This year’s annual BC Social Studies Teachers’ Association (BCSSTA) conference, held at UBC, started out with a lot of excitement about the keynote speaker, Chantal Hébert. Hébert drew on her experience as an influential columnist and political commentator as she shared her thoughts on current events happening in our province, in Canada, and around the world.
Teachers joining virtually and in-person had an opportunity to ask Hébert questions about politics, policy, and news before splitting up to join a workshop of their choice.
Conference attendees had a variety of topics to choose from for workshops, including radical thought, lessons to explore economics, classroom activities to understand global conflict, enhancing argumentation skills, supporting newcomer students from war zones, and more.
In a workshop titled Teaching BC History while Revitalizing the Chinook Jargon Language, participants were given an overview of resources that can help them introduce students to the history and legacy of Chinook Jargon.
Chinook Jargon is a language that borrows words from several different Indigenous languages spoken across BC, Washington, and Oregon, as well as settler languages. This relatively easy-to-learn language facilitated conversation between groups with different linguistic backgrounds. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, BC even had two dedicated newspapers published entirely in Chinook Jargon.
Today, the language’s legacy is still evident in place names across the province.
“We want to make sure we are providing value for our members while also bringing together academia, teachers, and community members. We try to combine all these voices to help teachers do the best teaching they can." – Michael Howitt, BCSSTA Executive Committee member. “
Workshop participants were given lesson plans and resources to help them introduce Chinook Jargon to their students as part of their exploration of BC’s history.
Like all good professional development, some wonderful connections between teachers occurred during this workshop. Tim O’Donnell, a teacher at Tamanawis Secondary in Surrey, shared that his school has a Chinook Jargon name, and he was keen to hear the presenters’ interpretations of the meaning.
Paisley Mckenzie, a UBC student who is learning Chinook Jargon, said that she had seen a dictionary define Tamanawis as “spirit” or “power.”
Another teacher in the workshop, Emmett Keyserlingk, noted that he came across the word Tamanawis while working with his BC First Peoples 12 students to write poetry in Chinook Jargon. Emmett used the word Tamanawis in the poem he wrote alongside his students as it was the closest translation he could find to “I feel that too.”
The definition shared with Tim by his school district for Tamanawis was “one who teaches wisdom.”
The presenters noted at the beginning of the workshop that language is more meaningful when it’s shared. This point was highlighted by the collective meaning-making and language exploration that occurred in this workshop.
Other workshops at the conference were every bit as engaging. “I found it really hard to choose which workshop to do because there were so many good options,” said Rylan Vanderwoude, a student-teacher at Vancouver Technical Secondary School, who also said he is excited to try out some of the resources he’s collected at the conference during his practicum.
The planning that goes into organizing this conference starts months, and even years, before the day of the event. BCSSTA executive members are already looking ahead and thinking of themes for future years’ conferences.
“We want to make sure we are providing value for our members while also bringing together academia, teachers, and community members,” said Michael Howitt, BCSSTA Executive Committee member. “We try to combine all these voices to help teachers do the best teaching they can.”
Stephan Biela, a teacher from Chilliwack, reported taking away a lot of new ideas from the conference, but found the connections with colleagues to be the most impactful. “The camaraderie, collegiality, and sense of community that this conference creates is so important—especially for teachers from smaller schools or districts where you might be the only socials teacher. This breaks that isolation.”