The Alberta Teachers’ Association

New ATA Publications Available

Check out the latest publications from the Alberta Teachers’ Association. To order your copy of the Association’s newest publications, email distribution@ata.ab.ca.

Breaking the Silence: A Guide for Sexual and Gender Minority Teachers in Alberta
The Alberta Teacher’s Association is committed to fostering understanding and acceptance of sexual and gender minority (SGM) teachers and works to protect the conditions of professional practice for all members. This guide was written to help break the silence that still surrounds the experiences of SGM teachers in schools. It is a source of information and support for SGM teachers who have questions or concerns about matters related to their employment.
(PD-80-40 2018 04)

Off-Campus Education in Alberta: Current Realities and Future Prospects
This study explores select off-campus coordinators’ (OCCs) responses to questions about their employment experiences, administrative responsibilities and working conditions. The report raises awareness about the important role of OCCs and emphasizes their often inconsistent and nonformalized positions in Alberta schools.
(COOR-101-14, 2017 12, 64 pp)

Sustainability Project Available to Book

The 3% Project is a sustainability project that mobilizes one million Canadian youth (three per cent of Canada) through five national tours across 600 schools. It provides youth-friendly and holistic education on climate change and empowers youth to take action today on solving climate change in their local communities. The project is targeted towards students in grades 8 to 12, is free of charge to schools, and involves a school assembly, workshop and mentorship program.

The project’s on-the-road team will be returning to Alberta in October 2018 and is now booking schools for this second tour. More information is available from the Foundation for Environmental Stewardship (FES) at www.fesplanet.org.

Respectful Schools Online Toolkit

A new online toolkit is available to help teachers and principals create respectful school learning environments through human rights education.

Developed by the Alberta Teachers’ Association in collaboration with various partners, the Respectful Schools Online Toolkit provides curriculum-related activities, lesson plans and resources that help teachers demonstrate concepts like fairness, equity and inclusion.

The toolkit was developed due to a 2015 amendment to the School Act that added a requirement that school boards, students and parents contribute to a “welcoming, caring, respectful and safe learning environment that respects diversity and fosters a sense of belonging.”

The toolkit contains resources, articles and real-world best practices related to human rights and human rights education. It’s available on the ATA website at
www.teachers.ab.ca >News and Info>Announcements.

Infuse the Orc Into Your Curriculum

The Online Reference Centre (ORC) is a collection of $1.4 million worth of resources that can be accessed through LearnAlberta.ca. The ORC makes it easier than ever for teachers to incorporate digital resources that support inquiry-based research and information literacy skills into their curriculum planning.

ORC resources support all grades from K–12 and cover a wide variety of subject areas including mathematics, sciences, computer sciences, human geography, psychology and art. Materials are also applicable for students in IB and AP programs and for those learning in a language other than English.

Using the ORC will not only support inquiry projects, it will also teach your students necessary information literacy skills by providing them with high-quality, professionally vetted, curricular-aligned resources—and the benefits do not stop there! Interactive features such as text-to-speech, text translation, text highlighting, text prediction and embedded dictionaries/thesauruses level the playing field for classrooms of diverse learners. Many of the ORC resources allow students to share articles through social media, subscribe to RSS feeds and download articles to MP3.

To help teachers learn about the features and benefits of the resources, the ORC has developed a robust website that provides just-in-time support for teachers
(www.onlinereferencecentre.ca).