Education director Ryan Boughen is looking forward to the start of the 2023-24 school year, especially since this is the first time in four years he isn’t focusing on COVID-19 preparations.
“It’s (fantastic and) exciting to get another school year started. (I’m) super excited to be talking about education and learning and not talking about COVID,” he chuckled. “You know, this time last year, the work I do, I was deep in the COVID conversations.
“So, I like talking about learning more than I like talking about COVID.”
The director of education for Prairie South School Division (PSSD) spoke about the upcoming school year during a recent kick-off conference for teachers at the Heritage Inn.
Educators met at the hotel on Aug. 30 and 31 to hear from division administration and discuss the Ministry of Education’s new provincial education plan (PEP; level 1) and how they can implement the plan’s proposed priorities in their classrooms.
Senior administration has felt for years that it was telling teachers what work they would be performing instead of asking them whether it was the right work and whether they could offer advice so both groups worked better together, said Boughen.
Division administration provided teachers with an overview of the PEP’s four action priorities, while — in groups — teachers discussed the initiatives and provided comments, he continued. Senior administrators will take that input, summarize it, return it to educators for further feedback and implement some suggestions into the division’s level 2 plan.
Educators will then work to implement that information in their schools (level 3).
The four priorities include learning and assessment, Aboriginal education, mental health and well-being, and student transitions into, through and out of school.
Specifically, this would be moving from grade to grade, from Grade 8 to 9 in the city, and exiting Grade 12 into the workforce or post-secondary education.
“So yeah, a pretty cool day,” the education director added.
Boughen provided further explanation of the division’s level 2 PEP plan and how it would pursue that work. He explained that he and HR superintendent Amy Johnson worked with ministry staff and other educational officials for 18 months on the PEP implementation team.
“And so what that allowed us to do is work with our administrators last year to fine-tune our level 2 plans based on what we learned doing the level 1 work,” he said.
“And now we’re saying to our teachers, is our framework right? What do we need to do better? What do you think we need to change? What are your thoughts, recommendations (and) things you’d like to see change?”
The division office wants to implement the teachers’ suggestions at the division level but needs to ensure that input can apply to 39 schools and their different settings, Boughen said. Administration will suggest to educators that they pursue “some really neat (and) specific things” in their classrooms but will understand if some ideas don’t work everywhere.
The ministry had wanted to implement the provincial education plan in 2020, but the pandemic nixed that idea, forcing the government to implement two interim learning plans for the province, he added. The new PEP starts this year and runs until 2030.
Another highlight of the teacher conference for Boughen was hearing from Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe, a respected psychologist and educational instructor who speaks about resiliency in schools. She spoke in person to PSSD last year and promoted her book, “Calm Within the Storm,” while this year, she spoke by video about ways to handle stress and promoted her new book, “Stress Wisely.”
“It’s neat (because) we have a really nice connection with her,” he added.
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