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Taking aim at Bench Rd. garbage Jennifer Feinberg The Progress Messes left behind by rural target shooters are in the sights of the Chilliwack-Vedder River Cleanup Society this fall. Sections of the beautiful Chilliwack River Valley are littered with spent shotgun shells, broken glass and carelessly dumped garbage as far as the eye can see. “We are requesting more people to come out to our cleanup for B.C. Rivers’ Day, so we can get a few of these areas cleaned up,” said Chris Gadsden, longtime volunteer with the cleanup society. He’s leading a tour, with a Progress reporter, and the local FVRD rep, to get a look at the disgusting state of the Bench Road area in the CRV. “We hope to see extra people showing up to our cleanup this year, because we’ve never been up this way in any organized fashion,” he said. Each little pullout along the forest services road up the mountain has a nest of shells, nails from burned pallets and assorted crap left behind when the recreational shooting ends. There are smashed orange “clay pigeons” everywhere, sharp clay shards mixing with broken glass. “They’ve taken out truckloads of garbage out of the area over the years. And they’ll be taking truckloads out the bush this time as well.” The 15th annual B.C. Rivers Day event is on Sept. 27, with registration starting at 8:30 a.m. from the Chilliwack Fish and Game Club on Chilliwack Lake Road. Orion Engar, FVRD rep for Area E, said he believes that target practice “ideally” should be conducted Continued: BENCH/ p6
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Students at Watson Elementary head back to school yesterday. This year Chilliwack students could get a taste of the new curriculum unveiled for all B.C. schools. GREG KNILL/ PROGRESS
New ‘hands-on’ curriculum for B.C. schools Tom Fletcher Black Press The new school year in B.C. is the start of a three-year transition to a new curriculum that Education Minister Mike Bernier says will emphasize “hands-on” learning. The new curriculum is being phased in this year for Kindergarten to Grade 9, with higher grades still in development. Bernier said this year it will be up to local school districts and teachers to begin implementing it before it becomes mandatory in the fall of 2016. Grade 10-12 curriculum is to be mandatory in 2017. Bernier, the Peace River South MLA appointed education minister this summer, said he’s heard from teachers who are looking forward to a curriculum that allows more
flexibility and individual learning. He stressed that basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic will remain, but students will also be taught life skills, communication, collaboration and critical thinking. Two areas of emphasis for the new curriculum are environmental education and an aboriginal perspective, which Bernier said will be present in “every single component in the curriculum.” Local schools are encouraged to work with aboriginal communities across the province to represent the full diversity of aboriginal experience, he said. Hands-on learning is already in place in schools, and Bernier used the example of a shop teacher in his home town of Dawson Creek who encouraged students at risk of dropping out to take his course. They learned mathematics and
physics through taking motors apart and reassembling them, he said. Bernier invited parents to look for themselves at grade-by-grade documents posted at curriculum. gov.bc.ca, listing learning standards and areas of emphasis. In the science curriculum, for example, students are to be taught “big ideas” that in grade one include “observable patterns and cycles occur in the local sky and landscape.” By Grade 8, they are to learn at “Earth and its climate have changed over geological time.” Science competencies required by grade seven include the ability to “exercise a healthy, informed skepticism and use scientific knowledge and findings for their own investigations to evaluate claims in secondary sources” such
as media reports. By that time they should be able to identify possible sources of error in their investigations, understand qualitative and quantitative evidence and “demonstrate an an awareness of assumptions … and bias in their own work and secondary sources.” The Chilliwack Teachers’ Association new president, LeeAnne Clarke, calls the changes “significant.” “The main concern I have is the lack of dedicated funding to the implementation of this curriculum,” she said. “In order to successfully implement this new curriculum, the Ministry of Education must provide new funding for items such as textbooks and other learning resources as well as proper training for teacher and staff.”
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