About Us - Past Presidents

Megan O'Mahony 1998-1999
Thank you for the honour of allowing me to represent you, the Science Teachers of Ontario, for this year. It has been busy, but also a time of professional growth for me. For that, I thank you. I have, with the help of your Board of Directors and the rest of the Executive, done my best to ensure that the collective voice of Ontario Science Teachers has been heard in the feedback sessions for the new curriculum documents as developed by the MET and writing teams, in our development and delivery of Science Now!! workshops, and through our involvement with other associations and initiatives.

Welcome to Ross Haley, the incoming President for 1999-2000! Ross has been Secretary of the STAO Exec for a number of years before moving into this position. Ross ... you are going to do a great job!

This has certainly been a learning year in terms of understanding what controls Ontario's education. I have gained a huge respect for those bureaucrats who work in MET; they work very hard and are aware of the educational process. I thank them for their work! However, I now feel very strongly that politicians should be kept at arms-length from educational policies. They are in this business for the short term and often for personal vs. student gain. The lack of vision as well as dearth of knowledge, and understanding of education they consistently display is also displayed in our new curriculum!

We are going through major curriculum changes right now. I reiterate that change is needed ... it is time to update our curriculum. It needs to be for our students... to prepare them for their futures ... not to prepare them to obtain a "top mark" on a content-based federal/international test. Our students need to be knowledge workers, not knowledge regurgitators!

It is interesting that little attention has been paid to some of the results from TIMSS '95, which has shown that the curricula of both Canada and the United States is far too broad, and with too little depth. Our new proposed curriculum certainly does breadth well! Hopefully, the feedback sessions will improve on this aspect.

Educators at all levels are aware that it is not possible to "deliver" the volume of the new Ontario curriculum using effective pedagogical strategies based on research on how students learn. Yet, the MET politicians consistently ignore reality when it is not part of their platform. Most groups, if not all, have requested that MET show in a timeline, exactly how and where the curriculum topics could be taught given the number of class periods we have to work with.

Curriculum is more than just a Ministry bound document! Publishing such a document does not constitute a "new curriculum". Thank heavens the delivery of this curriculum is in our hands ... we, the professionals in education. As you conveniently ignore the realities of knowledge acquisition vs. learning, rote learning vs. understanding and application as well as the social dynamics of society which is reflected in our classrooms, we work to teach the person ... our student. You claim that students need "real-life" experiences so insist on community service hours ... without taking any responsibility for how this can be done. You do remove support for students in apprenticeship programmes though. Why?

Our students need a curriculum that challenges them to be knowledge workers (a good description is given in the current Trends and Issues Alerts) which includes the higher level skills of analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating "knowledge" to solve new problems. Creative and computer skills are essential for this. If all the content of our "new" curriculum document is disseminated to students, there will not be time to develop much beyond the lower level skills of knowledge acquisition. Current (and not so current) research shows this time requirement clearly!

We, as teachers, need to spend more of our time educating the general public about education and our students' needs. If more people understood the reality, then fewer people would be caught by government propaganda. We can do this collectively, but I suspect that as individuals, we can have a huge influence as well. Education is a "hot topic"...it comes up in many conversations. It is amazing what a calm and fact-based response can do to help others understand.