ELAN'S HISTORY

Roberta Charlesworth, from the North York Board of Education;
Jim Henderson, from The Language Study Centre, Toronto Board of Education;
Art Hughes, from the Scarborough Board of Education;
David Kneeshaw, from the East York Board of Education;
G. William Stratton, from the Etobicoke Board of Education; and
Frank McTeague, from the City of York Board of Education.

Established as a loose organization of Toronto area consultants and working in close association with the Ontario Council of Teachers of English (OCTE), this early group presented workshops for the OCTE's annual conferences, (often held at the Park Plaza Hotel), served on the OCTE executive and wrote articles for its journal, Indirections (previously known as The English Exchange).

They also hosted a Spring and Fall lecture, the first for English Consultants and Teachers, and the second for all Consultants of any discipline and featuring a more generic topic about the nature of learning or the impact of language on learning (a gentle prologue to the Language Across the Curriculum movement of the late 80's). The Child and Youth Drama Association, a precursor of today's CODE (Council on Drama in Education) was also emerged from the early English inservice meetings.

The Founding of ECCO
In 1978, the founding six consultants realized there were good political and academic reasons to expand the reach of the organization beyond Metro. There were also appeals from consultants such as Chris Worsnop from neighboring boards like Peel , to broaden the membership. Within a year or two the group became known as The English Consultants and Coordinators of Ontario (ECCO) and its membership grew to encompass some 100 curriculum support staff from around the province. A constitution was written, and monthly meetings were hosted by boards within driving distance of Toronto.

The expansion greatly increased the collective resources of the members, and their influence in the provincial Ministry of Education which had subject specialists on staff to develop curriculum. Jerry George and Gray Cavanaugh were two such ministry officials who belonged to ECCO and gave members regular reports on Ministry initiatives. ECCO's responses were held in some esteem. It responded vigorously to the new guidelines in 1987, and ECCO members became writers of provincial curriculum and support documents. Jerry George, for example, organized the Profiles series that supported the ‘87 guideline. As this relationship with the educational bureaucracy developed, ECCO became the political voice for English teachers in Ontario, while the OCTE in its annual conferences supported professional growth and reflection.

ECCO walked a fine line between being a curriculum and human resource to the ministry, and lobbying to make the collective voice of English teachers known to Ministers and Deputy Ministers of Education. In addition to these two functions, its members began to share documents their boards were producing, and to write and publish monographs on key issues in English teaching. By the early nineties this phase of expanding productivity and influence took yet another turn.

Serious provincial funding cuts began, and many consulting or coordinating positions began to disappear from boards around the province. By 1993, several representatives attending ECCO meetings were secondary school department heads, principals, and even superintendents. In addition, there was a growing proportion of members from far-off boards who could not attend meetings.

The vigorous activity of ELAN's early founders included annual one-day conferences in the spring and fall featuring keynote speakers and workshops delivered by prominent educators like Bryant Fillion, John McInness and Frank Smith in the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Some of these workshops were introductions to the the importance of the media in English education. Frank McTeague and "Robbie" Charlesworth, were early pioneers in this work on Media literacy. They found key leaders in their boards and the funds to promote media study and video productions as far back as the early 1970's.

In the late 70's, one member of the group, Barry Duncan, joined forces with Linda Schuyler (De Grassi High) and Arlene Moscovitch (now of the National Film Board) to form the influential Association for Media Literacy. Other ELAN members - Wayne McNanny and Linda May Bell - were part of that founding group in the early 80's. Wayne authored and / or supported a lot of important work in media literacy done by the Waterloo Board of Education.

ELAN has continued to support the inclusion of Media Education in the new English curriculum for elementary and secondary schools. In 1987 we supported the AML's successful bid to have Media included in the new guideline as a mandatory component of program. Our members were prominent on the writing team that authored the new elementary curriculum (1997), which included media expectations in all grades, and in 1998 we advocated successfully for a media strand in all core secondary English courses.

ELAN is Born
The decision was taken in 1993 to change ECCO to the English Language Arts Network, to reflect the expanding base of its membership.

ELAN continued to facilitate a rich exchange of curriculum documents written by members (K to 12), and to promote the voice of English, Language Arts, and Media teachers in Ontario as new provincial secondary curriculum is written (in 1993 and again in 1996-8). Reports from members who have gone on to work on ministry projects, continue to be an important feature of meetings, and the executive established an interim alliance (in 1996) with other language arts organizations in the province (The Media/Language Arts Coalition) to ensure our collective involvement in the writing of new provincial curriculum, and to open an exchange concerning common purposes. ELAN executive and members played a leading role in the development of the new secondary curriculum in Ontario.

In 2003, ELAN mounted its first Provincial Conference. Provincial teachers of English, Media and Language Arts had been without such an event for a few years. Teaching with ELAN, held at New College, University of Toronto, was a great success.

In the winter of 1999 ELAN created its current website with a view to extending our networking capacities. In December of 2000, work began on a new electronic journal, ELANguage, given the demise of Indirections, which the OCTE had supported for years