1. Impact on Education Plan Priorities

Actions taken to pilot parts or all of the Draft Curriculum at any grade level is more likely to have a negative effect on student-staff relationships, literacy and numeracy goals, and our efforts to support staff with the diversity of learners in their classroom. 

• We are unable to anticipate how piloting would have any positive impact on Student-Staff Relationships.  
• We prefer that our teachers’ time and energy is not diverted away from implementing specific strategies from the Education Plan regarding Literacy and Numeracy. Any degree of implementation of a pilot of the Draft Curriculum, as presented, would take teachers away from this focus.  
• Finally, there is no evidence that piloting would contribute positively to our priority to support staff and would be more likely to disrupt efforts to help staff to implement effective inclusive practices. 

2. Impacts of the COVID 19 pandemic on student achievement

Piloting the Draft Curriculum would distract teachers from their focus on actively addressing the interrupted trajectory of learning caused by the period of at-home-learning in spring 2020, the intermittent periods of isolation and the increased absenteeism during 2020-2021. 

• The teachers have expressed concerns that piloting would take time away from their efforts to impact the gaps and delays in students’ literacy and numeracy skills caused in large part by COVID-19 related disruptions to in-class learning and attendance.

3. Teacher well-being

Teachers are already dealing with high rates of distress from students and parents on top of coping with their own COVID related fears and worries since March 2020 and during the entire 2020-2021 school year. An expectation to pilot is an unnecessary additional burden.

• We believe that our staff needs time to recover from these experiences and returning to a reasonably typical year would benefit that recovery. 
• Adding the expectations associated with piloting the Draft Curriculum as presented would be contrary to the goal of recovery and support for teacher well-being.

4. Logistics of piloting

The processes required for an effective pilot would be very demanding on teacher time. Issues related to sequencing and missing prerequisite skills would impact student learning. Finding or developing age appropriate resources to support instruction for vast arrays of new content would be a massive challenge.  

• Discovering or creating age appropriate resources for new learning outcomes requires considerable time and effort – especially given the number of learning outcomes that have been introduced at every level.
• With the removal of topics in science, and the introduction of large numbers of outcomes in social studies, teachers would need substantial time to collaboratively develop units of instruction, and to learn the content themselves.  
• Issues of sequencing are a major cause for concern. 
  • Students in a piloting class would not have learned the previous outcomes leading up to the new items. To address this, teachers would need to devise bridging lessons, which also takes more time. 
  • Students in a piloting class would be moving on to grades in the following year and may mix with students who were not involved in the pilot.  Since programs generally build on previous years’ outcomes, piloting parts or all would result in increased differences in background knowledge further complicating subsequent delivery of instruction. 
  • Students in a piloting class would miss out on elements of the current curriculum that are further developed in subsequent grades.  
• Teachers also raised questions about expectations for assessment and also reporting back to parents given the enormous number of outcomes. 
  • Our teachers have gradebooks that are closely integrated with the current learning outcomes. Our reporting tools also align with current outcomes. These are embedded into software infrastructures and reconfiguring them is not a simple process. We would not want to invest in temporary changes, or make adjustments intended to be more permanent, only to have to re-do it after the piloting period is over.  
  • Reporting occurs after teachers assessments. Developing assessments of the multitude of outcomes in the draft is daunting, and in some areas, the outcomes are too distinct from one another to group together. 

5. Issues with the Draft Curriculum

Teachers identified multiple issues with the Draft Curriculum and were of the unanimous opinion that piloting would have no benefit to students.  

1. Teachers identified learning outcomes deemed to be critical in the developmental progression of students. The current curriculum has many elements that have been very supportive of students’ academic growth. Our teachers identified numerous examples of key learning outcomes that have been removed. The samples below are by no means inclusive of all the examples that teachers provided.
   • Removal of opportunity to learn through play and exploration (in early grades)
   • Removal of key verbs in learning outcomes related to thinking such as ‘explore’, ‘understand’, ‘analyze’, ‘create’ and ‘question’
   • Removal of development of a sense of belonging within the local community that includes others and the notion that others have value
   • Removal of peer collaboration
   • Removal of skip counting by 2, 5 and 10 from Grade 2 Math
   • Removal of a cohesive sequence of topics in science
   • Removal or shifting of science topics that have engaged students through relevant hands-on learning. The Color unit in grade 1 science was an especially valued way to engage young students in systematic scientific inquiry. The light and sound unit of grade 2 was a favorite of kids and teachers. The building unit in grade 3 is something students remember for many years.  
   • Removal of interconnectedness of learning outcomes between subject areas
   • Removal of explorations of quality of life elements from the social studies curriculum where teachers could lead students to understand wants versus needs, the rights of the child, and lifestyle differences among cultures 
   • Removal of outcomes that connect fluency and comprehension in the development of reading and writing
   • Removal of age-appropriate concepts of probability in grade 5 math where vocabulary such as ‘likely’, ‘certainty’, ‘possible’ and impossible’ could be used during examination of topics in other subject areas  
   • Removal of relatable themes such as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in grade 6 and replaced with a flood of content including reference to the “Star Spangled Banner”
2. Teachers identified the addition of developmentally inappropriate learning outcomes for the age and grade level at which they appear in the Draft Curriculum. The teachers we spoke with explained that while they could potentially train students to recite or memorize items and facts in the examples given, it would be inappropriate to expect understanding. That is, students would not have yet developed the cognitive capacity to understand some of the listed content. Teachers identified the following examples:
   • Expecting 5 and 6 year olds to recognize distance using imperial and metric units
   • Expecting 5 and 6 year olds (most of whom are at an ‘emergent reader’ stage) to read a map and construct a map of their neighborhood 
   • Expecting 6 and 7 year olds to accurately spell 125 high frequency words
   • Expecting 6 and 7 year olds to connect with and understand Feudalism (Teachers explained that it can take months for a typical 8 year old to fully grasp that Canada is our country and Alberta is our province) 
   • Expecting 7 and 8 year olds to identify features of a sonnet (“A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem consisting of two stanzas. The first stanza consists of eight rhyming lines. The second stanza consists of six rhyming lines.”)
   • Expecting 7 and 8 year olds to collect data from the internet and social media as part of statistics in math (To learn about statistics currently, they collect first-hand data about classmates’ favorite things and other preferences)
   • Expecting 8 and 9 year olds to read angles using a protractor (Teachers explained that typically students at this age should be learning to read straight rulers)
   • Expecting 8 and 9 year olds to learn how to calculate the area of a circle
   • Expecting 9 and 10 year olds to not only study the geography and history of Canada, but also economics and civics concepts such as mixed and market economies, 3 branches of government, and make comparisons between the BNA Act and the Iroquois Confederacy
   • Expecting 9 and 10 year olds to understand even basic algebraic equations and rules associated with brackets in an equation
   • Expecting 9 and 10 year olds to understand multiplication of fractions
   • Expecting 10 and 11 year olds to manage math outcomes that were previously in the grades 8 and 9 programs of study
   • Expecting 10 and 11 year olds to compare the economies of Canada, the USA and one other country 
3. The sheer volume of learning outcomes means significantly reduced time available for teachers and students to study a concept or topic with any depth. 
   • By one estimate, teachers will go from spending 450 minutes per outcome to just 50 minutes per outcome.  
4. The Draft does not account for the wide variety of individual differences and needs presented by students and therefore contradicts our focus on Inclusive strategies.
   • Children with speech and language delays and children who have other academic, mental or physical challenges are not recognized.
   • There are no references that connect to the LGBTQ2 students’ experiences.
   • The First Nations content seems primarily historical and there is little focus on current or even recent experiences. 
   • The current curriculum and the 2018 draft allowed teachers to plan intentionally for the broad range of students in their classrooms. The content and the quantity in the Draft Curriculum make this an unattainable goal. 
5. The translation to French has resulted in inaccurate use of French phrasing and words. 
6. The current curriculum begins with a section (called the Front Matter) describing to teachers the philosophical foundations upon which content and concepts are developed. 
   • This foundation has been removed and replaced with long lists of overly prescriptive outcomes.
   • Much of the curriculum reads like a list of facts, identifies very specific texts and expects memorization rather than understanding and critical thinking.
   • Many of the outcomes infer or directly imply specific teaching strategies (pedagogy) that may be useful for some students but certainly not all students.
7. Removal of the flexibility a teacher needs in order to connect outcomes to their children’s real lives. 
   • The quantity of outcomes and the abstractness of the content reduces the time teachers can spend getting to know their students so that they can present lessons that connect background knowledge to learning outcomes in a meaningful way.  
   • The fixed list of facts and other unrelatable content will increase the pressure on students to revert to memorization rather than critical thinking and creativity. 
   • Without opportunities to hang new learning on previous knowledge, the chances of retaining the concepts falls quickly.  
8. The attempts to address indigenous perspectives look to our teachers like they have been tacked on after the fact and have little or no connection from one area of the curriculum to another. 
   • For example, the grade 2 math program refers to indigeneous ways of measuring the land, but this has no correlation to outcomes defined in the social studies curriculum where a connection might be made. Instead, those students will be grappling with an understanding of the Roman Empire.  

During the month of April, PHSD’s senior administration led a multi step approach to gather feedback from PHSD teachers. The intent was to provide a reasoned recommendation to the Board on whether or not we should participate in the opportunity to pilot the Draft Curriculum during the 2021-2022 school year.  

• Step 1 – Nominate teachers
  • Principals nominated K-6 teachers who were currently assigned to the grade level, had taught that grade for several years, and when possible, had taught grades on either side of the grade in question.
  • 22 teachers and two Education Services Coordinators were involved, representing all 7 grades (K-6)
• Step 2 – Independent review by nominated teachers (the panel)
  • Each teacher was offered a sub to cover classes while they worked independently on an analysis of the subjects in their grade level of the Draft Curriculum
  • Five questions formed the foundation of their analysis at this level, and later as they met in grade groups:

• • • Please identify critical developmentally appropriate learning outcomes that currently exist in the curriculum but have been removed in the draft curriculum? Why are they critical at this age/grade?
    • Identify some new learning outcomes that have appeared in the draft that you consider to be developmentally appropriate for the age/grade. 
    • Identify some new learning outcomes that have appeared in the draft that you consider to NOT be developmentally appropriate for the age/grade. Please offer reasons why these outcomes would be a poor fit for the grade level.  
    • What benefits do you suggest are possible through a pilot of parts or all of the curriculum?
    • What concerns do you have about piloting parts or all of the curriculum? (Eg: planning for the range of learners in your classroom; implications for inclusion; scope and sequence and previous knowledge needed; resources)
• Step 3 – Panel Discussion
  • Each grade group met with the Superintendent and the Assistant Superintendent of Education Services to review their analysis. Other teachers or principals were invited to attend and observe, with opportunity for participation after the panel had provided their feedback.
• Step 4 – Preparation of recommendation to the Board
  • System administration also met with Education Services consultants to collect their perspectives 
  • The feedback gathered from teachers thus informed the recommendation that senior administration presented to the board.