Valerie Bastien

Valerie Bastien has been teaching elementary school since 2003. She has been helping singers and other voice professionals for over 10 years as well.

Facilitator: Teachers who have a facilitator model teaching style tend to focus on activities. This teaching style emphasizes student-centered learning and there is much more responsibility placed on the students to take the initiative for meeting the demands of various learning tasks. This type of teaching style works best for students who are comfortable with independent learning and who can actively participate and collaborate with other students. Teachers typically design group activities which necessitate active learning, student-to-student collaboration and problem solving. This type of teacher will often try to design learning situations and activities that require student processing and application of course content in creative and original ways. Source: http://www.biz.colostate.edu/mti/tips/pages/WhatisYourTeachingStyle.aspx

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B.A. in Education B.A. in Fine Arts with Specialization in Classical Singing Performance

Valerie Bastien is a musician at heart and an educator by choice. Formerly trained as a classical singer, she obtained her Baccalaureate in Fine Arts (Specialization Music Performance) from Concordia University in 1998. She also studied classical guitar at Vanier College. If you have ever set foot in the Old Montreal during the mid-nineties, you might have heard her coloratura voice resonate throughout Place Jacques-Cartier where she was once regularly performing opera arias as a street artist. Valerie moved to Toronto not long after and put her music projects on hold to reorient her career. She graduated from University of Ottawa in 2003 with a second Baccalaureate in Education. She has since been teaching at the elementary level, currently for the Toronto District School Board. Her focus is on languages (French Immersion) and the arts. Her contributions in these areas include working in collaboration with Chenelière Education in creating the serie “Quelle aventure!” on extreme sports targeting the interest of young male readers. In 2005, Valerie published a teacher’s guide and resources entitled: “Y paraît que…”. This complete unit for grade 7 and 8 French Immersion students is entirely based on the Television Franco-Ontarienne’s web animated Canadian legends of the same title. It provides fun but challenging activities integrating Languages (French), Technology, Visual Arts, Drama and History. Faced with the demands of raising her voice constantly to address her class, a bunch of energetic students, Valerie started struggling with vocal difficulties a couple years ago. This was obviously of a great concern to her as singing is her passion. In an effort to terminate her health issues, she dived back into her research of vocal techniques. After realizing that vocal problems were in fact quite common within the teaching community, she was inspired to write “Voice Yourself in the Classroom”. Her book is directly intended to meet the vocal needs of teachers. It offers strategies to find one’s natural dynamic speaking voice: a voice that will project easily, feel good, sound great and of course, last. Private lessons are available in the Toronto, ON area or through Skype if you live in an other part of the world.