Teachers Convention – Calgary 2025

Note: AI generated picture of the Calgary Teachers Convention 2025.

I always look forward to Teachers Convention in the middle of February, the weekend before Family Day. This professional learning event has always marked the middle of the school year for me, though that’s probably not accurate. After Teachers Convention, there’s Spring Break in March and then a random holiday here and there, and then everyone starts looking forward to summer vacation. I know I do, even as I realize how much we haven’t done and how little time there is left to do it! It’s panic time for some of us who are classroom teachers.

This year I registered late for Convention and many of the workshops I wanted to attend were either sold out or I had to get on the waitlist. Lucky for me, I was able to get into the sessions I wanted to attend because not everybody who signs up for a session ends up going. And, not everyone who doesn’t end up going, cancels their registration. In any case, I took part in five sessions over the two days and they were all fantastic.

What follows is a list of the sessions I attended and some of my takeaways.

Building Inclusion: An Anti-Racist Approach – this session was led by Calgary Board of Education DEI specialists. And, yes, we still have those! I learned a lot about how the far-right and Neo-Nazi groups in Alberta recruit students as young as 10 years old for their organizations. Let me tell you: it was shocking: I will be more vigilant about this in the future.

Since this was an interactive session, one activity that participants engaged in made me reflect more about the biases I still have about age, sexual orientation, race, social class and more. Being aware of these biases, and recognizing them when they’re happening, is an important first step in anti-racist education, both mine, that of my students and other people I interact with on a regular basis.

Math Therapy, with Vanessa Vahkaria, the Math Guru, was not only an informative session, but it was also a lot of fun. Vanessa is very funny! Nerd alert: I saw Vanessa at NCTM in Chicago in September, follow her on Instagram, bought her book and read it with a group of teachers online. Vanessa joined us on one of the Google Meet sessions to talk about her book with us. There is so much in Vanessa’s book – Math Therapy – to think about! I know I will need to spend time thinking about how to implement her ideas with my students.

Something that stands out for me is how important it is to understand that what we are trying to do in a math therapy classroom (all classrooms should be math therapy classrooms, according to Vanessa!) is to heal and improve students’ relationship with math. We are not aiming for math geniuses or Fields medal winners. We are trying to help students understand that they can do math and that sense of accomplishment can have a positive impact in other areas of their lives. If you don’t believe me or can’t wrap your head around this idea, then you have to get Vanessa’s book. It will change your life as a math teacher!

Every time I listen to Vanessa speak or I read her book, my mindset about math anxiety and math trauma shifts in good and unexpected ways. I wish I had been exposed to these ideas, and her book, earlier in my career.

I attended two sessions, back-to-back, with Alicia Burdess and they were both amazing. I first discovered Alicia when I learned about Building Thinking Classrooms (BTC), the brain child of Peter Liljedahl. (Yes, I have all of his books!) Alicia has a great website and downloadable books across three grade levels – 2, 3 and 8 – with curricular and non-curricular math problems. They are an awesome resource!

Alicia’s first session was about using picture books to introduce kids to big, beautiful math problems. The other session was about a written number system created by junior high students in Alaska because the Hindu-Arabic number system did not fit their Indigenous language.

Seeing BTC in action – we were at vertical non-permanent surfaces (VNPS) in random groups of three with one marker – and realizing how engaging and intriguing the problems Alicia presented was very inspiring. Of course, I put holds on all of the books she mentioned in her session and I can’t wait to try them out with my students in the math lab.

Finally, I went to a session that was part of a series on special education sponsored by Mount Royal University with Dr. Chandra Lebenhagen. Dr. Chandra talked about how important it is to use evidence-based research to evaluate popular strategies that teachers use when writing up Individual Program Plans or IPP’s (IEP’s in the US). She provided participants with a framework that can be used to evaluate how a particular strategy is working and whether to continue to use it and tweak it so that there is growth in the initial objectives or discard it because it is not helping the student progress, academically and/or emotionally. One of my takeaways from this session was how important it is to have students self-assess their use of a particular strategy. Based on what students say, and the teacher’s assessment of how useful or not the strategy is for this particular student, then adjustments can be made or the strategy can continue to be used as is or with adaptations.

All in all. this year’s Teachers Convention was exceptional. Thank you, to the 2025 Calgary City Teachers Convention speakers and organizers for a top notch event!