November 7 , 2007
Students “socializing” before PDP Symposium’s keynote speech.
Students attended the keynote speech given by Dr. Heesoon Bai, Professor of Education at SFU and then attended a variety of presentations and workshops at Surrey’s L.A. Matheson Secondary School. Topics ranged from honoring origins to empowering students to handling gay issues in the classroom. Interestingly, the topics chosen were cross-curricular and could be incorporated into any subject matter, whether reading, writing or arithmetic. Student Monita Prasad praised the symposium stating “I attended the PE workshop in the morning and teaching world music and dance in the afternoon. Both were very engaging and interactive workshops and completely hands on. I left having learned quite a bit, and also feeling much more confident about teaching PE!” Kanwal Neel, coordinator of the symposium says “it gets students to reflect on their lives and how it affects their practice as teachers”.
This way of thinking also reflects how PDP makes a shift in learning for students. These courses signal the start of the students’ professional lives as teachers and they are turned towards thinking of themselves as practitioners instead of students. Instead of focusing on exam performance, students now need to turn attention to honing their own skills in front of the classroom.
This year’s symposium theme was “Socializing Justice”. Dr. Bai presented the students with the query, how do we educate students in such a way that they become just and justice-loving people? That is, “a person who does not think and see in terms of seeking and maximizing one’s self-interest, who does not rest with asking for a pre-determined list of rights and obligations so that she can calculate their balance…who approaches another person or another being with a profoundly paradoxical sense of…infinite responsibility”. Dr. Bai feels that “intersubjectivity” is key to the answer.
Essentially, “it is the mutual sharing of thoughts, perceptions, [feelings], values… We become intersubjective beings when, through sharing ourselves, we become radically open to each other's subjectivity and allow [its play] across our individual differences”. Finally, Dr. Bai reminded attendees that as teachers, they must take their roles with great responsibility and recognize and act, as if every action will have far-reaching consequences, for it is these actions that mark the just teacher.
For more information about Professional Programs or PDP, go to
For more information about Dr. Heesoon Bai, go to http://www.educ.sfu.ca/research/bai/
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