RESOURCES FOR SOCIAL STUDIES EDUCATORS

Welcome to the Pacific Slope

We are a collective of teachers based in Prince George, BC, who take joy in challenging ourselves and our students, co-developing learning resources, collaborating on professional development, and learning from/sharing our practice with others. At the heart of our work are thinking classrooms that provide authentic connections between curriculum, identity, and place, primarily in the context of Social Studies and beginning with local connections to history, geography, and culture.

Truth and Reconciliation Resources

Learning Resources for teaching about Truth and Reconciliation through understanding the background, impact, and legacy of Residential Schools, including examples from the Lejac School at Fraser Lake.

Local History and Geography

A collection of links, maps, and ideas for inquiring into local Indigenous and Settler history and geography in the Prince George area.

The Book

We worked with Pearson Education to produce a Sourcebook for developing thinking in Social Studies 9 students. Check it out, then order some class sets for your school, already.

TTSP Project

Read more about our long-term plot to support thinking, tinkering, story-telling, and place-responsive learning, the TTSP Project.

Educators, Storytellers, and Guardians of the Secret Flame

Learning Design
  • Critical thinking resources for teachers, especially in Social Studies, History, Geography, and the Humanities
  • Local (Prince George and North Central BC) history and geography learning resources
  • Assessment models: focus on working with evidence (sources) rather than recall 
  • Curriculum and resource development and review
  • Simulations, experiential education, place-based learning, manipulatives sets, and field work in K-12
  • Experimental curriculum and course design
  • Program evaluation and strategic planning for small organizations
Professional Communities
  • Network consulting and professional development strategy, including Critical Friends activities
  • "Personal Training" for student development and teacher professional growth (e.g. action plans)
  • Event design - getting the most out of get-togethers, face-to-face and online
  • Knife-throwing games, fun with fire, water sports, and other "embodied" activities to change the dynamics of a meeting
Public Education Advocacy
  • understanding your school, district, and jurisdiction: policy, people, culture, and place
  • engaging parents - connection, social capital, and activism
  • reaffirming teachers' work, wellness & work-life balance
Place in Education (PIE!)
  • Host place-responsive and experiential learning symposia in Barkerville, BC (next one planned for 2023)
  • From field trip to field studies: getting more out of teacher and student excursions
  • Local Outdoor Ed and Land-based/Traditional Knowledge curriculum
New Resource: Teach Climate History

Hivernant Consortium Model

We believe that successful initiatives of this nature are underpinned with mutual contributions and shared ownership, not unlike the hivernants (wintering partners) of the historic Northwest Company. Their shareholders were also fur-traders, the same people who set the vision were also the ones to carry it out. The hivernants also carried on famous disagreements and continual splintering and re-assembly. Although we have shared goals, ideas, and projects, we also foment the kind of dissent that comes with open-ended inquiry and a willingness to both build and dispense with tradition at the same time. Somewhere midst joy and cynisim, ideals and realities, we find our paths across educational landscapes, sometime converging, sometimes diverging.

​Good Cheer Pro-D Model

​We believe that professional development should, as often as possible, involve something to do with fire, good food, strong conversation, and an inspiring location. There should be as much laughter as learning taking place, and while serious things should be discussed, no one is allowed to take themselves too seriously.  Essentially, we have developed our Code for Pro-D along the lines of the Order of Good Cheer, the attempt by early French-Canadian settlers to survive the winter and "land-disease" through mutual contributions to the mind and body of companions.

The Pacific Slope Flycatcher

Picture
What's the deal with this bird? We sent out a cease and desist and all we got back was "ps-SEET, ptsick, seet." What nerve!

​Well, whatever your story, P.S. Flycatcher, we love you. You're welcome to join us at Mumbleypeg.
Respect for Indigenous Perspectives
  • ​​Over time, we have considered what it means for a group of mostly non-Indigenous educators to respond to the profound challenges represented by the TRC Calls to Action and encouragement to embed the First Peoples Principles of Learning in our practices.
  • For a start, in both our collaborative model and the students projects we design, we try to be responsive to connected communities and the people, places, stories, and identities within.
  • We've tried to take a patient and generous view -- intergenerational, relational, and experiential -- and feel that this work has had as much influence on teachers and pedagogy as it has had benefit for students.
  • We acknowledge that so many existing resources for Social Studies teachers, including some that we have developed in the past, are colonial in nature and are due for replacement and reimagining, with greater attention to cultural safety, more diverse voices, and an emphasis on Indigenous reconciliation -- we also acknowledge the danger of tokenizing this work.