Saturday D Workshops 3:10 pm - 4:40 pm

Presented by  June Cupido

Type of Session:  Active Workshop (90 minutes) 

Target:    Drama -Secondary (9-12), Experienced Arts Educators, Arts Researchers 

If you could speak to your younger self what would you say?  Learn how to create an inspirational personal narrative as we reflect on a journey “back to the future ...”  into a pivotal point in your life where you get to speak to younger self.

Has there ever been a time in your life when you knew intuitively that something wasn't quite right or off somehow?   What was it? 

The complete process, from answering probing questions to the final crafting of the narrative response is… Deep, Illuminating, and Heroic. 

By bringing together personal narratives the delegates can "time travel", transcend cultural boundaries and engage in a larger emotional narrative with deep-rooted messages. 

The outcome of this activity is to take delegates through a mini process…” If you could talk to younger self what would you say?” Ignite imagination and unleash emotions that may have prevented them from creating. Exploring Opposites: Duality, feeling one way and acting another.  

Intergraded Learning strands: writing instruction, performance, voice through writing, voice through performance   

 June Cupido, Jungian Story Coach/Weaver Creative Director 

June is a director and dramaturge and Jungian Coach who has been developing personal narratives through story coaching for over 17 years. She is passionate about creative approaches that will provide transformative insights into what affects good story writing, performance, positive mental health and well-being. As Joseph Campbell wrote, “The most rewarding mythological experience you can have is to experience how it lives inside yourself.”  He asserts that storytelling and myths relate to our search for truth, meaning, and significance through the ages. 

After 30 inspiring years in post-secondary education developing leadership programs to help students find a sense of purpose and social direction, June's focus now is to continue to create provocative theatre experiences that guide the integration, acceptance, and compassion for others through increased understanding of what another has experienced or is experiencing.  

https://www.truthandillusionworkshop.com/

 Presented by   Kari-Lynn Winters 

Type of Session:   Active Workshop (90 minutes) 

Target:   Elementary (Grades 1-4), Elementary (Grades 4-8), Beginner or pre-service teachers, Experienced Arts Educators 

All aboard the STEAM train—next stop: imagination station! This high-energy, hands-on, and interACTIVE workshop invites educators to step up their STEAM game by using Drama and Dance strategies to explore science, technology, engineering, arts, and math in engaging, embodied ways. Participants will act out the mechanics of simple machines, pollinate ideas through movement, fraction-hop across the floor, and engineer new frontiers and discover ways to sink their teeth into the science of real-life zombies and bloodsuckers!

Canadian children’s author and drama and dance professor, Kari-Lynn Winters, brings literacy to life with award-winning books that she has written: aRHYTHMetic, Hungry for Science, Hungry for Engineering, Hungry for the Arts, Hungry for Math, and Buzz About Bees, Bite Into Bloodsuckers, and Zoom In On Zombies! Get ready to whirl, twirl, and problem-solve your way into a future where STEAM education has all the right moves.

This workshop puts drama and dance at the core of STEAM learning. The workshop uses the elements of dance and drama (through movement, storytelling, and role-play) to explore science, technology, engineering, math, and literacy. The call highlights the need to shift from STEM to STEAM by fully integrating the Arts. This workshop showcases how Drama and Dance enhance understanding of STEAM concepts, making learning more immersive and accessible. Additionally, the conference seeks workshops that engage learners experientially. This session is highly interactive and embodied, allowing participants to act out pollination, dance fractions, physically and explore simple machines, and even real-life zombie creatures from books that I have written. Thus, it merges literacy with kinesthetic learning, making complex STEAM topics more tangible for young learners and prepares these students for their futures. 

 Dr. Kari-Lynn Winters is an award-winning Canadian children's author, poet, playwright, performer, and academic scholar. Since 2007, she has authored over 35 books. Kari-Lynn has received the British Columbia Book Prize silver medal twice and has garnered multiple nominations for awards such as the Forest of Reading (e.g., French Toast, Buzz About Bees, Jeffrey and Sloth) and the Chocolate Lily Awards (e.g., Good Pirate). Notably, her book, Bad Pirate won the prestigious Rainforest of Reading Award. Currently holding a Full Professor position in Brock University ‘s Faculty of Education, Dr. Winters teaches literacy and the arts to teacher candidates. Her love of teaching is evident and enjoys being in the classroom in any capacity. She lives in St. Catharines, ON.  For more information about Kari-Lynn, please see her website: www.kariwinters.com. 

 Presented by   Katie Knowlton, Meghan Kidd and Christina Kemp 

Type of Session:  Active Workshop (90 minutes)

Target:    Secondary Dance 

 A Hands on learning experience and sharing of resources that arelesson plans and activities centred around cultural dance practices and creating an equitable and inclusive classroom environment, use of technology and lighting in dance compositions and cross curricular stimuli (photography and media arts) for composition and the creative process. 

Dance for the Modern world is a dynamic, hands-on professional development experience designed for dance educators who want to bring the world into their classrooms. This immersive program blends movement, culture, and innovation to help teachers create culturally relevant, STEAM-aligned dance lesson plans that resonate with today’s students.

Participants will explore how dance intersects with science (anatomy), visual arts (photography), creative movement (community building), incorporating light sources into choreography (tech).

Grounded in real-world cultural narratives, this training equips educators to honor diversity while staying rooted in modern educational goals.

What you’ll gain:

• Hands-on dance and creative movement sessions
• Frameworks for integrating cultural heritage with 21st-century learning
• Tools for STEAM-infused curriculum development
• Strategies for inclusive, trauma-informed, and community-connected 

Katie Knowlton is a dance educator and science teacher at Cameron Heights in Kitchener.. She organizes and runs a Dance Team at Cameron Heights that has over 100 dance students that participate in styles of dance such as Bollywood, Bhangra, K-pop, Hip Hop, Jazz and Contemporary. Katie has experience teaching dance in both education as well as at Laurier University, Davenport Dance Project and as the choreographer of the KW Titans Dance Pack. As a Dancefest Alumni and a huge advocate for this event, Katie is excited to be leading the OSSDF board as the President this year to help continue to make DANCEFEST a positive experience for students and teachers.

Meghan Kidd is a Dance, Drama, and English teacher at the Waterloo Region District School Board. She has been teaching Dance at Laurel Heights Secondary School for 13 years and loves sharing her love and passion for the performing arts with her students. Meghan has choreographed and directed several school musicals during her 15 year teaching career. She runs and organizes her school’s Dance Teams and has been attending DanceFest with her students since she began teaching in 2010. Meghan enjoys being an active member of Ontario Secondary School DANCEFEST board of directors in her role as Vice President. 

Christina Kemp is a passionate educator with a unique blend of expertise in both technology and dance. As a secondary school teacher specializing in computer science and computer technology, she is dedicated to finding innovative ways to integrate digital tools into creative disciplines. With years of experience teaching dance in the classroom, leading extracurricular dance programs, and instructing at local studios, she understands the power of movement as both an artistic and educational tool. Since 2023, Christina has taken students to Ontario Secondary School DanceFest, fostering a love for performance and choreography. In addition to teaching, Christina serves on the DanceFest board as the Awards and Tabulation coordinator, fully embracing technology’s role in enhancing the dance experience.

Presented by   Janice Pomer 

Type of Session: Active Workshop (90 minutes)

Target:    Elementary (Grades 1-4), Elementary (Grades 4-8) 

Using the international ‘Dance Your PhD’ science initiative as inspiration, workshop participants will learn how to guide their students towards the creation of science-inspired movement phrases and extended choreography that provide students with opportunities to physically demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the science curriculum. Scientific themes we will explore include geophysical activity, the water cycle, and the solar system. 

Great for novice and experienced classroom teachers and dance/drama specialists interested in cross-curricular connections and activities that support students’ diverse learning styles. 

The template used in the workshop is inclusive and adaptable for students of all abilities, develops students’ creative and analytic thinking, and scientific observation skills, and embraces experiential and embodied learning practices.   

Participants should wear comfortable clothing/footwear they can move in.

 Participants will explore how dance can be used to communicate scientific information. They will receive hand-outs containing descriptions of all the exercises introduced in the workshop, as well as links to Dance Your PhD and other science inspired choreography.  

Based in Tkaranto, Ontario, Canada, Janice Pomer has been teaching, performing and creating in the fields of dance, music and physical theatre since 1976, touring and teaching across Canada providing dance experiences for learners of all ages and abilities in urban, rural, First Nation and northern communities. Janice’s unique pedagogy emphasizes how dance is a multidirectional process that engages the physical, intellectual, creative, and intuitive aspects of the mover. 

Author of three internationally acclaimed books on dance education: Perpetual Motion, Creative Movement Exercises for Dance & Dramatic Arts (Human Kinetics USA 2002), Dance Composition, An Interrelated Arts Approach (Human Kinetics USA 2009) and most recently Elementary Dance Education, Natured Themed Creative Movement and Collaborative Learning (Human Kinetics USA 2023). Janice’s books have been hailed as ‘inspiring’, ‘innovative’, ‘invaluable’ and ‘dynamic’ in academic journals and by dance educators and generalist teachers around the world. 

www.janicepomer.ca

Presented by   Cheri-Anne Byrne  

Type of Session:   Panel Discussion (90 minutes) 

Target:    Elementary (Grades 4-8), Secondary (9-12), Beginner or pre-service teachers, Experienced Arts Educators  

 This session invites participants to explore the connection to the world around them using the life cycle of a star to inform the movement.  Motivated by the prompt, ‘we come from the stars’, to explore the elements of dance as it connects to science curriculum in all levels.  Resources including, Lessons from the Earth and Beyond, the periodic table of elements and Tasha Spillet’s picture book, I Sang You Down from the Stars will be offered as entry points to build kinesthetic understanding of literacy and science 

Delegates will work collaboratively to create movement phrases connected to familiar elements (Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, iron, helium) found in the stars; how particles move in different states of matter, how to use movement to show chemical bonds and equations (time permitting). Educators will be introduced to a picture book written by Cree author Tasha Spillet and to the public resource Lessons from Beyond. 

 Cheri-Anne Byrne is an Ontario Secondary Drama and Dance educator with 17 years of classroom experience and the current treasurer of the Council of Ontario Drama and Dance Educators. Her teaching practice is anchored in infusing anti-oppressive and anti-colonial approaches to breakdown bias and barriers in educational spaces. She graduated from the University of Waterloo with an Honours degree in drama and obtained her BEd from Ottawa University.  Cheri-Anne has facilitated professional development at multiple CODE on the Road conferences, Alglonquin-Lakeshore, Hamilton-Wentworth and Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board.  Currently she is an consultant in Indigenous Education with a focus on supporting Indigenous Youth in DPCDSB.