“I wouldn’t say they were concerned; more curious than anything.”
Dixon elementary principal Bill Juhasz was reflecting on the sentiments among the 100 or so parents who turned out for a “What is the New Curriculum” parent night, jointly hosted by his school and Blair elementary.
“Not a lot of parents knew much about the old curriculum, let alone the new one,” Juhasz said.
“This was half about the new curriculum and half about showcasing what great things our teachers do and the effort that already goes into planning dynamic lessons.”
Teachers from both schools, said Juhasz, are very much “on the learning curve and have been dabbling with (the new curriculum) for the last year and we will be better equipped to share more about it later (in the school year).”
The old model of learning was about “imparting information into empty vessels,” he added. “Now it’s experiential learning.”
A dozen different stations, each hosted by a different teacher from one of the two schools, greeted the parents with explanations of how that particular unit might work within the new curriculum and how it will be assessed.
A bell was rung every ten minutes and each parent group moved onto the next station.
“Teachers were collecting all the questions (from parents) throughout the night, so we can answer them more fully next time around,” said Juhasz.
The primary areas parents were concerned about, said the Dixon principal, were:
1. How can we help our kids at home?
2. Personalized learning? How can teachers achieve that when there are so many different children in the classroom?
3. If students are always allowed to choose how they are going to answer, how are they going to learn when they don’t have that choice?
In answer to the last question, Juhasz said teachers would still have to see all the “modals of learning” from the students throughout the semester or course, not just the ones the student favours.
“This kind of teaching and learning has been happening for decades, though, and our teachers have been involved in this as well,” said Juhasz.
“We will be having a meeting to reflect on the questions and understand what we can do to incorporate that in the next meeting with parents; which will be the parent-teacher meeting in September at the start of the school year.”
