VCC LINC Workshops Huge Success

Over the past few months the team at Edith Lando VLC has had the pleasure of working with PhD Student Laura Brass. Laura, who is in the Language & Literacy Department in the Faculty of Education at UBC, is keenly interested in feminist issues and her PhD thesis investigates the topic of skilled refugee and immigrant women. Laura came to Canada from Romania July 1, 2008 (YES she arrived on Canada Day!) as a skilled immigrant woman with an undergraduate degree in Romanian-English and a desire to become a Canadian teacher. As a teacher back in Romania, Laura worked with a wide variety of age groups ranging from little first graders all the way to college students.

Shortly after arriving in Vancouver, Laura found her first job teaching ESL. She quickly learned that she loved working with adults and that teaching English was one of her passions. Her career as an ESL teacher took her to a few different institutions and she says “[she] felt like she finally found her people” when she was offered a teaching position at Vancouver Community College (VCC). “They appreciated me,” she explained with a huge grin.

Over the last year, while working closely with her PhD supervisor Jennifer Jenson, Laura came up with the idea and developed a workshop series for VCC LINC (Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada) students on Feminist Pedagogies.  After all her positive experiences with VCC Laura felt “[she] wanted to give back to the community”.  Her eight-part workshop series focused on a variety of topics including feminism in Canada, getting to know yourself, SOGI and sexuality, and even common courtesy and expected Canadian norms.  The workshops were completely free and open to any LINC Language students in levels 4-7.  As an observer of the workshops, I could see that her students were benefitting so much from the sessions.  Not only were their language skills greatly improving, they were building confidence and developing new relationships.  Although a huge success, unfortunately her workshops did not attract any participants who identify as men.  Laura said, “it was not unexpected that no men showed up”.  For many cultures around the world this topic is not one that men are used to exploring.  For them “the topic is too abstract”.

When I met with Laura over lattes at the beautiful UBC Campus, I was drawn in by her passion and energy.  I asked her why she thought it was important for immigrant women in Canada to learn about feminism and feminist issues.   She expressed that learning about these topics helps to provide the students with a cultural background.  It teaches them how to interact with people in their new home country, how to represent themselves and how to treat others.  Many of these newcomers don’t know anything about feminism.  Laura also feels that “they need to learn how things work here” and how to communicate in a manner that Canadians can relate to.

When not busy working on her PhD or developing courses Laura can be found spending time with her handsome husband and her favorite creature in the world, her dog Max.

Watch out for more projects and workshops from Laura in the coming months!

 

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