About ME
I’m a writer, editor, researcher, podcaster, and Assistant Professor.
I work with learners of all ages to confront power, privilege, and the possibilities of more just and equitable futures—both on and off the page. Most days you’ll find me helping fellow writers and researchers dream up, document, and disseminate their ideas. That’s part of what I do in the New College Writing Centre at The University of Toronto, where I’m currently serving as an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream.
In a past life, I taught high school English, Social Sciences, and Special Education north of Toronto. Now a Ph.D. Candidate at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), my current research explores critical and care-centred approaches to school-based drug education, as well as collaborative, participatory, and arts-shaped inquiries among youth and educators more broadly. I also help coordinate the Toronto Writing Project, a network of educators that supports teachers of writing in supporting their students. Someone even handed me a microphone to host the project’s Teaching Writers Speak podcast.
When I’m not hunched over a keyboard and pouring over works-in-progress, I’m almost always outdoors—preferably on a beach.
Experience
Assistant Professor (Teaching Stream), New College Writing Centre
New College, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
2023 - Present
Coordinator / Podcaster, Toronto Writing Project
OISE, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
2016 - Present
Writing Coach, OISE STudent Success Centre
OISE, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
2021 - 2023
Research Assistant, THE Addressing Injustices Project
OISE, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
2015 - 2022
Research Assistant, LGBTQ Families Speak Out
OISE, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
2018 - 2020
Daily & Long-Term Occasional Teacher
Simcoe County District School Board
2010 - 2020
Education
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto
Ph.D. Curriculum & Pedagogy (ABD)
Dissertation: Writing Across Teachers’ Encounters with Drugs at School: Towards a Critical Collaborative Inquiry and a More Loving Drug Curriculum
Expected 2024
M.A. Curriculum Studies & Teacher Development
Thesis: “Something to Just Hold On To”: Occasional Teaching and Collaborative Inquiry in Precarious Times
2017
B.Ed. Intermediate-Senior Social Sciences & English
2010
WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY
B.A. Honours Sociology
2009
Recent Presentations
Walkland, T. (2024, April). “‘The lines are increasingly hazier’: Reframing drug education as critical collaborative inquiry.” In Drugs, poetry, music, and care: Illuminating while reimagining possibilities using collaborative practitioner inquiry. [Symposium presentation]. Paper presented to the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA.
Simon, R., Baer, P., & Walkland, T. (2024, April). Constructing educational possibilities in queer literacy research through intergenerational co-creation. Paper presented to the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA.
Walkland, T. (2023, November). “Capturing things that are difficult to depict in words”: Writing across teachers’ encounters with drugs at school. Paper presented to the Literacy Research Association (LRA) Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA.
Academic Articles
Simon, R., Baer, P., & Walkland, T. (2024). “Gender is like an ocean”: Exploring the intersections of queer literacy research and teaching through filmmaking. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy.
Simon, R., Gallagher, B., & Walkland, T. (2022). “Swirling a million feelings into one”: Working-through critical and affective responses to the Holocaust through comics. Research in the Teaching of English, 56(4), 385-410.
Goldstein, T., Salisbury J., Baer, P., Koecher, A., hicks, b.l., Reid, K., Owis, Y., Ga’al, E., & Walkland, T. (2021). Family advocacy for gender inclusive schooling. Perspectives in Urban Education.
Simon, R., hicks, b. l., Walkland, T., Gallagher, B., Evis, S. and Baer, P. (2018). “But in the end, you are all beautiful”: Exploring gender through digital composition. English Journal, 107(3), 39-46.
Simon, R., Evis, S., Walkland, T., Kalan, A., & Baer, P. (2016). Navigating the “delicate relationship between empathy and critical distance”: Youth literacies, social justice, and arts-based inquiry. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 15(3), pp. 430-449.
Book Chapters
Simon, R., Gallagher, B., Walkland, T., Allen, A., Friesen, D., Evis, S., & Kalan, A., with youth from the Addressing Injustices Project. (2023). “We can’t ever let this happen again”: Addressing anti-Semitism through arts-based inquiry. In V. Stead (Ed.), Confronting anti-Semitism on Campus. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Brownell, C., Walkland, T., & Simon, R. (2021). Critical Literacies in Canada: Past, Current, and Future Directions. In J.Z. Pandya, R.A. Mora, Alford, J., N.A. Golden, & R.S. deRoock (Eds.), The critical literacies handbook. New York, NY: Routledge.
Walkland, T. Contributor. (2021). Chapter 4: How do I teach beyond the canon? In R. Beach, D. Appleman, B. Fecho, & R. Simon, Teaching literature to adolescents, 4th Edition (pp. 68-93). New York: Routledge.
The Addressing Injustices Collective: Simon, R., & hicks, b.l., Walkland, T., Gallagher, B., Evis, S., Baer, P. (2018). “Breaking gender expectations as a whole”: Adolescents’ critical rewriting of a trans young-adult novel. In B. Guzzetti, J. Dunkerly-Bean, & T. Bean (Eds.), Literacies, Sexualities, and Gender: Understanding Identities from Preschool to Adulthood. New York, NY: Routledge.