BcEd Access is very pleased to offer our 10th annual conference online!
November 1st, Friday Night 7-9pm
November 2nd, Saturday 10am – 4:30pm.
ASL Interpreters will be provided.
Workshops will be recorded and available temporarily. If you are not available at that exact date and time, you can still benefit from the shared lived experience of our presenters and watch them later.
This conference really focuses on our lived experience.
We have been through it.
We are living it.
We are working to provide information to help families navigate the very challenging education system.
Workshop Titles:
Symbia Barnaby – Keynote Speaker, Fri Nov 1st 7-9pm Kim Block – Navigating the BC Human Rights Process, Sat Nov 2nd 10-11am Jeanette Dyck – Guide to Home Learning & Tips on Teaching Outside the Box, Sat Nov 2nd 11:15 am-12:15pm Levonne Abshire – Raising Self-Advocates, Nov 2nd, 12:30-1:30pm Jennifer Branston – The Potential of School District Accessibility Plans, Nov 2nd, 1:45-2:45 Tracy Humphreys – Panel Discussion: Advocating for Inclusive Education through PACs and DPACs, Nov 2nd 3-4
The Conference Speakers. ID: 6 profile pictures of the presenters with the presenter info above. Find out more information http://www.bcedaccess.com
Gaining knowledge and information is part of the challenge. There is a lot of information to think about. We don’t get manuals when we sign up our kids for school. School doesn’t always turn out to be as expected and we need to know what our options for advocacy are.
This is our opportunity to pass along what we have learned to all of you. To share.
Tickets are now on sale. $45.00. For those who need financial assistance to attend, please email us. We don’t want the fee to be a barrier for people to attend. secretary@bcedaccess.com
We look forward to sharing and discussing with you all these very important issues in education.
As the school year begins, many of us are already navigating challenges to ensure our children receive the support they deserve. At BCEdAccess, we know this process all too well—because like you, we are parents and guardians of kids with disabilities. We understand that resolving issues in schools isn’t just about speaking up, it’s about knowing how to navigate systems and leverage the tools available to us.
If you have a concern about the health, education or safety of your child, most often, following the informal complaints process can resolve it. This means trying to resolve the issue with the staff directly involved first, then the principal, then the school district principal, etc.
Every public school district has a bylaw for an appeal directly to the School Board under Section 11 of the School Act. You can usually find it by searching the school district site for ‘Section 11 appeal’, or you can call the district office to ask. Many of them have a provision that requires you to follow an informal complaints process first before filing a Section 11 appeal. The school act, however, does not have this requirement. Any decision of an employee of a board that significantly impacts the health, education or safety of a child can be appealed to the board (Section 11.2).
If your child or youth attends independent school, these schools are governed by the Independent School Act, so they don’t have the Section 11 appeal piece. You can still escalate through the same informal complaints process, and usually can appeal to the Board of Directors of the school. These schools have fewer requirements from the government to give access to education but are certainly subject to the same human rights requirements as everyone.
Three brief words of advice on complaints:
Everything in writing. If a hallway meeting or phone call happens, follow up with an email. Send your requests by email. The principal may call you to respond. Talk with them, and then follow up by email. Find support for this if you need it! You can then reply to emails and add in other people if you are escalating the concern to the next level and everyone has the history of the conversations.
Bring support to meetings. Don’t go to meetings in person or online alone if you can possibly avoid it. Bring advocacy support, your doctor, your best friend, or all of the above. Someone to take notes, be a witness. People who work with your child or youth outside of school can be great but grandma or your neighbour will also be helpful. Meetings can be emotional and it helps to have a third party there to listen and support you.
Keep things moving. Don’t wait a long time for an answer. Delays can be because staff are understandably really busy but your child or youth is waiting for a solution in the meantime. In your written communication make sure you say when you’re expecting a response by. A week is the longest recommended to give for a response if it isn’t immediately urgent, 2 or 3 days is often better so you’re hearing back in the same week, and for anything urgent by today or tomorrow at the latest. Very urgent, make that phone call and follow up with an email just to document it.
If you wait for as long as you said you would, and you get no response, you can go up to the next level.
Here are some tools for writing emails, and learning about your rights and the rights of your child/youth in education:
We’ll be celebrating 10 years of coming together as a community of parents, guardians, and advocates who are working together to build a more inclusive world for our kids. We have spent the past 10 years gathering to support each other, share strategies, inspire action, and push for systemic change. When you join us online on November 1and 2, you’ll find workshops that offer practical advice on self-advocacy, human rights, and accessibility, and like-minded people who have been there just like you.
Our keynote speaker, Symbia Barnaby, along with other workshop presenters, will show us how lived experience is not just valuable, it’s the expertise we need to drive real change.
You can feel the excitement with just a few short weeks until AdvoCon2023! We’ll be diving deep into the theme of Breaking Barriers Together with our conference partner BC People First and we can’t wait to welcome you!
AdvoCon2023: Breaking Barriers Together, presented by Title sponsor
Kwantlen Polytechnic University logo
A Hybrid Event On Self-Advocacy and Disability in Education
Hosted by BCEdAccess and BC People First
Thursday, October 19th to Sunday, October 22nd on Whova
and
October 21st and 22nd at Simon Fraser University Surrey Campus, and broadcast on Whova
FEATURING: – Minister of Education and Child Care the Honourable Rachna Singh
– Parliamentary Secretary of Accessibility Susie Chant
– BC Ombudsperson Jay Chalke
– Human rights lawyer Laura Track
– Teachers of Inclusive Education
– Margaux Wosk, Jo-Anne Gauthier, Conrad Tyrkin, Ackshay Sachdeva, Sherwin Strong, Anne Turner, Sharon Gregson, MLA Katrina Chen, and so many more!
This conference is for parents/guardians, self advocates, educators, administrators, professionals, and all allies/accomplices in the pursuit of inclusion. Join us for workshops, panels, and presentations. Featuring greetings from the Minister of Education and Child Care, presentations from staff in this and other Ministries, workshops and panels by self-advocates and other experts with information on human rights, how to teach and support disabled students, and how to advocate within education and other systems, there is something to benefit everyone passionate about breaking barriers to improve accessibility and inclusion. Professional development credit available.
“I am so grateful to this group for giving me the baseline info I needed to successfully get my child into school, and to know her rights. What a resource”
AdvoCon Attendee
As a registered charitable organisation, donors and sponsors/exhibitors are imperative to helping AdvoCon2023 succeed. We welcome financial and in-kind contributions from like-minded and supportive organizations, and ideally we’re looking for folks aligned with our values who we can build relationships with, to work together year-round to support each other’s goals.
Here’s just a sample of some of the amazing lineup for this year’s event:
The Honourable Rachna Singh, BC Minister of Education and Child Care
Inclusive Education and the Framework for Enhancing Student Learning – Ministry staff presenting
Accessibility Secretariat of BC with a session on the Accessible BC Act and education and other services
Levonne Abshire, Advocacy Fatigue, Self Care and Community Care
Symbia Barnaby, an Indigenous woman of Haida and Mi’kmaq descent living in northern BC, will share and discuss her film, Healing Nation
Christine Younghusband, Institute for Public Education, with Dreaming Big About Education 3
The EA Standards Working Group will present on their work
The poplular self-advocate youth panel and adult panels will both take place again this year
and many more great panels, presentations and workshops still to be announced!
The event will be hybrid, with two in-person days and all four days online.
This year we are fortunate to be co-hosting with BC People First (BCPF), an independent voice of self-advocates in BC for over 40 years. BCPF is a society made up of a group of members from across British Columbia who want to make sure that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are included and respected in our communities as full citizens. BCPF members work together to write letters, do presentations, and advocate with governments about issues affecting people with disabilities. BCPF is a place for self-advocates to network and get support while sharing and learning advocacy skills.
Becoming a sponsor and/or exhibitor gives your organization the opportunity to support a great cause while also receiving promotion to the BCEdAccess and BC People First communities and our supporters and networks. Our follower count grows each year and our 2023 sponsors will reach more people than ever before.
The growing private BCEdAccess Facebook community has over 5,300 community members (compared with 3700 in 2021) from all over BC, and is very active with upwards of 10 posts per day, all of which receive significant engagement
We have a good following on social media with over 5,000 followers on our public Facebook page, over 3,100 followers on Twitter and nearly 1000 on Instagram
Our mailing list reaches over 1,000 subscribers
On average, our blog posts have 3,000 visitors within 24 hours of being published, and our blog has nearly 6000 followers
Last year’s virtual AdvoCon had 204 attendees and we are expecting higher numbers at our 2023 conference due to increased interest and the hybrid nature of the event.
Let’s Make a Change together.
We champion and support children and youth with disabilities and complex learners to reach their full potential in education across British Columbia, and in all aspects of their lives. This is achieved through supporting families, sharing information, providing education to families, allies, professionals and students, providing community engagement and awareness, and other activities to promote equitable access to education and inclusion for all.
Sponsorships for AdvoCon2023 allow the conference to succeed by helping to cover costs like:
Paying our speakers and honoraria
Providing free and/or discounted conference tickets to people who are facing financial barriers
ASL Interpretation
CART (Communication Access Real-time Translation), a speech to text real-time captioning service
Graphic design and promotional support
Cost of the online platform, the in-person conference venue, catering, etc.
If you know of any organizations or businesses that may be interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at this incredible event please reach out and share. This is an excellent opportunity to support a great cause while also receiving promotion to the BC EdAccess community and our supporters!
We’re delighted to announce that for our 9th annual advocacy conference, #AdvoCon203, we’ll be cohosting with BC People First, an independent voice of self-advocates in BC for over 40 years.. AND we’re going hybrid, with all 4 days online, 2 of them in-person and broadcast, at Simon Fraser University, Surrey!
Following a very successful 3-year shift to an exceptional online conference experience, we are ready to safely bring back an accessible in-person component to this year’s event while keeping the same great online experience you’ve come to expect:
AdvoCon2023: Breaking Barriers Together
A Hybrid Event On Self-Advocacy and Disability in Education
Thursday, October 19th to Sunday, October 22nd on Whova
and
October 21st and 22nd at Simon Fraser University, Surrey Campus
AdvoCon is an annual education advocacy conference organized by the BCEdAccess Society, a grassroots, BC nonprofit society and Canadian charitable organization, founded in 2014. We are parents and guardians of students with disabilities and diverse abilities from all over the province. Our focus is action for equitable access to education, and we are led by the population we serve – disabled people, BIPOC, 2SLGBTQ+, and other people in protected classes under human rights.
Presentations, workshops, and panels fall into our four streams of Health and Wellbeing, Advocacy in Education, Professional Development, and Systems Advocacy. Self-advocacy and ‘Nothing About Us Without Us’ will be a focus throughout.
BCEdAccess and BC People First are proud to be providing CART captioning, ASL interpretation and Active Listeners along with other accessibility features both online and in-person.
Minister of Education and Child Care Rachna Singh for a brief address
MECC Inclusive Education and Framework for Enhancing Student Learning staff to present on these two areas and how they work together
Parliamentary Secretary for Accessibility Susie Chant, and Assistant Deputy Minister Sam Turcott
MLA Katrina Chen will facilitate a discussion on inclusive child care
Levonne Abshire, Levonne Abshire Coaching and Consulting
Dr. Christine Ho-Younghusband, Institute for Public Education BC
Anne Turner, Disability rights advisor, artist and author
Symbia Barnaby, Healing Nation Coaching and Consulting
Cyndi Dalglish, EA Standards of Practice Working Group
Ryan Kappmeier, EA Standards of Practice Working Group
Sarah Brooks, Teachers of Inclusive Education
Annabree Fairweather, Confederation of University Faculty Associations
Regan Rankin, Teachers of Inclusive Education
Andree Gacoin, BC Teacher’s Federation
Tracy Humphreys, Executive Director, BCEdAccess
Andrea Hilder, Hummingbird Consulting
Nicole Kaler, Chair, BCEdAccess
More added every day!
Hosted online on the Whova app, and at the Simon Fraser University Surrey campus, speaker sessions will run all day, with included lunch and coffee breaks in-person. There will be a fun event in Surrey on Saturday night, and informal opportunities on the Whova app and at the venue to make connections.
Guided by facilitator Amanda Fenton and supported by our Executive Director Tracy Humphreys, join us to explore big dreams about what the education system could look like in this sequel to our Dreaming Big session last year! We need you to participate at AdvoCon2022, our 8th annual education advocacy conference held October 20th to 23rd online!
Tickets available now – Facebook group members receive a good discounted rate and the first 100 purchased receive a care package delivered to their house!
My work is participatory group process design and facilitation for both online and in-person gatherings. I live on the twice-stolen territory of the Qayqayt; lands which are also important to the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) and Kwantlen, in what is now known as New Westminster, BC, Canada with my partner and our rambunctious rescue Great Dane, Bruce. Looking forward to meeting everyone at the Dreaming Big About Education 2 session on Sunday!
About Tracy Humphreys:
Tracy is a mom to 3 children with disabilities and she has ADHD and other invisible disabilities. She is currently Executive Director of the BCEdAccess Society and president of the Victoria Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils. She has been an active volunteer in BC schools for over 20 years, as a board member on her local PACs, the District PAC in Victoria (VCPAC), as a BCCPAC representative and as Board Vice President of Elizabeth Buckley School for 3 years. With over 30 years management experience, she is currently a consultant CEO for beauty companies, and winner of the 2019 Victoria Community Leadership Award in Lifelong Learning for her work with BCEdAccess as a full time advocate for families of children with disabilities in British Columbia schools since 2014.
Dreaming Big About Education 2
A follow up to our Dreaming Big session from AdvoCon2021 – you won’t want to miss this!
This will be a very engaging session with a mix of whole group and small group conversation and some easy-to-use collaboration tools. In our conversation we’ll listen together for our biggest hopes and dreams for “what school is”; where everyone feels that they belong, they have purpose and they matter, where the school system/ecosystem is filled with children, youth + adults whose needs (relational, physical, cultural, educational, legal, identity, +) are met, and they are engaging in learning with the school community. What does this future look like? What are the most compelling themes in each other’s visions?
Why do this work of dreaming and visioning together? Writer adrienne maree brown encourages us to engage in “visionary fiction” as it is our right to write ourselves into the future.“Visioning is looking into the future together, dreaming together, flexing the imagination muscle, and saying aloud what we long for. The more people who deeply share a vision, the more possible that vision becomes.” ~ adrienne maree brown, emergent strategy
Tracy is on Twitter @TracyCareQ
For more information about Amanda, visit her website:
Guided by advocates and community leaders, participants will be taken on a journey to revisit key moments in the history of the inclusion movement in B.C. Join Richard McDonald, Linda Derkach and Karla Verschoor for this important learning foundation at AdvoCon2022, our 8th annual education advocacy conference held October 20th to 23rd online!
Tickets available now – Facebook group members receive a good discounted rate and the first 100 purchased receive a care package delivered to their house!
Richard McDonald is the President of the BC Self Advocacy Foundation. Richard has been advocating for the rights of people with disabilities to live in community for over forty years. Richard is a featured artist in the From The Inside/Out! exhibit and spoke at the demolition of Woodlands.
Linda Derkach has had a long career in the community living sector, including being the Executive Director of Port Alberni Association for Community Living and currently the president of BC Family Net, a provincial network that provides a provincial voice for children, youth, and adults with developmental disabilities and their families.
Karla Verschoor has been with Inclusion BC since 2006, when she joined the organization as a volunteer coordinator. Over the years, Karla has worked in various leadership roles as an advocate, strategic planner and now as Executive Director. Karla has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Alberta where she studied Political Science and Government and a Certificate in Dialogue and Civic Engagement from Simon Fraser University. Karla lives in Vancouver with her husband and daughter. When she’s not working Karla enjoys volunteering at her daughter’s school and with her local neighbourhood house.
Disability History: The Journey to Inclusion
Understanding the challenges and successes to advance inclusion in our province is key to keep our movement strong and moving forward to realize our vision of a world where everyone belongs. Participants will hear what it has taken for people with disabilities, their families, and supporters to get here and how we can come together to face current challenges.
Transitions are a big topic among families and we’re excited to hear from Arden Duncan Bonokoski about initiatives supporting disabled students on the path to post-secondary education. See her speak at AdvoCon2022, our 8th annual education advocacy conference held October 20th to 23rd online!
Tickets available now – Facebook group members receive a good discounted rate and the first 100 purchased receive a care package delivered to their house!
Arden is the Executive Director of the BC Initiative for Inclusive Post-secondary Education. She holds a Masters in Community Health Science, from the University of Calgary. She has been working to advance inclusive post-secondary education since 2009 and is passionate about confronting social bias in ways that enable marginalized people to live inclusive lives on their own terms.
Scaling the impact of Inclusive Post-secondary Education
Inclusive post-secondary education provides a vision of an inclusive life path after graduation. In this session, we will share how the lessons learned over the last 20 years of facilitating inclusion at the post-secondary level can help support students and families to advocate for quality inclusive education in high school.
After this session participants will:
Be familiar with the guiding principles and practice of inclusive post-secondary education
Understand how the vision for post-secondary education can support advocacy and relationship building through the high school years
Have practical actions they can take back to support their own advocacy
The BC Initiative for Inclusive Post-secondary Education (Steps Forward) is on Twitter @STEPSForwardBC
We really value our regular participation in the Mental Health Committee and we’re glad to have Shelley Nessman and others from the committee coming to run a World Cafe on mental health. Join to bring your ideas and learn more at AdvoCon2022, our 8th annual education advocacy conference held October 20th to 23rd online!
Tickets available now – Facebook group members receive a good discounted rate and the first 100 purchased receive a care package delivered to their house!
The Mental Health Committee is a group of professionals with various affiliations to groups and organizations in British Columbia ranging from future planning to public health. Members work for organizations with a focus on mental health and wellness for their constituents. The group began to meet as a response to the pandemic with a dream to support better mental health support for all British Columbians.
What the Health
Join us for an online World Café to talk about what we might need for better mental health as we enter a new phase of the pandemic!
Things change daily and we often forget to take the time to sit with others and think about what is going on in the moment – give yourself the gift of an hour to have conversations and answer some interesting questions about how we are individually and as a collective.
We’re excited to learn from the Self Advocates of Semiahmoo about how to create change in our communities. See them present at AdvoCon2022, our 8th annual education advocacy conference held October 20th to 23rd online!
Tickets available now – Facebook group members receive a good discounted rate and the first 100 purchased receive a care package delivered to their house!
The Self Advocates of Semiahmoo (SAS) are a team of advocates who make change through positive relationships. We have experience in leadership and self advocacy at local, municipal, provincial and federal levels and aim to make our community an accessible and inclusive space for everyone.
Connecting with the Community: Making Change Through Positive Relationships
Come listen, learn and ask questions with the Self Advocates of Semiahmoo (SAS). We will do a panel presentation for 30-40 minutes, followed by an interactive question period for the audience. This presentation will be about how we make connections in the community, and how this process leads to positive change for everyone involved. Advocates will give examples of previous events we’ve hosted with partnerships, and what we’ve learned from working with different groups of people.
