Welcome to the Pacific Slope

We are a collective of teachers 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.

Educators, Storytellers, and Guardians of the Secret Flame

Learning Design
  • Critical thinking resources for teachers, especially in Social Studies, History, Geography, and the Humanities
  • 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!)
  • Biennial place-responsive and experiential learning symposium in Barkerville, BC (next one is Sep. 23-25, 2021)
  • From field trip to field studies: getting more out of teacher and student excursions
  • Outdoor Ed and Land-based/Traditional Knowledge curriculum

​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.

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.

TTSP Project

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

Our Twitter Feed, such as it is

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.

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.