President's Message

I know that as President of the BCSSA I speak for all of us in expressing our gratitude to Charlie Etchell, Maureen Dockendorf and the Professional Development Committee for the fabulous early learning spring forum at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver last weekend. I felt that this forum was a watershed moment in our quest to bring urgency to the 0-5 agenda.

In particular I would encourage people to pay attention to the messages brought by keynotes Stuart Shanker and Charlie Coffey. Stuart talked about how very early brain development, based on quality parent-baby interaction, leads to self-regulation in children, and Charlie spoke of the need for a policy framework at a national level. I also want to give credit to our colleague Mike McKay for his expert facilitation of the entire forum. The way that he wove themes through the two days evoked higher level dialogue among presenters and participants alike.

It is also my pleasure to offer our thanks as members of the BCSSA to Steve Carlton and the Membership Committee. The successes of their efforts were evident last week during the new members and new superintendents workshops led by mentors on Thursday, and the retirement dinner that same evening. As we watched decades of wisdom move into retirement it was great to see not only our new people being so well supported but being supported by the very braintrust that has "retired". And as we express our appreciation to those fine committees, we say thanks as well to Wendy Lee, Lisa Aspinall, Doreen Schieweck and Stephanie Cardwell for their over-the-top work and to contractors including Kim Young and Colin McDougall for their work behind the scenes in both professional development and member services.

I am pleased to have been able to represent the association in a variety of ways over the past few weeks. I am equally pleased and grateful to have had Wendy working closely with me and to having the ongoing support of and connection with executive colleagues including vice-president Steve Cardwell who gets to be me whenever I can't be. Our connections remain strong in terms of our presence at events such as the pan-Canadian gathering of provincial association leaders in Montreal in January, the work that we do through the Education Advisory Council (more below), our participation in meetings or conferences of partner groups including BCSTA, BCTF, BCPVPA and BCASBO, and the calls that we get to participate in unique events. One example of the latter is a breakfast meeting that I attended this week on your behalf with senior ministry officials, members of the Premier's council on technology, and members of the board of the Virtual School Society, where we listened to and engaged with Michael Horn (co-author of Disrupting Class) and talked about the future of education.

On a related matter, the Education Advisory Council (EAC) continues to emerge as something more than a bi-monthly gathering of 15 educational partners. Through our Deputy Minister’s leadership it is becoming a place of influence. Participants have identified 15 potential topics for policy-influencing discussion and input to government, with those topics ranging from early learning to aboriginal education to assessment. EAC members have been asked to rank those and I have indicated for us that our preference would be to have EAC be the starting point for the province wide dialogue on assessment. I have indicated to EAC members that we have prepared a paper that we would be happy to share in advance of the June meeting. Thanks go to Bruce Beairsto for authoring that paper on our behalf.

And finally, thanks again to all of you for your genuine engagement in the regional discussions on influence and profile and for considering questions like “what kinds of influence do we want, and to what end?" and "what kinds of profile do we want, to what end, and with what effect – positive or negative – on our influence?". We will extend that analysis in the coming weeks with a member survey, then bring whatever closure we can to this important topic at the summer academy in Kelowna.


– Keven Elder, BCSSA President