School District No. 46 (SD46) has been chosen to help create a social responsibility component of the new B.C. education curriculum, superintendent of schools Patrick Bocking announced at the April 8 school board meeting.
“I’m very excited that we’ve received a grant from the Ministry to participate in developing social responsibility profiles under the new curriculum for the province,” Bocking said. “We’ll have eight to 10 of our teachers working with Ministry staff.”
Bocking said the group will meet about four times to develop the social responsibility portion of the new curriculum.
“It is certainly a big question mark when we look at [social responsibility] competencies and what does it look like and how do you measure it?” trustee Christine Younghusband noted. “I’m excited that we are a part of that and that we’re going to be informing the learning and be involved in the development of it.”
New curriculum
SD46 is developing a plan to implement the Ministry of Education’s new curriculum over the next three years.
“Assistant superintendent [Greg] Kitchen, principal Paul Bishop and principal Sally Thicke and I met with members of the SCTA (Sunshine Coast Teachers’ Association) and with the education and implementation committee to talk about how we will effectively bring the new curriculum forward,” Bocking said. “It was an initial meeting where we were talking about our parameters and what the new committee is going to look like, but some of the concepts we came up with is that we would like to look at probably a three year implementation period with next year being an awareness.
“Make sure everybody understands that there is a new curriculum and move forward as a district with that. Second year to be working with it a little more intensely, trying different subject areas, different levels, different grades, that kind of thing, and in the full final year having some concerted work in that curriculum so that the teachers understand in the fourth year it’s an expectation that our district will be working with the new B.C. curriculum.”
Bocking said the Ministry’s new curriculum is only defined for kindergarten to Grade 9 students right now, but that “we’re hoping that the rest of it will be developed before too long.”
“It’s scheduled to be out pretty much now for Grade 10, 11 and 12, but it’s certainly not. There are an awful lot of complications around this kind of a project of course, including what does graduation look like? How does it lead into university, college and post high school life?” Bocking said.
Younghusband noted she was excited SD46 was going to be “taking our first steps” with the new curriculum.
“And I like that it’s a three-year implementation because although the draft is out it is really incomplete and that’s not just mentioning the 10-12 but currently incomplete,” Younghusband said.
“There’s supposed to be things like behind the click and what it’s going to look like, sample assessments, sample units and they’re not present so I think that although we are moving forward it is cautious and as things emerge we will be ready for them.”
Music
Bocking announced that SD46 will create more musical experiences for kids in kindergarten to Grade 3.
“We are doubling the amount of music that children will get from K-3 in our district for next year. We will be hiring three full time music teachers to accomplish that at the elementary level,” Bocking said.
“So we’re really excited about that and looking forward to seeing an enhanced music program with that initiative.”
