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By Chris Brown

'Concerns and criticisms'

Prairie Rose to form teacher committees to study draft K-6 curriculum

Apr 9, 2021 | 11:10 AM

DUNMORE, AB – Prairie Rose Public Schools will establish four teacher committees to evaluate core areas of the draft K-6 curriculum before deciding whether or not it will participate in piloting the curriculum in the fall.

“Fundamentally we’re going to have the professionals who teach kids at those grade levels, K-6, be involved and look at the new draft curriculum,” says Supt. Roger Clarke. “We want to do this Specifically in core subject areas for sure, at least initially with math language arts, social studies and science.”

Clarke says that since school divisions have flexibility with how much of the curriculum they choose to pilot, they want to have as much information as possible.

The committees will evaluate all aspects of each curriculum including content, implementation, assessment, age appropriateness and learned competencies.

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Feedback from the committees will be shared with the board and executive staff for review and further evaluation.

The draft curriculum was released by the province at the end of March and has been met by heavy criticism.

Concerns have been raised about the content, expected outcomes, age-appropriateness and more.

Clarke says the division shares those concerns and he’s heard directly about deep concern around the social studies curriculum, both the content that is in there and the content that’s missing.

“There’s been a call for a new curriculum for many, many years. So here we now have a draft and we want to be constructive in our approach because the truth is, if government does proceed with this curriculum then it will be mandated for us in not the coming year which is the ’21-’22 school year but the ’22-’23 school year we would all have to be in it,” he says.

“So if we’re going to be mandated at that time with this current curriculum then we want to have some input into that so that it’s the best rollout of the curriculum that we can make.”

Medicine Hat Public School Division and Medicine Hat Catholic Board of Education have already said they will not pilot the curriculum this fall.

Clarke says establishing the committees should not be taken as a show of support for the curriculum.

He feels everyone is weary after more than a year of COVID-19, and the school division wants to be mindful of how that might be playing into negative thoughts about the curriculum.

The school division says it’s important parents share any concerns or feedback about the curriculum with the government.

Parents are encouraged to read the curriculum and take part in the government’s survey.

A variety of concerns have been raised since the curriculum’s release last week.

Parents and educators say some of the social studies subject matter in early grades is not age-appropriate and others have taken issue with how First Nations, Metis and Indigenous history is taught.

Charges of plagiarism have also been levied by an academic from the University of Calgary.