Prince George District Teachers' Association
2023 Spring Fling Educational Conference
Thanks to all involved for a great Spring Fling Conference. Next year's conference takes place Friday, Apr 26, 2024. Workshop proposals will open up around the end of October 2023.
The 19th annual Spring Fling Educational Conference takes place in-person only at Prince George Secondary School in Prince George / Lheidli T'enneh Territory, BC on April 28th, 2023. This conference serves pre-K and K-12 educators from North Central BC and is co-hosted by BCTF Locals 27 Cariboo-Chilcotin, 28 Quesnel, 55 Burns Lake, 56, Nechako, and 57 Prince George. The conference is open to teachers, administrators, education professionals, education support staff, and other guests. We typically see 800 or more educators at this event. Workshop topics span the range of interest, including curricular areas, mental health and wellness, and cross-curricular concerns for educators and schools. In addition to room-based workshops, we welcome proposals for excursions, land-based and experiential learning.
NOTE ON LUNCH: We are planning to provide lunch for all attendees this year -- the registration includes an option to opt out of lunch so that we can minimize food waste. Our goal is to queue up food trucks and have them prepare a set number of lunches to go at 12:00pm on Apr 28. We have never done this before, so if our plan does not work we will provide lots of notice. The cost of lunch will be included in the conference fee. Also new, our lunch break will be 12:00-1:15 (15 minutes shorter than in previous years), and the afternoon session will therefore end at 2:45 and not at 3:00.
ADDITIONAL CONFERENCE INFORMATION WEBSITE: http://edfling.ca
CONFERENCE DOCUMENTS: workshop list with room numbers, school room map of PGSS, forms for presenters
Keynote - Overwhelmed? You are not alone! What's going on?
It Has Been a Long Three Years…and Here We Are!
For better or worse, we are social animals. Our well-being depends on the quality of the contact. We share a home environment; a work environment. We are impacted as we encounter others; we have influence over each other simply by being near (and simply by existing), let alone interacting. From a biological/physiological/historical perspective, we have a nervous system which very heavily influences our experience of ourselves and of others. We “ping” off each other. As you interact with students, colleagues, parents and others involved in the educational process, your nervous system can often be more in control of what you experience then you are – which means we can be disconnected from this process and not have the kind of control (and result) we would prefer.
As a therapist and educator specializing in supporting people to find more ease and ‘regulation’ in their lives, I want to share with you some information about how I understand overwhelm, how the body participates in the response to being overwhelmed, and what we can do to shift this experience. I work with people dealing with trauma. I am going to talk about how to be more “self-informed” and “other aware”, which could support you to be more attuned and responsive, less reactive and more effective. I will share a bit of the science about how all this works and how it relates to our everyday lives. And possibly we will discover something that will make a difference.
Speaker
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Berns Galloway
Berns currently works as a psychotherapist (since 1995 after graduating with an MEd from the University of Victoria)) and Somatic Experiencing trainer (since 2008), facilitating Somatic Experiencing trainings around the world. His first professional work was as a Special Education teacher in New Brunswick (his home province) after graduating from Dalhousie University (1989) and Acadia University (1980). Moving to Yellowknife in 1984 (for one year which lead to seven) supported gaining many years’ experience as an elementary classroom teacher and engaging with all that that involves (and more). Living in ‘the north’ was a unique and rich experience. Pursuing his own personal development work then lead to a move away from working with kids to working with adults in a more intimate context. As a somatically oriented practitioner and trainer, Berns now supports people who work with others to orient to what is working (amidst all that is not) as a way to renegotiate overwhelming experiences and achieve better health and well-being.