2024
Workshops
This year's conference will feature two workshops. You will find information about each one below.
Art in Action: Poetry and Collage, in dialogue towards Peace and Social Justice.
Jason “Blackbird” Selman, Melanie Garcia,
Wellysanè Minyangadou Ngokobi and Melissa-Ann Pereira Ledo
Thursday, March 21, 2024
A group of four Teaching Artists, Jason “Blackbird” Selman, Melanie Garcia,
Wellysanè Minyangadou Ngokobi, and Melissa-Ann Pereira Ledo, will facilitate a workshop that will guide participants through the foundations of mixed-media poetry and collage in response to the themes of Peace and Social Justice. Participants will be invited to reflect on their relationship with current events and be invited to respond through creative means."
Jason “Blackbird” Selman is a Montreal born poet, trumpet player and community worker. He is the author The Freedom I Stole (2007, Cumulus Press), Africa As A Dream That Travels Through My Heart (2016, Howl) and co-editor of the poetry anthology Talking Book (2006, Cumulus Press) which chronicles the writings of Kalm Unity Vibe Collective (of which he is a founding member). He works as a teaching artist, conducting poetry workshops in schools across the Montréal area and beyond. His work is grounded in the themes of ethno-musicology, surrealist expression, love and the intersection of masculinity and emotional vulnerability.
Melanie Garcia is a Filipina-Canadian collage artist concerned with unconscious and liminal spaces, existentialism, the body and its connections to a place or the environment. Her works have been exhibited in Canada, the US, the Netherlands, Iceland, and Norway. Her commissioned works have appeared in the Marshall Project, the Guardian, the Walrus, Ciele Athletics, Émigré as well as supporting the artistic visions of musicians, poets and designers. When not pushing little pieces of paper Melanie has been offering art workshops to youth in and around Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal for the past decade.
Wellysanè Minyangadou Ngokobi is a doctoral student in Educational Studies here at McGill University. Her research focuses on bettering teacher education programs so that they best prepare pre-service teachers to facilitate the culturally diverse classrooms here in Montreal and worldwide. As an advocate for critical cultural awareness in learning environments, she has led and is involved with various initiatives and committees geared towards EDI and anti-racism here in the university, consistently seeking to center and empower student voices in conversations they are too often excluded from.
Melissa-Ann Pereira Ledo (she/her/they) is of azorean settler background, is a proud queer mother, and is an educator/artist/researcher. She has over a decade of teaching and leadership experience in the Educational system, is a former Pedagogical Consultant for the English Montreal School Board, and co-founded the social enterprise and non-profit inPath. She has worked as part-time faculty for the Art Education department of Concordia University, consultant for Equitas’s Young Leaders for Equality LGBTI project in Haiti, and Consultant/ Director for the La Cabane. Her Masters work followed elementary teachers' creation and implementation of age-appropriate arts curriculum focused on Queering Curriculum, and she blossomed this work into a community initiative called Rainbow Story Hour. As a researcher her work focuses on curriculum development, queering curriculum, ideas of representation, community building amongst educators, and facilitating through the arts with a focus on how to best support marginalized youth. She has more recently held roles at McGill University as Research Assistant on Walking Alongside: Responsibilities and Redress in Quebec Teacher Education, Course Lecturer, and Teaching Assistant. She is currently a SSHRC funded PhD student in the DISE department, and the current title of her work is Representation Matters: Informing Schools on Becoming Human Rights Leaders Through the Transformative Power of Queer Teaching Artists. Ledo is also the Program Manager for exChange: An Intergenerational 2SLGBTQI+ Daring Dialogue Arts Project, Social Media Coordinator for QSEC, a mentor for Concordia’s Art Volt, and the Exhibition Coordinator for the EGSS’s 2024 Conference.
The Politics of Memorialization
Rachel McCabe
Friday, March 22, 2024
Trafalgar teacher and Social Science Department Head, Rachel McCabe will walk through a unit taught at the Sec IV level about the politics of memorialization. It is an extension unit that is strategically placed at the conclusion of the first chapter of the required (and often controversial) MEES course (History of Quebec and Canada). Students start with a critical examination of the legacy of John A Macdonald and the monuments erected across Canada in his honour. Students then expand the framework to look at the many purposes and functions of memorials in the world beyond Canada. The tools and materials used for the perspective-taking exercises and learning conversations will be shared with participants. The approach of this unit can be used to facilitate learning about other issues that may provoke tensions and conflicting values. An important dimension of social justice education is representation. The premise of this unit is representation matters.