TEDxWestVancouverED rethinks education for this year's conference

Since 2013, public-school principal Craig Cantlie has been organizing the annual TEDxWestVancouverED educational conference. But on September 24 at the Kay Meek Centre, it will be his final TEDx conference with the “ED” suffix because the company that controls the brand, TED, is going to stop licensing events that use this tag line.

“We may morph it into something else,” Cantlie told the Straight by phone. "Every year what we want to do is showcase innovative ideas that are happening in classrooms and inspire educators, parents, and anybody who wants to come out and see what kind of great things are going on in education."

Cantlie’s passion for delivering educational information in this way began when he was living in Japan and heard creativity expert Ken Robinson’s TED talk asking if schools kill creativity.

“I often think, as an educator: why do classrooms still look the same as they did when I was an educator? How can we rethink what we’re doing?” Cantlie said.

This year’s event will focus on rethinking edwhucation and features 20 speakers, including former B.C. Lions star Angus Reid, deep-sea explorer Phil Nuytten, play-based pedagogical expert Bridgitte Alomes, First Nations educator and North Vancouver school principal Brad Baker, developmental psychologist Gordon Neufeld, international photographer Jody MacDonald, and author and educational innovator Alan November.

Cantlie revealed that he contacted November while the Massachusetts-based author was on-stage at another conference.

“I loved what he was talking about, so I emailed him as he was speaking,” he recalled.

Cantlie noted that when the first TEDxWestVancouverED was held in 2013, public education was on the receiving end of a torrent of bad publicity. The conference was created to remind educators and other residents of the region that there's a great deal of positive things going on in the schools.

"Obviously, the public education system could use more money," he acknowledged. "There's no question about it. But therre are lots of great things being done that we need to celebrate."

He noted that this year, there are more parents attending. In the past, people have come from as far away as Japan and Manitoba to attend the conference.

One of the speakers this year is a standup comic, Joey Commisso, who's been diagnosed as bipolar. Cantlie said he saw Commisso at another event, and said he told hilarious tales about living with his condition.

"If I'm listening to someone and it speaks to me, I ask them to be part of it," Cantlie said.

This year, Commisso is one of the speakers will give four-minute presentations answering the same question: "what is your why?"

In 2014, this part of the program asked the question "what is smart?" Last year, it was "what is success?"

There are also eight-minute, 12-minute, and 18-minute talks.

"Basically we go all day from 8:30 until 3:30," Cantlie stated. "Within that, we have four different sessions.. Then within each session, we have a mixture of different-length talks."

Between each session are "conversation breaks" in an event space in West Vancouver secondary. According to Cantile, Discovery Education will provide a virtual-reality exhibit and Microsoft will show some of its newest technologies. There will also be a mock classroom with a robotic section.