Last week, we held our annual division wide professional development day. Over the past number of years, we’ve morphed this day to be far more engaging for our staff through self-selection, the utilization of expertise within our division and a focus on professional dialogue around learning. We’ve also been able to incorporate an edcamp or open spaces format into the day to further support the professional autonomy of our staff.

This year, I was honored to be asked to provide the opening keynote address. The message requested, by the ATA PD committee who in large part organizes this day, was to remind our staff of the freedom they have given by me to break old pedagogical rules that no longer serve our students well. In other words, let’s look at how we can do things differently in the classroom and in our schools to enhance our students’ experiences and promote higher levels of learning. Although recognized as a high performing and innovative division, we must always be striving as professionals to hone our skills and increase our learning.

I usually offer an additional session during this day where staff members can sit around with me in a causal setting and just ask any question that they have. It is a great opportunity for me to further engage with staff and allows me to more fully understand what myths may need to be dispelled, issues need to addressed or simply what conversations need to be had. Although this is a scheduled session, quite often throughout the day, I’m drawn into additional conversations with staff. I relish in the opportunity to engage with our staff because I learn so much!

When I hear our teachers sharing their expertise and reflecting on their own practice in engaging dialogue, I get pretty excited. I heard about high school English teachers looking at eliminating outcomes that really don’t serve students well, junior high teachers developing cross curricular courses and elementary teachers ready to adapt their instruction the next school day based on the latest diagnostic assessments. This is what can occur, when people in my position provide a liberating environment to take a chance and go beyond one’s comfort zone.

“If you limit yourself to what’s comfortable you deny yourself what is possible.”  Dan Thurman

And these conversations align perfectly with the Ministerial Order on Student Learning not an archaic movement to go back to the basics! Our students deserve engaging classrooms and real life experiences. Content heavy curriculum must be replaced by project based learning and competency attainment to ensure deep and engaging learning. Surface learning or simply covering the curriculum will not suffice!

It is music to my ears when I hear our teachers grappling with their instructional practice and dialoguing on their impact. It confirms their desire to become the best possible version of themselves. And that is what is needed to educate students who are Engaged Thinkers, Ethical Citizens with an Entrepreneurial Spirit; exactly what our world needs!!!

Earlier today, I completed my first round of continuous improvement plan reviews. These reviews, lasting about an hour each, were scheduled with the administrative teams of each of our 14 schools. In these first meetings, the focus was to engage in a dialogue about their upcoming year. Over the three-day period, many of my senior administration team were able to hear responses to the following questions:

1. How was your school opening? Successes, Highlights, Challenges and Concerns
2. What do you believe your priorities are for the year?
3. What are your ideas regarding the implementation of our faith plan, “Walking Together”?
4. How will your school meet the needs of the 21st century student better this year than last?
5. What data will you be collecting to move your plan forward?

The conversation was free-flowing and without any pressure. Administrators shared their hopes and dreams for the coming year with intense excitement and enthusiasm. They also shared their frustrations, their fears and their concerns. To me as a superintendent, that vulnerability demonstrates tremendous trust amongst senior and school leaders and is fundamental in our recognition as a high performing team.

After the 14th review, I must confess that I am a little mentally fatigued. At the same time, I have a great sense of exhilaration because of what I heard! Every school demonstrated their passion to move forward rather than step back. Leaders spoke of project based learning opportunities, common assessments, collaborative time, multi-age groupings, team teaching, inquiry and impact of innovative instructional practice on learning. They acknowledged that “doing it different” was tough but they knew that it was the right thing to do!

Interestingly, not one leader said, “Let’s go back to the basics!”   

Instead of focusing on “back to the basics” lets concentrate on ensuring foundational skills are mastered! #hs4 #abed

— Chris Smeaton (@cdsmeaton) September 19, 2014

I’m proud of our leaders and the staff in our buildings. I’m proud that they are constantly looking at ways to move forward and offer our students a better education experience, instead of defaulting to a compliant “back to the basics” mentality. I’m excited, as I see the positive energy in our staff and transformational changes in our buildings and classrooms that are preparing our students for their future and not our past. That is what I hear when I listen to our school leaders! That is the passion they possess!

I chuckle (only a little) when I hear people who desire us to return to the good old days of education because it was good enough for them. I might argue if it was truly good enough for them but I’m sure it is not good enough for our students today. It can’t be! The world is far too complex to resort to the basics. Foundational skills must be mastered but not as an end product but rather as an opportunity to expand our learning.

We can’t stand still and we certainly can’t go back. We must move forward by adjusting our structures, reflecting on our instructional practice and creating the rich learning environments that our students need and deserve.

Please…don’t look back!!! 

There is no doubt that most school curriculum is jam packed with far too many outcomes. It is eye opening to read just what has been placed on the school curriculum plate over the years. Author Jamie Volmer expresses it well in his article, “The  Ever Increasing Burden on America’s Public Schools.”   While every addition has merit, we’ve long past the point of excessive.

Over the years, I’ve been involved in the curriculum development process. Sitting on various committees, the format seems to be well engaging. Stakeholders are brought in to provide their oversight and debate which outcomes are most important. The unfortunate result, is that egos are seldom left at their origin and therefore every outcome becomes non-negotiable. Hearing, “my organization can never support this curriculum without the inclusion of these outcomes” is rather frustrating.

The bottom line is that every outcome does not have equal importance. There is a hierarchy of importance and everybody involved in the curriculum design process must be aware of that simple fact. What we’ve had up to this point is excessive outcomes, that at times, has provided a barrier to innovate teaching because covering the curriculum has become more important than deep learning. Add in some standardized testing, link them to accountability and you have many teachers who default to surface learning, i.e. covering the curriculum.

Now, before the cheers or boos (depending on your camp) come up about standardized testing and accountability, let me be perfectly clear that both are required. Multi-million dollar organizations, of which an education system is one, requires checks and balances. While teaching practice may vary greatly, the impact of the learning must have a level of standard to ensure high quality education from class to cl,ass, school to school, and system to system. And, although I prefer the term assurance, it would be naive to believe that there should be no accountability for the use of public funds to finance education. The issue with standardized testing and accountability rests on the emphasis as opposed to the existence.

In Alberta, the education ministry has made some bold moves in shifting the emphasis by the elimination of the provincial achievement tests in grade 3 last year, grade 6 this year and grade 9 in 2015-16. I’m hopeful that our diploma exams can also receive less emphasis through continued dialogue with our post-secondary institutions to allow for the de-stressing of our students, parents, teachers and schools. But let’s focus on what has been realigned, re-emphasized and ultimately re-imagined! I would suggest that these bold moves and emphasis shift do not support the need to simply cover the curriculum!

There is a hierarchy of outcomes! There are essential outcomes that without concentrated time for deep learning, students will ultimately fall into the abyss! And now, given the elimination of these barriers (real or imagined), teachers have the opportunity to go beyond surface learning and covering the curriculum. For years, educators have requested a culling of learning objectives in all curricula and now we have the freedom to begin just that! Teachers in our system have been given a very clear message from me to ensure students have full understanding of the essential outcomes to be successful. I’ve asked our staff to redefine the curriculum into “need to know” and “nice to know” and focus on the first.

While there is still work to do on the consensus on essential outcomes, teachers have the ability right now to “thin” the curriculum and focus on innovative strategies without “big brother” looking over their shoulder. Project based learning and other pedagogies focusing on deep learning will enhance cross curricular connections, elevate student engagement and provide an improved and transformed system. With initiatives like curriculum development prototyping on the horizon and grassroots work through inspired curriculum, the move by teachers to begin debating essential outcomes will allow them  to get ahead of the curve, to reflect on their own teaching practice and most important provide an even better learning experience for their students.

Let’s make sure we don’t just, “cover the curriculum!”

The following is the abbreviated text of my opening address to our staff.  

Before I begin my opening comments, I want to take time to welcome to our Holy Spirit family, St. Michael’s Bow Island . Over the past couple of years our borders have continued to expand through parents desiring Catholic Education and using the 4X4 method. But this expansion is must bigger and constitutes a whole school and an entire community desiring to come to us. As a regional division our strength comes from the diversity that exists in each of our communities and all of our schools. And the addition of St. Michael’s will only serve to strengthen our division and ensure high quality education is offered in our part of southern Alberta. Please join me in welcoming St. Michael’s Bow Island!

Last year’s faith theme was “Taking Our Place at the Table.” Beginning with David Wells, we were called to come to the table, look around and see who was at our table and possibly even more important, look who was not at our table. Too often in education we have a focus for one year and then it passes. Been there! Done that!  This cannot be the case with last year’s theme because before we can fully address this year’s theme of “Walking Together” we must ensure that everyone is at our table. We must ensure that our most vulnerable and the disenfranchised of our community are together with us at the Holy Spirit table. We must always work for the poor and stand up for the disadvantaged and ensure that they are welcomed to our table.

Because our table belongs to everyone and while we have many from our FNMI community sitting with us and walking together, we must fully realize that there are many who, for a multitude of reasons, do not feel welcome at our table. While we have made great strides in working with our FNMI community, on building stronger and more trusting relationships, there is still much to do. We must go beyond our invitation and instead go and bring them to our table. We cannot walk together with parts of our community not feeling a sense of belonging, not connecting with us and us not connecting with them. I ask you again this year to make a difference in our FNMI students’ lives. Learn about them and from them so that you can teach them. This is a message that comes from Pope Francis himself when he worked with seminarians, “You are going to learn from the people before you teach them anything.” We must continue to make reaching out and closing an opportunity gap that currently exists as a high priority for our school division. Education is the new buffalo for our First Nations people and education is a positive step forward to help eliminate the negative cycle that haunts many of our First Nations communities.

Walking together also means supporting each other in all things and at all times through our greatest strength, our faith. Last week I attended funeral services for a former teacher from St. Michael’s and a grade 5 student from St. Joseph. What I witnessed in both services was our staff walking together, providing support to families, students, and each other. While tragic events are never a good way to start a school year, it reminded me of how we come together in our own grief to support, to pray and to love- in other words, to walk together. While often taken for granted, it is what we are called to do as a Catholic school division and within a faith community.

Finally, I want to address our continued journey in Inspiring Education. We all know we are a high performing school division- being selected as 1 of only 5 divisions to travel to China in November and share our leadership practices around Inspiring Education is just another example. That recognition and the opportunity for 2 central office personnel, Brian Macauley and Lorelie Lenaour and 2 principals, Val Leahy and Kevin Kinahan, comes not from my leadership, but from the work occurring in our division, our schools and in our classrooms. But as a high performing school division we must continue to push forward, not willing to stand still and certainly not accepting the status quo. We must continue to review and reflect on all of our practices to ensure that we are making the greatest impact on learning for our students. We must use the data that we collect, both qualitative and quantitative, to demonstrate and assure our public that indeed the highest quality of Catholic Education is being offered in all of our schools and every one of our classrooms.

This past summer I had the opportunity to have conversations with both Minister Jeff Johnson and Deputy Minister Greg Bass. Both expressed their appreciation of what we do as a school division, what we do in our schools and most of all, how we continue to transform our educational practice to make an even greater impact on student learning. They are both very aware of my mantra to break the pedagogical traditions that don’t serve students well, to focus our teaching on the “need to knows” and thereby thinning the curriculum and they applaud our endeavor to do education different. It is a message that I highlight to you again today! Innovative teaching and creative endeavors will only abound in our schools if you fully believe that you have far more freedom than ever before to try different things, to risk take and to embrace a fail forward attitude! You have permission to continue to do things different!  

I’m extremely excited about this coming year. I continue to love what I do because I’m surrounded by great leadership here and in the schools and I’m blessed to work alongside all you, the most gifted, talented and committed staff around. May God bless each of you as you invite all to the table and walk together in your ministry of Catholic education.

The following article was published in the Lethbridge Herald on June 4th. This is my last submission to the Lethbridge Herald for the 2013-14 school year.

With the month of June arriving, the end of the school year is not far behind. This will be my last superintendent’s column for the year and so I would like to take the opportunity to thank the Lethbridge Herald for allowing these weekly columns from superintendents in the area. In this changing world of education that we live in, communication is essential in keeping our stakeholders well informed. But the opportunity for local superintendents to write a weekly update provides important information to a large sector of our population that doesn’t necessarily have direct ties with the school community.

Over the past year, the majority of the articles written have focused on the changing face of education rather than specific initiatives in divisions. Although this may not seem particularly significant, it demonstrates the high level of camaraderie that exists between our local superintendents. While none of us were hired by our resident boards to maintain the status quo, and our first allegiance must always to be our own division, we all fully understand the importance of speaking with one voice when it comes to what is best for students. That is why there has been a consistent message throughout the year about the importance of continually evolving the present system to better meet the needs of the students of today and tomorrow.

My superintendent colleagues from across the province are gifted leaders. Each is guided by research and high levels of professional judgment with a goal to create an even better educational system than currently exists.  The consistency of messaging demonstrates, not only the commitment we all have to bringing about the vision of Inspiring Education, but also how closely we work together, how we collaborate and how we learn from each other. 

While some school divisions have communication officers, the vast majority of communications come through the office of the superintendent. Divisions utilize blogs and press releases and have invested heavily in social media, like Twitter and Facebook, to increase the likelihood of getting their message out. The Lethbridge Herald has provided an additional avenue for local school systems to communicate with the public. This initiative, now completing its second year, has provided readers with more than just a glimpse of what is happening in the classrooms of today. It is an opportunity well appreciated by local superintendents and a service required by our public.

Thank you Lethbridge Herald!