'A joke': Teachers consulted on draft curriculum say feedback was ignored

When veteran Alberta teacher Marliss Visser first saw a draft of the province's K to 6 social studies curriculum last year, she cried. 

"It was totally unexpected. I was so shocked," she said. 

Visser was one of the more than 100 teachers from across Alberta who made up the province's curriculum working groups. They were given two days of virtual meetings last December to provide feedback on proposed edits to the kindergarten to Grade 6 draft curriculum before it was unveiled publicly in March.

Education minister Adriana LaGrange was not made available for an interview, but in a statement from her office, the ministry said the role of the curriculum working group members was to provide advice and recommendations during the drafting step of the curriculum.

"We are thankful for every teacher that participated and provided their valuable feedback," said press secretary Nicole Sparrow.

When Rachel Notley's NDP government was in power in Alberta from 2015 to 2019, it started a major overhaul of public school curriculum, saying the existing curriculum was between eight and 30 years old. The revamp, building on a process started under previous conservative governments, was to encompass all grades and all subject areas, and take six years.

Alberta Education was field testing the first stage, a new kindergarten to Grade 4 curriculum, when the NDP lost the 2019 election to the United Conservative Party, which promptly put the K-4 field testing on pause.

It made its own sweeping rewrites while claiming the NDP changes were based in ideology. Critics, however, have lined up to pan the UCP changes, including accusations of plagiarism, inaccuracies and flaws in how it covers race, colonialism and Indigenous people.

Teachers involved in curriculum working groups were unable to share their experiences and thoughts on the process until now because they were made to sign a non-disclosure agreement that expired earlier this fall.

Visser, who has more than 20 years experience and works for the Palliser School Division, says she and other teachers were asked to share their thoughts on the social studies curriculum with a ministry employee, and the overall emotion from the group was sadness. 

"I had this anxiety that, 'oh my goodness, my name is now published … and now I have a responsibility to critique this curriculum, which just overwhelmingly needed to go back to the drawing board and be redone,'" she said. 

"It wasn't developmentally appropriate. It wasn't age appropriate. It for sure didn't include ways in which we could have inclusive learning, like differentiated learning and so on."

Annie Greeno, a teacher with the Holy Spirit Catholic School Division, was also part of the social studies working group.

"They gave us a pile of [excrement] and then told us to look through the [excrement] for corn that's digestible. To look through garbage and find something salvageable," she said.