Dear fellow petitioners, Just two quick reminders: 1. Please mail remaining paper petitions to me at PO Box 277 Calmar, AB T0C 0V0. I am grateful for any number you collect, even if it’s just you  I hope to get a chance to present the petition when the new gov’t sits in legislature. So, yes the stragglers can collect a few more sigs if you like. 2. Please join us this Friday, May 29th, 6pm Lister Centre for the Alberta Math and Education Forum: Restoring Excellence and Evidence-Based Teaching in the K-12 Curriculum It's free. All are welcomed, but if you have time to RSVP me at mrgranthd@yahoo.ca, then I can make sure we have enough coconut shrimps :) The hope is to have a few short presentations (Dr. Craigen, Dr. Troitsky, Mr Wachowicz), open mic for parents, and discussions between parents, educators and education officials. I want the discussions to translate into action on the part of the officials. Raja Panwar, rep from Alberta Education has confirmed his attendance along with Liberal Leader Dr. David Swan, and Wildrose Shadow Education Minister Mark Smith. I am still waiting to hear from the new Education Minister David Eggen. Also no word from Ric McIver or Greg Clark. To those who know politics better than I, why are they all so silent after being elected? Apparently, Premier Notley is out of town. The ministers have s a meeting in Calgary May 27-28th? That still leaves time for them to return for the evening of the 29th. Considering that I sent out an invitation to Rachel Notley as soon as she won the election and that I invited Mr. David Eggen before he even knew he was going to be appointed Education Minister, I can't deny feeling a bit dismissed. I suppose action will speak louder than words this Friday. We will then know whether the new gov’t is really all that different. Kindest regards, Dr. Nhung Tran-Davies p.s. Thanks to Cynthia’s help, every school in Alberta will have received the following fax during this past week: Dear Principal, Teachers and Education Support Staff, We are truly grateful to you for being such important mentors in the lives of our children. We can only imagine how difficult a task it is to educate so many children well. When we send our children to school, there is an implicit trust we have in you and the system: trust that you are providing quality education to our children; trust that you are equipping our children with strong, solid foundational skills and knowledge. However, having seen the detrimental results of Inspiring Education’s discovery math, we cannot stand by and allow Inspiring Education to continue systematically breaking down the rest of our children’s education. Please STOP further implementation of the Inspiring Education initiative until strong scientifically-based evidence becomes available proving that Inspiring Education is NOT causing harm to our children’s knowledge base, skills and future. We, the parents, academics and professionals, DID NOT give the government consent to: 1. Shift the focus of curriculum from an emphasis on content and knowledge to an emphasis on “21st century competencies/skills.” We do not want them to cut curriculum content. 2. Shift to an Inquiry/Discovery-based/Problem-based approach to teaching when multiple meta-analysis studies have proven how inferior inquiry-based learning is to direct instruction. 3. Continue to push the “new math” (discovery math) when it has failed and resulted in weakened math skills in our children. They need to inform all teachers of the re-emphasis on the basics/standard approaches as agreed upon by former minister Johnson 4. Direct our teachers to “teach less” to become mere facilitators/guides, while promoting more group-work, which research has shown to be a less effective learning strategy. We want our teachers TO TEACH. 5. Deprive our children of knowledge by replacing our children’s school libraries with Learning Commons. Books and libraries inspire learning. 6. Deprive our children of textbooks from which they can effectively study. Our children deserve quality textbooks. 7. Push the overuse of, addiction to, and dependency on technology on our children throughout the school day. Our teachers cannot be replaced with technology. 8. Replace a quantifiable measure of our children’s progress (PATs, percentage/letter grade) with vague qualitative measures (eg. consistently, frequently,etc). 9. Constantly harp at our children that “memorization is at the expense of understanding” when memorization is one of the most useful tools needed for understanding. 10. Deprive our children of adequate practice needed to master fundamental skills and knowledge. An Alberta Math and Education Forum will be held on May 29th at 1800h, Lister Centre (UofA) to find resolution to the math and curriculum debate. Please join our discussion to restore excellence and evidence-based teaching practices in the K-12 curriculum. Yours Sincerely, Dr. Nhung Tran-Davies, MD on behalf of 20,000 petitioning Albertans