Conference 2012

 Emergent Learning: Turning Tides in 21st Century Education

A new conference that challenges the way we think about education will take place on April 23rd and 24th, 2012 at the World Trade and Convention Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  Registration is now open on our conference website!

This conference is being presented by our sister organization, Turning Tides Community Outreach, and looks beyond learning disabilities to a education system that focuses on the whole child.

Emergence captures the concept that we are educating children for an emergent future: a future which none of us can predict. What is needed to live in a world that is constantly emerging? How do we educate our children to live, shape and lead in such a world?

Keynote speaker Sir Ken Robinson is known around the world for his inspiring views on ways to teach children differently. He believes the pursuit of standardization has led education systems to kill creativity - ignoring hundreds of other valid and valuable ways of learning. We share his belief that we must adapt our education system to consider the whole child.

This conference is about how we can create an educational experience that leaves politics behind and embraces the children we hold dear.  For years, there has been tension between teaching skills and the more spontaneous child-centered learning.

The conference mandate is to embrace both of the paradigms that have been part of the debate on education since the 1800's. Perhaps it is time to understand that both are essential to a child's well being.  

The question is how to we prepare our children for a world where change is not only part of their world, but happens at a speed that none of us has experienced before. Children will need to be resourceful and confident and ready to create. We cannot educate them based on what was; instead, we need to rise to the challenge to educate them to embrace a world that is beyond our ability to vision. 

This is new territory, and it will require the best of all of us. Let's support our children - they hold the future.

You can find more information on the conference at our website - www.teachingthewaychildrenlearn.com.  Registration now open!