Category Archives: Education
Rosenshine’s Principles in Action
Rosenshine’s Principles in Action by Tom Sherrington My rating: 4 of 5 stars I live in an educational jurisdiction that has lost its way; there is a collective amnesia regarding effective explicit instruction. Tom Sherrington’s small book is a pleasant corrective. Building upon Barak Rosenshine’s 10 principles of good instruction, Sherrington explains and expands on […]
Using Blogger for Online Learning
If you are a teacher who’s wanted to create a website for your classes, but thought it was too daunting a task, there is a relatively easy solution: Blogger. Blogger is Google’s free online blogging tool that is easy to use and access, and can be adapted to almost any online requirement. I am scaling […]
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? […]
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 […]
Some comments on the Supreme Court education decision
On Thursday, November 10, the Supreme Court of Canada issued a decision from the bench only 20 minutes after final arguments in the long standing dispute between the BC government and the BCTF. Here is my contribution to Vaughn Palmer’s first article on the teachers’ victory: ______________ Can you imagine if a new BC government […]
Choice and flexibility: some thoughts on the new curriculum
The latest drafts of the grades 10-12 English and social studies curricula and the recent announcement of BC’s new graduation requirements [Ed. note: This link has been updated.] confirm what many secondary teachers have feared: the continued (and perhaps accelerated) slide toward a consumer-oriented education system that offers little accountability. Let’s start with the new curricula. […]