It is my pleasure, on behalf of the Board of Education, all of our school communities and our students to wish all of our School District 42 teachers, Happy World Teachers’ Day. UNESCO sets aside October 5 as World Teachers’ Day. This year the UNESCO focus for World Teachers’ Day is the link between the strong and empowered teacher voice and the development of sustainable and ethical societies.
In a time when we are beginning to examine a redesigned provincial curriculum written by BC teachers, we are engaging in a process of re-focussing teaching and learning in ways which we know can have great importance to all of our students, their learning and their pathways beyond schooling. The redesigned curriculum has fewer learning outcomes, providing more opportunity for teachers to exercise professional judgement about what is relevant to students and how students will learn; it has core competencies with profiles that will include all students from our strongest to our most challenged; and it embeds First Peoples’ Principles of Learning in all curricular areas.
I believe that the changes proposed come from the hearts and minds of teachers – professionals who are intent on constantly examining the profession, the work undertaken with students and the ever-changing cultural contexts that our students bring to their learning.
To all of our teachers in Maple Ridge – Pitt Meadows School District: thank you for your dedication to our students and to this most important profession.
Sylvia Russell
Superintendent of Schools
“Empowering teachers, building sustainable societies” is the World Teachers’ Day slogan for 2015.
It is recognized that teachers are not only a means to implementing education goals; they are the key to sustainability and national capacity in achieving learning and creating societies based on knowledge, values and ethics. (UNESCO, 2015)