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Adult Education Program

Memorandum To: Adult Education Program Staff From: Hanna Cabaj (Coordinator) and Jaime Puentes (Admin Assistant) Adult Education Program

Vol. 2019/2020 No. 276 September (2) 2019

In This Issue

Upcoming Events/Dates

PD Day 1

Thanksgiving Weekend 1

New/Important Information

Returning Superintendent 1

LINC Contribution Agreement 1

Annual Program Objectives 1

ESS-Online Absence Notification Reminders 2-3

Employee News

Retirements 4

Tips for Classroom Instructors

Resource of the Month 4

Upcoming Webinars 5

Outreach Report

Community Engagement 5

Social Media Posting 5

AE Nursery Program

Thanksgiving 6

Inserts included this month:

PD Day Agenda

Adult Education Program Annual Program Objectives

Upcoming Events/Dates

Professional Development Day — Adult Education ESL/LINC/LBS instructors, nursery instructors and administrative staff:

Date: Friday, October 4, 2019

Location: Mary Ward LINC & ESL Centre

Please refer to the insert in this issue for details about the agendas for that day.

Thanksgiving Long Weekend, October 12-14, 2019

No Adult Education programs/classes will be running during these dates. Classes resume on Tuesday, October 15, 2019.

New/Important Information

Returning Superintendent

We welcome back our former Superintendent of Education, Peter Aquiar, who is assuming the responsibilities for the Adult Education Program again. Peter has welcomed all to the new year during our annual Orientation Meeting and has made a visit to the Eglinton LINC and ESL Centre. Welcome back to the team Peter!

LINC Contribution Agreement – 2020-2025

Over the summer months, TCDSB received official confirmation from Immigration, Refugees, Citizenship Canada that TCDSB application for LINC program delivery for the period 2020-2025 has been accepted in principle. The negotiations of the new contract are to start after the upcoming federal elections.

Annual Program Objectives – 2019-2020

Adult Education Program sets annual program objectives that are aligned with TCDSB Multi-year Strategic Plan. Please find in enclosures annual objectives for the school year 2019/2020

Submission to: Jaime Puentes

Adult Education Program

80 Sheppard Avenue East

416-222-8282 Ext. 2513

Fax: 416-512-4992

Email: puent-

ej@tcdsb.org

New/Important Information

ESS — Online Absence Notification Reminders

The Payroll Department continues to customize SAP Payroll system for the Adult Education Program. Please review the process for reporting absences, making supply arrangements and/or updating your availability to supply.

To report an absence:

You report absences through the Employee Self Service portal – ESS. You also advise your school site verbally or by phone, as applies.

You can report a full day (default) or partial day hours absence.

You can view your absence history since Sept 1, 2019.

You report absences in advance, or within 48 hours if you did not do so prior to the absence. This ensures the supply instructor gets paid on time. You can, however, enter an absence after the day of your absence has passed, as long as it is reported within a week.

You can determine if the assignment requires a supply or not and the supply can be prearranged by you or the system can find one for you.

If you want to pre-arrange the supply to teach your class:

First make sure you phone the supply to ensure he/she is available and to provide more details of the assignment.

Then create the absence and select the supply name in the drop down. The system will generate the absence and will confirm the absence in an e-mail to you. It will also contact the substitute instructor you have selected, through an e-mail, to confirm the supply assignment. The supply in this case does not have to do anything else as the assignment was already pre-arranged.

If you have not pre-arranged a supply:

The system will generate the supply assignment and send an e-mail notification to all supply staff available for the required absence.

The position will be awarded to the first respondent who accepts the supply assignment in ESS.

If you need to cancel the absence, go to ESS, find the absence on the list and select Cancel. The substitute you had prearranged and selected for that absence will receive an email saying the assignment is cancelled.

If you created an absence and selected the wrong person to supply, you need to go to the absence in ESS, find the incorrect absence, and cancel the absence, then create a new one with the correct supply.

To cancel an absence after payroll has been processed, you need to contact The Payroll Secretary in Adult Education by email at puentej@tcdsb.org

For employees in the casual employee group only: Code 20— Leave of Absence Without Pay - is available as a reason for absence as these employees do not have sickness, family illness or personal absence quota allocations. Your absences will be shown in the paystub as Unpaid Absence.

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To: Adult Education Program Staff

From: Hanna Cabaj, Continuing Education Department

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To: Adult Education Program Staff

From: Hanna Cabaj, Continuing Education Department

New/Important Information To Supply staff: to update availability and accept assignments

Update your supply availability through the Employee Self Service (ESS) on a regular basis. If you select only one area of the city to supply, your name will not be displayed in the list for the areas you did not select. If you chose not to be available for assignments on specific says (e.g., Tuesdays and Thursdays), your name will not be displayed in the list of supply staff available for those days or evenings.

For supply instructors, you do not need to mark Friday and Saturday afternoons for availability, as we don’t have programs running on those times.

When absences are reported by staff, supply assignments are created in ESS and e-mail notifications are sent out to all supply staff available as per the supply availability selections in ESS.

All supply assignments can only be accepted through ESS – on a first response basis.

If you are interested in supplying, you have to check your TCDSB email account frequently to find out about supply assignments available through e-mail notifications. When you see an e-mail announcement of a supply assignment, you need to go to ESS, find the supply assignment and accept it in ESS.

An e-mail notification is sent to the instructor who requested a supply and to you.

You can cancel an assignment you are no longer available for, if the job has not been processed by payroll.

You will be able to view your assignment history since Sep 1, 2019.

To all employees: important reminder

If you are accessing ESS through a school or public computer, remember to log out of your ESS account, then sign-off and exit out of the computer in order to protect your personal account information and your personal user ID and password.

To review the processes described above, refer to PowerPoint presentation, available in the For Staff section of Adult Education Program webpage at: https://www.tcdsb.org/FORCOMMUNITY/AdultEducationESL/Resources/Pages/ESS---Employee-Self-Service.aspx If you are having technical issues with ESS, you can contact Jaime Puentes Herrera at puentej@tcdsb.org and include in your message a screenshot of what you see at the moment you are having problems creating an absence or updating your supply availability.

Thank you for your cooperation in this process !

Employee News

Retirements

We are saying good bye to Milica Petkovic, Ida D’Souza and Vasuki Senthilnathan, who decided to retire before the beginning of the new year. We wish them a happy and healthy retirement. They will be missed by their learners and colleagues.

Tips for Classroom Instructors

Resource of the Month: Teaching Resources for Federal Elections (CLB 4+)

Submitted by Anne-Marie Kaskens, Resources Consultant

The ElectionsandDemocracy website (URL above) is worth a visit. It is an Elections Canada initiative with teaching resources about federal elections and democracy. It is helpful now as our federal election looms, but is also helpful for teaching citizenship concepts and sparking discussion in the adult ESL/LINC classroom. The Classroom section has nine election-related teaching kits. They were developed for elementary/secondary, but they are also suitable for adult ESL (at CLB 4+).

You can download the kits, view them online, or order a print copy (free of charge). An ordered kit will be mailed to your home, with enough materials for a class of 35 learners.

Most kits include: A Teacher’s Guide (with activities explained); a reading, graph, or infographic; one or more videos;

an exit ticket; and a PowerPoint slide deck. Five kits are described below:

Does Voting Matter? In this kit, learners explore how much they care about decisions made by the federal government. They engage in a voting simulation where they see how voter turnout affects decisions.

Civic Action - Then and Now: Learners consider what they want to change, and examine two case studies that resulted in change: women and the right to vote in Manitoba, and Aboriginal and Treaty Rights in Canada’s Constitution.

Elections by the Numbers: Learners make predictions about voting trends, and analyze a graph and table about voter turnout since Confederation, and by age.

Voting Rights Through Time: Learners reflect on inclusion, and examine case studies on voting rights for three groups: Japanese Canadians, women, youth.

Geography of Elections: Learners examine their own federal electoral district using maps and fact sheets.

Another election-related resource

ABC Life literacy has developed a free, 18-page resource, titled “A Guide to Voting: A Literacy Practitioner Workbook for Voting in the 2019 Federal Election.” It is relevant for classes with learners who are eligible to vote.

Download it here: https://abclifeliteracy.ca/sites/default/files/Guide-To-Voting-2019.pdf

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To: Adult Education Program Staff

From: Hanna Cabaj, Continuing Education Department

https://electionsanddemocracy.ca/your-classroom

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To: Adult Education Program Staff

From: Hanna Cabaj, Continuing Education Department

Upcoming Webinars

Visit Tutela to register for the webinars below. Webinars below with a star are for TESL Ontario members, who also join the TESL Ontario group on Tutela.

Sep 23, 8:30-9:30 pm: Overview of Mental Health lesson plans at CLB 1 (Nicole Bodner, Sarah Hamid-Balma)

Sep 27, 5-6 pm: Intercultural Fluency in LINC Classroom: Teacher Training and PBLA (Sandhya Ghai)

* Sept 29, 7-8 pm: Using Socrative for Formative Assessment in the Classroom (Afrouz Mobayen)

* Oct 23, 7-8 pm: Dealing With Multi-Level ESL/EFL Classes (Maria Glass)

Oct 24, 8-9 pm: Researching the Effects of the Blended Learning Approach in LINC (Jill Cummings, Matthias Sturm, Augusta Avram)

Upcoming TESL Events:

Oct. 2, 5:30-9 pm: TESL Toronto AGM and Roundtables, Tartu College Event Space (3 Madison Ave). TESL Toronto AGM, and round table presentations with Toronto ELT professionals, sharing their research. Register: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/tesl-toronto-agm-and-round-tables-tickets-70088688153

Dec 5-6: TESL Ontario 47th Annual Conference, Toronto Marriott Downtown Eaton Centre. Learn more: https://www.teslontario.org/conference

Outreach Report for September (2) 2019 Submitted by Kay Ham, Program Consultant

Community Engagement:

Adopt a Library Campaign: This idea was presented at our Instructors-in-Charge meeting on Thursday, September 5, 2019. This campaign asks staff members and possibly our learners to adopt ONE Toronto Public Library branch to monitor the presence of our program directory. Notify Kay when the level is low and needs replenishing. A big thank you to the instructors at Finch@Warden Adult Education Centre who have volunteered. If you would like to help out, please email Kay at kay.ham@tcdsb.org with the library branch name.

Social Media Posting:

The social media team is ready to resume active posting. In order for the team to be active, staunch support from the staff and learners is more than important. Please keep sending photos and videos with a short description of the materials to kay.ham@tcdsb.org after obtaining participants’ consent for media release.

Our media handles are:

Facebook: @TorontoAdultEducation Instagram: TorontoAdultEducation Twitter: @AdultEdTCDSB

AE Nursery Program

Submitted by Elsa Parra, Nursery Program Instructor at COSTI Corvetti Education Centre

We hope Nursery instructors and children have a lot of fun together using this free resource. More files and links for this topic can be found on this webpage: http://homeschoolcreations.com/ThanksgivingPrintables.html This pack contains early learning printables to use with your child. The first half of the kit focuses on skills for younger children and the second includes pages for more advanced preschoolers or kindergarteners. I would highly recommend printing the activities from this set onto cardstock so that they are sturdier for younger hands. If you would like to share, please feel free to print this pdf file for your own personal use. Acknowledgement: Jolanthe @ http://homeschoolcreations.com

The Turkey Poem (Author Unknown)

The turkey is a funny bird. His head goes wobble, wobble.

All he says is just one word, Gobble, gobble, gobble!

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To: Adult Education Program Staff

From: Hanna Cabaj, Continuing Education Department