Alberta teachers, schools scrambling to prepare for launch of new curriculum

In Candice Conrad's Grade 1 classroom, learning to read looks much different than the lessons adults might remember.

On a recent morning, Conrad leads her Thorsby Elementary School students through a sequence of phonemic awareness exercises.

Their desks are clustered into three groups. Conrad sits at the front of the room, her finger on a word list in a thick guidebook.

"We're going to punch that last sound out. Ready?" Conrad says. "Shrink."

"Shrin-kuh," the 18 kids repeat, emphasizing the "kuh" sound and punching their teeny fists into the air.

The group of mostly six-year-olds also say syllables aloud, then blend them into words with a clap of their hands. They chop up word sounds in the air with their hands pressed together, then say the full word while sweeping their hands away.

Conrad is using multi-sensory techniques encouraged by Alberta's new English language arts and literature curriculum, which will be mandatory in all the province's kindergarten to Grade 3 classrooms starting this fall.

So will a new K-3 math curriculum, along with a revamped K-6 physical education and wellness curriculum.

Usually, teachers prepare for new curriculum without fanfare. But Alberta's journey to rewrite its K-12 curriculum in all subjects at once, in English and French, has been on a topsy-turvy path for more than a decade.

Under three governments — Progressive Conservative, NDP and finally the United Conservatives — rewriting the curriculum became a political football.

The schedule of which subjects and grades would be mandatory for the 2022-23 school year changed twice during the last six months.

Some educators, academics and parents pleaded with the government to "ditch the draft" of the proposed elementary school curriculum.

Most school divisions refused to pilot test those drafts, and less than one per cent of Alberta teachers formally participated.

As the deadline approaches for 25,000 Alberta elementary teachers to bring the new curriculum to life, CBC News spoke to 11 educators and school board leaders about preparation. Their message to Alberta politicians was clear: step out of the way, and let us make this work for kids.