Dear fellow petitioners, The legislative sessions will commence October 26th. I am grateful that Wildrose Education Shadow Minister Mark Smith will be on our side along with Liberal leader Dr. David Swann. Hopefully, the PCs, as suggested by interim leader Ric McIver, will also take a stand against the ill-informed direction of education initiated by their former peers. Although I don't know the first thing about politics other than contending, over the past two years, with whomever is in power, I quite appreciate the outcome of this recent federal election. I have faith in our new Prime Minister, Mr. Justin Trudeau, but the fact that the majority of Albertans voted for the Conservatives instead of the NDP does make me wonder whether the NDP had come into provincial power rather accidentally this past spring. The NDP are quite possibly living on borrowed time. If Minister Eggen and his NDP team have any humility, they would know that they have a lot to prove to be worthy of their seats in the Legislature. If they have any power of observation, they would know that there are dire consequences to not listening to the people, especially when the people are our children's advocates. Unless the NDP utilizes this one fortuitous chance to make a significant difference in our children's education, they are at heightened danger of being swept away in a sea of blue or red in the next provincial election. The NDP, however, do seem like a nice group of individuals, and so I hope they will earn the respect of over 20,000 petitioners by taking a courageous and bold stand against the discovery math curriculum and the PC's Inspiring Education because these initiatives have been proven detrimental many times over. Unfortunately, Minister Eggen has been unwittingly signing his name to countless formed letters, addressed to fellow petitioners, claiming that "Inspiring Education was a 2010 report to the Government of Alberta; it is not a government policy document and does not provide instruction to teachers or boards on student achievement or curriculum." This one statement clearly demonstrates how disconnected he is from what is actually happening on the frontline. Many school districts, eg Calgary Board of Education, have, in the past few years, been piloting Inspiring Education and the realization of Inspiring Education has been the implementation of an "inquiry-based learning" system at these schools, where teachers are pressured to be merely "facilitators of learning" rather than teachers of knowledge for our children. The whole premise of Inspiring Education is to dictate a "student-centred" approach, an increased emphasis on "competencies" over content (ie, knowledge), a move towards a more digital curriculum (ie. less teacher teaching, more computer overuse), and a dissolution of the Provincial Achievement Tests, the one proven measure we have to ensure our children are meeting standards. And of course, there is the very troubling matter of replacing our school libraries with "learning commons" under Inspiring Education's 2013 Ministerial Order. With regard to the current mathematics curriculum, Minister Eggen's letters state that "teachers are required to know about a broad range of instructional strategies and to use their professional judgment to select strategies that best meet the learning needs of each student." Again, if this were true that only teachers need to know multiple strategies, it would be fine. However, it's not true and Minister Eggen doesn't seem to realize that. Although former Jeff Johnson had in the June 2014 meeting with myself and the team (Mae &Glen) gave directions for the curriculum to remove the mandate to teach multiple strategies, his staff surreptitiously left the 2014 written "clarifications" rather ambiguous by still suggesting that students "explore strategies". Now that the algorithms are rewritten in the curriculum (please make your teachers aware of this if the school board isn't), the "multiple strategies" remain the last scourge of the discovery math curriculum that need to be remedied in order to bring our math curriculum up to standard for our children. As you know, Minister Eggen only met briefly (15mins) with myself the day I and the team (Dr. Porteous, Marion Leithead, Cynthia Cheung) presented our 3000 signature petition against Inspiring Ed on June 24, 2015. It was a mere introduction. He verbally promised to personally meet again so that we can have a real discussion, but Minister Eggen has been elusive since. Apparently, he or his staff is stonewalling some petitioners by telling them that he had answered all their questions and will no longer respond to their letters. I thank you for continuing to write to him despite their dismissal. I am grateful for your support in this. Even though I have yet to hear back on a handful of my recent emails to his office, I have just sent off another reminder of my request for a meeting with Minister Eggen. I value integrity and honour. I will not rest until he honours his word. Like Jeff Johnson, I have faith that when Minister Eggen personally listens fully, he will act quickly and accordingly in the best interest of our children. I hope for us to find satisfactory resolution soon so that you don't have to hear from me again :) Kindest regards, Dr. Nhung Tran-Davies https://www.facebook.com/Alberta-Math-Petition-715037091853017/ Everyone plus over 18,000 petitioners see the problem with math, why can't they? http://calgaryherald.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-back-to-basics http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/10/09/editorial-time-for-alberta-to-get-back-to-the-basics-of-math