Webinars 2025

Description: Storytelling, poems, fairy tales, and nursery rhymes have both enchanted and educated children the world over. Similarly, adults also love poems, songs, proverbs, and short stories as part of their English learning diet. Sayings from Jesus, the Bible’s Wisdom Literature, and favourite works from Tolstoy, Karen Blixen, George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis and Tolkien will be presented. There are lots of ways to use the original text, audio recordings and videos. These skilled authors/teachers demonstrate varied and powerful grammar, idioms, style, and vocabulary, while engaging the learner with insights into God and humankind, the Gospel, human’s wretchedness and beauty, and how they lose their bearings and are found. How might you use literature to add spice and engage people’s deep questions?

About the Presenter: Jeff McCarrell was trained in missions with the Canadian Baptist Ministries among Somali in the Horn of Africa and at Regent College in Vancouver, BC. For 35 years Jeff has served with congregations and with Dixon Women’s ESL Classes in Etobicoke, seeking to make Christ known to predominantly Muslim neighbours.

Recognized by TESL Ontario for PD hours.

Description: Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping education, including church-based ESL programs. For many educators, AI feels intimidating—raising questions, fears, and uncertainty about its role in teaching and learning.

This session isn’t about turning you into an AI expert or asking you to fully integrate AI into your teaching. It’s about demystifying AI, recognizing how it’s already influencing education, and equipping you with enough knowledge to begin exploring its potential. Together, we’ll uncover its opportunities, challenges, and practical applications, creating a space to break down fear, spark curiosity, and start meaningful conversations about its role in your ESL classrooms and programs.

In this presentation, you will:

• Gain a foundational understanding of what AI is (and isn’t) and how tools like ChatGPT work.
• Discover practical examples of how AI can support ESL teaching, from lesson planning to fostering critical thinking.
• Explore how students might already be using AI tools and how this impacts teaching and learning.
• Address common fears, biases, and barriers, while recognizing AI’s potential to enhance your mission to teach and welcome newcomers.

No prior experience with AI is required—just an open mind! This session will give you the tools and confidence to start exploring AI’s role in your teaching practice and to engage thoughtfully with your students about this rapidly evolving technology.

About the Presenter: Sandy Ho has been an Adult ESL instructor with the YCDSB for over 7 years. She holds a Master’s in Applied Linguistics and Exegesis, a TESL Canada Level 3 Professional Certificate, a TESL Ontario Certificate, and is PBLA (Portfolio-Based Language Assessments) trained. Before working with new immigrants, she served as the Academic Director and Curriculum Developer for a chain of private language schools across North America, overseeing 10 institutions. Sandy has also worked as an IELTS Assessor, Spanish and Linguistics instructor, and private tutor. She leverages technology extensively in her teaching and develops many online resources. Beyond the classroom, Sandy is dedicated to helping her students transition to life in Canada, assisting them in understanding cultural nuances and raising their cultural awareness. She provides emotional and spiritual support, walking alongside many as a life coach.

Recognized by TESL Ontario for PD hours.

Description: This workshop will explore Beginner ESL Resources, including vocabulary and grammar exercises, videos and interactive activities. It will help instructors select the best resources for their group format to engage and motivate students learning English.

By the end of the workshop, participants will:

• be able to identify the unique needs of beginner adult ESL learners
• be familiar with some available ESL resources that will help reduce prep time, be appropriate for students, and result in positive learning outcomes.

About the Presenter: Nataliya Lykhosherstova is a LINC Literacy Instructor at The Immigrant Education Society (TIES) in Calgary. She started her teaching career in Ukraine where she received her PhD in Linguistics and worked at the Teachers’ Training University—first as a sessional instructor and then as a lecturing professor.

Since 1995, Nataliya has taught methodology and languages, working as a language instructor, tutor and interpreter in Ukraine and Russia and now in Canada. For the last 10 years she has fallen in love with teaching adult literacy ESL students. Nataliya helps these newcomers, who have little or no formal education, adjust to life in Canada as well as develop learning strategies and literacy skills in English. She currently teaches a split Hybrid Literacy Foundation/CLB 1 class at TIES.

Recognized by TESL Ontario for PD hours.

Description: Teaching grammar by talking about rules and getting students to apply them is often ineffective in the long run because it is only helpful if students remember the rules when they need them. The Noticing-Awareness-Practice (NAP) model has been developed to provide teachers with a structure for introducing grammar embedded in the real-life context in which they occur. When students notice the grammar and are aware of the rules, then they can more effectively practice them in context. In this session, participants will experience the NAP model and have the opportunity to adapt a piece of text for teaching purposes.

About the Presenter: Roswita Dressler is an Associate Professor at the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary specializing in second language teaching. She is a wife and mother and former K-12 teacher. She used to coordinate the adult ESL classes at her church, Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd.

Recognized by TESL Ontario for PD hours.