Scroll through the (incredible) offerings below and jot down the codes for two choices (first and alternate choice) for both morning and afternoon sessions, then proceed to the registration page. CIS members who are leading a workshop, please choose your own workshop.

​Morning Sessions

Memes and Media Literacy (I Can Haz) 
The Medium is the Message. As a new breed of content creators emerges on digital forums such as Reddit and Instagram, the internet meme has become an integral part of society, especially the current generation of high school students. In this workshop, you will explore the evolving history of meme culture, how to apply memes towards "observations and conversations", and practice creating your own memes. ​ Code: AM1
DAVID FINKELSTEIN is an English teacher at Crescent School. His background also includes drama, performance arts and Special Education.
Department Heads' Meeting
The Department Heads’ meeting provides an opportunity for English curriculum leaders to discuss areas of common concern. A list of topics will be created from Department Head suggestions ahead of the conference, and we will provide an updated document listing texts used in CITE Schools. Adrian will start the ball rolling asking about the role of English in project-based learning. Please send suggested topics and your school’s text lists to Adrian at hoadread (AT) hsc.on.ca Code: AM2
​ADRIAN HOAD-REDDICK is a teacher, poet, radio host, wordsmith, and Lead Idea Farmer at Hoadworks, inc., a new media company providing innovative educational content and word games. He is also Vice Principal, Academics, at Hillfield Strathallan College’s Middle School and a former Chair of CITE. Adrian has over thirty-five years of English language and literature teaching experience; he never grows any less inspired by the opening sentences of Watership Down, or the closing lines of The Great Gatsby.
Make Your Choice: Aligning Student Interests and Teacher Passion 
The best lessons are the ones where the teacher is passionate about the topic being taught. Teacher enthusiasm can be contagious. What if the teacher was passionate about the whole course? This workshop will explore ways to capitalise on teacher passion and expertise to engage students in your English program. At Hillfield Strathallan College, we have successfully offered theme-based ENG4U option courses for several years. Our program combines teacher autonomy with accountability and collaboration to create exciting “option courses” for our English students. These variations on the compulsory Grade 12 English course become “elective-like” courses, giving both students and teachers choice to explore areas of interest. This workshop will also examine the Voice & Choice Project offered in Grade 11 English, as well as some of the other program options we are piloting to align student interests with teacher passions. Code: AM3
​JEREMY W. JOHNSTON is the Subject Coordinator of the English department at Hillfield Strathallan College, where he has taught English and Classical Studies for 17 years. Jeremy has a Master's degree in Curriculum and Pedagogy from the University of Western Ontario and, in 2017, he completed a research sabbatical on entrepreneurialism and innovation in the English classroom. Jeremy is also the author of "All Things New: Essays on Christianity, culture & the arts" (2018).
Flash Debates and Building Argumentation 
In this session, we will work through quick, fun and effective protocols that you can easily adapt and use in your classroom the next day!  We will focus on building argumentation skills through flash debates as participants will practice protocols for debate and methods of coaching partner talk during those debates.  They will learn strategies to focus students on seeking and analyzing evidence and logic. These debate protocols encourage students to state big, bold claims or positions, gather more specific details and quotes as evidence, ranking the evidence, and finally correlating evidence with reason. Ultimately, these skills support students in building argumentation in a low stakes, fun manner before we ask them to move to high stakes experiences like essays and exams.   If we can’t say it, we can’t write it! This session will be suitable for middle and senior students. ​Code: AM4
​DANIELLE GANLEY is in her 23rd year of teaching and has been lucky enough to spend the last 19 as an English teacher at Holy Trinity School in Richmond Hill.  Her current focus as the department head is to encourage a culture of reading with a focus on diverse and disruptive texts. Over the last two decades, Danielle’s role has  extended outside the classroom including the building a senior school writing centre, an Ed-tech coaching position for Cohort 21, a professional growth coach and an educational trainer for Apple Canada.  
Destabilizing the hyper-rational: a case for all manner of nonsense, jibberish, humour, the yummy, and upside-downedness
%&#@?! Are you locked into a framework for teaching English that places too much of an emphasis on analytical essay writing, conventional texts, and who/what/where/when quizzes? Can't get to the why and how? Is the requirement to meet with curricular standards and learning skills as they currently exist serving to turn your students into mere human capital, all the while denying them the opportunity to flex their creative muscles, to be genuinely collaborative, and to experience the ever-necessary (but often elusive) state of vulnerability? If so, join us for an exploration of ways to bring the humanity back to the classroom.​ Code: AM5
MIKE PALUCH is currently an administrator at St. Andrew’s College, where he has taught for 13 years. He has spent his career teaching English to high school students.

MELISSA RAMON is currently the Librarian at St. Andrew’s College, where she has taught for 15 years. She has extensive background teaching history and English to middle and high school students. ​
The Bad Version
How do you unblock students for writing success? What exercises and prompts will give them energy and confidence to create language based projects? How do you build failure resilience and stop perfection paralysis? In this workshop Duncan McKenzie will use exercises used in his own television writing rooms to breathe life into 'homework' both for individual writing projects and group work. Code: AM6
DUNCAN MCKENZIE has been a radio and television writer and producer/director for almost 30 years. His credits include History Bites, Train 48, That's So Weird and Baroness Von Sketch Show. Duncan also writes about improvisation and teaches for Oakville Improv Theatre Company.
 Writer’s Craft: A Different Approach, or How to Help Your Students Love Poetry
In this workshop, I present a model for Writer's Craft that focusses on prose and verse composition simultaneously, encourages students to cross traditional genre borders, and focusses on what students hope to say with their work that cannot be said so well in any other form. We will discuss how to introduce the trifecta of prose, verse, and review work as essential base skills, including an introductory verse unit that helps students see the possible in verse, to find in it a form that offers unique opportunity for expression, and to leave behind antiquated views of what poetry is to explore what it might be for them. I'll also suggest some projects that offer students opportunities to go beyond these initial skills to create work that excites them and offers them a new voice to express their own deeply held concerns. Code: AM7
LAURA MCRAE is a teacher at Havergal College, where she teaches, among other courses, Writer’s Craft. Her chapbook, Distributaries, was published in 2016 by Frog Hollow Press, and her first full-length collection, Were There Gazelle, is forthcoming from Pedlar Press.

Afternoon Sessions

Canada Explores: Inspire Adventure through Storytelling
We are all explorers and writers in our own right; some less practiced than others. Our students have limitless ability to see the world through screens and technology. I dream of connecting our students more deeply to the earth and the world around them by providing a platform for students to authentically engage the skills of storytelling and the sharing of their narrative through the lens of adventure and exploration. Come with me on a journey of inspired non-fiction writing. Be a part of a grassroots initiative to build a community of writers across Canada. ​Code: PM2
TIM ROLLWAGEN is the Director of Global Learning at Lakefield College School.  As a seasoned traveller, adventurer, and advocate of all things global citizenship, Tim has a developed a diverse resume of teaching experience that has taken him to Nunavut and Morocco. Through the lens of student leadership, Tim has been integral in the development of many new initiatives at LCS, including the creation of a Global Citizenship Conference. He is also a coach for the CIS professional development group, Cohort 21 and founder of Peterborough Explores, a community based organization that inspires adventure writing, photography, and storytelling. 
Teaching the Profile as a Multimodal Form (FULL)
What makes a person tick? Profiles aim to answer that question. Made popular by a new form of journalism in the 1960s, the genre contains some of the best contemporary writing and documentary filmmaking relevant to students' lives today. The questions journalists and documentary filmmakers ask of profile subjects seamlessly connect to the questions English teachers want students to ask of themselves, the texts we study, and the world. Participants will receive practical resources that include recommended texts for study, assignment prompts, rubrics, examples of student work, and potential units of study. The genre easily addresses all four strands of the English curriculum and encourages students to think beyond themselves and to make connections beyond the classroom. As New Yorker editor David Remnick says, profile writers “travel the world, united only in the chronicling of people who you could say are obsessed, in one way or another, with some corner of the human experience.” Code: PM3
MATTHEW TREVISAN is the English department head at St. Andrew’s College. Prior to teaching, he wrote for The Globe and Mail and the Kingston Whig-Standard. He has exhibited his photography at the Gladstone Hotel, Gallery 44, and George Brown College.   

TRENA EVANS is the English department head at Royal St. George’s College, where she teaches English, Film Studies, and Writer’s Craft. Prior to her fifteen years of teaching in independent schools, she taught English, Composition, and Film at Western University and Columbia College Chicago. She is currently on the Teacher Advisory Council for Hot Docs for Schools.

JENNIFER GOLDBERG teaches English at Havergal College; at Havergal, she is currently working part-time in Admission, and is also a past Chair of Teaching and Learning. Prior to joining Havergal, Jennifer served as department head of English at Crestwood Preparatory College and, before that, worked as a Media Analyst at Queen’s Park.
The Best and Brightest
Do you want a quick and easy way to walk away with ideas and material that you can use next week in your English classroom? Then come to this sharing workshop where every participant gets five minutes to pitch their favourite assignment, assessment, resource or lesson plan to the group. Come and 'brag' about something you are excited and passionate about, and get ideas from your equally excited and passionate colleagues. All resources will be shared electronically within the group. Code: PM4
CHRIS JULL is a sixteen-year teacher and former department head at Crestwood Preparatory College, as well as the current CITE Treasurer. When not teaching Grades 10, 12 and AP English Literature, he can be found moderating the chess club, directing the staff-student choir or coaching the Kids Lit Quiz team. Chris started his Masters of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo this past fall.
​When Teaching is a Joke: Using Humour in the Creative Classroom
How is humour related to creative thinking and how can it be used in the classroom to encourage fresh, fun, and energized approaches toward teaching, learning and engaging with texts?  This lively and interactive workshop explores diverse ways of interweaving humour into reading, writing and thinking about English through a series of surprising and enjoyable writing activities. ​Code: PM5
GARY BARWIN is a writer, musician and educator and the author of 23 books including the nationally bestselling novel Yiddish for Pirates which won the Stephen Leacock Award for Literary Humour, the Canadian Jewish Literary Award and was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award. He has taught and been writer-in-residence in many universities, colleges and schools.
​Expectations-Based Assessment: Condensing Curriculum to Maximize Skill
In an age where students are increasingly asking for more relevance to their education, the Humanities must respond by explicitly teaching the skills needed for 21st century success. By co-creating a shared language of combined curriculum expectations, and using success criteria towards achieving mastery, teachers of English have an opportunity to track and assess student development in a more precise and visual manner. Code: PM7
​ERIC DAIGLE is a senior English teacher at Hillfield Strathallan College. Formerly the Academic Director of Rosseau Lake College, Eric introduced a whole-school, cross-curricular inquiry-based program called Discovery Days. He is a facilitator of the CIS professional development group, Cohort21, and has presented at both CAIS and CIS conferences. Eric is the author of Low Thread Count, a self-published book of poems and short stories.
Is It Sticking?
In an ideal world, we are tweaking our lessons as we go, ensuring that the material and the skills we teach really “stick.” However, science often shows that we are not always following the most effective path to learning -- specifically, for long-term concept acquisition and application.

Introducing ideas from a variety of pedagogical researchers and cognitive psychologists, we will talk "myth vs reality" and examine how teacher metacognition, blended with student metacognition, conversations/observations, and structured "looking at work" protocols can help you refine your teaching for better student outcomes.

Bring a lesson / unit plan / assignment or project idea that you want to "tweak" to include more metacognition. Together, we will brainstorm ideas based on the workshop concepts. Code: PM8
JODI RICE teaches AP English Language and Composition at The Bishop Strachan School and Challenge and Change in Society online for the E-Learning Consortium Canada. She has also worked for the American College Board developing AP English Language exams and curriculum and supporting AP English teachers through online outreach. Recently she has joined BSS's Learning Commons team, working collaboratively with teachers to support and develop teacher and student learning based on best practices and research. She loves reading books that blow her mind by making her think about teaching and learning in unexpected ways, and then endlessly tweaking her lessons.

MONICA HODGSON is an English teacher at The Bishop Strachan School in Toronto. She has taught courses at every level from grades 7- 12, including Media Studies and Writer’s Craft. She is also the Department Head for Performing Arts and has been a Drama instructor in the Middle and Senior Schools. This year she has taken on the role of Lead Teacher for the Senior School, focusing on instructional coaching, co-teaching, researching and moving forward best practices. She relishes getting up early, grabbing a cup of coffee, and curling up with a good book.