Session 6, 2pm-2:50pm: Youth Run – Child Friendly Community Day Brainstorming Session
Elizabeth Campbell
Elizabeth Campbell
Elizabeth (Liz) has over two decades of high school classroom teaching experience, as well as experience as a lead teacher for a local school board in rural Ontario. She has taught everything from philosophy to alternative education. In addition, she co-facilitated self-directed professional development workshops for educational practitioners. Liz completed a PhD in Educational Sustainability at Nipissing University in North Bay and is currently an adjunct professor at University of Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton University. She is passionate about inclusive, holistic, democratic, and self-directed education and believes that fostering a loving culture of inquiry creates an environment where diversity is honoured and all students have the opportunity to flourish. She describes the ideal learning environment as a co-created space for alternative (authentic) knowing, researching, and representing and as co-researchers the learners in her care embark on a journey of discovery through action research projects. Time, trust, respect and freedom are key values in her living theory, which she honours by loving her students into learning. As Liz negotiates the mandates and policies of public education she continues to develop her own living theory to address the spiritual crisis she believes inhibits learning. It is the sustainability of self-directed action research, her role as grandmother of four, her passion for the rights of children, and her faith in human kind that inspires her to continue researching and writing with the hope of contributing to a shift in what counts as education and learning.