Here's a blog entry by our Elementary/Middle Years Representative and Webmaster, Nicole Jarvis: 

"Up at 5am to go to Whistler today! Gorgeous drive of the sunrise along the Sea-toSky. Volunteering for my Provincial Specialist Association ( BC Association of Teachers of Modern Languages ). As an Executive Committee member I've been able to re-vamp our website and support my fellow language-teaching colleagues in the BC K-12 school system. It's a lot of hours, and not void of stress, but it's been really rewarding and a great opportunity for growth. I'm inspired by Stacey Sveistrup and Rome Lavrencic's dedication to our PSA: after many many years of contributing, they still facilitate workshops.

Today I'm manning an information booth while my fellow executive members teach at their schools or lead workshops here (Stacey Sveistrup: Intensive French teaching methods, and Rome Lavrencic: iPad Language Inquiry). I'm thankful for other colleagues who contribute to Executives, facilitate workshops, and attend these conferences, conventions and workshops. I've met teachers from all over the province who seek support for French instruction in their intermediate and middle school classrooms (grades 4-9), and many were excited to see the "Restez Calme" poster from TeachersDiscovery.ca! Our first Joint Conference with the BC Provincial Intermediate Teachers Association (PITA) and the BC Rural and Small Schools Teachers' Association = Success!"

Thanks to our conference collaborators! 
www.bcruralteachers.com
www.mypita.ca

Thank you to all of our joint-conference collaborators (MyPITA and BC Teachers of Rural and Small Schools) , workshop presenters, and attendees! We had a great time and look forward to supporting our newest members. 

Click on NEWS up top to check out the 'Storify' from Wednesday's Twitter Chat and see photos from the spring's #WhistlerPSA2015 "Transforming our thinking and practice" conference.

                                                                        -BCATML Executive Committee             May 8th 2015

We had a successful Twitter chat about the new FSL curriculum. Thanks to all the participants for your sharing of ideas, opinions, questions and answers.  Here is a link to the chat.

https://storify.com/staciajo33/bcatml-chat-about-new-fsl-curriculum
-Stacia Johnson, Chat Moderator

NOTE: "In a number of slides (listed on the BCATML's Curriculum Information Page), it mentions "content & concepts" together. While in the first round of drafts, the concepts were initially put in the content column (content & concepts), after feedback from the field and many discussions, we have come to the conclusion that concepts are "bigger" than content, and that is why in the new KUD model concepts "reside" in the centre and are linked to all of the areas (content, curricular competencies, and big ideas). 

[Additionally,] we do not plan to ever "close" the feedback.  This curriculum will be a living document, and we will continue to gather any feedback that people provide as they dig deeper and deeper into using the curriculum. We will move ahead with the first round of revisions once we have a big enough "chunk" of feedback. We hope to begin the revision process in Jan/Feb, but the draft will still be open for feedback even after we begin our revisions."

Cheers,
Laura

Laura Hawkes
Curriculum & Assessment
Ministry of Education"