Author: Courtney Anne Brewer

I am committed to using my rigorous research background in my effort to secure accountability and I believe that this experience is my strongest asset to my service with the WCDSB. I am committed to aligning my work with peer reviewed research and with the initiatives set forth by the Ontario Ministry of Education. When I notice misalignment, my doctoral status and my role as a Catholic educator calls me to address the issue and advocate for change. My doctoral research was focused on the role of social and cultural capital as refugee mothers transitioned their children to schools in southern Ontario. At this time, Ontario was becoming a new home to many refugee families and yet, the Ministry of Education did not have any monographs or frameworks in place to support refugee families or students that used an assets-based approach. I wrote an article that was published in the Canadian Journal of New Scholars in Education that offered a framework for support and reached out to the Ministry of Education. I was invited to speak at a conference run by the Ministry of Education and they published a monograph about supporting refugee students that reference a book I co-edited, entitled “Immigrant and Refugee Students in Canada” (2014). 

As I grew as a scholar and educator, I continued to see gaps in research, policy, and practice. I found this alarming and noticed that disinformation and misinformation were seeping into the education world. Teachers are thirsty for information but peer-reviewed research is largely hidden behind paywalls and presented in ways that are not user friendly for busy teachers. I decided to start a YouTube channel where I summarize educational research studies and share best-practices in accessible ways for teachers. I suggest easy and practical steps they can take based on the research I have shared. I honour their busy schedules by providing information in a way that they can either view or simply listen to, and they can start and stop the information as needed. As a researcher, I am able to access and review scholarly works that are useful for educators while advocating for changes in academic contexts that make research inaccessible to the majority of people who could benefit from it. I am always inspired by how devoted educators are to improving their practice and I will continue to support them using my unique skill set. 

Before instruction can take place effectively, it needs to be grounded in equitable approaches to learning and achievement. My graduate research is focused on supporting refugee families as they transition their children to school in Ontario. My work uses an asset’s approach to understanding the forms of capital (social and cultural) that refugees maintain as they reconstruct their lives in a new country. Through this work, I became a peer-reviewed expert in critical policy, equity, and leadership, as it pertained to education in Ontario’s school system. 

My experience as a researcher heavily informs my approach to improving the instructional program. I am committed to making research accessible for educators so that best practice can be effectively implemented into instruction. In order to improve the instructional program in my own role, I worked with a colleague in the early years division to run a year-long PLC targeted at structured reading instruction. My colleague and I met regularly as critical friends to deprivatise our practice and offer each other resources, ideas, reflections, and next steps. We were able to honour our different teaching styles while remaining accountable to research-informed best practices in reading instruction. We saw gains in our students’ reading abilities and felt empowered to continue our learning and growth as educators in this area, primarily in the area of assessment. This PLC inspired my PQP practicum project, which was a resource for teachers that addresses the Right to Read mandated by the Ontario Ministry of Education. This resource includes long range plans for reading instruction in Kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2, digital tracking forms, links to resources, a video series summarizing the research about reading instruction, a video series for parents about how to encourage reading in the home, and letter templates for teachers to provide to families to bring them into the learning process. 

During my time as a graduate student (MEd and PhD) I was able to secure provincial and national funding for my scholarly work. In my MEd tenure, I received the Ontario Graduate Scholarship ($15 000) plus an entrance scholarship and access to a research assistantship. In my doctoral tenure, I received the SSHRC Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship ($105 000) and other honourable internal funding opportunities as a result of my research. These funding opportunities have given me ample experience in learning how to seek out and apply for funding for a variety of purposes. I am skilled at aligning a funder’s scope and objective with the objectives of my own projects and writing an appropriate budget, timeline, executive summary, and final report, which typically accompany grants and financial awards. These skills are transferable to leadership roles where grants and funding need to be secured to support school initiatives such as outdoor structures and school-wide events. 

Prior to becoming a full time teacher, I co-edited a book entitled “Immigrant and Refugee Students in Canada” (Brush Education). In this book, I co-authored several chapters and oversaw the research contributions of scholars across Canada. I kept detailed records of correspondences, negotiated contracts, provided feedback related to our project goals, and organized a round-table event at the Canadian Society for the Scholarship of Education’s Annual Conference. These skills are transferable to educational leadership where I will be uniting a large group of people towards common goals in an organized manner. 

In my role as a teacher, I developed the organization to support desired practices by taking on the role of keeping the art room stocked and ordering new art supplies as necessary. The approach I used in this endeavour relied on collective responsibility. I added a white-board to the art room so people could list items they were hoping to have available and I posted friendly reminders about sharing supplies in a communal way. I modeled my values by offering specialty supplies I had when people in the school community requested them. 

Another way that I helped to develop the organization was by creating digital versions of many paper forms that teachers in the early years division were using. I created digital startup forms for parents to fill out so teachers could easily access a spreadsheet with all of the information they needed about their students. Furthermore, I converted many of the assessment forms into digital formats so that we could use an ipad or laptop to run assessments and see whole-class data at a glance. This was useful for my own needs but also for engaging in PLCs an professional development. 

As a scholar and teacher, I am deeply committed to building strong relationships with people and setting people up to build strong relationships with others. While working in the academic landscape, my colleague and I noticed that education spaces advocate for collaboration in theory but favour competition and singularity in practice. This inspired our pursuit of critical friendship. After publishing our research about critical friendship in academic contexts, we developed a workshop programme that we presented to the WCDSB’s “Developing the Leader Within: Leadership Part 1” leadership series. This experience showed helped me see all that goes into developing people in an organization and how to adapt research for a teaching audience rather than an academic audience. 

From here, I co-authored a book entitled “The Critical Friendship Revolution: Leading Ethical Practice Through Authentic Relationships” (2023) that moved our work beyond academia and into leadership and educational spaces. This book explores how critical friendship can be used to promote accountability in ethical dilemmas and how critical friendship can promote equity and inclusion in professional settings including schools and received a foreword by Dr. Maria Cantalini-Williams, a former WCDSB employee and the Dean of the Faculty of Education at Wilfrid Laurier University. 

Within the Waterloo Catholic District School Board, I have engaged in setting directions by working with staff at St. Matthew School in faith formation. In the 2017–2018 school year, I was given the opportunity to lead my colleagues in growing in our understanding of our role as educators rooted in Christ’s message as part of our board-provided professional development day devoted to faith formation. We began the day by sharing a meal together and then worked in small groups to engage in activities that helped us understand how we can bring our faith into every aspect of our role. 

During this school year I was also given the opportunity to take the lead on running our Faith in Action Cross Pilgrimage activities. I worked with the principal, our school’s chaplain, and a fellow teacher to learn about  the goals of the pilgrimage and then helped plan activities to engage students and staff across the whole school. I also captured faith in action and created a video to share at our culminating liturgy. The week that we received the cross was incredibly inspiring and I felt a strong sense of purpose in leading in a Catholic education system. 

Additionally, I was given the opportunity to provide professional development about connecting our Catholic faith with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I spoke at our school’s first staff meeting and shared information and scripture about the TRC. We discussed how to navigate equitable practice in an institution that has a history of harm towards Indigenous people in Canada. This conversation was ongoing in our school and I took my experience beyond the school to my professional learning group in my Principal Qualification Program class.