B.C. Ministry of Education makes it mandatory for K-9 this fall
By Agnieszka Krawczynski
The B.C. Catholic

Caption: John Bevacqua

Some Catholic principals are speaking out about what the B.C. government’s new curriculum means for their schools.

“I’m quite optimistic and positive about it,” said John Bevacqua, principal of Vancouver College, a K-12 all-boys school.

“In my opinion, anytime you give the teaching professionals and, as a direct consequence, students, more choice, more flexibility, it’s a good thing. This curriculum attempts to do that.”

Bevacqua criticized the old style of teaching as being “a mile wide and an inch deep,” going down a checklist and covering many topics without delving into them deeply enough.

The updated curriculum, handed down by the Ministry of Education as mandatory for K-9 this fall, does the opposite.

It’s “a few inches wide but a kilometre deep. You can explore topics more in depth, and perhaps can give students more choice in the type of content.”

That means teachers can tailor their lessons to their students’ interests. Despite the flexibility, Bevacqua said, he’s not worried that vital information will fall through the cracks.

“Some of the criticism I hear is that we are somehow lowering the standards. Honestly, I don’t see that as the case,” he said.

“I think it’s in many ways removing the focus on just covering content and enhancing skill development.”

Not every teacher is thrilled about the change. Bevacqua said traditionally, teachers at independent schools have “had to be really specific and show they were covering all the curriculum in a very narrow, prescriptive way. Now the government is saying we’re going to give you a bit more autonomy.”

Teachers are “not really sure” how to handle some of that independence, especially in higher grade levels that are typically more content-heavy.

The curriculum redesign has principal Caterina Kennedy feeling nostalgic.

“It brought me way back to when I first started teaching,” said the principal of St. Michael’s Elementary School in Burnaby.

A fan of gradeless report cards, she praised the Ministry of Education for announcing it will do away with provincial exams in favour of other ways of assessing students.

“It’s just not the way learning should be,” she said. “We know that every learner is different, so you can’t teach that way because you won’t be hitting all those individualized needs.”

She said while the curriculum allows more flexibility, it does not remove “basic foundations” of reading, writing, and arithmetic.

That said, it’s a “huge hurdle” for teachers. “I think they’re a little overwhelmed. They’ve spent years fine-tuning their current plans and now they’re thinking they need to redo everything.”

Her teachers have already begun the transition and, inspired by the curriculum redesign, recently gained an Innovation Partnership Grant from the government for implementing a “Learning in Depth” approach.

“We randomly assign a simple topic to a learner,” for example the moon, light, or sacred buildings.

Over the years, students research their unique topics until, by Grade 8, every one of them has become an expert in something and has also learned how to investigate and think critically.

The new curriculum will become mandatory for Grades K-9 this fall, and will come into force for Grades 10-12 next year.