BC TEAL 2026 Annual Conference

This workshop focuses on Universal Design for Learning, neurodiversity, and metacognitive strategy training in adult LINC classrooms. While related approaches such as multisensory engagement, translanguaging, and guided technology are explored in depth in a companion session, this workshop centers on proactive instructional design and learner self regulation, highlighting how UDL and metacognitive practices can support learners who may experience reading, writing, attention, or processing challenges.
Participants are introduced to UDL as a design framework that anticipates learner variability from the outset. The session begins by examining observable indicators of possible learning differences and discussing how intentional planning can reduce barriers before they affect participation or progress. Translanguaging and multisensory strategies are briefly revisited as supporting methods within this broader framework.
The workshop then moves from theory to practice through clear classroom guidelines organized across two stages. Stage 1 focuses on building comprehension and confidence using multimodal input, guided translation, and structured word finding. Stage 2 emphasizes language expansion and production through reflective feedback, task based speaking and writing, and metacognitive self monitoring. Examples are aligned with receptive and productive skills and demonstrate how these strategies can be embedded into community based modules such as Health and Safety or Civic Engagement while maintaining alignment with PBLA competencies.
By integrating UDL with metacognitive practices across both stages, participants explore ways to enhance accessibility, learning efficiency, and effective use of teaching time. Attention is also given to supporting learner autonomy through goal setting, reflection, and strategy awareness.
By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to apply UDL principles proactively, incorporate metacognitive strategies into LINC tasks, and use supportive techniques such as translanguaging to strengthen engagement. The final 15 minutes are dedicated to facilitated discussion, allowing participants to share experiences and co create practical adaptations for their own LINC contexts.

With the closure of Stage II classes it is an important time to come together and share ideas and practical strategies to assist students, LINC staff including, admin, instructors and programs leaders with the challenges on the journey ahead. This presentation from MOSAIC's LINC Sector Coordination BC/Yukon offers ideas on supporting students, instructors, and program administrators through the transition after LINC 4.  Drawing from direct experience, this session will share ideas on key challenges and lessons learned on delivering program changes, and provide suggestions for guiding and coaching clients through their next steps. Grounded in adult education theory, this presentation shares insights on how clients can identify goals and engage in self- advocacy towards their employment, academic English, community and civic engagement goals after LINC 4. 

This session focuses on small ways LINC instructors can respond when students’ mental health challenges show up in class. Adult immigrant learners juggle work, parenting, settlement, health, and language stress, so mood, focus, or safety concerns often appear as absences, lateness, irritability, or disengagement. Using short LINC-based scenarios, we will explore how teachers can notice signs of distress, respond with empathy, and make appropriate referrals without becoming counsellors. The session highlights indirect regulation strategies (emotional check-ins, predictable routines, brain breaks) and clarifies boundaries, including when concerns feel heavy or unsafe and how to loop in settlement workers, counsellors, or admin.
By the end of the session, the audience will be able to more confidently notice and respond when mental health concerns show up in your LINC classroom. Firstly, they will be able to recognize common signs that a learner may be struggling with their mental health and understand the difference between noticing/responding and diagnosing. Secondly, they will be able to apply small, indirect strategies to support learner regulation and engagement. Finally, they will be able to use simple phrases to set boundaries and refer students to appropriate supports when concerns go beyond their role or raise safety issues.

We live in interesting times in the national LINC program. In 2026, 29 years since CLB 5 programming was introduced, LINC will cease offering English instruction at CLB 5, 6, 7, and 8. Add to that funder-mandated cost-saving program cuts, and many teachers will be scrambling for a new job. If they stay in LINC, they will need to adapt their teaching approach to be successful with Stage I LINC learners. This means adapting the style of communication used in the classroom, the pacing of lessons and approach to instructions and activities, and importantly, the choice of teaching materials.


Changing to a new CLB level and making all these adaptations is stressful! From the combined 130+ years experience in the LINC and EAL fields of the presenters, feeling comfortable at a new CLB level can take several months of trial and error; more if the teacher is new or newer to teaching and classroom management. Over that time, teachers can become frustrated and exhausted, especially when learners don’t understand and don’t progress.


In this hands-on workshop, the ISSofBC LINC Instructional Coordinator team will provide guidance and direction to participants on how to adapt their teaching approach to a new LINC teaching assignment and much more quickly meet the needs of Stage I CLB level learners. Both new and experienced teachers will learn how to adjust their classroom and written communication to the CLB Profile of Ability of learners; how to choose appropriate materials based on the CLB Features of Communication; and what interactive, communicative lesson delivery needs to look like for Stage I CLB learners to succeed. Teachers will walk away feeling better prepared and more confident to thrive in a new teaching assignment in Stage I LINC.

Given the increasing attention to and application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education, investigating its ethical use is timely. AI safety concerns are not limited to deep fakes. They also include the ethical application of AI in classrooms such as bias, fairness, transparency, and academic integrity. The studies which have investigated using AI in education tend to lack ethical recommendations for educators. To address this gap, this study, informed by the Seoul Declaration for safe, innovative, and inclusive AI, will aim to review the application of AI in education and offer recommendations for educators to ethically employ it. First, the historical background of AI and the current landscape of AI in K-12 and higher education in international contexts will be explained. Then, the application of AI in Education will be reviewed, and ethical concerns will be examined. Finally, best practices for K-12 and post-secondary educators to implement AI in class will be offered.

Avenue transitioned to Moodle 4.5. As a result, instructors and administrators have access to a cleaner interface, improved navigation and new tools designed to support more efficient course design and delivery. This practical demonstration focuses on tips and tricks that help educators quickly adapt to Moodle 4.5 while making the most of Avenue’s teaching and learning environment.


Session participants will explore key interface changes, smarter ways to organize courses, content and efficiencies that will improve the Avenue learning experience for both instructors and learners. The session also includes navigation shortcuts, activity setup efficiencies and accessibility enhancing design choices. These can make Avenue courses easier to manage for educators and more intuitive for students.


Designed for educators with varying levels of Moodle experience, this session emphasizes what’s new, what’s different and what’s useful right now. Participants will leave with practical knowledge and strategies they can immediately apply in their Avenue courses to enhance usability, learner engagement and instructional efficiency.

This study examines how emotional and material entanglements shape the identities of six immigrant women teachers living across Canada. Drawing on qualitative interviews and visual narratives and analyzed through a material-discursive framework (Barad, 2007; Deleuze & Guattari, 1978/2020), the research explores how objects—such as jewelry, coins, and handwritten notes—act as emotional anchors that mediate belonging, literacy practices, and professional identity. Through these affective-material encounters, participants narrate how their emotional connections to objects sustain their resilience, foster multilingual literacy practices, and bridge transnational ties between home and host countries. The findings reveal that literacy development among immigrant educators extends beyond textual practices to include embodied, affective, and material dimensions of meaning-making. By highlighting the agency of emotions and objects in shaping self-perception and pedagogical engagement, this research contributes to new materialist perspectives in applied linguistics and immigrant teacher education. It advances understandings of literacy as a relational practice embedded in emotional and material life, challenging skills-based paradigms and offering implications for inclusive literacy policies and practices that honour teachers’ transnational experiences.