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Encountering Curriculum
Fixed to the back wall of a classroom’s storage room is a steep and narrow wooden staircase. The storage room is dark and cool, but as you climb the staircase, sunlight beckons and the air turns warmer. Suddenly, you emerge into a greenhouse flooded with brilliant sunlight and fresh greenery, and offering a panoramic view of the neighbourhood in which the school is located. The school’s rooftop oasis is home to seedlings, cuttings, mature plants, grow lights and containers of soil and compost. This miniature Eden is the domain of Dustin Bayer and students in Jasper Place High School’s permaculture program. The Edmonton teacher is also a master gardener and permaculture designer.
Today, Bayer and half a dozen students review their designs for the school’s central courtyard. The group moves outside to survey the terrain and discuss the vegetation best suited to a northern clime. Bayer encourages the students to imagine what could be planted and where, explaining the need to contrast colours, textures, shapes and heights. The bell rings, signalling the end of lunch; students scatter and Bayer heads off to teach a class.
It’s tempting to use a metaphor about sowing ideas and watching them grow. It is tempting because that is exactly what is happening here—Bayer and his students are creating curriculum that is vibrant and free-flowing. Encountering and exploring curriculum that is creative and inspiring is the theme of this issue of the ATA Magazine.
Bayer takes an ecological approach to education. In his article he writes that the “potential for education to become a highly diverse, connected and resilient system” is exciting. Bayer and his students’ engagement with curriculum is living, evolving and promising.
Tucked away in a wing of Jasper Place High School is Britt Petracek’s art classroom/studio. Today, Petracek’s students focus on various art projects. Students draw at tables, write and sketch in their journals, or work at a computer. All are absorbed in their assignments. Lively chatter rises from the girls seated at the long drawing tables. As well as being the school’s fine arts department head, Petracek is a participating teacher in InSight Education, a course that combines curricula, technology and student-centred learning. The course explores Social Studies 20 and Biology 20 and allows “for adapting and arranging the timetable to meet students’ learning needs.” Petracek writes that the idea originated from participating in the Finland–Alberta partnership, and from “reflecting on the flexibility students had in creating their timetables and exploring curriculum.”
South of Edmonton, down the QEII, Airdrie teachers Lynn Leslie, Jean Parker, assistant principal Adriana Wild and principal Michael Panić, of Our Lady Queen of Peace School, are nurturing “creative, flexible and critical thinkers to solve complex issues.” The school’s approach to making the classroom “a living experience” is fundamental to its integrated curriculum, and the observations of Grade 7 students enrolled in the program, and featured in this issue, attest to a refreshing approach to learning.
Observations about curriculum from international experts in public education are featured in “Redesigning Alberta’s Curriculum.” It should come as no surprise that these experts attribute much of the province’s recent innovative work in curriculum to the Alberta Initiative for School Improvement (AISI). While the article may at first read like an elegy for a vanquished hero, it should give the provincial government pause to reconsider the devastating funding cuts it inflicted on AISI.
Phil McRae, ATA executive staff officer and researcher, tackles the emerging issue of adaptive learning systems: today’s version of yesteryear’s antiquated teaching machine. “Rebirth of the Teaching Machine Through the Seduction of Data Analytics” addresses the harvesting by schools of students’ private information (data) for the benefit of corporations that have invested in the business of individualized and personalized learning. McRae’s alternative to the corporations’ proposed utopia of 24/7 education spoon-fed to students glued to screens is a no-brainer. He writes: “The education of our next generations should not be about machines but, rather, about a community of learners whose physical, intellectual and social well-being is sacred.” This point of view, he says, “is driven by the human desire to connect, maintain friendships, tell stories, share thoughts and inquire into the nature of the world. It’s a perspective that flows naturally together with research on learning that suggests education is not about just content or physical place—it is a collective and highly relational set of experiences within a community of learners.”
Encountering curriculum that is creative is an inspiring experience for a community of students and teachers, as it explores the essence of what it means to be alive.
