates will receive a professional development certificate from the Faculty of Education.

Preparing to Teach Internationally is open to all university students from 91��ɫ and beyond, along with educators who are considering teaching in an international setting, including teaching English as a second language. Some of the topics explored in the program are: international education systems and schools; issues and politics; skills and strategies required to teach in an international setting; and how to plan and prepare for the role.

Registrations are now being accepted for the spring session, offered April 28, May 5, 12, 26 and June 2, in five-hour classes on 91��ɫ’s Keele campus. The deadline for registration is March 31. Registrations can be submitted online by way of the website.

For more information, visit the website, or contact the International Education Office at 416-736-2100, ext. 20052, or by e-mail at international@edu.yorku.ca.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Trombonist Ron Westray, Oscar Peterson Chair in Jazz Performance in 91��ɫ’s Department of Music, returns to Toronto’s Massey Hall on Thursday, Feb. 23 for an innovative youth outreach program.

He will lead “Rhythm Counts”, an invitational workshop for young people, just before his former bandmates, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra led by Wynton Marsalis, take centre stage to perform the highly-anticipated .

Ron Westray

Called , the arts and education outreach program presented by the Corporation of Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall provides complimentary tickets for selected concerts to youth who might otherwise be unable to attend. The program, now in its 13th season, aims to enhance and broaden students’ musical horizons by exposing them to world-class performers and related pre-concert demo-workshops by noted local performers/educators.

Westray has invited 91��ɫ music grad and multiple Juno Award-winning jazz saxophonist Mike Murley to co-host the 30-minute workshop, to be held in Massey Hall’s intimate Century Lounge. The session is designed to demonstrate the language of jazz and the art of improvisation, to prepare the students for the mainstage performance. Together, Westray and Murley will present an informal mix of commentary, musical demonstrations and historical highlights, followed by a Q&A. Tickets for the workshop and concert have been distributed to more than 150 music students, ranging in age from 12 to 17, at selected schools and community groups in the Greater Toronto Area.

“I was thrilled to be invited to take part in Share the Music and connect with these young people,” said Westray. “I come from the performance world, and it’s always a pleasure to have the opportunity to play, plus the chance to talk about the music with a fresh audience.”

Westray in performance at the Lincoln Arts Center

“We’re delighted to have Professor Westray on board for this event,” said program coordinator Laraine Herzog. “He’s a perfect fit, seeing as he was lead trombonist with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra for so many years. His reputation as an incredible performer and educator precedes him – not to mention his connection with Oscar Peterson, a true Canadian musical hero, through his position at 91��ɫ.”

Prior to joining 91��ɫ, Westray toured internationally with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra for more than a decade, including a number of performances at Massey Hall.

“Wynton [Marsalis] deserves every honour for his immense accomplishments in building the JLCO, its reputation as one of the finest jazz ensembles in the world, and its remarkable touring reach,” said Westray. “I was in the audience when they played Massey Hall last year, and it was like seeing my family from the other side of the fourth wall. I’m looking forward to seeing these guys play once again, and to helping a new young audience develop a deeper connection to a band and a musical repertoire I feel so strongly about.”

As well as a performer, Westray is an accomplished composer and recording artist. His commissions for the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra include the monumental score Chivalrous Misdemeanors – Select Tales from Don Quixote (2005) and arrangements of the works of Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman. He is well known for his collaborations with Wycliffe Gordon, and has also appeared in concert with such luminaries as Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Stevie Wonder, Benny Carter, Dewey Redman, Roy Haynes, Randy Brecker and a host of other pre-eminent artists. A regular on the New 91��ɫ City club circuit, he has played premier jazz venues such as the Village Vanguard, Blue Note, Sweet Basil’s, Iridium, Jazz Standard and Smalls, and is a standing member of the Mingus Band. In 2009, he joined 91��ɫ’s music department, where he teaches in the jazz program and co-directs the 91��ɫ Jazz Orchestra.

Next month, Westray is participating as soloist and clinician at the prestigious Savannah Music Festival. On March 25, he appears as guest soloist with the 91��ɫ Wind Symphony, performing Rimsky-Korsakov’s Trombone Concerto under the baton of 91��ɫ music Professor William Thomas.

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After five years of transnational research by educators and artists in Panama, Nicaragua, Mexico, the United States and Canada, the VIVA! Project is launching its new book, iVIVA! Community Arts and Popular Education in the Americas, edited by project lead Deborah Barndt, a professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES) and coordinator of the Community Arts Practice certificate.

“The book is the culmination of years of research and rich exchange with partners,” says Barndt of the 2003-2007 Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada-funded participatory action research VIVA! Project. “Each partner undertook research of a community arts project and annual transnational workshops allowed them to reflect critically and creatively, collectively and comparatively, on their diverse educational and artistic practices.”

(SUNY Press and Between the Lines), which includes a DVD that brings the projects to life, will launch Friday, Oct. 28, from 6:30 to 9pm, at the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto, 16 Spadina Rd., Toronto. The launch, co-sponsored by the Catalyst Centre, will include performances, poetry and video screenings at 7pm and 8pm, as well as displays of VIVA! partner organizations and local community arts groups. Refreshments will be served.

The launch is part of a larger Arts & Communities Network event, which will run from Oct. 27 to 31. Five of the international VIVA! Project partners will facilitate professional development workshops over the five days, a cross-faculty initiative funded by 91��ɫ’s Academic Innovation Fund.

The workshops represent unique community-University partnerships, says Barndt. Community partners include the West-Side Arts Hub, Nomanzland Theatre, Young Peoples Theatre, Centre for Indigenous Theatre, Regent Park Focus, Digital Storytelling Toronto, Latin American Art Centre Collective, Latin American Canadian Art Projects and Mural Routes. Academic partners include 91��ɫ’s Community Arts Practice program, 91��ɫ's Faculty of Environmental Studies, the TD – 91��ɫ Centre for Community Engagement, 91��ɫ’s Department of Theatre and Department of Dance in the Faculty of Fine Arts, Destination Arts in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Education, the Centre for Research on Latin America & the Caribbean and the Centre for Refugee Studies.

Left: Deborah Barndt

The first workshop, Sharing Lives and Cultures: Community Media on Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast, an evening dialogue with Margarita Antonio, will take place on Thursday, Oct. 27, from 6 to 9pm, at Regent Park Focus Youth Media Arts Centre, 38 Regent St. (lower level), Toronto.

Antonio is a Miskitu journalist, a leader in regional Indigenous women’s networks and the UNESCO Officer on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. She is founder of the Institute for Intercultural Communication of URACCAN University and she helped develop BilwiVision, a youth-run community television program. Antonio will share Central American experiences and open up a dialogue with Toronto community media activists.

The second workshop, Movement and Poetry Workshop, will be with Amy Shimshon-Santo on Friday, Oct. 28, from 1 to 4pm, at West-Side Arts Hub, 91��ɫ Woods Library, 1785 Finch Ave. W., Toronto. Shimshon-Santo is a Los Angeles-based performing artist, educator and researcher. As director of ArtsBridge for University of California, Los Angeles, School for the Arts & Architecture, she prepared arts educators, built arts education infrastructure and cultivated K-20 community partnerships.

On Saturday, Oct. 29, the Community Mural Production Workshop with Checo Valdez will take place from 10am to 4pm, at the Davenport-Perth Neighbourhood Centre, 1900 Davenport Rd., Toronto. Valdez is a well-known graphic artist, political cartoonist and muralist who teaches at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana in Mexico City. He has recently developed a training program in community-based mural production and has coordinated mural projects all over Mexico.

On Sunday, Oct. 30, The Arrivals Creation Process: Recovering the Lost Body with Diane Roberts will take place from 2 to 5pm at West-Side Arts Hub, 91��ɫ Woods Library, 1785 Finch Ave. W., Toronto. Roberts is a Caribbean Canadian theatre artist working from an AfriCentric perspective. She is currently artistic director of urban ink productions, which develops and produces aboriginal and diverse cultural works of theatre, writing and film, integrates artistic disciplines and brings together different cultural and artistic perspectives and interracial experiences.

The final workshop, Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way with Monique Mojica, JoséÁngel Colman Pérez and Alberto Guevara, will take place on Monday, Oct. 31, from 6 to 8pm, at 612 Markham St., Toronto. VIVA! Project partners Pérez, Mojica and Guevara will speak about the collaborative and intercultural creation process in producing the groundbreaking play Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way at the Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse in May.

An established senior artist, Pérez is a master storyteller and oral historian and was the first professionally trained theatre artist of the Kuna people in Panama. Best known for his work in cultural recovery through theatre, Pérez was a major leader in the Kuna Children’s Art Project. Mojica (Kuna and Rappahannock nations) is a Toronto-based actor, playwright and artist-scholar spun directly from the web of New 91��ɫ’s Spiderwoman Theater. Her first play Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots was produced in 1990 by Nightwood Theatre and Theatre Passe Muraille. Guevara, a 91��ɫ theatre professor, is the coordinator of the Community Arts Practice (CAP) certificate offered by the Faculties of Fine Arts and Environmental Studies and was the assistant director of the play Chocolate Woman Dreams the Milky Way. Originally from Nicaragua, he integrates performance and politics. His research has focused on the theatricality of violence in Nicaragua and Nepal.

All the events are open to the public and admission is free. To RSVP for the launch, visit the . For more information about the workshops, visit the  website.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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They were attending the 10th annual Aug. 22 to 24. The theme this year was Connected Community Learning: The Next Decade.

For two-and-a-half days, they heard speakers and took training sessions on new technology tools and best practices in the classroom.

Right: Teachers receive training in the latest online educational tools at ABEL Summer Institute

“ABEL is at the forefront of 21st century learning and at the interface of K to 12 and postsecondary education systems,” said Robert Haché, the new vice-president research & innovation at 91��ɫ, in his opening remarks. “The ABEL program is exemplary at applying the latest research and giving teachers access to pioneering tools and support for teaching and learning.”

The conference featured . In his keynote speech, Curtis Bonk, an authority on emerging technologies for learning and author of books on how web technology is revolutionizing education, identified the top 10 trends in educational technology. Dean Shareski, a digital learning consultant from Saskatchewan, talked about learning methods that should be kept and those that need to be discarded. And Norm Vaughn, an education professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary, discussed blended learning in the classroom to foster student engagement and success.

At a celebratory luncheon, the institute also recognized ABEL members’ hard work and dedication to classroom innovation over the past 10 years.

Left: ABEL project manager Janet Murphy (left) and Anita Drossis, a teacher at Vaughan Secondary School, cut the 10th-anniversary cake

Founded in 2002, the award-winning ABEL program, based in 91��ɫ’s Institute for Research on Learning Technologies, is recognized as a leading international authority on new modes of teaching, training, learning and collaboration.

Sponsors of this year’s institute included Microsoft, Apple, Pearson Education, Ektron, Mindshare Learning, Mygazines, 91��ɫ and the 91��ɫ Region District School Board.

Thanks to Microsoft, five 91��ɫ students attended the institute as delegates and received a three-year membership subscription to the ABEL program through the Microsoft/ABEL Student Undergraduate Award.

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