Red Deer Public teachers ready to bring new curriculum to the classroom this fall

Red Deer Public Schools

Published

2 years ago

3 minute read

Red Deer Public’s Learning Services Team have been working hard to ensure our elementary school teachers are well prepared and are confident to teach the new curricula this fall.

For a second school year in a row, our Kindergarten to Grade 3 teachers will start their school year delivering a new provincial curriculum. Science teachers and French Immersion Language Arts and Literature teachers in Kindergarten to Grade 3 will begin teaching a new curriculum this fall. As well, Math and English Languages Arts and Literature teachers in Grades 4-6 will implement new curriculums in September. The Provincial Government postponed the implementation of the new Fine Arts curriculum for Kindergarten to Grade 3, and the Science curriculum for Grades 4-6.

During the 2021/2022 school year, in preparation for this new curriculum implementation, 148 teachers were involved in training, many in both Mathematics and English Language Arts and Literacy. In 2022/2023 Red Deer Public continued supporting these teachers, added training in Physical Education and Wellness for Kindergarten to Grade 6 teachers, and training for teachers implementing new curriculum in the 2023/2024 school year. The Learning Services team has trained approximately 491 teachers, in multiple subject areas, over two years in Red Deer Public Schools.

“Our Learning Services team has hosted all of our elementary teachers at our Central Services location for multiple training sessions. This has meant that every elementary teacher has had three full days with us immersed in the new curricula with some returning for planning and creating resources,” said Della Ruston, Associate Superintendent of Learning Services. “These sessions have been invaluable because it has allowed our Learning Services team to collaborate with teachers as we all work our way through the new curricula and learning outcomes.”

The province has supported this professional learning by providing $198,000 for the 2022/2023 school year and $191,000 for next year to Red Deer Public. Another $254,340 was provided in 2022/2023 and $259,155 for next year to purchase learning resources for the new curricula.

“We are really fortunate as a Division to have a strong Learning Services team who has the ability to guide our elementary school teachers through these new curriculums,” said Ruston. “In addition, the support of our Board and administration has allowed us to ensure we can best support our teachers in the classroom.”

First Nations, Metis and Inuit Learning Services Coordinator Hayley Christen and Lead Teacher Terry Lakey have worked alongside all of the Learning Services coordinators to ensure authentic Indigenous teachings that align with and are infused throughout the new curricula.

“We are confident that our teachers have the knowledge, understanding, and best resources for teaching and supporting the implementation of new curricula to our students heading into the fall,” said Ruston.

Red Deer Public Schools

www.rdpsd.ab.ca/

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Red Deer

Judge upholds sanctions against Red Deer Catholic school trustee who opposed LGBT agenda

Published on November 18, 2024

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Monique LaGrange was ousted last December from the Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools’ board for comparing the LGBT agenda targeting children to brainwashing.

A Canadian judge ruled that a school board was justified to place harsh sanctions on a Catholic school trustee forced out of her position because she opposed extreme gender ideology and refused to undergo LGBT “sensitivity” training.

Justice Cheryl Arcand-Kootenay of the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta ruled Thursday that the Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools (RDCRS) Board’s sanctions placed against former trustee Monique LaGrange will stand.

LaGrange had vowed to fight the school board in court, and it remains to be seen if she can take any further actions after the decision by Judge Arcand-Kootenay.

The judge ruled that the RDCRS’s policies in place for all trustees, which the board contended were breached, were “logical, thorough, and grounded in the facts that were before the Board at the time of their deliberations.”

As reported by LifeSiteNews, the RDCRS board voted 3-1 last December to disqualify LaGrange after she compared the LGBT agenda targeting kids with that of “brainwashing” Nazi propaganda. As a result of being voted out, LaGrange later resigned from her position.

The former school board trustee initially came under fire in September 2023 when she posted an image showing kids in Nazi Germany waving swastika flags during a parade to social media, with the bottom of the post showing an image of kids waving LGBT “Pride” flags along with the text: “Brainwashing is brainwashing.”

After her post went viral, calls for her to step down grew from leftist Alberta politicians and others. This culminated in her removal as director of the Alberta Catholic School Trustees’ Association (ACSTA).

In September 2023, the RDCRS passed a motion to mandate that LaGrange undergo “LGBTQ+” and holocaust “sensitivity” training for her social media post.

LaGrange, however, refused to apologize for the meme or undergo “sensitivity” training.

Education

‘Grade inflation’ gives students false sense of their academic abilities

Published on November 18, 2024

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Michael Zwaagstra

The average entrance grade at the University of British Columbia is now 87 per cent, up from 70 per cent only 20 years ago. While this is partly because the supply of available university spots has not kept pace with growing demand, it’s also likely that some B.C. high schools are inflating their students’ grades.

Suppose you’re scheduled for major heart surgery. Shortly before your surgery begins, you check into your surgeon’s background and are pleased to discover your surgeon had a 100 per cent average throughout medical school. But then you learn that every student at the same medical school received 100 per cent in their courses, too. Now you probably don’t feel quite as confident in your surgeon.

This is the ugly reality of “grade inflation” where the achievements of everyone, including the most outstanding students, are thrown into question. Fortunately, grade inflation is (currently) rare in medical schools. But in high schools, it’s a growing problem.

In fact, grade inflation is so prevalent in Ontario high schools that the University of Waterloo’s undergraduate engineering program uses an adjustment factor when evaluating student applications—for example, Waterloo might consider a 95 per cent average from one school the equivalent of an 85 per cent average from another school.

Grade inflation is a problem in other provinces as well. The average entrance grade at the University of British Columbia is now 87 per cent, up from 70 per cent only 20 years ago. While this is partly because the supply of available university spots has not kept pace with growing demand, it’s also likely that some B.C. high schools are inflating their students’ grades.

Sadly, grade inflation is so rampant these days that some school administrators don’t even try to hide it. For example, earlier this year all students at St. Maximilian Kolbe Catholic High School in Aurora, Ontario, received perfect marks on their midterm exams in two biology courses and one business course—not because these students had mastered these subjects but because the York Catholic District School Board had been unable to find a permanent teacher at this school.

The fact that a school board would use grade inflation to compensate for inadequate instruction in high school tells us everything we need to know about the abysmal academic standards in many schools across Canada.

And make no mistake, student academic performance is declining. According to results from the Programme for International Assessment (PISA), math scores across Canada declined from 532 points in 2003 to 497 points in 2022 (PISA equates 20 points to one grade level). In other words, Canadian students are nearly two years behind on their math skills then they were 20 years ago. While their high school marks are going up, their actual performance is going down.

And that’s the rub—far from correcting a problem, grade inflation makes the problem much worse. Students with inflated grades get a false sense of their academic abilities—then experience a rude shock when they discover they aren’t prepared for post-secondary education. (According to research by economists Ross Finnie and Felice Martinello, students with the highest high school averages usually experience the largest drop in grades in university). Consequently, many end up dropping out.

Grade inflation even hurts students who go on to be academically successful because they suffer the indignity of having their legitimate achievements thrown into doubt by the inflated grades of other students. If we want marks to have meaning, we must end the practise of grade inflation. We do our students no favours when we give them marks they don’t really deserve.

Just as our confidence in a surgeon would go down if we found out that every student from the same medical school had a 100 per cent average, so we should also question the value of diplomas from high schools where grade inflation is rampant.