My name is Lindsay Spence, and I was the Summer Education Coordinator for 2012. This summer, we as a group accomplished many things. However, with being the education coordinator comes a lot of responsibilities and goals to be met. From the beginning of the summer term, you need to be well aware of these goals. The beginning of the summer began with a comprehensive look at the social studies curriculum guidelines for grades 7-10. We looked at these grades because of their connections with the Value Based Medium of FACTSnet. Focusing on ‘responsible and global citizenship’, FACTSnet offers an open conversation to analyze and deconstruct the social studies network so it is accessible for not only students, but parents as well. I did student guides for grades 7-10, as well as student transition guides for parents grades 7-10. This was a large job. There are two more grades for both the parents and the students to be completed that could not be done this summer. On top of the student and parent guides, a lesson plan was created for teaching about homelessness was created to be taught at a conference or in a classroom at a later time. The goal is spreading knowledge about responsible citizenship, as laid out in the Alberta education curriculum. See Parents As Coaches Alberta and the Alberta Social Studies Network for views of my work completed.
In connection with the Parents as Coaches as well as the Alberta Social Studies Network input, I, as the education coordinator, talked to parents about what their child should be expecting entering each new grade, as well as what they could do as parents to facilitate the learning process. This was an incredibly important role to play during the summer. As FACTSnet strives to connect with the community and multiple resource bases, it is important to reach out to the parents as well as the students in order to facilitate learning and what can be accomplished through schooling.
Another main goal of FACTSnet in relation to the Summer Education coordinator is getting involvement of surrounding schools in each constituency. Teaching responsible citizenship, as well as an intricate look at the Japanese culture (as grade 8 curriculum required) is important to this organization and what we are trying to accomplish. Because of this, a letter was written up with the initiatives for the schools in relation with our organization and sent to all of the schools within each constituency. Next year, we will need to make a greater impact in the schools and actually have participation to accomplish this. However, the issue with this is that we start so late in the year, when regular schools only have 2 months left of classes.
Another way I attempted to integrate our resources into the classroom was participating in the creation of a book of Alberta History. By writing 9 stories for “The Adventures of the Grey Nuns”, myself and another member of the team were able to get the entire book ready for publishing with added curriculum ties for classroom use, as well as chapter summary questions. This was a large part of the summer, but it was well worth it, since we will have integrated resources connected to Alberta Education curriculums. It was a large accomplishment for myself to aid in the publishing of a book. It was something I will look back on fondly.
After these summaries were completed, a lot of blog reconstruction and fixing needed to happen. With so many posts on this website, it is necessary to do upkeep on the website. Being a future teacher, I see simple indexing and smart use necessary to use the website efficiently. David agrees and for next summer, some editing and changes to the website will need to happen in order to create the most efficient and easily accessible resources.
This summer was fast paced and included a high learning curve. Working with FACTSnet not only helped me learn more about what it would take to be an incredibly informed and resourceful teacher. I look forward to hearing what you have learned through your experience with this organization, and I hope you get as much out of it as I did.
Lindsay Spence
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