Presentations:

The Summer Literacy Symposium: Building Teacher Capacity Through Collaborative Professional Learning

Melinda Clifford, Ministère de l’Éducation

The Summer Literacy Symposium is a dynamic, three-year professional learning program designed to support educators in strengthening literacy instruction across Quebec’s English-speaking community. Consisting of immersive, three-day workshops each summer, the program offers teachers, consultants, and principals the unique opportunity to learn, collaborate, and build connections with colleagues from across the province.

Centered on the Active View of Reading, the Symposium equips educators with essential knowledge and practical tools for teaching students how to read. It also responds to areas of need in the current ELA curriculum, offering greater clarity and depth where guidance is limited, thereby equipping teachers to support literacy development more effectively and build a stronger foundation for student success.

Led by the ELA Programs team at the Quebec Ministry of Education and the Leadership Committee for English Education in Quebec (LCEEQ), the Symposium features targeted workshops, keynote presentations, and collaborative activities. Bringing together some of the country’s most renowned researchers and educational leaders, the Symposium offers research-driven, sustained professional learning that helps educators tackle key challenges in literacy instruction and elevate best practices in the classroom. 

Literacy in Action's Migratory Roots Festival

Yolanda Weeks, Literacy in Action

From 2022-2024, we at Literacy in Action created the Migratory Roots Festival with the English-speaking communities of Bury, Richmond, Lennoxville, Ayer’s Cliff, Eaton Corner, and Stanstead, located in the Estrie region of Quebec’s Eastern Townships. Leading up to the festival events, we ran a series of intergenerational creative, cultural, and core literacy workshops in each community to ensure that participants had access to learning opportunities that explored their personal histories of movement, migration, and belonging in the region. These workshops were designed for English-speaking low literacy learners and was offered to all lifelong learners. Emerging artists, poets, and writers from each town equally created thematic works that were featured during the celebratory events. This creative approach and accessible educational methodology allowed participants to become an active and integral part of creating the cultural content of the events.

Our film will share the results of these efforts, giving viewers an intimate look at the events that occurred in six ESC across a shares the results of these efforts, giving viewers an intimate look at the events that occurred in six ESC across a vast rural region of Quebec. The visual journey highlights a cultural pride that honours a plurality of English-speaking identity, the power of inclusive lifelong learning practices and the efficacity of a cross-sectoral strategy for fostering community vitality.