New lessons may hit K-4 by 2020
A $64-million Alberta school curriculum overhaul will cover indigenous history and culture, computer coding, climate change, mental health, and sexual and gender diversity while emphasizing the fundamentals of math, reading, and writing, Alberta’s minister of education says.
“We’ll all remember this as the beginning of a fine new start to Alberta education right across this province,” Education Minister David Eggen said at Edmonton’s John A. McDougall school Wednesday as he announced the ambitious six-year plan.
For the first time ever, Alberta teachers, consultants and ministry staff will review and update K-12 arts, language arts, social studies, science, math, and health curricula in both official languages simultaneously. Once approved by the minister and phased in, revised lessons could hit K-4 classrooms as early as 2020, with the older grades coming in the following years.
The Alberta Teachers’ Association will choose the teachers who decide what children should learn and compose new tests to go along with the curriculum.
This fall, the public will also have chances to tell the ministry what it wants to see covered in the province’s classrooms.
Questions remain about whether a remodelled curriculum will improve students’ comprehension of basic concepts in math and literacy, said Wildrose MLA and education critic Mark Smith, who taught social studies in Drayton Valley for 30 years.
He pointed to Alberta’s slipping scores on international tests as evidence the province needs clearer achievement goals in literacy and mathematics. Although the teachers’ association would like to see them go, provincial exams must stay, Smith said.
“Standardized testing provides a level of accountability for teachers, for students, for parents, that allow our students to get a picture, a snapshot, of where they are in any given day. I think we all need that in society.”
Although Eggen said provincial exams will evolve over time, he called the tests “a responsibility I should not back down from.”
Smith also said teachers may find the proposed timeline overwhelming.
Previous curricula have rolled out subject by subject so teachers could digest new expectations in “bite-size chunks,” Smith said.
“I guess we’ll find out if there’s a difference between ambitious and foolish.”
After broad consultations in 2008 and 2009 under the former Progressive Conservative government, curriculum redesign “fell in an abyss,” said Henri Lemire, superintendent of the French school board Conseil des Ecoles CentreNord based in Edmonton.
The work done under the previous government will not go to waste and forms the basis of the new plan, Eggen said.
Having a schedule is a relief to Lemire, who said an outdated curriculum leaves school practice out of sync with research and Alberta trailing other global school systems.
Developing a replacement in French and English together is great news for francophone and French immersion students and their parents, he said.
In the past, it took as long as two years to translate new curriculum into French.
“Alberta’s been trudging with this far too long. The minister, this morning, wants to correct something,” Lemire said.
Included in a refreshed curriculum will be the history, perspectives and contributions of “groups ignored for far too long,” such as First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and francophone people, Eggen said. There’s $4 million set aside to consult with indigenous people to ensure curriculum accurately reflects their history and teachings.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada last year recommended lessons on residential schools, treaties and indigenous history be a mandatory part of lessons from kindergarten to Grade 12.
Local First Nations people must play a role in developing those lessons, said Jeannie Paul, education liaison and policy analyst with the Confederacy of Treaty 6 First Nations.
She said textbooks in use teach students about the Iroquois, who lived mostly in Eastern Canada, rather than the stories of Cree, Saulteaux, Dene and Blackfoot people who first inhabited the Prairies.
Teaching students about the dim legacy of residential schools will also help people evolve and move on, together, she said.
“If a school could take it away, a school could put it back.”
An updated mental health and sex education curriculum, along with early discussions about gender equity and consent, are on Barbara Silva’s wish list for an improved curriculum.
The communications director of Calgary-based Support Our Students parent group hopes for better physical education, and the reintroduction of teachers who specialize in music, the arts, phys. ed, and languages.