Curriculum implementation gets a failing grade
By Lethbridge Herald on March 29, 2023.
Jason Schilling
ATA President
The headline-grabbing controversies over the Silk Road, Mart Kenney and the elimination of dinosaurs may have subsided, but teachers’ professional concerns about Alberta’s new curriculum have not yet been resolved. The government’s recent decision to proceed with the implementation of even more curriculum, despite the concerns of teachers, should worry all Albertans.
Alberta’s K–3 teachers have been working with the new math, English language arts and literature (ELAL) and physical education and wellness (PEW) curricula for six months. Unlike the government, the Alberta Teachers’ Association has been listening to these teachers, and their message is clear — this curriculum is failing.
Teachers report that the rollout of the new curriculum has been rushed, resources are scant, content is poorly sequenced and outcomes are overloaded. As a result, students are struggling.
The math curriculum is the main source of concern. In a recent survey of our members, 62 per cent of K–3 teachers said they were dissatisfied with the new curriculum, and only 26 per cent reported being satisfied with it. The feedback is equally bad for the PEW curriculum and only slightly better for the ELAL curriculum.
“The new curriculum will leave huge gaps in students’ learning in math,” reported one teacher. “The content is very difficult, and everything from a grade above has now been moved to a grade below, so there will be huge gaps and a lot of stress and no increased improvement in math.”
Teachers feel overwhelmed and unsupported by the government.
Furthermore, although their concerns are professionally well founded and rooted in what’s best for their students, they feel ignored despite the government’s insistence that it is listening.
Teachers’ anxiety about the state of curriculum implementation has been compounded now that the government has announced additional implementation in Grades 4–6 and the addition of new curriculum in science, French and French immersion language arts. These new subjects have been piloted for only a few months, in a very small number of classrooms. The feedback we have received on this pilot tells us that more work needs to be done before the curriculum is ready to be used with your children.
This is too much, all at once. Ultimately, the prospect of yet another hasty curriculum implementation will be too much for students and teachers. In the face of inadequate funding supports and the largest class sizes in the nation, our teachers need time to help students with their mental health and pandemic-exacerbated learning gaps. The last thing we need is another unsupported curriculum to implement.
I would prefer to avoid hyperbole, but this really is a recipe for disaster, and those most affected by it will be our students.
There is a way forward, however, when it comes to curriculum development and implementation:
• Pause implementation for now. Allow K–3 teachers more time to refine the ELAL and math curricula before introducing more subjects or more grades to this chaotic mix.
• Listen to teachers who are currently teaching the curriculum. Use clear and transparent processes to gather their comprehensive feedback.
• Bring teachers back to the table for curriculum writing. Create working groups of active K–3 teachers to review their colleagues’ feedback and revise the curriculum documents.
• Provide more time and professional learning opportunities to better support teachers through implementation.
• Work with school boards and publishers to develop an array of classroom-ready resources that support student learning and are available to all teachers.
• Build a better plan for how teachers will be fully engaged and supported as curriculum development and implementation are expanded to other grades and subjects.
Before 2010, curriculum development and implementation went on in this province without significant fanfare or concern. Long-standing processes were used again and again with various subjects and grade levels to ensure success. It worked well. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. We just need to re-embrace the principles and processes that work.
This chaos began when the government tried to do things so dramatically different. The first step was pushing teachers out of the room because it was felt that their input wasn’t needed.
It’s clear now that teacher input was not only needed but essential for implementation to be successful. Without it, we must give this curriculum implementation a failing grade.
Jason Schilling is the president of the Alberta Teachers’ Association and a teacher from southern Alberta.
23-22
This UCP curriculum-gate disaster is yet, another, reason, of many, why, many of us Albertans will be voting for the AB NDP on May 29th. Much, would need to be revoked, and fixed.
the issue with curriculum is far greater than the upc nonsense, is it not? we keep pounding away at elitist promulgation of what too often amounts to useless things, unless we are about training society for jeopardy contests.
there is far too little in the way of life skills engagements and structured growth lessons, apart from learning to write and read (too little effort in teaching how to read) and performing basic and necessary math calculations. we find time to teach about the likes of shogun japan, but not empathy for one another and for the life systems that encompass us and that are integral to our survival.
factoring polynomials – unreal – but no real respect for problem solving, such as through interpersonal lessons or via the skills related to trades. after all, do not the vast majority of us provide physical services, and do we not depend on those people and skills that create, build, and fix things?
but what does the honour roll celebrate? – good little memorisation and regurgitating machines with an 80%+ “grade” average in those “skills”; those that can follow do best, while those that honestly question and are of a divergent approach are rated lesser. we have a system that is most about punching out what the oligarchy wishes and commands…simple drones that do best when they are told and follow.
those not a part of that elite, who also have sundry skills and innate beauty to share out, are shuffled to the sidelines, being taught that what they can bring to the table is hardly as worthy.
Teachers have become a bunch of left-wing socialist whiners. They feel they are so hard done by, what with 3 months of time off every year.
The kids that they are turning out from school don’t know the first thing about hard work, respect, or achievement. It shows in the godawful work ethic kids have these days.
Way too much concern about not hurting anyone’s feelings and letting the inmates run the asylum.
yes, best to have them learn about life glued to fox news – like you, i wonder?
Wrong. Never watch the sewer that is FOX.
so, why, i wonder, do you echo the foxist soundbite of dismissing a person or an entire group for being “leftwing?” and, why is it that leftwing is entirely unacceptable, which then suggests “rightwing” is entirely good?
just a note – teachers work very hard; consider that there are many very nasty parents, and consequently, many of their kids will bring a lot of issues to the school. that, of course, would be just the behavioural concerns teachers must deal with. but the curriculum itself is mostly a waste – try and sell that stuff to the masses every work day. indeed, “why do we need to learn this….?”