Ontario’s Ministry of Education is holding widespread consultations to create a “made in Ontario” plan to improve public education. The consultation builds on ideas from Michael Fullan’s report, Great to Excellent: Launching the Next Phase of Ontario’s Education Agenda. Fullan proposes that because Ontario has had great success in increasing literacy and numeracy scores and increasing the high school graduation rate, it is now the time to leverage this success to take the next step, from great to excellent.
There is much in Fullan’s report that is directly relevant to the role of school libraries. For the first time he has acknowledged that technology is key. He focuses on his “Six Cs”: Character Education, Citizenship, Communication, Critical Thinking & Problem-Solving, Collaboration, and Creativity & Imagination. So many connections to ideas in Together for Learning! These connections offer us a fresh opportunity to demonstrate how school libraries and teacher-librarians can help Ontario’s education system achieve its goals.
There are so many ways that school library programs can help move Ontario’s education agenda forward, and there has never been a time where the collaborative, inquiry and critical-thinking approach has had such great relevance to the goals of our education system. And now we have the opportunity to help the Ministry make those connections by providing feedback for their consultative process. Face-to-face consultations are being held across the province. You can also provide feedback through an online form, or even organize a local consultation using the toolkit provided by the Ministry.
So what do you think? Do school library programs connect to Fullan’s Six Cs?
Find out more about how you can provide feedback to the Ministry, and participate in this unprecedented opportunity.