BC TEAL 2026 Annual Conference

The primary objective of this session to initiate a meaningful conversation about how academic support units can continue to build effective, student-centered services at a time when there’s shrinking staff capacity and growing workloads. The session focuses on the creation of Learning Commons – central hub of academic support and its connection with Writing Centre and English Studies faculty to develop academic resources that support the core skills – Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. 
The discussion will also focus on the challenges faced with student engagement and active collaboration with faculty members. It also sheds light on to the manner academic support units as well as faculty members are at the front lines of taking care of students well-being in high stressful situations. 

GenAI can help EAL instructors tap into scalability to fill in the gaps when providing individualized feedback, saving hours of typing out every suggestion. Drawing on personal EAP classroom this academic year, the research focus is practical, using GenAI to enhance instructor-guided feedback on writing and speaking tasks to include personalized examples and practice for each learner. The presenter will share tailored prompts focusing on common learner weaknesses in writing structure (e.g., clarity, organization, and word choice) and on suprasegmentals in pronunciation (stress, rhythm, intonation), without overwhelming students or instructors. The goal of the session is to share what worked and what didn’t. Successes included prompts that stayed focused on one skill at a time, feedback delivered in digestible formats, and practice activities that could raise student’s awareness and help to self-identify weaknesses for future tasks. Challenges included trying to do too much for each stage of the assignment and producing feedback that felt too long. The session will link each challenge to a practical adjustment that attendees can adopt immediately. Survey results reporting student reactions and preferences will also be discussed when receiving AI feedback, including hesitation to trust AI feedback and the importance of Instructor guidance. By the end of the session, attendees will leave with a set of prompt templates to use for scalable, individualized feedback prompts while, hopefully, avoiding some of the pitfalls. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly shaping how learners access information, communicate, and learn languages. From translation tools and grammar checkers to AI-generated images, videos, and voices, learners are interacting with AI daily—often without the skills needed to understand how these tools work or how to use them safely, critically, and effectively.
This session introduces a new AI literacy course  in Avenue.ca for adult ESL and settlement-focused language programs at CLB 1-4.  The activities are  aligned with the Avenue Learner Standards for Technology-Enhanced Language Learning (TELL). The course supports learners in building a foundational understanding of AI and generative AI, recognizing AI-generated and manipulated content, and developing awareness of how AI can both support learning and be used to mislead or cause harm.
The course is highly visual and experiential. Learners engage with a wide range of AI-generated images, videos, and audio samples to observe how realistic AI content can appear. Hands-on activities guide learners through identifying common features of AI-generated media, checking sources, and questioning accuracy. Several AI engines and AI-powered language learning tools—such as translation, pronunciation, and writing support apps—are introduced, with step-by-step instructions that help learners use these tools effectively while understanding their limitations.
The presentation will showcase how the course integrates interactive tasks, guided discussions, and reflection activities that promote learner agency and critical thinking. Participants will also see how the course explicitly addresses Avenue standards related to digital safety, ethical technology use, and independent learning.
Attendees will leave with practical insights into designing AI-aware lessons, concrete examples of learner-friendly activities, and strategies for supporting learners as they navigate AI tools and information in their everyday lives and communities.

This panel examines how classroom‑based volunteering can serve as a meaningful developmental pathway for language learners seeking future roles in education. In a TEAL landscape marked by rapid change, access barriers, and shifting learner demographics, volunteering creates space for learners to strengthen their language proficiency, workplace readiness, and emerging pedagogical identities through authentic participation in instructional environments. These practices align with the 2026 conference theme Rooted and Relevant: EAL Approaches in a Changing World, emphasizing flexible, learner‑centered approaches that respond to current sector challenges. 
Our focus is on learners who have limited access to full‑time language programming, including graduates of settlement‑language programs, temporary residents such as CUAET visa holders, and Stage 2 learners navigating fragmented or constrained educational pathways. Their experiences illustrate how volunteering can bridge structural gaps, foster confidence, and support career exploration within Canadian educational contexts. The session’s objectives are to: demonstrate how volunteering enhances language development, communication skills, and learner confidence through situated practice; illustrate how classroom volunteering supports workplace competencies and early pedagogical awareness for learners pursuing education‑related career pathways; and provide instructors with strategies for identifying, mentoring, and integrating learner‑volunteers in ways that benefit both volunteers and classroom communities. 
The panel includes multiple perspectives: one presenter examines language‑learning gains associated with classroom volunteering; another highlights how volunteering builds workplace readiness and community connections; a third discusses how volunteer engagement nurtures interest in education careers and supports foundational teaching skills. The chair synthesizes these insights, situates them within broader TEAL sector shifts, and facilitates discussion on practical implications for instructors and programs. Participants will leave with evidence‑informed strategies for leveraging learner‑volunteer strengths, fostering inclusive community‑rooted practices, and responding to sector challenges in ways that remain both rooted in learner needs and relevant to evolving TEAL contexts.

In their use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), EAL educators can both reinforce and challenge dominant language ideologies, reflected in how large language models tend to privilege standardized practices in English, Indigenous, and other named languages (Stap & Araabi, 2023; Lau, 2024). This presentation explores how developing and enacting a translanguaging stance—a belief system for leveraging learners’ full linguistic repertoires holistically (García et al., 2017)—can support the critical use of GenAI in EAL instruction, especially when the educator and their students do not share a similar linguistic and cultural background.
Drawing on his Design-Based Research (DBR) project, the presenter demonstrates how ChatGPT was used in translanguaging-informed ways to make instructional materials more linguistically and culturally responsive for teaching Japanese exchange students in a sociolinguistics course. This work involved the deliberate integration of: (1) translanguaging theory grounded in antiracist, decolonial, and poststructuralist perspectives (Li, 2018); (2) emerging knowledge of Japanese language and sociocultural norms; (3) complementary digital tools such as DeepL to support proofreading and cross-checking translingual outputs where appropriate; and (4) the linguistic and cultural expertise of students and colleagues, including a teaching assistant proficient in Japanese.
Through short practice-based vignettes, the presentation illustrates how such critical GenAI use strategies can potentially help identify, negotiate, and disrupt deficit-oriented language ideologies embedded in GenAI-generated output. The findings highlight both the pedagogical possibilities and ideological tensions of GenAI use, and offer practical implications for EAL educators seeking to design or revise teaching materials through a translanguaging-informed, socially just lens in Canada and beyond.

As generative AI (GenAI) tools become commonplace in higher education, many instructional responses continue to focus on restriction, detection, or punitive approaches to academic integrity. This practice-based presentation offers an alternative: a postplagiarism-informed teaching strategy that makes GenAI use visible, intentional, and ethically grounded within a creative problem-solving task. Postplagiarism emphasizes that while learners may outsource aspects of their work to GenAI tools, human responsibility and accountability for the final output remain central (Eaton, 2023). Drawing on classroom practice in undergraduate management education, this session introduces a short, structured activity in which students are explicitly encouraged to use GenAI tools while documenting and reflecting on both human and GenAI contributions across stages of creative problem solving, including problem framing, idea generation, solution development, and evaluation. By designing the activity to surface rather than conceal GenAI use, students engage in ethical decision-making, develop judgment about when and how GenAI is appropriate, and take ownership of their learning. For instructors, this approach supports academic integrity without reliance on surveillance technologies, while fostering trust, transparency, and student engagement. We will briefly outline the postplagiarism framework, describe the classroom activity, and share key instructional insights gained from its implementation. Although situated in management education, the approach is adaptable across disciplines and learning contexts. 

In this session, participants will be provided with a summary of Let’s Talk About GenAI, FASTER conversations.  These were a series of webinars, hosted on tutela.ca, that provided the opportunity for adult language and settlement instructors across Canada to explore implications of generative GenAI tools through the lens of the Government of Canada’s ethical framework FASTER Principles. These involve considering Fair, Accountable, Secure, Transparent, Educated and Relevant principle., Each webinar session offered a safe and shared space to move beyond hype-driven fears toward thoughtful, practical understanding of how GenAI intersects with everyday instructional duties.
Each FASTER workshop began with a short overview of the FASTER Principles and what each concept means in the context of language instruction. A relevant GenAI technical issue was clarified to enrich each conversation. These included how hallucinations happen, GenAI creates content, security can be enhanced with good practices. Participants then engaged in guided small group conversations, where they shared their current experiences, questions and concerns about using GenAI tools in lesson planning, assessment and materials creation. Through peer discussion exchanges, teachers considered issues including security, bias, accountability, safety, ethics and more. 
The focus of the workshops was to build a shared understanding of the responsibilities of educators including ethical, pedagogical and professional considerations.  The facilitators of this session will share reflections and FASTER resources for the participants consideration with the possibility of the materials being repurposed and facilitated in Canadian LINC and ESL centres.