Category Archives: BC Politics
Adios Twitter!
After 14 years and 1700+ followers, I finally deleted my Twitter account. It was disappointing. I’m a news junkie, and Twitter used to be an excellent tool for curating my news feed. Unfortunately, Musk has destroyed a once great social media platform and turned it into a sewer. The last straw was election day in […]
A Review of Thinking Reading
Thinking Reading: What Every Secondary Teacher Needs to Know About Reading by James Murphy My rating: 4 of 5 stars If you’re new to structured literacy or the science of reading, this book will be an excellent introduction, particularly if you’re a secondary teacher facing dozens of students who are struggling to read. On the […]
Humankind: A Hopeful History (by Rutger Bregman)
Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman My rating: 4 of 5 stars More a philosophical treatise than a history text, Bregman’s Humankind is a fascinating attempt to define a new realism: human beings are essentially decent and compassionate, and all attempts to show otherwise are cynical and false. Did you know we are the […]
A few thoughts on returning to school in the age of Covid-19
If British Columbia and other jurisdictions are serious about a “continuity of learning”, then it’s clear that distance or distributed learning (DL) will play an integral part. As such, I would like to offer the following suggestions based on my 27 years as a secondary public-school teacher, seven of which were in DL. I certainly […]
Decontenting & the Honour Roll
The following is a letter I submitted to the North Shore News regarding the North Vancouver School Board’s recent decision to eliminate the honour roll.……… This policy should be a clear warning sign for parents about the general drift of BC’s new curriculum. The automobile industry uses the term “decontenting” to describe the gradual reduction […]
Looming on the horizon: English Studies 12
Of the many changes to British Columbia’s new English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum, none may be more problematic than English Studies 12. If all goes according to plan, the BC education system will see the wide-spread adoption of this new course in 2019-2020. In other words, folks, it’s arriving next September. Why is it problematic? […]
A Few Thoughts on BC’s Electoral Reform Ballot
If you’re a BC resident, don’t forget to send in your ballot for the 2018 Referendum on Electoral Reform. This opportunity may not come along again in our life time, so don’t waste a rare chance to have a direct say in how our democracy is run. When I used to teach political science at […]
Curriculum must be a teacher’s ally, not a teacher’s foe.
In the spring of 1993, despite working in a temporary five month teaching contract in the lower mainland, I faced the reality that permanent, full-time teaching positions in British Columbia were scarce, so I found myself looking northward. Thus, in September, I started teaching in a small rural school two kilometres from the Alaska border. […]
On the latest report card “innovation”
There is a renewed push in BC to remove letter grades from report cards. The front line of this struggle is currently in Squamish. Here is my response to the local newspaper’s story on this issue. ___________ The push against letter grades is, of course, not new. It’s just the latest salvo from the Romantics who brought […]
Reflections on BC’s proposed English 10-12 curriculum
As someone who has taught for 24 years in the BC public education system, I am somewhat bewildered by the new curriculum proposals for English 10 to 12. First, the lack of a Communications stream is a serious mistake. I am glad that some of the language that initially justified the removal of Communications is not […]