Don't Start Something New on the Last Week of School

Don't Start Something New on the Last Week of School

Sorry for the long blog post title. I usually prefer something short, pun-ish, or punchy.

Let me repeat the title:

Don't Start Something New on the Last Week of School

In this blog post, I will criticize a larger organization for disobeying this mantra. I will also, somewhat hypocritically, provide three examples where I have similarly ignored this advice and suggest why this was unavoidable in my case.

Last week, the Ontario Ministry of Education released its revised Language Curriculum for Grades 1-9. This is public information. I will keep my comments brief and focused on the timing of this release. This is not a wise time to share a new curriculum. It is too close to the end of the school year. In my board, there are no professional development days left to develop instructional strategies for implementation.

I'm going to share a tweet by Jerry DeQuetteville. I will preface it by saying that Jerry is no fan of the current provincial government, but he makes a valid point.

One week before the summer holidays the curriculum is released. Teachers are expected to figure it out themselves. They will be expected to develop materials and find resources. Schools will be expected to review and make modifications to IEPs etc. /9

— Jerry DeQuetteville (@jdeq) June 21, 2023

I'm sorry for quoting a tweet - as I am weaning myself from Twitter as it has changed for the worse - but this is poor timing. The new science curriculum was released in March 2022 for implementation in September 2022. That feels like a more reasonable amount of time to get organized prior to implementation. The new math curriculum was released June 2020 for implementation in September 2020 - this was particularly challenging as educators were still wrestling with the COVID pandemic.

Don't Start Something New on the Last Week of School

Why don't I pay closer attention to this statement? I have my reasons.

The first example of my contrariness is that I'm beginning the Queen's University Summer 2023 Teacher-Librarianship Specialist Additional Qualification course as the instructional lead. The course begins on Monday, June 26 because it aims to provide a bit of a longer time frame to complete than other AQs. (The Queen's TL AQ runs from June 26 - August 11.) I will also be teaching some of the York University TL AQs, but those AQs have a different schedule and they haven't started yet.

The second example that may make me wonder "What was I thinking?" relates to a voluntary project that some of my colleagues and I are undertaking. I won't say too much about it here, but it involves creating a 3-5 minute video. Our deadline is June 30. That's not my choice but we have to abide by the timelines we are given externally. Our team has been busy with graduation, report cards, extra curricular clubs, and all the wonderful but time-stealing tasks that come with the end of the school year, so we haven't had a lot of time to work on the project. It'll be an intense time to get it all done.

The third example isn't exactly starting something new. In a rare moment of being realistic, our Volunteer Recognition team at school realized that we had no time left to hold our annual Volunteer Tea and Reception. Instead, we created little gift packages that will be sent home during the last week of school. 

We still continued the tradition of placing book plates in new books for the school library in their honour. It's unfortunate that we couldn't carve out the time but maybe that message is slowly sinking into my subconscious.

Don't Start Something New on the Last Week of School