Educator Support staff are on the road introducing OJEN’s free resources and services to faculties of education across Ontario. In a year when labour action restricts teachers’ ability to attend professional development sessions, OJEN has refocused our attention on teacher candidates. Since the beginning of the year, Director of Educator Support, Nat Paul, has visited the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) and the Faculties of Education at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay and Brock University in St. Catharines. Approximately 70 new teachers had the opportunity to become familiar with two of OJEN’s most popular teaching resources – The Access to Justice Game and the Steps to Justice Workshops.
The Access to Justice Game, is an interactive classroom lesson that highlights the challenges Ontarians face as they try to resolve legal problems. The game offers a practical and fun way to learn about a serious social issue while developing skills and knowledge that build legal capability.
Steps to Justice Workshops use Community Legal Education Ontario’s website of the same name to give students experience accessing practical legal information on some of the most commonly experienced legal problems. Whether or not the teacher candidates go on to teach law or some other subject, Steps to Justice is a great resource to direct students to for reliable legal information in the future.
“It is always positive to meet with people at the beginning of their careers and start to form a relationship with them,” Nat explains. Of the approximately 70 teacher candidates, only two had heard about OJEN prior to attending the PD session. Both the teacher candidates and their professors learned about the more than 200 free resources and the numerous Courtrooms and Classrooms programs offered at www.ojen.ca.
OJEN’s Educator Support Department plans to visit all of the faculties of education in Ontario throughout the year.