Place in Education -- a unique experiment in place-conscious and experiential learning, geographic literacy, and integration of humanities, sciences, and arts. The Pacific Slope has partnered with the Prince George Social Studies Teachers' Association to put on this event which takes place in Barkerville, BC Sept 27-29th, 2018.

Check out all the details at http://GoldRushEd.ca

Great things happen when teachers collaborate. Ever since it's formation in 2010, the Pacific Slope Educational Consortium has staged an annual retreat to develop an essential inquiry for the year and share our progress towards placing critical thinking in the core of our individual and collective practices. These events take place at our Purden Lake Conference Centre over an evening and adjacent Pro-D day -- a key realization of our ongoing goal to engage in meaningful, place-based, and productive professional learning. This year we are happy to host the executive of the recently formed Prince George Social Studies Teachers' Association as they map out their activities for the coming year. We get things going on Sunday June 4th with an evening session on developments with the new Social Studies curriculum. On Monday June 5th the Pacific Slope will reflect and share on their upcoming publication for Social Studies 9 and the PGSSTA will plan a fall retreat for local Social Studies teachers and consider some new initiatives to support its members. Both groups will then turn to critical questions regarding the new curriculum and associated classroom practice. Of particular interest are the various Grade 11/12 Social Studies electives in place for the next school year and what local teachers are planning to do with them.

Our format features 3-4 talks on the symposium themes, and 3 excursions (with a few choices for each), all set in the spectacular setting of Barkerville Historic Town. This world-class heritage site will be closed to tourists and open to symposium participants, so we will have unique, behind-the-scenes access and room to learn.

Details to follow in January 2016, including the launch of the symposium website.

Mumbleypeg 2015, our annual Social Studies teacher retreat at Purden Lake, was a great reminder that not all teacher Pro-D needs to take place in classrooms or lecture theatres. This small consortium of educators designs most of it's Pro-D gatherings with a few basic principles in mind: something to do with fire, good food, strong conversation, and an inspiring setting. This year, the rain came in fits and starts, but not enough to dampen our Thursday night reverie by the fire. Someone brought out some Extra Old Stock and toasted Harper's Old Stock Canadians, which we took to mean us. Knives were tossed, boats hauled from the water, wood split, moose steaks grilled, bottles opened, jokes told, coals banked, and snoring heard to wake the dead.

For our Friday session, the two areas of focus were research/writing skills and the new BC Social Studies curriculum. On the topic of research/writing skills, we wondered about how much do we teach, why students needs this, and how do we teach it?  We used the essay writing guide from http://historyskills.jimdo.com/ to centre our discussion and, if nothing else, this probably convinced more or us to revive attempts to teach formal writing for research essays in our classes, not just as prep for the SS11 exam (which we agree required a different "formula" for success), but as a way to organize and drive thinking (primary benefit) as well as to demonstrate learning (secondary benefit).

Our other endeavour was to unpack the new curriculum. A few of us had not had a good look at it yet, while others had been been mucking about in the new waters for some time. We had copies of the K-9 Social Studies Curriculum, the Draft SS10 and proposed Gr. 11/12 electives. We used the SS9 curriculum to centre our discussion, and were impressed by two things: the sheer volume of historical content that could be attached to the course the way it is framed (1750-1919), and the related challenge of how to approach the course thematically or from a framework other than that of the familiar sequential survey course -- the history teacher's skilled tack over a long distance with a strong wind aft and only occasional forays ashore. The content bookends effectively place most of the old SS9, all of the old SS10 and some of the old SS11 into one course. Rather than simply drop a pile of topics and rebuild a survey course, the new SS9 begs for a new framework. We didn't exactly nail one down (not that the six of us would teach the course in the same way), but we did see how the four "Big Ideas" (basically: ideology, environment, power, identity) could act as new curriculum organizers. We also speculated on the use of some kind of matrix for unit design where the content and competencies would form the axes. While this appeals as some kind of curriculum checklist, in reality it is hard to draw out a single skill from one historical case study or vice versa. For example, do bits and pieces of WWI pop up throughout the course as they help elicit a skill or competency or follow a theme, or does it make more sense to teach WWI in one go and dogpile the associated skills? Part of what made our discussion interesting was to wonder if we have become history teachers instead of socials teachers, and if this was a problem or even a real thing. It is quite possible to approach Social Studies through a different lens, a geographic one, for example, and maybe the new curriculum makes it easier for us to broaden our skillsets as teachers. We noticed that the SS9 course, and perhaps others, was laid out to make project-based learning and cross-curricular inquiry a more natural fit. The lack of provincial exams and paring down of learning outcomes -- tempered somewhat by the massive amount of Canadian history that takes place between the start and end dates -- really does open the door to a different approach.

We agreed to all take a stab at throwing together a new SS9 outline and see what happens next. As is often the case at our Pro-D sessions, we left with the an uneasy feeling like we had generated more questions than answers, a result of having our ideas challenged by others, especially the easy ideas. We also left with that warm feeling that we were lucky to be doing what we were doing -- working with students, teaching in a field that continually offers us change and interest, and having colleagues to keep us sharp and connected.

Get set for the 6th annual Pacific Slope Retreat and SD13 AGM.  This year, we take to the shores of Purden Lake and the "Lewis-Spike Conference Centre" for a plenary session on Thu., Sep 24th starting at 6:00 p.m. and seminar sessions on Fri., Sep 25th from 9:30-2:30.

Once the traditional knife-tossing game and steak dinner are out of the way, we have an ambitious agenda.

This year we will explore design aesthetics for courses under the new curriculum.  What elements of design should guide us as we put the new BC Social Studies curriculum through its paces?  What kind of frameworks can we use to make sense of the swirling mass of competencies, skills, and content?  Is it that easy to pick and choose from among the (vast) content areas (now even vaster with the curriculum re-org)  in order to address competence, or is SS more like Math in that there is some core content that is necessary for students to encounter in sequence? Can we map this out using the "juggernaut" of the new SS9 as a test case? What's the difference between history and SS? What if we used a geographic framework to understand our role as SS teachers, or sociological, philosophical, ecological, anthropological for that matter? What does the new focus on Aboriginal content actually mean when it comes to course design? How do we broach the subject of historical revisionism as we look to a post-colonial curriculum and pedagogy?

When that whole business devolves into a cage match, we have a practical topic to go to -- an evaluation of the teaching resources posted at http://historyskills.jimdo.com/ including a document on written essays.

Wed., June 10th, the Pacific Slope Consortium meets to discuss place-based learning, tying field study to classroom projects, and development of hands-on activities during field trips. We have Barkerville on the mind, and will give some thought to a place-based learning symposium that we'd like to organize there in 2016. This meeting is supported by a small inquiry project grant from the PGDTA (release time).

Our agenda: 

• lit review and shared experience with place-based learning, activities, rationale
  
• course contexts, pedagogy, and methodology
• case studies involving field trips: Fort St. James, Barkerville, Fort George Park

The 5th annual Mumbleypeg Invitational Professional Development Endeavour is scheduled for October 23rd & 24th, 2014. 

Every year in the early Fall, more or less (since More With Less), we’ve descended on the SD13 Retreat Centre at Purden Lake for an evening and day of great conversation, fare, and professional learning. While knife-throwing games and revelry by the fire or in the water are optional, we do get down to some stirring conversation and professional learning that has immediate reverberation in our classrooms.

This year’s theme is "Survivor." We will see a History 12 role-play simulation in action ("Soviet Survivor") and design the framework for a new Social Studies 11 simulation involving global poverty and development. We have often found role-plays/simulations to be a great short-cut towards enthusiastic student engagement with learning outcomes... no surprise really; students make authentic connections when their identities are in focus.

At our Professional Development sessions we use a "critical friends" approach, also know as the Socratic Fire Circle, to prod each others'  thinking. We also spend some time checking in on our various teaching practices.  

Thursday evening 5:00-10:00 pm and Friday 9:00am-2:00 pm.  Sign up at https://pdreg.sd57.bc.ca.

A day of inquiry coming on May 27th. The idea is to put on a 2 day inquiry project, one of which would involve a release day to meet on May 27th, the second one in June during exams. We're planning an evening session on May 26th and daytime session the next day. We using the model suggested by the BCTF for Teacher Inquiry and seeking our release time from the PGDTA PD Fund. Our intention is for each person to bring one powerful question related to their practice (assessment, student projects, technology, staff development, whatever the attendees are interested in) and discuss these for a few hours in the evening of the 26th informally, and then pick up the threads in the morning for more formal "critical friends" dialogue. We've found that these intense experiences, with a backdrop of good food and spectacular views, are a gorgeous way of doing Pro-D. We had initially thought of doing our day of inquiry at a local school, but one of our Pacslopers, JP, has suggested that this get-together take place at his lakehouse east of town and that we add an evening to the mix to get more out of it. We've done this a few times now, mainly at our Purden Lake Conference Centre (Rob's cabin), and they take a little longer than your average 9-2:30 PD day stuffed in a classroom, but they do wonders to help connect the year-long professional conversations we have online and face-to-face.  Great inquiry. Great conversation. Great location. Great Pro-D.