Stephen Hawkins-Bogle, director of instruction, and Rachel Friedrich, teacher coordinator, gave a presentation to the School District 72 board on the intention behind the district's curriculum and using student-centred practices.
"This learning for educators is critical. We have a curriculum designed to create skills our society needs more than ever right now," said Friedrich. "My role is one small part of a larger effort to advance this strategic plan. It involves working with teachers and administrators to use evidence-based practices that position students as drivers."
The curriculum, introduced in 2016, focuses on developing students into 'educated citizens,' encouraging critical thinking, communication, and conceptual understanding as skills. Friedrich said some teachers and administrators dove into the work last year. Now, there are more reaching out this year for help in creating more engaged students, rather than compliant ones.
A teacher's toolbox was created to help educators integrate these practices into a learning environment.
"It's abstract. It's complex. It's deeply interconnected and relational, and it's designed with more emphasis on a deeper understanding of concepts and the application of processes than on the memorization of isolated facts and information like our old curriculum was," said Friedrich.
"There's tons more autonomy for teachers, but it's much more complex to use. This is why we call it a standard-based curriculum, and when we assess that learning, it's called standard-based assessment. This curriculum is designed to be used with students. It's not to be used like teachers used to when we were all kids, and it was kind of a mystery to figure out what exactly we're supposed to do beyond figuring out what the teacher wanted."
In her presentation, Friedrich used an example from Southgate Middle School. During a social studies lesson in a Grade 8 classroom, the teacher, Tracy Fischer, taught the class about characterizing different periods in history and identifying turning points in those periods. Fischer then helped students define terms such as 'turning point' and 'decline' and encouraged them to make personal connections to global events from their own lives, such as COVID-19.
"Students were drawing between personal experiences and academic concepts, the concept being this turning point in history," Friedrich said. "We have this amazing group of students who remember where they were. I think March 13 is the day they remember like we remember September 11... Why is this important? Because learning is intensely personal, and it needs to be. It also honours Indigenous world views in that learning is personal, holistic, relational, inter-connecting, reflective and reflexive and that we learn from our stories and the stories of others."
