The end of this school year marks ten years since I handed in the keys to my classroom at Rockridge Secondary school, and picked up the key to my new shared office in the Faculty of Education at VIU. I taught in West Vancouver schools for 21 years, building a rich collection of memories, relationships, resources, and political history mementos for my walls. Some of these mementos stayed behind in my former colleagues’ classrooms, but I put these ones up the first day in my new office.
Ten years ago…
In 2016, Justin Trudeau was still the new prime minister and Barack Obama was still the American president. AI and global pandemics seemed the stuff of science fiction to most of us, and we had likely never heard of a heat dome.
In 2016, the “revised BC curriculum” was in its first year of implementation at K-9, and those of us who were writing the 10-12 courses were still finalizing their development.
In May, 2016, the Ministry of Education announced that the provincial exam program had ended, and would be replaced with graduation literacy and numeracy assessments that would neither be tied to specific courses nor “count” toward student grades. The province began to pilot a new 4-point proficiency scale in a limited number of school districts, including Nanaimo-Ladysmith, where my family lives.
In 2016, My daughter Jane was just about to enter kindergarten, and now she is entering grade 10. My niece Mya was a 13-year-old teacher-helper in Jane’s ballet class, and is now entering her final year in my teacher education program.
Jane was on my mind when I wrote my first course syllabus for Social Studies Methods, knowing that she may someday have some of my students as her teachers. This week, as I work on my fall 2026 syllabus for Social Studies Methods, I’m also thinking about Mya, because she will be one of the year 5 students taking my class.
In the last few years, I have taken to wrapping up my courses by asking my students to reflect on what their students need of them, and what our society needs of us as social studies teachers. I can apply that thinking to my own planning.