There is a moment that happens in schools, usually during a staff meeting, when a problem gets named and the room waits to see what happens next.

Recently, the problem was vaping and phones. The question underneath it was familiar: what are we going to do?

One suggestion that surfaced was suspending students found two-to-a-bathroom-stall, because someone heard one school was doing it. Logical on its face. Unusual bathroom occupancy is a reasonable indicator of something happening. But suspension for that? Two girls in a stall could be vaping. They could also be having a conversation that one of them is not ready to have in a hallway.

That is already a problem with the logic. And the deeper problem is the one we reach for suspension to solve in the first place.

Suspension works in a narrow band of circumstances. When a student poses an immediate safety risk to others, removal is necessary. When a situation requires a cooling period before anything productive can happen, a short absence can create that space. These are real uses. They exist for good reason.

But suspension does not teach. It relocates. The student goes home, disconnects from school for a day or two, and returns to the same peer group, the same social pressures, and the same circumstances that shaped the behaviour. Nothing in that sequence interrupted the pattern. We interrupted the student’s presence in the building, which is not the same thing.

The research on this is extensive and consistent. A decade-long study by the American Institutes for Research analyzed over 1.24 million disciplinary incidents in New York City public schools and found that more severe exclusionary discipline produced no reduction in future misbehaviour, not through behavioural change, and not through deterrence.¹ Students who were suspended were more likely to be suspended again in subsequent years, not less.² A longitudinal study published in Justice Quarterly found that suspensions increased subsequent offending, including assault, theft, and drug involvement, even after controlling for prior behaviour, and that repeated suspensions amplified this effect further.³

What suspension reliably does is give adults the feeling that something was done. The student is gone. A consequence was issued. The record reflects it. For institutions that need to demonstrate responsiveness, this is not nothing. But it should not be confused with change. Researchers at AIR noted that educators have very little information about the long-term consequences of their suspension decisions, and many genuinely believe removal makes schools safer and more conducive to learning.¹ The belief is understandable. The evidence does not support it.

The downstream data is worth sitting with. The Fabelo et al. Texas cohort study, the largest of its kind, tracked every 7th grader in Texas public schools over six years and found that 31% of suspended students repeated a grade and 10% dropped out. Among students with eleven or more suspensions, nearly half had contact with the juvenile justice system.⁴ A meta-analysis synthesizing 274 effect sizes from 40 primary studies identified exclusionary discipline as a meaningful predictor of increased delinquency, consistently, across subgroups, regardless of race or type of exclusion.⁵

There is also something worth saying plainly about the bathroom scenario specifically. The instinct to apply suspension there comes from a desire for a clear rule with a clear consequence. No ambiguity, no judgment call. But that clarity is purchased at the cost of context. Two students in a stall is not the same situation every time, and treating it as if it is will occasionally catch something it should not.

Schools that rely heavily on zero-tolerance frameworks do not actually have less ambiguity. They have moved the ambiguity upstream, into the decision about what the rule covers, and then pretended it is gone. The dramatic expansion of exclusionary discipline over recent decades was driven largely by zero-tolerance policies applied not to serious safety incidents, but to minor, nonviolent infractions: tardiness, insubordination, disrespect.⁶ The rule felt precise. The application was always a judgment call.

Students do not change because consequences are severe. They change when they have a consistent relationship with adults who notice them, when they develop some internal reason to want something different, and when their environment shifts in ways that make the old behaviour less necessary or appealing. Schools can influence all three of those things. Suspension addresses none of them. The Learning Policy Institute’s review of national discipline data puts it plainly: suspensions do not address any of the underlying reasons that may be leading to behavioural incidents, nor do they create opportunities for students to learn new approaches to communicating or resolving conflicts.⁶

This does not mean ignoring behaviour. Presence matters. Addressing things in the moment matters. The adult who walks past a bathroom entrance and keeps walking is making a choice, and that choice accumulates into a culture.

But the answer to that problem is not a harsher consequence chart. It is visibility, consistency, and the unglamorous work of being where students are.

Suspension should be a narrow instrument used when the situation genuinely requires it. It should not be the response we reach for because it feels decisive.

Feeling decisive and doing something that works are not the same thing. Schools that confuse the two spend a lot of energy demonstrating resolve and relatively little producing change.

References

1. American Institutes for Research. (2021). Less is more: The effects of suspension and suspension severity on behavioral and academic outcomes. AIR. https://www.air.org/project/less-more-effects-suspension-and-suspension-severity-behavioral-and-academic-outcomes

2. Disability Rights NC. (2025). Stop suspending students from school — it’s counterproductive. https://disabilityrightsnc.org/resources/stop-suspending-students-from-school-its-counterproductive/

3. Mowen, T. J., & Brent, J. J. (2019). School discipline as a turning point: The cumulative effect of suspension on arrest. Justice Quarterly, 36(6). https://phys.org/news/2019-07-school-suspensions-subsequent.html

4. Fabelo, T., Thompson, M. D., Plotkin, M., Carmichael, D., Marchbanks, M. P., & Booth, E. A. (2011). Breaking schools’ rules: A statewide study of how school discipline relates to students’ success and juvenile justice involvement. Council of State Governments Justice Center.

5. Noltemeyer, A. L., Ward, R. M., & Mcloughlin, C. (2015). Relationship between school suspension and student outcomes: A meta-analysis. School Psychology Review. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34117607/

6. Learning Policy Institute. (2024). Pushed out: Trends and disparities in out-of-school suspension. https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/crdc-school-suspension-report

I was four years old when Dick and Jane changed everything for me.

I don’t remember learning to read. What I remember is the feeling of being hooked. That moment when black marks on a white page stopped being symbols and started being a world. By the time I hit junior high, I was reading more than 200 books a year across Grades 7, 8, and 9. The Hardy Boys. Nancy Drew. Every mystery I could get my hands on. Then in high school, Louis L’Amour and Zane Grey pulled me into the American West: horses, dust, consequence, honour. I wasn’t escaping my life so much as discovering that other lives existed, that human experience was wider and stranger and more textured than anything my small corner of the world could show me.

Part of what made that possible was the absence of television in our house. I’m not romanticizing deprivation. I’m noting a simple truth: when there’s nothing competing for your attention, a book fills the silence completely.

Then I got a part-time job after school, and the numbers dropped. Life, as it always does, made competing demands. That pattern has followed me into adulthood. I still aim for 75 books a year. I use audiobooks when I’m driving. I’ve read on Kindle. I’ve used every format available because I refuse to let the format become the barrier. But I’ll admit what most readers eventually admit: there is something about a physical book, the weight of it, the ability to flip back three pages because something clicked, the margin note in your own handwriting, that no screen has fully replicated for me.

I share all of this because I want to talk about what reading actually does, and why I’m worried we are quietly deciding, as a culture, that it no longer needs to be taught with the same urgency we once gave it.

What a Book Does That a Summary Cannot

Reading a full novel is not the same cognitive act as reading excerpts, summaries, or even very long articles. The difference is not sentimental. It is structural.

A novel requires sustained attention across time. The reader must hold characters, timelines, cause-and-effect chains, and emotional arcs in working memory across days or weeks. This is not passive reception. It is an ongoing act of mental construction. The brain is building a model of a world that does not exist, populated by people who have never lived, in situations the reader has never encountered. That process, extended, effortful, imaginative, is one of the most comprehensive cognitive workouts available to a human being at any age.

Excerpts have value. I use them in my classroom to support specific outcomes. But an excerpt is a photograph. A novel is the trip. You can show a student a photograph of the Rockies and they will understand that mountains are large. They will not understand what it feels like to be small.

The research on this is not subtle. Extended reading builds vocabulary in context, which is the only way vocabulary genuinely sticks. It builds syntactic flexibility, the ability to process complex, layered sentence structures, which transfers directly to writing quality. It builds empathy, because fiction in particular forces the reader to inhabit a perspective that is not their own for an extended period. And it builds the capacity for sustained focus, which is the skill most under attack in the current attention economy.

The Digital Age Has Not Replaced Reading. It Has Replaced Practice.

I am not anti-technology. I want to be precise about what I am saying.

The problem is not that students have phones. The problem is that phones and screens generally train attention toward short, high-stimulation, algorithmically optimized content. The reward cycle is fast. The cognitive demand is low. The brain adapts. And when that same brain is asked to sit with a novel for forty minutes, following a plot that does not resolve in the next ninety seconds, it registers the experience as uncomfortable.

That discomfort is not a signal to stop. It is a signal that something real is happening.

We are now beginning to see what happens to a generation that reads less. Writing quality declines not because students are less intelligent, but because they have encountered fewer complex sentences and therefore cannot construct them. Comprehension of extended argument weakens. The ability to follow a sustained line of reasoning, in a court document, a contract, a piece of legislation, a medical explanation, weakens with it. These are not trivial losses.

AI will not solve this. If anything, AI accelerates the problem. When a student can generate a summary of a novel in thirty seconds, the temptation to substitute that summary for the experience of reading it is enormous. But the summary cannot give them what the reading gives them. The summary is the photograph again. The reading is the trip.

If You Want Students to Read, You Have to Read

This is the part that lands hardest when I say it to teachers, and I say it often.

I have listened to educators, good, dedicated, skilled educators, admit that they have not read a book in years. They are busy. They are exhausted. The demands on teachers have multiplied while the hours in a day have not. I understand all of that completely.

And yet.

Students are extraordinarily good at detecting what adults actually value versus what adults say they value. If reading is something we assign but do not do, they will understand the message beneath the message: this is a task, not a practice. This is something you perform for school, not something you carry into your life.

I recently finished reading a fantasy series: Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses series, followed by Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing series. They are not the books I would have predicted finding myself absorbed by. They surprised me. Maas built a world so vivid and internally consistent that I found myself genuinely grieving when arcs closed. Yarros captured something true about loyalty and courage inside a dragon mythology that should have felt absurd but didn’t. Neither of these books is without challenging content. Both include explicit scenes that I did not anticipate going in. I adjusted. I kept reading. Because the world they built was worth inhabiting, and I am a reader, and readers finish books.

When I talk about those books with students, casually, in passing, the way you mention something you actually care about, the response is immediate. They want to know what I thought. They want to tell me what they thought. The conversation is different from any conversation prompted by an assignment.

That is the point. That is the entire point.

What This Asks of Schools

Reading full novels aloud in class still matters. Home reading programs still matter. Libraries still matter. The quiet, low-stakes invitation to disappear into a book, without a quiz waiting at the end, without a graphic organizer to complete, still matters.

Students need to experience reading as something that happens to you, not just something you do to demonstrate competency.

They need to feel what it is to be genuinely lost in a story. To read past their bedtime. To resent an interruption because the chapter is not finished. To be changed, in some small or large way, by an account of a life they did not live.

That experience does not happen with excerpts. It does not happen with summaries. It does not happen when the teacher has not read a book since the last professional development day on literacy strategies.

It happens with books. Whole books. Given time. Modelled by adults who mean it.

I have been a reader since I was four years old. I intend to keep reading until I cannot. The least I can do is make sure the students who come through my school understand why.

Vince Hill is a school principal in Alberta with over 35 years in education. He writes about teaching, learning, and the life of a rural school.

Alberta Education drew a line in the sand. Phones, they declared with the full authority of a provincial directive, shall not be seen during instructional time. They shall remain in bags. They shall remain in pockets. They shall remain — and this part is crucial — not in your hands.

We, the educators, read this and felt hope stir somewhere beneath the lesson planning and the staff meeting agendas. Finally. A policy. A line. A stand.

Then we went back to our classrooms.

The policy, as written, allows students to carry their phones on their person or in their bags, provided they do not use them during class. This is a bit like telling a golden retriever it can sit beside the steak as long as it doesn’t eat it. Technically enforceable. Spiritually optimistic.

To their credit, students adapted immediately, not to the spirit of the policy, but to its precise legal language. The bathroom became a sanctuary. If the phone is in the locker, the locker becomes a pilgrimage site. Students who previously couldn’t find the motivation to walk to the pencil sharpener are now logging impressive daily step counts making the round trip to their lockers before entering a bathroom stall. It’s practically a fitness initiative.

And bathrooms themselves, those tiled halls of contemplative quiet, became, for a season, the most Snapchatted rooms in the building. Alberta Education did manage to clarify that phones are banned from bathrooms entirely. One imagines the policy meeting that produced that particular line item.

This is where I must confess to you my own innovation: the silver mixing bowl.

Every morning, my Social Studies students enter and deposit their phones into a large silver bowl at the front of the room. It sits there like an offering. Like a small, circular altar to the gods of distraction, temporarily decommissioned. No one pulls a phone from a communal bowl in front of their peers. The social calculus doesn’t work. The bowl is, against all odds, effective.

I say this not to patent the method but to illuminate what it reveals: that it takes a physical receptacle and daily enforcement ritual to replicate what a simple policy directive was supposed to accomplish on its own. We have arrived at a place where “please don’t use your phone” requires props.

There is the math class problem, which no one in the policy discussions appeared to have anticipated. Calculators, once a classroom staple, vanished during the Chromebook era. Now a student in Grade 10 math, forbidden from using their phone, simply does not have a calculator. The phone comes out. The phone is, technically, being used as a calculator. The phone is, factually, also receiving a Snap of someone’s lunch. These two activities are not mutually exclusive. They are, in fact, the natural habitat of the modern adolescent multitasker.

And so the math teacher is now in the epistemologically thorny position of confiscating a device being used for legitimate academic purposes, while the student holds the moral high ground with the expression of someone who has prepared for this exact moment.

Then there is the dead Chromebook gambit.

The student arrives. The Chromebook is uncharged. The phone, they explain with entirely too much calm, is their only available device for note-taking. They are a victim of circumstances. They are not, let the record show, a student who forgot to plug in their Chromebook because they were on their phone until midnight. They are simply unprepared through no fault of their own, and they would very much like permission to open the one device that connects them to their entire social world in order to type the odd sentence between notifications.

You grant it, or you don’t. Either way, you’ve spent four minutes of instructional time on the negotiation, and twenty nine other students have noticed that the window opened.

I have stood at the front of a classroom and said, with the full weight of professional authority and thirty-five years of accumulated experience, “Put the phone away.” I have said it with patience. I have said it with exhaustion. I have said it on days when I genuinely wanted to check my own phone, because frankly the device is useful and we are all living in the same century.

The difference, I tell them, is that I wait for my breaks. I say this. They nod. And I see in their eyes not defiance but something more honest: a kind of sympathetic incomprehension, the way you might look at someone who claims to enjoy cold showers.

The battle is not lost. It is also not won. It is a daily act of institutional will conducted with mixing bowls and confiscation policies and the gentle absurdity of telling a sixteen-year-old that the small computer in their pocket must wait until 3:15.

We are, to be precise, holding the line, one bowl, one bathroom ban, one dead Chromebook at a time. Alberta Education has spoken. The silver bowl gleams. Somewhere down the hall though, a student is very slowly walking to their locker.

Progress.

Grad season arrives the same way every year, in a rush of rented gowns, family photographs, and the quiet pride that settles over a small school when it sends its young people out into the world. This year, though, something is different at our school. We changed how we recognize our top students, and it has given me the occasion to think carefully about a tradition I had taken for granted for most of my career.

The valedictorian. That word carries a particular gravity. Parents say it the way they might say “full scholarship” or “straight A’s,” as shorthand for a certain kind of arrival. But where did the idea come from, what does it actually measure, and are we certain it still does what we think it does?

A Tradition Born in a Different World

The valedictorian tradition traces its origins to 1772 at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. The Governor of Virginia at the time, Lord Botetourt, established a gold medal for the student most skilled in Latin oratory, a very specific academic skill that colonial educated society considered essential. The term itself comes from the Latin vale dicere: to say farewell. The valedictorian was, at origin, simply the student chosen to deliver the closing address.

By 1920, American high schools had widely adopted the practice, but the criterion had shifted. Latin oratory was out, grade point average was in. The tradition kept the name and the ceremony, but the underlying logic changed completely. It became, in effect, a contest for the highest numerical average, stripped of the oratorical and character dimensions that once shaped the selection.

That shift matters more than it might appear. A practice originally rooted in demonstrated public scholarship, in actually saying something, became a prize for accumulated marks. The speech remained, but the connection between the honour and the capacity to speak meaningfully to one’s peers became incidental.

What the Research Actually Shows

I have heard figures cited, including one that claimed more than 80 percent of valedictorians never reach top leadership positions, and I want to be honest with you about what the research actually says, because the truth is more nuanced and, in some ways, more instructive.

The most rigorous long-term study on this question was conducted by Karen Arnold, a researcher at Boston College, who followed 81 high school valedictorians and salutatorians for 14 years beginning in 1981. Her findings were clear and, for those of us in education, worth sitting with. Valedictorians did very well in college. Ninety-five percent graduated, with an average GPA of 3.6, and 60 percent went on to earn graduate degrees. Nearly 90 percent entered professional careers.

Her conclusion was not that academic achievement is unimportant, since it clearly predicted college success, but that the traits rewarded by the valedictorian system (consistency across all subjects, compliance with institutional expectations, sustained performance under evaluation) are not the same traits that tend to produce exceptional impact in the broader world. Those traits belong to people who are often uncomfortable students: obsessively passionate about one thing, uninterested in performing well in subjects that don’t engage them, and poorly served by systems that measure breadth and compliance above depth and drive.

This is not an argument against academic excellence. It is an argument about what we are measuring when we reduce excellence to a single ranked number.

The Problem With One Number

Our school, like most, has historically selected its valedictorian on the basis of academic average. I do not dispute that academic average reflects real effort and real achievement. What I dispute is whether it is sufficient, whether it captures what we actually want to be saying when we stand before a graduating class and say: this person represents you.

For too long, the selection has been narrow in ways we rarely examine. It has overlooked leadership: the student who organized and held together a team when things fell apart, who spoke up in difficult moments, who showed others what it looked like to carry responsibility with grace. It has overlooked citizenship: the student who gave back to the community, who showed up not because they were being graded on it, but because they understood that belonging to a place means contributing to it. It has overlooked attendance, resilience, and character under pressure.

In some schools, the problem has taken a different shape: the valedictorian is elected by students, transforming what is meant to be a recognition of merit into a popularity contest. That approach has its own well-documented failures, and we should be equally skeptical of it.

The deeper problem is that a single category of recognition, one winner, one criterion, one story of success, has never been adequate to a graduating class. A graduating class is not a single thing. It contains futures we cannot predict, paths we have not charted, and contributions we have not yet imagined.

The Conversation We Should Have Been Having

For years, Canadian educators, business leaders, and policy-makers have repeated some version of the same warning: we face a serious skilled trades shortage, the work is essential, it is well-compensated, and we are not attracting enough young people into it. We say these things at conferences and in reports, and then we hold graduation ceremonies that recognize one pathway as the pinnacle of student achievement and treat every other pathway as an afterthought.

That contradiction is not lost on students. It is not lost on the young person who has spent three years in the Registered Apprenticeship Program (RAP), who has been on a job site in sub-zero temperatures learning to do something real and skilled, who has met the Alberta Rutherford Scholarship standard (because that scholarship applies equally to apprenticeship pathways), and who watches graduation night as the academic honours flow in one direction only.

The Rutherford standard is worth pausing on, because it is already doing something important. Alberta’s Alexander Rutherford Scholarship requires a minimum five-course average of 75 percent and is available to students enrolled in university, college, or apprenticeship programs. The provincial government, through the Skilled Trades and Apprenticeship Education Act, has already recognized that trades pathways are post-secondary pathways deserving of the same foundational recognition. Our graduation ceremonies have not caught up to that reality.

Trades-bound students are not taking a dumbed-down version of school. Career and Technology Studies courses require technical reasoning, precision, sequential problem-solving, and the capacity to apply knowledge under real conditions with real consequences. A student who has mastered welding, carpentry, automotive service, or electrical work has demonstrated competency in ways that a GPA alone cannot capture and that many academically-ranked students would struggle to replicate. We should not need to argue this point in 2026, but apparently we still do.

What We Did Differently This Year

This year, our school separated its recognition into two streams: one for students pursuing university and college pathways, one for students pursuing trades and vocational pathways, both anchored to the Rutherford standard. We did not abandon academic excellence as a criterion. We expanded the criteria to include leadership, citizenship, attendance, and character. We asked who actually represents this class, not just who scored highest on a transcript.

The result was a ceremony that felt more honest. It reflected the actual range of achievement in our graduating class. It told every student in that arena that their path, the one they chose, the one they worked for, was worth honouring.

That is not a lowering of the bar. It is a more accurate reading of what the bar should measure.

A Different Kind of Farewell

The word valedictorian means, at its root, to say farewell. For years, that farewell has been delivered by whoever scored highest on the transcript. There is nothing wrong with honouring that student. There is something wrong with pretending that student tells the whole story of a graduating class.

Our graduates are heading into a world that needs engineers and electricians, physicians and pipefitters, teachers and technologists. They are heading into a world that rewards the consistent and the creative, the credentialed and the capable, the ones who can hold a room and the ones who can hold a weld.

All of them deserve a proper farewell.

Vince Hill is a school principal in Alberta with over 35 years in education. He writes about teaching, learning, and the life of a rural school.

The first three parts of this series made the case. This part puts it in your hands.

If you have been reading along, you know the argument: the verb in a learning outcome is not background noise. It is the single most important word in the sentence. It tells you the cognitive level the curriculum is asking for, and from that, everything else follows: the learning progressions you build, the activities you design, and the assessment evidence you collect. The theory is sound. But theory without practice is just conversation, and teachers do not plan in theory. They plan for Monday morning.

What follows are three worked examples drawn from Alberta ELA outcomes across three different grade levels: Grade 2, Grade 5, and ELA 20-1. Each example walks through the same four-step process. Each one demonstrates that the method does not belong to a single subject, a single grade band, or a single type of learner. The process is the same. The content changes. The structure does not.

Before you read, a word about how to use these examples. They are not lesson plans. They are not units. They are thinking maps: structured records of the decisions a teacher makes when they read an outcome with genuine attention to the verb, trace the cognitive path to that verb, and build the progression students need to travel it. Once you have worked through a few outcomes this way, the process becomes second nature. You begin to read curriculum differently. The outcomes stop looking like administrative requirements and start looking like design instructions.

That shift in how you read the curriculum is the point. These examples are meant to model that shift, not to replace your own professional judgment. Take the structure. Apply it to your outcomes. See what it reveals.

One more thing worth naming before the examples begin. The new Alberta curriculum structure, which many teachers are still in the process of implementing, is actually built for this kind of reading. Each Learning Outcome sits at the top of a layered structure: Knowledge below it, Understanding below that, Skills and Procedures at the base. Each layer carries its own verbs. When you read those layers together, the curriculum is already telling you the progression. It is already showing you what students need to know before they can understand, and what they need to understand before they can demonstrate the outcome. The four-step process we use in each example is not being imposed on the curriculum. It is drawing out what the curriculum already contains.

Worked Example One: Grade 2 ELA

Understanding the model is one thing. Watching it work on an actual Alberta outcome is another. What follows is a step-by-step walkthrough using a single Grade 2 ELA learning outcome from Alberta’s 2022 curriculum. We have chosen ELA deliberately, and we have chosen the new curriculum deliberately, because this is where many teachers are right now: implementing outcomes they are still unpacking, in a structure that looks and reads differently from what they have worked with before.

Here is the Grade 2 ELA outcome we are working with:

Students explain how the organization of ideas and information within texts can support the purpose or meaning of messages.

The Knowledge associated with this outcome tells us that creators share messages for different reasons, including entertainment, learning, and instructions; that messages can be imaginary or real; that they can be shared digitally or non-digitally in a variety of forms; and that stories can follow a recognizable structure including beginning, problem, solution, and ending.

The Understanding tells us that ideas and information can be organized in a variety of ways to support the expression and understanding of messages.

The Skills and Procedures tell us what students must be able to do: examine different reasons for messages to be shared; explain why engaging with messages can be enjoyable; distinguish between fiction and non-fiction; compare and contrast forms used to organize messages; and examine the structure of a variety of stories.

That is the full picture of the outcome. Now we work through it the same way every time.

Step 1: Find the primary verb in the Learning Outcome.

The Learning Outcome verb is explain. Not list, not identify, not describe. Explain.

Explain sits solidly at the Understanding level of Bloom’s revised taxonomy. It asks students to construct meaning and communicate it, to go beyond recognizing or naming something and articulate how or why it works. For Grade 2, this is a meaningful cognitive demand. It tells you that the endpoint of instruction is not students being able to point to a story structure or match a label to a text form. It is students being able to articulate, in their own words, how the way a text is organized connects to what the creator was trying to do or say.

That is your destination.

Step 2: Read the Skills and Procedures verbs and understand how they serve the outcome.

This is the step that the new curriculum structure makes possible in a way the old one did not, and it is where the layered verb work pays off.

Look at the Skills and Procedures verbs: examine, explain, distinguish, compare and contrast, examine. Notice that these verbs are not all at the same cognitive level. Examine sits at Understanding, reaching toward Application. Distinguish sits at Analysis. Compare and contrast sits at Analysis. The second explain mirrors the outcome verb.

What this tells you is that the Skills and Procedures are not a checklist of disconnected tasks. They are the cognitive building blocks that, taken together, give students what they need to reach the outcome verb. A student cannot explain how organization supports meaning if they have never examined different text forms, distinguished between fiction and non-fiction, or compared how different structures serve different purposes. The Skills and Procedures describe the road. The Learning Outcome describes the destination.

This is also where teachers can see clearly what the assessment must not do: it must not stop at the Skills and Procedures level and call it done. Examining text forms and distinguishing fiction from non-fiction are steps on the way to the outcome, not evidence of it.

Step 3: Write three learning progressions that build from the Knowledge through the Skills and Procedures toward the outcome verb.

LP 1 — Notice: Students examine a variety of familiar texts and identify the purpose of each one. With teacher guidance, they explore the Knowledge layer: what kinds of messages exist, what forms they take, and what the difference between real and imaginary stories looks like. Activities at this level are observational and guided. Students are building the vocabulary and the conceptual foundation that the later progressions require.

What this looks like in the classroom: The teacher brings in a range of texts: a picture book, a recipe, a letter, a non-fiction article, a digital poster. Students sort them by purpose, with discussion. The teacher names the forms explicitly and introduces the language of fiction and non-fiction. Students examine the structure of one familiar story using a simple visual frame: beginning, problem, solution, ending.

LP 2 — Compare: Students distinguish between fiction and non-fiction texts and compare and contrast the forms and structures used in each. They begin to notice that different organizational choices serve different purposes. Activities at this level move from observation into analysis, with teacher support still present.

What this looks like in the classroom: Students read or listen to two short texts on a similar topic, one fiction and one non-fiction. They use a comparison organizer to identify how each is structured differently and discuss why the creator might have made those choices. The teacher guides students toward noticing the relationship between organization and purpose, but students are doing the comparing themselves.

LP 3 — Explain: Students explain, in their own words, how the organization of a specific text supports its purpose or meaning. This is where the outcome lives. The student is performing the primary verb: explain. They are not just noticing or comparing. They are constructing and communicating an understanding of why the text is built the way it is.

What this looks like in the classroom: Students read a new text independently or with minimal support. They are asked to respond, in writing or orally, to a prompt such as: How does the way this text is organized help the creator share their message? Their response does not need to be lengthy. It needs to demonstrate that they understand the relationship between structure and purpose, and that they can articulate it.

Step 4: Check your assessment against the outcome verb, not the Skills and Procedures.

The assessment question is always the same: did the student do what the outcome verb asked them to do?

For this outcome, that means: did the student explain how organization supports purpose or meaning? Not: can they label a story structure? Not: can they sort fiction from non-fiction? Those belong to LP 1 and LP 2. They are evidence of progress through the progression, and they are worth noting formatively. But they are not evidence of the outcome.

A straightforward summative task: give students a short, unfamiliar text appropriate to Grade 2. Ask them to explain, verbally or in writing, how the way it is organized helps the creator share their message. The assessment criteria are direct: Is the explanation in the student’s own words? Does it identify a specific organizational feature? Does it connect that feature to the purpose or meaning of the text?

If a student can do that, they have met the outcome. If they can label the parts of a story but cannot yet articulate why that structure serves the message, they are at LP 2. You know where they are, and you know what comes next.

The completed map:

• Learning Outcome Students explain how the organization of ideas and information within texts can support the purpose or meaning of messages.

• Primary Verb Explain (Understanding)

• Skills and Procedures verbs Examine, explain, distinguish, compare and contrast (Understanding to Analysis)

• LP 1: Notice Teacher-guided examination of a range of text forms; sorting by purpose; introduction of fiction/non-fiction distinction; visual story structure frame

• LP 2: Compare Student comparison of fiction and non-fiction texts using organizer; analysis of how structure serves purpose with teacher support

• LP 3: Explain Independent or near-independent response to an unfamiliar text; student explains how organization supports purpose or meaning

• Assessment task New unseen text; student explains in own words how organization supports the creator’s message

• Assessment question Does the student explain the relationship between organization and purpose? Can they articulate it, not just identify it?

Worked Example Two: Grade 5 ELA Oral Language

A second example shows that this process works beyond early literacy and written responses. In Grade 5 English Language Arts and Literature, one Alberta learning outcome states:

Students investigate how oral language can be designed to communicate ideas and information.

This outcome connects beautifully to story work because stories are not only read or written; they are also spoken, heard, interpreted, and performed. In Grade 5, students are asked to think about oral language as something that can be intentionally designed. That means the focus is not simply, “Can the student speak in front of the class?” The deeper question is, “Can the student make deliberate oral language choices to help an audience understand an idea, a character, a perspective, or information from a story?”

Step 1: Find the verb. Just the verb.

The key verb in this outcome is investigate.

This matters. Investigate does not mean repeat, memorize, or perform without thinking. It asks students to examine how oral language works and to make intentional choices based on what they notice. In this outcome, students are learning that communication is designed through choices such as words, voice, body, pacing, emphasis, gesture, facial expression, audience awareness, and format.

The Alberta Grade 5 curriculum language supports this directly. Related skills and procedures include integrating verbal, non-verbal, and paraverbal language to enhance communication; selecting formats for oral communication based on audience and purpose; and presenting ideas and information in a logical manner to inform, persuade, or entertain.

That gives us the cognitive address. Students are not simply “doing a presentation.” They are investigating how oral language choices shape meaning.

Step 2: Name what the verb rules out.

Because the verb is investigate, this outcome rules out treating oral communication as a polished performance alone. A dramatic reading, speech, podcast, or presentation may be the final product, but the learning itself is not the product.

It also rules out assessing only volume, eye contact, or confidence. Those may be part of oral communication, but they are not enough. The outcome asks students to understand how oral language can be designed to communicate ideas and information.

At the other end, this outcome also rules out giving students a script and asking them to “read it with expression” without asking them to explain the choices they made. Expression matters, but in Grade 5, the learning deepens when students can say why they chose a pause, a gesture, a tone, a repeated phrase, a visual support, or a particular format for a particular audience.

Step 3: Write three learning progressions that build toward the verb.

LP 1 — Notice: Students listen to or view short examples of oral storytelling, dramatic reading, podcast clips, or teacher-modelled story excerpts. They identify how speakers use voice, pacing, pause, gesture, facial expression, word choice, and body language to help the audience understand a character, event, mood, or message.

What this looks like in the classroom: The teacher reads the same short story excerpt in two different ways. Students discuss: What changed? What did the speaker do with voice, body, pace, or emphasis? How did those choices change what we understood about the character or scene?

LP 2 — Experiment: Students choose a short excerpt from a story and try multiple ways of communicating it orally. They experiment with verbal, non-verbal, and paraverbal choices. They might change pace, pitch, pause, gesture, facial expression, volume, or format. They receive peer feedback focused on how clearly their choices communicated meaning.

What this looks like in the classroom: Students work with a partner or small group. One student reads or presents a short excerpt as though the character is nervous. Then they try it again as though the character is confident, regretful, excited, or uncertain. The group discusses what changed and which choices helped the audience understand the character’s perspective.

LP 3 — Design and explain: Students design an oral communication piece based on a story. They choose a format and audience, make intentional oral language choices, present their work, and explain how their choices helped communicate ideas or information from the story.

What this looks like in the classroom: Students choose one of several formats: a character interview, a short podcast segment, a dramatic monologue, a partner dialogue, a story trailer, an oral retelling from a different point of view, or a “character on trial” explanation. The assessment focuses not only on the presentation, but on whether students can explain how their oral language choices supported audience understanding.

Step 4: Check the assessment against the verb, not the activity.

The assessment question is not: Did the student perform well?

The stronger assessment question is: Did the student investigate and intentionally design oral language choices to communicate ideas or information from a story for a specific audience and purpose?

A practical summative task: Story Voice Design Studio. Students select a story, scene, character, or moment from a shared class text or from a text they have chosen. Their task is to design an oral communication piece that helps an audience understand something important about the story.

Students choose their format from a menu: a character interview, a podcast-style reflection, a dramatic monologue, a two-voice dialogue, an oral story trailer, a retelling from another character’s point of view, or a small-group panel where characters explain their choices.

To make the task inclusive, students can choose the story or scene they want to work with, the oral format that best fits their strengths, whether to work independently or with a partner, and which supports they need such as sentence stems, planning templates, rehearsal time, or peer feedback.

Before presenting, each student completes a simple oral language design plan: My audience is... My purpose is to inform, persuade, or entertain by... The story idea or character I want the audience to understand is... The oral language choices I will use are... These choices will help my audience because...

This keeps the assessment aligned to the Alberta outcome. The final product is not just a speech or recording. It is evidence that the student can investigate how oral language works and then design communication intentionally.

The completed map:

• Outcome Students investigate how oral language can be designed to communicate ideas and information.

• Verb Investigate

• Cognitive level Understanding/Analyzing — students examine how oral language choices shape communication

• Curriculum connection Students integrate verbal, non-verbal, and paraverbal language; select oral formats for audience and purpose; present ideas logically to inform, persuade, or entertain

• LP 1: Notice Students identify how speakers use voice, gesture, pace, pause, expression, and word choice to communicate meaning in a story excerpt

• LP 2: Experiment Students try different oral language choices with a story excerpt and use peer feedback to determine which choices best support meaning

• LP 3: Design and explain Students create an oral communication piece based on a story and explain how their choices communicate ideas or information to a specific audience

• Assessment task Story Voice Design Studio: students choose a story-based oral format and present live, recorded, independently, or collaboratively

• Assessment question Did the student intentionally design oral language choices to communicate an idea or information from the story for a specific audience and purpose?

Worked Example Three: English Language Arts 20-1

The same process works at the senior high level, where outcomes are often broader and more layered. In English Language Arts 20-1, one Alberta general outcome states:

Students will listen, speak, read, write, view and represent to create oral, print, visual and multimedia texts, and enhance the clarity and artistry of communication.

This outcome is powerful because it asks students to do more than produce a final assignment. It asks them to make intentional choices as communicators. The learning is not simply that students create a poster, essay, speech, podcast, visual response, or multimedia text. The learning is that students understand how form, structure, medium, language, image, organization, and revision work together to make communication clearer and more artful.

Step 1: Find the verb. Just the verb.

The key verbs are create and enhance.

Create sits high on the cognitive demand scale. Students are not only recalling, explaining, or analyzing. They are composing something new. They are making decisions about content, form, structure, medium, voice, image, detail, and audience.

Enhance is equally important. It tells us that the first version is not the endpoint. Students must improve the clarity, thoughtfulness, effectiveness, correctness, and artistry of their communication. Revision is not cleanup. Revision is part of the thinking.

Step 2: Name what the verb rules out.

Because the verbs are create and enhance, this outcome rules out assignments where students simply complete a product without making or explaining craft decisions. It rules out treating editing as the final spelling-and-grammar check. It also rules out staying in analysis alone. A literary essay may support this work, but if students only explain a theme in conventional essay form, they may not fully demonstrate the breadth of the outcome. This outcome asks students to create oral, print, visual, or multimedia texts and to enhance the clarity and artistry of communication.

Step 3: Write three learning progressions that build toward the verb.

LP 1 — Notice craft: Students examine mentor texts to identify how writers, speakers, filmmakers, designers, or creators make communication clear and artful. They notice choices related to diction, structure, image, sound, pacing, repetition, contrast, symbolism, typography, silence, framing, or tone.

What this looks like in the classroom: Students study a short poem, a visual text, a film scene, a personal essay excerpt, or a spoken-word performance. They ask: What choices did the creator make? How did those choices affect meaning? What made the communication clear? What made it artful?

LP 2 — Experiment with form and medium: Students take one idea from a studied text and try communicating it in more than one form. The purpose is not to make multiple polished products. The purpose is to understand how form and medium shape meaning.

What this looks like in the classroom: After studying a novel, film, short story, poem, or Shakespearean play, students choose one significant idea and experiment with two or three possible forms, then reflect on which form best communicates their intended meaning.

LP 3 — Create and enhance: Students design one intentional oral, print, visual, or multimedia text for a specific audience and purpose. They revise it based on feedback, then submit both the final product and a short creator’s statement explaining the choices they made to enhance clarity and artistry.

What this looks like in the classroom: Students create a polished text that communicates an interpretation or idea connected to a text studied in class: a dramatic monologue, a podcast episode, a visual essay, a multimedia response, a spoken-word piece, an op-ed written in role, a curated photo essay, a digital story, or a hybrid print-visual composition.

Step 4: Check the assessment against the verb, not the activity.

The assessment question is not: Did the student make something creative?

The stronger assessment question is: Did the student create a purposeful text and enhance the clarity and artistry of communication through deliberate choices in content, form, structure, medium, language, and revision?

A practical summative task: Text Transformation Studio. Students begin with a text studied in ELA 20-1 and identify one significant insight they want to communicate. Then they choose the form that best fits their purpose. To support all learners, a design pathway provides flexible entry points: My idea. My audience. My form. My craft choices. My revision focus. My evidence of growth. These supports do not reduce the rigour. They increase access to the outcome because the central learning remains the same: students create and enhance communication with intention.

The completed map:

• Outcome Students will listen, speak, read, write, view and represent to create oral, print, visual and multimedia texts, and enhance the clarity and artistry of communication.

• Verb(s) Create and enhance

• Cognitive level Creating, with revision as deliberate improvement of clarity, effectiveness, and artistry

• LP 1: Notice craft Students analyze mentor texts to identify how language, image, structure, sound, medium, and design choices create effects

• LP 2: Experiment Students try communicating one literary insight in multiple forms and reflect on how form and medium shape meaning

• LP 3: Create and enhance Students create a purposeful text, revise it, and explain how their choices improved clarity and artistry

• Assessment task Text Transformation Studio: students transform a literary insight into a crafted oral, print, visual, or multimedia text for a chosen audience and purpose

• Assessment question Did the student create a purposeful text and enhance communication through deliberate choices in form, structure, medium, content, language, and revision?

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  What These Examples Have in Common

Three different outcomes. Three different grade levels. Three different subject areas within ELA. One process.

In each case, the work began not with a unit plan or an activity list, but with a single question: what does the verb actually ask students to do? From that question, everything else followed. The cognitive level became clear. The progression became visible. The assessment criteria wrote themselves.

That is what this series has been arguing from the beginning. The verb is not a small thing. It is the thing from which all the other things grow. When teachers read curriculum with close attention to the verb, they stop planning around content and start planning toward thinking. And when students understand the verb, they stop completing tasks and start monitoring their own learning.

The new Alberta curriculum, read this way, is not a burden to be managed. It is a progression already embedded in the document, waiting to be drawn out. The Knowledge tells you where to start. The Skills and Procedures tell you how to build. The Learning Outcome tells you where you are going. The Verb tells you what it looks like when students arrive.

That is the whole method. Four steps. A table. A question. Repeatable for every outcome in every subject at every grade. Take it, adapt it, and make it yours.

Vince Hill is the Principal in Alberta. Adelee Penner is owner of Elk Willow Consulting working with school leadership teams across Canada and internationally.

In Part Two of this series, we made the case that the verb in a learning outcome is not decorative language. It is a design instruction. It tells you the cognitive level the curriculum is asking for, and it determines the activity, the task, and the assessment that follow. But making that argument raised a question we have both sat with in our own classrooms for years: what do you do when students cannot yet reach the verb?

You write a carefully constructed outcome. You choose the right verb. You design an activity worthy of that level of cognitive demand. And then a significant number of your students stare back at you because they do not have the foundational knowledge to even begin. The outcome was sound. The instruction was sound. The students simply were not where the curriculum assumed they would be. That is not a failure of the framework. It is the next problem the framework has to solve.

That gap is where learning progressions live.

We want to be clear about something before going further. Learning progressions are not a workaround for the curriculum, and they are not a way of lowering expectations for students who arrive behind. They are a way of building the road before asking students to travel it, within the structure of the outcomes, not around them. The destination stays fixed. What changes is the deliberate mapping of the path that gets students there.

The learning progressions model is, at its core, an answer to the question that every thoughtful teacher is always asking but rarely makes explicit: what does the path to this outcome actually look like, and where on that path are my students right now? It asks teachers to think not just about what the outcome requires at its endpoint, but about what knowledge, understanding, and experience a student needs to accumulate before that endpoint is within reach.

Adelee came to this work first as a classroom teacher. She wanted to understand the progression of learning students needed in order to reach the outcomes in the curriculum. Once she could see that progression more clearly, she could better identify where her students’ skills and understandings actually sat along the way, and design learning tasks that were more inclusive of all the learners in the room. That same concern followed her into her work as a learning lead, administrator, central office leader, Education Manager with Alberta Education, and now as an educational consultant working with school leadership teams across the province, throughout Canada, and internationally.

For Adelee, learning progressions are not an abstract planning tool. They are a way to make the curriculum teachable, learning visible, and assessment more truthful. As a new curriculum is implemented, this becomes even more important. If assessment is aligned to the progression of learning, students have a better chance to show what they know, understand, and can do, and teachers have a clearer basis for reporting that learning with accuracy and integrity. Vince came to this work through thirty-five years in the classroom, building and rebuilding curriculum maps and noticing where students fell through the gaps between what the outcomes assumed and what students actually brought with them. We arrived at the same place by different roads.

To a skeptical teacher, I (Adelee) would say this: learning progressions are not about adding one more thing to an already full plate. They are about making the invisible work of teaching visible. Most teachers already make these decisions instinctively. They notice when students are not ready for the task, back up, reteach, find another entry point, and adjust. A learning progression simply makes that professional thinking explicit. It gives teachers a shared way to name what comes first, what comes next, and what evidence would show that students are ready to move forward. In that sense, you are not learning a new skill. You are naming and organizing something you are already doing, and giving it enough structure that it can be shared with colleagues, communicated to students, and connected directly to assessment.

The value of sitting with teachers and asking, “What does it actually take to learn this from Kindergarten to Grade 12?” is powerful. It slows the conversation down in the best possible way. Instead of rushing straight to activities or assessments, teachers begin to unpack the learning underneath the outcome. They ask: What prior experiences do students need? What vocabulary matters? What concepts have to be secure before students can reason, explain, analyze, or apply? Where might students get stuck, and how would we know?

The Teacher’s Playbook framework adds structure to that conversation. It helps teachers move from outcome to verb to learning progression to learning task to evidence of learning. In schools where this work has taken hold, I (Adelee) have seen teachers become more precise in their planning and more confident in their assessment decisions. I (Adelee) have also seen the conversation about student learning shift from who is “getting it” and who is not, to where each student is in the progression and what they need next.

To make this concrete, consider what the progression looks like in an elementary science context. If the curriculum eventually asks students to explain how objects start, stop, change direction, or change speed, students first need embodied experiences with movement. The progression might begin with students noticing how their own bodies move: pushing, pulling, balancing, stopping, rolling, falling, and changing direction. From there, they observe and describe how familiar objects move in similar ways. Later, they compare the effects of different pushes and pulls, describe patterns in motion, and eventually use scientific language to explain force, friction, gravity, and energy transfer.

LP 1 might ask students to notice and describe movement using their own bodies and familiar objects. LP 2 might ask students to compare how different pushes and pulls affect motion. LP 3 might ask students to explain, using scientific language, how forces cause objects to start, stop, change speed, or change direction.

The destination may be a complex explanation of force, but the road begins with children paying attention to how movement feels and behaves in the world around them. The same principle holds at the secondary level, whether the subject is Social Studies, mathematics, or literature. The content changes. The grade level changes. The logic of the progression does not.

Take Social 10, General Outcome 1: Students will explore the impacts of globalization on their lives. Within that, Specific Outcome 1.1 reads: Acknowledge and appreciate the existence of multiple perspectives in a globalizing world.

The verb acknowledge sits in the lower registers of Bloom’s taxonomy. Appreciate reaches higher, toward affective engagement, toward genuinely internalizing another perspective rather than simply noting its existence. Together they describe a destination, but they do not describe the road. A student who has never been asked to identify that different perspectives exist cannot leap directly to appreciating their coexistence in the context of global economics and migration. The gap is too wide, and leaving students to cross it unassisted is not rigour. It is a set-up for failure dressed up as high expectations.

So we build three Learning Progressions for that outcome:

LP 1 — Introduce the concept of multiple perspectives in the context of globalization. This is the on-ramp. Students who arrive with limited prior knowledge start here. Activities at this level involve exposure and basic identification: what does it mean that people in different parts of the world experience the same global process differently?

LP 2 — Explore case studies of different perspectives on global issues. Students who have the introduction begin working with real examples. They are not yet synthesizing or evaluating. They are building the evidentiary foundation that deeper analysis will require.

LP 3 — Reflect on personal perspectives in relation to global events and discussions. This is where the outcome lives. By the time a student reaches LP 3, they have the vocabulary, the examples, and the cognitive scaffolding to genuinely acknowledge and appreciate the plurality of perspectives the outcome demands.

Learning progressions also matter because they can be made visible to students. When students understand the progression, they are not simply completing tasks for the teacher; they begin to see the learning path for themselves. They can ask: Where am I now? What am I ready to try next? What would stronger evidence of my learning look like? This is where assessment begins to support agency rather than simply judge performance. The progression gives students language for their own growth, and it gives teachers a clearer way to offer feedback that moves learning forward rather than simply marking where it fell short.

That connection between progression and assessment is where the practical value of this model becomes most visible. A table anchors every specific outcome in the curriculum. The three learning progressions sit in each row. Those progressions guide instructional decisions: what comes first, what comes next, and what activity demonstrates that a student has moved through all three stages. Under Outcomes Based Assessment, the question is never “did the student score seventy percent on the test?” It is “did this student demonstrate, through this activity, that they have met this outcome?” The learning progressions define what meeting the outcome looks like at each stage of the journey, which means there is no ambiguity about what is being measured or why.

This matters enormously for students with uneven prior learning. If a student arrives in Social 10 without the foundational knowledge to engage at LP 3, and many do, the progressions mean they are not abandoned to fail against an outcome that was never designed for where they actually are. They begin at LP 1. The road is built before they are asked to travel it. And because the entire structure stays within the Alberta curriculum framework, instruction remains aligned with what Alberta Education expects and assessment remains defensible.

It matters equally for planning. The question shifts from “what should I do for three weeks on globalization?” to a much more precise one: for each specific outcome, what does LP 1 look like, what does LP 2 look like, and what does LP 3 look like? The answer gives you the activity sequence, the formative checkpoints, and the summative task in one movement. The curriculum drives the instruction. The instruction drives the evidence. The evidence drives the assessment. Nothing floats free, and no gap opens up between what was taught and what was assessed.

That is what this framework is designed to prevent: the quiet misalignment where students appear to have met outcomes they have not actually reached, because the task measured something adjacent to the verb rather than the verb itself. Learning progressions keep the verb honest at every stage, not just at the summative end.

That is what curriculum design should be. Not coverage. Not activities chosen because they are engaging or because the chapter ends on Friday. A deliberate path from where students are to where the outcome requires them to be, built by teachers who know exactly what verb governs the destination and exactly what scaffolding students need to get there.

In Part Four, we will walk through the practical steps of building a learning progression table for a couple of specific Alberta curriculum outcomes, with a replicable template any teacher can adapt for their own classroom.

There is a moment in every teacher’s career, if they are paying attention, when something clicks that they can never unclick. For me, that moment happened in a classroom at Brandon University somewhere between 1989 and 1991, in a course taught by a professor named Dr. Shirley Chapman. I (Vince) was working on my Bachelor of Education, my third degree, and I was not exactly a wide-eyed undergraduate. I had already spent years in the classroom. I thought I knew what curriculum design looked like.

Dr. Chapman had other ideas.

She was working on a book at the time, whether it was ever published I honestly don’t know, and that question has nagged at me for thirty-five years. But the idea she was developing in that classroom was, in my estimation, one of the most practically brilliant frameworks a teacher could ever encounter. It was not revolutionary in the sense of being untested or theoretical. It was revolutionary because it was so immediately, obviously right.

Here is what she did. She took Bloom’s Taxonomy, the original six levels that Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues had identified in 1956: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation, and she made a single, elegant argument. Every level of that taxonomy, she said, corresponds to a set of verbs. And the verb you choose when you write a learning outcome determines everything that follows: the depth of thinking you are asking for, the activity you design to meet that outcome, and the assessment you use to evaluate whether students have actually arrived there.

Read that again. The verb determines everything.

Unbeknownst to me, a few miles down the road at the University of Manitoba, Adelee was arriving at the same conviction through her own formation as an educator. We were not yet acquainted. We would not meet for another two decades. But the idea was already taking root in both places, independently, which perhaps says something about how right it was.

It seems almost too simple. But sit with it for a moment. Consider the difference between asking students to list the causes of World War I versus asking them to analyze the causes. Both sentences appear to be about the same content. They are not. "List" sits at the Knowledge level, recall and reproduction. "Analyze" lives at the Analysis level, it requires students to break apart relationships, weigh contributing factors, and build an argument. The activity you design to meet a listing outcome will look nothing like the activity you design for an analysis outcome. Neither will the rubric. The verb is not just a word. It is a destination. And once we accept that, the questions that follow are unavoidable: Is the outcome actually asking students to evaluate, or has it quietly settled for describe? Is it pushing toward synthesis, toward something genuinely new, or is comprehension, students giving back what they were given, all that is really being asked for?

These are uncomfortable questions. The honest answer, for most of us in the classroom, is that we default lower than we intend. We tell ourselves we are building critical thinkers while we are actually designing tests that reward good memory. The verb list makes that visible. It holds you accountable in a way that good intentions alone cannot. A reference list of verbs organized by taxonomy level accompanies this article.

Bloom’s Taxonomy, of course, has since been revised. In 2001, Lorin Anderson, one of Bloom’s former students, led a team that updated the framework. The levels are now listed as: Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analyzing, Evaluating, and Creating. The verbs shifted too, and notably the top level moved from Synthesis to Creating, a recognition that the highest cognitive act is generative, not just integrative. The revision also converted the nouns of the original to verbs, which, fittingly, made the whole framework more action-oriented. More teachable.

If you are working in Alberta’s newer elementary curriculum, you are already brushing against this whether you realize it or not. The KUSP model, Knowledge, Understanding, Skills and Procedures, still leans on language that echoes the old taxonomy. “Knowledge” rather than “Remembering.” It works. The principle holds regardless of the label. Take, for example, a Grade 1 ELA Learning Outcome from the current Alberta curriculum: Students examine ways that messages can be organized and presented for different purposes.

Look at that verb: examine.

Examine sits in the lower-to-middle range of the taxonomy, somewhere in the territory of Understanding, reaching toward Application. Think of what examining actually means: you are not just identifying, which would be pure recall. You are looking carefully, turning something over, trying to understand its nature and purpose. A doctor examines a patient not to recite symptoms but to interpret them. For a Grade 1 student, that is exactly the right level of cognitive demand. It signals exploratory, observational learning, not memorization, not yet analysis. It tells you what the classroom should feel like, what the task should ask, and what evidence of learning should look like.

That is the power of a single verb.

We have recently had conversations with education specialists who work directly with Alberta teachers as they unpack the new elementary curriculum. What strikes us both about those conversations is how much time those specialists have to spend on exactly this point. Not on the content of the outcomes. Not on the resources or the units. On the verbs. On helping teachers understand that the verb in the outcome is not decorative language, not a stylistic choice made by a curriculum writer on a Thursday afternoon. It is the signal. It tells you how far you need to go with students, how deep the knowledge needs to be, and what level of thinking the curriculum is actually asking for.

That investment of time is not a criticism of teachers. It reflects something true about how curriculum documents get read in the rush of a school year. Most teachers were never explicitly taught to read an outcome the way a lawyer reads a contract, with close attention to every word and an understanding that the specific language carries specific meaning. We read for the topic, the concept, the subject matter. We ask ourselves: what are students supposed to learn about? The verb, sitting right there at the front of the sentence, often gets absorbed into the background. It becomes invisible precisely because it is so familiar. Examine. Describe. Analyze. Evaluate. We know what those words mean in ordinary conversation. The problem is that in a curriculum outcome, they do not mean what they mean in ordinary conversation. They mean something precise. They mean a level of cognitive demand. And if you miss that, you can teach the right content in the wrong register for the entire unit and never know it.

This close reading of the verb matters for teachers, but it also matters for students. If students only hear the topic, fractions, ecosystems, persuasive writing, historical causes, they may not recognize the thinking action the curriculum is asking them to practise. A student who thinks the task is to “tell what they know” will produce very different evidence than a student who understands that the task is to compare, justify, interpret, or analyze. In this way, verb clarity is not just a planning tool. It is a condition for creating learner agency.

This is what makes verb work feel tedious to some teachers and essential to others. The ones who have done it know that it reorganizes everything. Once you see that describe and analyze are not interchangeable verbs pointing at different degrees of the same task, but genuinely different cognitive operations requiring genuinely different instruction, you cannot unsee it. The curriculum begins to read differently. The outcomes stop being administrative boxes to check and start being design instructions.

There is a practical chain at work here, and it runs in one direction. The verb in the outcome sets the cognitive level. The cognitive level determines the appropriate task or activity. The task or activity generates the evidence. The evidence is what assessment measures. That chain is only as strong as its first link. If you misread the verb, or quietly substitute a lower-level verb in your own planning, the misalignment compounds at every step. You design a task that doesn’t reach the level the outcome requires. You assess the task rather than the outcome. You record results that look like student performance data but are actually measuring something other than what the curriculum intended. The students appear to have met the outcome. They have not. They have met the task you designed, which was aimed at a different cognitive address.

This is not a hypothetical risk. It is what happens in classrooms where the verb is treated as background noise. And it is worth being direct about it, not to assign blame, but because the solution is genuinely simple once the problem is visible: check the verb, then check whether your task actually asks students to perform that verb on the content. Not a lower-level version of it. Not an approximation. The verb itself.

Consider the verb analyze. In the Alberta Professional Learning Consortium’s student action verb glossary, analyze is defined as considering something in detail in order to find meaning and determine relationships, patterns, similarities, differences, and so on. That is different from classify, which asks students to arrange ideas or objects into groups based on attributes. It is different from compare, which asks students to identify similarities and differences. It is different from explain, which asks students to describe the how or why of something. And it is different from assess, which asks students to determine or decide something after consideration. These verbs may be related, and they may even appear within the same learning sequence, but they are not the same learning task.

A student might classify information as part of an analysis. They might compare two examples in order to notice a pattern. They might explain the relationship they found. They might assess which factor mattered most. But none of those actions, on their own, fully equals analysis. Analysis requires students to look closely, break the whole into meaningful parts, determine relationships, and make sense of how those parts work together. When students can see that distinction, they are better positioned to ask themselves: What kind of thinking is this task asking from me? What evidence would show that I have done that thinking? What would make my response stronger? These are the kinds of questions that help students move from completing assignments to monitoring the quality of their own learning.

Now here is where this matters for the broader conversation about curriculum and classroom design, the conversation we are building toward in this series.

We talk a great deal in education about not spoon-feeding students. We invoke critical thinking constantly, as if naming it were the same as teaching it. But if you write your outcomes with low-level verbs and then design activities that match those verbs, you have not failed to teach critical thinking through some mysterious oversight. You have designed it out of your instruction. The verb made it so.

Conversely, and this is the hopeful side, if you are deliberate about the verb, if you consciously reach for analyze or evaluate or create when the curriculum and the age-level demand it, you are not just writing a better outcome. You are structuring the conditions under which deeper learning becomes possible. You are doing what great teachers have always done, which is to hold students to a standard they cannot yet see for themselves.

The assessment question deserves its own moment here, because it is where the verb either pays off or gets quietly abandoned. Designing an assessment that genuinely measures the verb in the outcome requires asking a harder question than most of us are accustomed to asking: not “did students learn the content?” but “did students do what the verb asked them to do with the content?” If the outcome says evaluate, the assessment needs to put students in a position where they are actually making and defending a judgment based on evidence and criteria. A multiple-choice test that asks students to identify the correct answer does not measure evaluation. It measures recognition. Those are not the same cognitive act, and recording recognition data as evaluation data gives you false confidence about where your students actually are.

When we make the verb visible, we give students access to the hidden architecture of the task. They begin to understand that improvement is not simply about adding more detail or writing more neatly or getting the right answer. Improvement depends on matching the evidence to the thinking action. If the task asks students to analyze, then a stronger response is not just longer; it shows relationships. If the task asks students to justify, then a stronger response does not simply state an answer; it uses relevant reasons and evidence. If the task asks students to assess, then a stronger response makes a decision based on criteria. This is where verb clarity becomes learner agency.

That would have been enough. But teaching builds on itself, and the verb framework Vince learned at Brandon University eventually found a natural partner in the education Adelee was receiving at the University of Manitoba. We came to the same conviction by different roads: the verb in the outcome is not decoration, it is architecture. What we still needed was a system for translating that conviction into daily practice. That system arrived about ten years ago, and it changed everything again.

That is the story for Part Three.

Part Three, “From Outcome to Evidence,” explores how to build a learning progression that connects where students are to where the outcome requires them to go.

Vince Hill is the Principal in Alberta, and Adelee Penner, CEO/Owner of Elk Willow Consulting. This is Part Two of a series on learning progressions and outcomes-based curriculum design.

Here’s a sample copy of the Verb List for your Reference, and by no means the exhaustive list:

Alberta Regional Professional Development Consortia. (n.d.). Definitions for student action verbs for Alberta’s K–3 mathematics curriculum. ARPDC. https://arpdc.ab.ca/pd-resource/definitions-for-student-action-verbs-for-albertas-k-3-math-curriculum/

Alberta Professional Learning Consortium. (2023). Glossary for student action verbs: Alberta’s grades 4–6 mathematics curriculum (2022). APLC. https://aplc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Glossary-4-6-Math.pdf

Alberta Professional Learning Consortium. (2023). Glossary for student action verbs: Alberta’s K–6 science curriculum (2023). APLC. https://aplc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Glossary-K-6-SCIENCE-1.pdf

Armstrong, P. (2010). Bloom’s taxonomy (1956). Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/

Here’s a copy of the Verb List for your Reference (by no means an exhaustive list):

If you would like this list in pdf, please submit a comment with an email, follow or subscribe.

Most professional dialogue about outcomes-based assessment happens between educators, in staff rooms, at conferences, and in policy documents written for other policy documents. Parents are discussed. They are rarely part of the discussion.

This Reddit thread was different.

What started as a comment from a reader who finished my article more confused than when they started turned into one of the most precise and honest exchanges about OBA I have encountered outside of academic literature. No credentials were cited. No positions were defended for the sake of defending them. A parent pushed back, asked hard questions, and by the end had articulated the central problem with OBA implementation more clearly than most professional development sessions manage to.

The frustration people feel toward outcomes-based assessment is not confusion about the model. It is a rational response to encountering the language of the model without the architecture that makes it work. That distinction matters enormously, and it took a parent asking honest questions in a Reddit thread to sharpen it.

The conversation is reproduced here with permission.

Reddit User 1: (not sure if a parent)

The longer I read the article the less I knew about what OBA actually is (last week’s OBA article).

Me:

Sorry about that. Let me try to break this down.

Outcomes-based assessment starts with a question most people never think to ask: what is school actually for? The traditional answer, in practice, has been to sort and rank students. Tests, percentages, and letter grades were designed to spread students out on a curve so universities and employers could compare them. The grade told you where your child ranked. It told you almost nothing about what they actually knew or could do.

Outcomes-based assessment starts from a different premise. Before a unit begins, the teacher identifies exactly what a student should be able to understand or do by the end of it. Not “cover Chapter 7,” but something specific: a student should be able to explain how economic decisions affect different groups of people unequally. That’s the outcome. Everything in the unit; the lessons, the discussions, the assignments is designed to get students there.

The assessment then has one job: find out whether the student got there.

This changes what a grade means. Instead of “your child answered 73% of questions correctly,” the feedback becomes “your child can identify economic inequality but is still developing the ability to explain why it happens.” That’s information you can do something with. A percentage tells you your child is a C+ student. An outcome tells you exactly where they are in their learning and what comes next.

The other shift worth understanding is this: in a traditional system, once a test is done, the grade is permanent. In outcomes-based assessment, the question is always whether the student has demonstrated the outcome, and that can happen through multiple opportunities, formats, and evidence. The goal is learning, not a single performance on a single day.

It is not a softer system. The expectations are explicit and the same for every student. What changes is that the evidence of meeting those expectations can look different, and the process doesn’t end when the calendar says it does.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Hope that helps, I appreciate you expressing your concern.

Reddit User 2: (parent)

The shift you’re describing makes sense in principle. Clear outcomes and feedback about what a student can actually do improve on a single percentage without context.

The breakdown happens at the point of communication with families.

Most parents are not operating inside the system. They don’t share a common understanding of what terms like “developing” or “approaching” mean in practice. Without concrete examples tied to real student work, the feedback can feel less clear.

A percentage is blunt and immediately understandable. It provides a quick signal. Descriptive language offers more detail, but often requires interpretation before it becomes actionable.

That creates a gap. The system may become more precise internally while becoming less accessible externally unless something replaces that lost clarity.

In the past, that gap was often bridged through a combination of percentage scores, individualized comments, and direct conversations at parent-teacher conferences. A low score signaled a problem and prompted follow-up. Parents had a clear entry point for action. Terms like “emerging,” “satisfactory,” or “proficient” leave more room for interpretation, and the level of urgency is less obvious.

This does not need to be framed as a choice between two opposing systems. Each carries value. Outcomes-based assessment can improve the quality of feedback, while also raising the standard for how clearly that feedback must be communicated. Without consistent standards, exemplars, and shared understanding, it risks becoming abstract for the people expected to use it.

The issue is not the intent of the shift. The issue is whether the implementation preserves clarity while adding depth, rather than displacing clarity with complexity.

Me:

Thank you for weighing in on this. I want to cite Dylan Wiliam’s research and it is a cornerstone of why I moved away from defending percentage grades.

You are right that percentages feel objective to parents, and I understand why. A number looks precise. The problem is that the precision is largely an illusion. When researchers gave the same student work to multiple teachers and asked them to grade it independently, the scores spread across an 18% range. The same assignment. The same student. Dozens of different numbers. That is not a measurement tool parents can fully trust, even though it feels like one.

There is more. Researcher John Hattie spent years analyzing hundreds of studies on what actually moves student learning forward. Grades on their own ranked surprisingly low. What worked was specific feedback about the work itself. Even more striking, when teachers gave students a grade and written feedback together, students almost always ignored the feedback and focused only on the number. The percentage was actually getting in the way of the information that could help them improve.

Another point is about test-taking skills. A student who is good at cramming can score 85% on a Friday test and retain very little of it by the following Monday. That 85% went home on a report card and told that family their child had learned the material. The grade captured a performance on a specific day under specific conditions. It did not capture learning.

Outcomes-based assessment is trying to ask a different question entirely. Not “how did your child perform on that day?” but “what can your child actually do, and where do they need to grow?” That is harder to communicate, and the responsibility to communicate it clearly falls on teachers and schools. But the percentage was never as reliable a signal as most of us were led to believe.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Reddit User 2: (parent)

Let me first acknowledge the validity of your points, but I think there’s some room for pushback on some points.

Even if the precision is imperfect, the percentage still operates as a shared, low-friction signal. Parents understand it immediately, can place their child somewhere on a broad continuum and decide whether attention is needed. That interpretive efficiency matters, even if the measurement itself has limitations.

Outcomes-based assessment shifts the focus to better questions about learning, I don’t take issue with that shift. The issue I have is that the replacement system removes the signal/indicator before an equally intuitive one is established.

Research showing that students ignore feedback when paired with a grade applies inside the classroom context. Parent interpretation operates differently. Parents are not using the number to refine a piece of work; they are using it to gauge overall standing and determine whether to engage further. Without a clear signal, that initial trigger becomes less reliable.

The variability you describe also carries over into descriptive systems. Terms like “developing” or “proficient” still depend on teacher judgment. If there aren’t tightly aligned standards and widely shared exemplars, the inconsistency remains, but is expressed through jargon filled language instead of numbers.

The distinction between performance and learning is important. Outcomes-based models address that more directly and it’s a good thing in many circumstances. The trade-off however is increased abstraction in how results are communicated. When that abstraction is not anchored to clear, concrete references, interpretation becomes uneven across families.

The core issue is not whether percentages are flawed. That is established. The issue is whether the current implementation of outcomes-based assessment replaces the lost clarity with something equally usable for the people who rely on it outside the classroom.

Edit: a few more thoughts

There is also an expectation of a parent-teacher partnership in supporting student learning.

That partnership depends on shared understanding. A communication shift of this magnitude, introduced with limited input from parents and without a clear, accessible bridge for interpretation, creates a barrier rather than reinforcing collaboration. It places the burden of translation on families without equipping them to carry it.

In its current form, the system does not replace the lost clarity with something equally usable, and it complicates the partnership it depends on.

Me:

First of all, this is great! You are making exactly the points my article was trying to surface, and this exchange is a good example of why the conversation matters.

You are right that the current implementation often fails families. I want to be clear though: that is not an argument against OBA. It is an argument for doing it properly, and doing it properly requires teachers to arrive at the same place through the same process. For me, that meant a colleague who pushed back hard and refused to let me stay comfortable with what I had always done. That kind of professional friction is what actually moves thinking. A one-day PD session where someone presents slides and teachers politely wait it out does not get anyone there.

I’ve heard stories of teachers reverting back and this is predictable, and it is telling. Teachers who were handed a framework without understanding the reasoning behind it did what people do when something feels arbitrary: they complied minimally and eventually went back to what they knew. That is not resistance to OBA. That is resistance to being handed a system without being trusted with the thinking underneath it.

What is happening in this thread is closer to what needs to happen in staffrooms. People are disagreeing, pushing back with evidence, and being forced to refine their positions. That is the process. That is what has to precede implementation for any of it to take root at a level deeper than vocabulary.

The gap between OBA done properly and OBA done at the surface is not a minor one. It is the difference between a staff that genuinely understands assessment philosophy and a staff that learned new words without changing anything underneath them. Your concern about parent clarity belongs in that conversation too, because communication is part of doing it properly, not an afterthought.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Thank you for this!

Reddit User 2: (parent)

That distinction you’re drawing matters more than anything else in this discussion.

What’s being presented publicly does not reflect OBA as it is described in the research. The version reaching classrooms often carries the language and some structural elements, but not the depth of shared understanding needed to hold it together.

That is where the problem compounds. Familiar signals like percentages are removed, but nothing equally coherent or consistently applied replaces them. The result is not just a different system, but one that feels unstable. The issue is not the idea itself, but how incomplete implementation obscures its strengths.

From the outside, this shows up as inconsistency, drifting standards, and what appears to be grade inflation. Parents are responding to what they are actually experiencing. Their concerns reflect the system as it exists in practice, not the model described in theory.

The partnership piece becomes strained in that environment. A partnership depends on shared understanding or at least a clear path to developing it. When the communication model shifts this significantly without bringing families into that understanding or providing clear reference points, the relationship feels less collaborative and more imposed.

The frustration comes from watching something that relies on precision and coherence being introduced without either fully in place. In that condition, the system invites skepticism because the version people encounter does not clearly demonstrate the strengths it is supposed to deliver.

Me:

You have landed on something important, and I think you are right that it is the crux.

Skepticism toward OBA is not irrational. It is a rational response to an irrational rollout. When parents and teachers encounter a system that removed familiar reference points without replacing them with anything equally coherent, their skepticism is not a failure of understanding. It is accurate feedback about what they are actually experiencing.

That is what makes incomplete implementation so damaging. It does not just fail on its own terms. It poisons the well for the model itself. Teachers who tried and did not understand the why, parents who feel the system became less readable, students caught between two frameworks neither of which is fully intact: all of them are responding honestly to a real problem. And every one of those responses becomes an obstacle the next person who tries to implement it properly will have to work against.

The idea is sound. The research behind it is substantial. But an idea only gets judged by what people encounter in practice, and what many people have encountered so far is the language of OBA without the architecture that makes it work.

That is the argument for doing this right, not faster. Precision and coherence are not finishing touches. They are the foundation. Without them, the system does not just underperform. It actively undermines the trust it depends on to function at all.

Thank you to everyone who engaged seriously in this thread. This is the conversation that needs to happen before implementation, not after.

Alberta’s curriculum renewal is not a rumour, a trial, or a distant administrative concern. Elementary schools have already navigated the shift. Junior High is next, with full implementation arriving in stages over the next two years. The new programs of study are built, by design, around outcomes-based assessment. That is not incidental to the renewal. It is the architectural logic of it.

Which means this is the moment. Not the moment to panic, and not the moment to wait and see. This is the moment when Junior High teachers in Alberta have a rare thing: time, institutional permission, and a structural reason to examine how they assess student learning and ask whether the way they have always done it is actually the way they want to keep doing it.

The honest answer, for most teachers, is complicated.

The System We Inherited

Not because they are resistant to good ideas. Not because they are lazy or set in their ways. But because the system that trained them, hired them, and surrounded them every day was built on a different logic, one that runs so deep most of us stopped noticing it was a choice.

Most teachers working in Alberta schools today learned to teach inside a system where assessment meant something very specific: assign work, collect it, mark it against a percentage scale, record the grade, move on. The grade was the product. It told students where they stood relative to a standard, relative to each other, and relative to a pass/fail line drawn somewhere around fifty percent.

That system had internal coherence. It was legible to parents, reportable to administrators, and familiar enough that nobody had to explain it. Teachers became skilled at it. They developed marking schemes they trusted, rubrics refined over years, assessment calendars calibrated to cover the curriculum before June. There is real professional craft embedded in that work, and it would be a mistake to dismiss it.

But it was a system built around a different question than the one outcomes-based assessment asks.

Traditional grading asks: how did this student perform on this task? Outcomes-based assessment asks: what can this student actually do, and what is the evidence? Those sound similar. They are not. The first question points at a moment in time. The second points at a progression. The first produces a record of performance. The second produces a picture of learning.

Outcomes-based assessment asks teachers to unlearn something before they can learn something new. That is genuinely hard, and it deserves to be said plainly before any toolkit or framework is offered. So let’s name the specific places where that difficulty lives.

Where Good Teachers Get Stuck

The first place is the most common and the least visible. A teacher hears “outcomes-based assessment,” attaches outcome numbers to the tasks they were already assigning, and considers the job done. The gradebook looks different. The practice does not. This is not dishonesty. It is a predictable response to change that arrives as a labelling exercise rather than a pedagogical shift. When OBA is introduced as a reporting format rather than a fundamentally different way of thinking about evidence, teachers adapt their paperwork and leave their practice intact. The research is consistent: many teachers who formally adopt standards-based systems continue to factor in effort, completion, and behaviour, because the underlying logic of the old system was never examined. It was only renamed.

The second place is the fear of wholesale demolition. Teachers hear “outcomes-based” and imagine they have to throw out everything they have built and start over before September. That is not what OBA asks. It asks teachers to look at what they already do and ask which outcome each task actually generates evidence for, and whether the evidence it generates matches what the outcome is demanding. Most of what good teachers already do has direct value in an outcomes-based framework. It just needs to be looked at through a different lens. That lens is the subject of Part Two.

The third place is the one every teacher recognizes in their gut: the coverage-versus-mastery collision. The pacing guide says move forward. A third of the class hasn’t consolidated the foundational concept. The bell rings anyway. Outcomes-based assessment does not create this problem. It surfaces it. The tension was always there, absorbed quietly into the grading system as a low mark rather than a pedagogical signal. A 45% was the system’s way of recording that a student had not mastered the material and then moving everyone along together regardless. OBA makes that quiet failure visible and asks what happens next. That question is harder to sit with than a number in a gradebook, but it is the right question. Part Three deals with it directly.

The fourth place is not a misconception. It is frequently accurate. Teachers do not have time. They are already managing instruction, relationships, reporting, supervision, intervention, and administration. Asking them to fundamentally rethink their assessment practice on top of all of that, without protected planning time or structural support, is a recipe for surface-level compliance rather than genuine shift. The Alberta curriculum renewal creates an obligation for school and system leaders here. If the curriculum is outcome-based by design, the professional development, the collaborative structures, and the time to do this thinking have to follow. Teachers who say they don’t have time are often right. The answer is not to work faster.

The fifth place runs deepest, especially among secondary teachers who have spent careers defending the rigour of their marking. The percentage grade feels scientific. Proficiency levels feel like opinion. The irony is that OBA, done properly, is more explicit about criteria than traditional grading, not less. A well-constructed proficiency scale describes exactly what evidence is required at each level. A percentage grade, by contrast, is frequently a composite of achievement, effort, completion, and behaviour blended together in ways that are rarely transparent and often inconsistent between teachers. What OBA threatens is not objectivity. It is familiarity. That distinction matters, because teachers who believe they are defending rigour are actually defending a system whose rigour is far less defensible than it appears.

The sixth place is practical and real: students and parents push back. Students have built strategic behaviours around the traditional system, calculating minimum effort for a passing average, banking marks from easy tasks to offset harder ones. OBA disrupts those strategies. Parents have their own deeply held mental models of what a grade means, and “proficiency level” is not part of that model. The solution is transparency and communication, not retreat. When students and parents understand what a proficiency descriptor actually means, what it looks like in practice and why it gives a more accurate picture of learning than a percentage average, most of the resistance resolves. It is not a reason to abandon an approach that serves learners better.

The Renewal as Permission Slip

There is something unusual about the position Alberta Junior High teachers are in right now, and it is worth naming directly.

Most teachers who want to move toward outcomes-based practice do it against the current of a system still built around the old logic. Their report cards want percentages. Their gradebook software wants numbers. Their department head asks how the class average compares to last year. They can believe in OBA as a philosophy and still find the practical infrastructure of their school working against them at every turn.

The Alberta curriculum renewal shifts that current. It does not remove every obstacle. The gradebook software will still want numbers, and parent communication will still take work. But it changes the institutional landscape in a fundamental way: the curriculum itself is now outcome-based by design. The new programs of study are built around learning outcomes with specific cognitive demands embedded in them. That is not a framework being imposed over the curriculum. It is the curriculum.

For the first time in most Alberta Junior High teachers’ careers, moving toward outcomes-based assessment is not a personal professional project undertaken in isolation. It is the expected direction of travel. The teachers who engage with that conversation now, before the implementation pressure arrives, will lead their schools through the transition. Elementary teachers in Alberta have already been through this. The practical wisdom, what helped, what got in the way, what teachers wish they had understood earlier, is sitting in the professional networks around every Junior High school in this province. This is not a leap into the unknown.

The Question That Changes Everything

All six of the barriers above have a common root.

They are not really about workload, or parent pushback, or gradebook software. They are about a question that the traditional system never asked teachers to answer cleanly: what does this outcome actually ask students to be able to do, and what would count as evidence that they can do it?

That question is deceptively simple. Most teachers, confronted with it for the first time in relation to a specific outcome, find it harder to answer than they expected. Not because they are poor teachers, but because the traditional system never required them to answer it. It required them to cover content, assign tasks, and record scores.

In outcomes-based assessment, that question is primary. Everything else follows from how clearly a teacher can answer it.

The answer lives in the verb.

Every Alberta learning outcome contains a verb that specifies the cognitive demand being made of the student. That verb is not decorative. It is the technical specification of what assessment evidence has to demonstrate. A student who can recall information has not met an outcome that asks them to evaluate. A task that asks students to list has not generated evidence for an outcome that demands analysis. The verb is the key, and most teachers, through no fault of their own, have never been taught to read it.

Part Two of this series is about that verb, and what happens when teachers learn to take it seriously.

It would be easy to write a piece about OBA that moves quickly past the difficulty to get to the solutions. Frameworks are more comfortable than friction. Toolkits feel productive. Professional development tends to live in the solution space because the problem space is harder to sit with.

But teachers who have tried to implement OBA without understanding why it is hard will recognize what follows: the good intentions, the early effort, the gradual drift back to what was familiar. Not because the approach was wrong, but because the underlying beliefs about what grades mean, about what assessment is for, about professional identity and institutional pressure, were never surfaced and examined.

The Alberta curriculum renewal is, genuinely, the best structural opportunity most Junior High teachers in this province will ever have to make the shift they have probably always suspected needed to be made.

The barriers are real. The resistance is rational. And the moment is now.

Part Two — “The Verb That Changes Everything” — examines how to read a learning outcome, why the cognitive demand embedded in its verb determines everything about valid assessment, and what Bloom’s Taxonomy actually means for daily classroom practice.

Vince Hill is a school principal and educator with over 35 years of classroom and leadership experience in Alberta. Parts Two and Three are co-authored with Adelee Penner, former Regional Education Manager with Alberta Education and now Education Consultant.

There is a phrase that has been making the rounds in Alberta education circles lately, and Minister Demetrios Nicolaides seems genuinely fond of it. He said it at the press conference when he tabled Bill 25. He says it in interviews. He will probably have it embroidered on a throw pillow by summer. “Schools should teach students how to think, not what to think.” (The Globe and Mail)

Hard to argue with that. It sounds reasonable, balanced, and frankly, like something most teachers have been trying to do since the beginning of their careers. The problem is that Nicolaides appears to believe these are two separate and opposing things, and that teachers are generally doing the second one while pretending to do the first.

Bill 25, formally titled the Act to Remove Politics and Ideology from Classrooms, was tabled at the end of March 2026. It would require teachers and school boards to be “neutral” and “impartial” when delivering lessons and crafting the school environment. (CBC News) It would ban most flags in schools. It would give the minister more veto power over school board decisions. And it emerges, perhaps not coincidentally, while the government faces other rather pressing scrutiny it would prefer not to discuss. But that is a different article which I shared last Wednesday.

This article is about what the legislation implies about teachers, what it will do to classrooms, and why the government’s argument falls apart the moment you push on it even lightly.

The Assumption Behind the Bill

When Nicolaides was asked directly whether there should be limits on neutrality, whether, for example, slavery should be presented as a balanced “both sides” debate, he repeated that educators should stay free of bias at all times. (The Globe and Mail) Both sides. Always. Free from any personal opinion. That is not a pedagogy. That is a hostage negotiation.

The implicit assumption driving this bill is that teachers are entering classrooms with agendas. That they are, in some coordinated and deliberate way, steering young minds toward particular political or social conclusions. The subtext, when you listen to how these conversations inevitably drift, tends to land on LGBTQ issues, pronouns, gender identity. The government has been on this particular trail for a while now. In 2024, it amended the Education Act to require parents to opt in before students under 16 were taught about gender identity, sexual orientation, or human sexuality. (The Globe and Mail) Bill 25 continues in that spirit, with broader reach and sharper teeth.

So let us be honest about what is actually being suggested here. It is not that teachers are running ideological boot camps. It is that some parents are uncomfortable with the idea that a child might encounter a perspective at school that differs from what they have been told at home. And rather than trust that children can hear different ideas and survive the experience, the government has decided the solution is legislation.

What Teachers Actually Do

I have been in classrooms for over thirty years, and I can say with some confidence that the average teacher is not sitting at home each night plotting which students to convert to which cause. Most of us are trying to figure out how to get a room full of adolescents to engage with anything at all.

What teachers actually do, the good ones, anyway, is challenge students to examine the assumptions behind their own beliefs. That is not ideology. That is the entire point of education.

I have had students repeat things in class that were offensive, dismissive, or factually incorrect, things clearly absorbed at home and carried in like a borrowed coat that did not quite fit. My job in those moments was not to shame them, not to validate the opinion, and not to offer my own competing version. My job was to ask the question that made them think about why they believed what they believed. Where did that idea come from? What evidence supports it? What would someone who disagrees say, and how would you respond to that?

That is called critical thinking. It is also called the Socratic method. It has been around for roughly 2,400 years and has, to date, not been identified as a form of grooming.

I was that student once. I said things in my teens that I now recognize as ignorant, recycled opinions from adults in my life delivered with the full confidence of someone who had never actually thought the matter through. I was lucky enough to be challenged by teachers and peers who pushed back without attacking me personally. That discomfort changed me. Not because someone told me what to think. Because someone made me actually think.

The Chilling Effect Nobody Is Talking About

Here is what concerns me most about Bill 25. It is not the stated intention. It is the consequence.

Nicolaides pointed to a January incident where someone surreptitiously recorded a teacher at a Fort Saskatchewan school making disparaging remarks about conservative culture, and Premier Smith shared the recording on social media. (CBC News) That teacher made a mistake. Fair enough. But consider the current climate for a moment. Teachers across the country have been openly discussing Donald Trump's trade war, Canada's sovereignty, and what "Elbows Up" actually means as a national response. Those are not fringe conversations happening in dark corners. They are happening at kitchen tables, in hockey arenas, and yes, in classrooms, because they are relevant, real, and exactly the kind of current events a social studies teacher is supposed to engage with. But under the logic of Bill 25, a teacher who frames that discussion with any detectable lean risks the same fate as the Fort Saskatchewan teacher. One parent, one phone, one Premier's retweet. The response to one teacher's poor judgment in one classroom has become legislation that effectively tells every teacher in Alberta to watch their backs.

Teachers are already pulling back. They are already self-censoring, second-guessing, and wondering whether a discussion about current events, a novel with difficult themes, or a debate exercise around a contentious social question is going to result in a parent complaint, a recorded conversation on a student's phone, and a share from the Premier's account. That chilling effect is real, and no policy document about neutrality fixes it. And lest we forget, this is the same government that dismantled the Alberta Teachers' Association's self-governing authority and created the Alberta Teaching Profession Commission, a body that exists specifically to receive formal complaints of unprofessional conduct against teachers. The infrastructure for reporting teachers was already built and waiting. Bill 25 is simply the legislation that gives more people a reason to use it. Teachers are not paranoid for feeling exposed. They are reading the room accurately.

The legislation creates a world where the teacher who challenges a student’s casual dismissal of another person’s dignity has to worry that it will be characterized as ideology. The bill would encourage students to express diverse views while requiring teachers to support them in doing so (Global News), which sounds fine until you realize that “diverse views” apparently includes views that a classmate is less deserving of dignity based on how they live. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms still exists. So does basic human decency. A teacher who reminds a classroom of that is not spreading ideology. They are doing their job.

The Irony the Minister Does Not Seem to Notice

In 2024, Nicolaides published a ministerial order requiring students to know the global significance of Alberta’s vast oil reserves and Alberta’s reputation as the most ethical producer of oil in the world. (The Globe and Mail) That is a political and ideological position dressed in the language of fact. It is in the curriculum. Mandated. But a Pride flag in a classroom window is where the line gets drawn.

The goal here is not neutrality. Neutral classrooms do not exist, and anyone who has spent twenty minutes in one knows it. The teacher’s tone, the examples they choose, the questions they ask, the authors on the reading list, the historical figures who get a paragraph versus a chapter, all of it carries weight. Bias does not announce itself at the door. It is woven into every pedagogical choice, including the choice to remain silent.

The real question is not whether ideology enters the classroom. It always has and always will. The question is whether we trust teachers to navigate that reality with professionalism, or whether we legislate them into paralysis and call it neutrality.

Most teachers I know are trying to raise the next generation of people who can think critically, tolerate disagreement, and form opinions based on evidence rather than inheritance. That is not an agenda. That is a vocation.

And it turns out it is also exactly what Demetrios Nicolaides says he wants. He just seems to think teachers are the obstacle rather than the means. Then again, I have spent this entire article questioning assumptions, examining evidence, presenting competing perspectives, and arriving at a reasoned conclusion. So I have to ask: did I just slip into ideology, or did I just demonstrate exactly what critical thinking looks like? I will let you decide. That is, after all, the point.

Picture a Grade 10 classroom in rural Alberta, where a student raises her hand and asks, “But how do we know that’s true?” Not with a sneer, not with folded arms, but with genuine intensity. That kind of intensity stops everyone else mid-breath. That moment sticks with me because it echoes something ancient: Socrates wandering the Athenian marketplace, prodding citizens with questions that didn’t just seek answers, but dismantled assumptions. He didn’t invent questioning, but he perfected it as a method. That method is now called the Socratic method. It turns dialogue into a mirror for the mind.

Rewind back to my own university days at Providence College, where eight of us crammed into Dr. Hiebert’s office for philosophy class. There we sat, pinned under his masterful Socratic grilling. Questions fired like precision-guided arrows, exposing gaps in our logic we didn’t know existed. We’d argue, stumble, rethink, and suddenly see layers of thought we never imagined possible. It wasn’t punishment. It was exhilarating mental mountaineering, pushing us to heights that felt impossible until we summited. Somewhere between those moments and today’s classrooms, we’ve lost much of that craft, replacing it with a culture that often treats questions as either polite filler or weapons for social media clips.

The tragedy isn’t that students stopped asking questions. It’s that we stopped teaching them how to ask well. In an era of loaded questions. Those are sneaky traps that smuggle in accusations while wearing an innocent question mark. We risk raising a generation jaded by discourse that prioritizes gotchas over genuine inquiry. A question from curiosity opens doors: “What if we tried this?” A question from doubt tests foundations: “What holds up if we push here?” Socrates mastered both, using doubt not to demolish egos, but to birth clearer thinking. Dr. Hiebert revived that same fire. Schools could do worse than emulate them.

Curiosity-based questioning is the easier sell. It sparkles with wonder, the thrill of a kid dismantling a toy just to see the gears. “How does this work?” it asks. “What happens next?” Teachers love it because it fuels engagement, turning passive listeners into explorers. But left unchecked, curiosity without skepticism becomes a playground for shiny half-truths. Enter doubt: the stern uncle who insists on receipts. “Does this evidence actually support the claim?” it demands. In science, research, and honest debate, doubt isn’t cynicism. It’s rigor. Socrates didn’t feign wide-eyed innocence. He wielded doubt like a surgeon’s scalpel, exposing contradictions until truth emerged, bloodied but intact. Dr. Hiebert did the same, turning our fumbling defenses into unexpected breakthroughs.

Yet media has tainted doubt’s reputation. Watch any cable news panel, and you’ll see questions engineered for viral clips: “Why do you hate freedom?” they imply, without saying it outright. These loaded questions force false choices, assuming guilt before the answer lands. No wonder people flinch at inquiry now. They’ve been conditioned to hear attack in every “why.” It’s said “why” questions breed defensiveness, implying judgment. Fair point sometimes: a barked “Why did you do that?” sounds like a parental inquisition. But wielded Socratically, “why” digs deeper: “Why this conclusion from those facts?” The word isn’t the villain. The intent is.

Debate clubs, once staples in schools like mine back in the day, understood this balance. They weren’t just shouting matches. They trained students to research claims, anticipate rebuttals, and challenge respectfully. You’d define terms, cite evidence, then probe: “What assumption underpins that?” No ad hominem cheap shots. Just structured doubt honing arguments like a whetstone. We’ve let those clubs fade, but their skeleton could revive questioning instruction. Pair it with the journalist’s 5 Ws and 1 H. Who, what, when, where, why, how. Students get a toolkit: start broad with curiosity (”What happened?”), narrow with doubt (”How do we verify it?”).

Psychologists offer another model: reframing. A client says, “I failed again.” The therapist echoes, “What makes this feel like failure?” It grabs the statement, flips it into a question, and invites depth without judgment. Classrooms could steal that move. Instead of shutting down a shaky student claim with “That’s wrong,” try: “What led you there?” It models Socratic humility. We all build on sand sometimes. While testing veracity politely. Students learn challenge needn’t mean combat.

But technique alone flops without culture. Do we teach curiosity as a script, or foster rooms where it’s safe to admit ignorance? Curiosity thrives when wrong answers don’t scar, when teachers admit gaps (”Great question. Let’s find out”), and when doubt is celebrated as growth, not disruption. I’ve seen it: the student who risks “But is that true?” because the class values truth over comfort. Doubt, meanwhile, sharpens when channeled constructively. Away from snark, toward evidence. It generates seriousness, focus, the quiet thrill of demolition that precedes reconstruction. Dr. Hiebert’s office proved that: exhaustion gave way to electric clarity.

Socrates faced pushback too. His questions irked the powerful, earning hemlock. Today, our poison is subtler: algorithms rewarding outrage over reflection. Students absorb that, mirroring loaded questions in class debates or group work. “Why would anyone believe that nonsense?” they snipe, echoing pundits. We must counter with deliberate practice: role-play Socratic dialogues, dissect news clips for hidden premises, practice reframing barbs into probes. Teach them a good question either widens horizons (curiosity) or stress-tests bridges (doubt). Bad ones just burn the village.

Imagine debate clubs reborn, not as elite squads but everyday tools. Weekly sessions: one team defends a claim, the other deploys respectful doubt. “What evidence? Counterexamples?” Peers scoring on civility and logic. Add Socratic circles: students in the middle, questioning a text’s assumptions while the rim listens. Weave in 5 Ws for structure, psychological reframing for empathy. The result? Kids who question veracity without venom, who spot loaded traps and dismantle them calmly: “That assumes X. Let’s unpack that.”

This isn’t fluffy pedagogy. In a post-truth scrum, students need armor: curiosity for discovery, doubt for discernment. Socrates knew questioning wasn’t rebellion. It was citizenship. Galileo doubted heliocentrism’s opponents with data, not disdain. Darwin questioned origins with relentless observation. They paired wonder with skepticism, birthing progress. Dr. Hiebert showed me that eight sweaty philosophy students could scale those same peaks.

We owe students that duality. Curiosity ignites love of learning; doubt forges wisdom. Together, Socratically deployed, they produce thinkers who navigate nonsense without becoming it. In classrooms from rural Alberta to Athens to cramped college offices, that’s the real method worth reviving. Not just asking questions, but asking them well. Because in a world of noise, the sharpest minds are the ones that know how to listen to silence between the words.

Interested in the Socratic Method steps? Here they are:

• Clarify your thinking and explain the origins of your ideas -“Why do you say that?” or “What exactly do you mean by this?”

• Challenge assumptions embedded in the claim - “What are you assuming instead?”

• Look for evidence supporting or contradicting the idea - “Do you have an example?”

• Explore alternative viewpoints and perspectives - “What is an alternative perspective?”

• Examine the implications and consequences of the position - “What would be the implications of that?”

Want to explore the Socratic method further? Check out these resources:

• Smarter Thinking: The Socratic Method

• Socratic Questions for Leading Effective Discussions

Sometimes I wonder when “the customer is always right” quietly mutated into “I can say whatever I want, whenever I want, to whomever I want.” The shift wasn’t an earthquake, it was more like a slow seep through the cracks of decency, lubricated by Wi‑Fi and a comment box.

Once upon a time, when teachers said something, it was at least considered before being questioned. You could disagree, sure, but most parents didn’t jump straight to the online firing squad. Now, Facebook has become the new town square, minus the accountability of having to look anyone in the eye.

The Covid Effect (and a Dash of Keyboard Courage)

I’ve spoken to colleagues across the province, teachers, nurses, restaurant managers, even town clerks, and almost everyone has noticed the same thing. The pandemic changed us, isolation bottled up frustration, and when the cork came off, it sprayed everywhere.

People grew loud behind their keyboards. The pause that used to come before saying something cutting got replaced by the “Post” button, and once you realize you can call someone names online and still sleep soundly, well, why stop there? Next thing you know, you’re berating a nurse, swearing at the city clerk, and screaming into the social media void about your child’s school without an ounce of verified information.

When Opinion Became Gospel

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen truth take a back seat to belief. A parent hears a sliver of gossip about a teacher, runs with it, and before long a whole community is convinced something sinister is happening in Grade 8 homeroom. It’s remarkable how a “friend of a friend on Facebook” has somehow replaced firsthand inquiry and critical thinking.

We’ve entered a cultural moment where emotion now carries more weight than evidence, and opinions, no matter how ill‑informed, get treated as gospel truth. Outrage has become both hobby and identity.

When Entitlement Took the Mic

It’s not only that opinions have grown louder, it’s that many of us now feel entitled to have those opinions treated as truth. The attitude seems to be, “I feel it, therefore you must honour it, validate it, and rearrange your policies around it.”

You see it when a parent storms into a school demanding immediate action based on a screenshot, a half‑heard hallway story, or a Facebook thread. You see it when someone calls a teacher, nurse, or waitress a liar, not because they have evidence, but because the outcome didn’t match what they believed they deserved.

Social media has supercharged this mindset. When every account is a personal broadcasting station, it’s easy to start believing that having a platform automatically means having authority.

The tragedy is that this entitlement doesn’t just erode trust in institutions, it erodes our own credibility. The more we insist that our feelings alone should carry the day, the less willing we are to do the hard work of listening, checking facts, and accepting that sometimes we might be wrong.

The New Rules of Respect

But here’s the irony, while everyone is demanding “respect,” more of us are acting like we’re entitled to it without offering any in return. We want deference without evidence, apologies without accountability, and change without conversation.

What if respect stopped being conditional? What if it wasn’t a currency we traded for loyalty points, but a default setting, something we offered as proof that we’re the adults in the room?

A Modest Proposal

• Pause before posting. Would you still say it if your name, and your child’s name, were attached to it permanently? Because they are.

• Ask before assuming. Sometimes a ten‑minute chat beats a ten‑paragraph rant.

• Model the tone you want kids to copy. They’re learning more from how we talk about people than what we tell them about kindness.

• Call in, not out. If someone gets heated, pull them aside rather than piling on, grace in private repairs far more than scorn in public.

• Remember that disagreement isn’t disrespect. Debate sharpens ideas, derision dulls minds.

Reclaiming Civility: The Quiet Revolution Starts Here

Maybe what we need now isn’t another rally, another rant, or another viral post, it might just be a return to the simple tests that once kept us human.

Before we speak, post, or press send, take the Mirror Test: would we be proud to hear our words coming from our child? If not, maybe it’s best left unsaid.

And when conflict does arise, maybe we bring back the Kitchen‑Table Rule. Picture the conversation as though everyone’s sitting down to supper, you can disagree, sure, but you still have to pass the potatoes with a smile.

That’s where real change begins, not in outrage, but in restraint, not in entitlement to be heard at any cost, but in willingness to earn trust with how we speak, not just what we say, not in louder voices, but in quieter hearts willing to listen first.

The revolution worth joining isn’t the one that tears down others, it’s the one that rebuilds grace, one conversation, one classroom, and one Facebook thread at a time.

The Invisible Wound

There is a particular kind of childhood wound that leaves no visible scar. No bruise, no broken bone, nothing a doctor can photograph or a teacher can point to. Yet it shapes everything, how a person sees themselves, how they relate to others, whether they believe they are worthy of love, and whether they can even name what they feel. Psychologist Dr. Jonice Webb calls it Childhood Emotional Neglect, and her landmark book Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect was the first book written expressly to name this invisible force.

Webb defines Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN) not by what happened to a child, but by what did not happen, the consistent failure of parents or caregivers to notice, validate, and respond to a child’s emotions. That absence becomes the invisible weight adults carry through life, sapping their joy, leaving them feeling disconnected and unfulfilled, and making them feel, as her title captures it, like they are running on empty.

What It Looks Like in Adults

The grown child who experienced Childhood Emotional Neglect does not always know they carry it. They may not be able to identify a single traumatic event. In fact, many high functioning people carry it in plain sight beneath a polished exterior. Common struggles that emotionally neglected children carry into adulthood include:

• Emotional numbness and difficulty connecting to or expressing feelings

• A persistent, gnawing sense of not being good enough, even in the face of achievement

• Fear of intimacy and avoidance of closeness, because emotional vulnerability was never modelled as safe

• Difficulty trusting others and expecting disappointment or abandonment

• Depression, anxiety, and substance abuse as numbing strategies for a pain that was never given words

• Struggles with self discipline and boundaries, placing everyone else’s needs first

The grown child might say, “Nothing really happened to me,” and yet walk through the world with an unshakable feeling of emptiness, shame, or disconnection. The wound is not dramatic, but it is deep.

The Generational Chain

Here is the part that makes this conversation urgent for every educator. Most parents who emotionally neglect their children do not do so out of cruelty. They do it because they were never given what they needed either. Emotional neglect is often a generational pattern, passed down unintentionally, not malice, but a gap, quietly inherited.

A parent who grew up in a home where feelings were never named, never modelled, never acknowledged, simply has no emotional language to pass on. They may have loved their children fiercely. They may have provided food, shelter, and safety. But the emotional vocabulary, the ability to say “I see that you’re hurting,” “It’s okay to be angry,” “Let’s talk about what you’re feeling,” was never placed in their hands, so they could not place it in their children’s. And those children grow up and have children of their own.

To illustrate this point, in a recent conversation with a colleague about this book, they had this to say:

“I was born into a family with siblings close in age. My dad worked two jobs, and when he came home, he still had the farm to tend to. My mom worked too, and my grandmother lived with us to look after us while my parents were away. On paper, it probably looked like we were being cared for. My grandmother had been raised by an alcoholic mother, who herself had been raised by the Grey Nuns. Her upbringing was passed on by her stern voice and the sense that she was happiest when we were quiet or outside. There was no warmth in her, no tenderness, no sense that we were truly being seen.

By the time my parents got home, it was usually time for bed. My dad was kind when he was around, and I do remember him playing with us, but I rarely saw him because of how hard he worked. My mom was overwhelmed in her own way. I do not remember her sitting on the floor with us, playing, engaging, or entering our little world. Later, when my grandmother became sick, my mom became her caregiver. Whatever possibility there may once have been for attention or connection disappeared entirely. When my grandmother eventually died, my mom fell into a depression, and any emotional space that might have opened for us never really did.

What I carried out of childhood was the deep belief that I was not worth anyone’s time. I learned to go numb, because numbness felt safer. If I did not feel, then nothing could hurt me. Looking back now as an adult, I think of that little girl and realize how deeply sad and pushed aside she really was. In many ways, I feel my grandmother stole my childhood. Everything revolved around her. I have often felt my grandmother resented me most.

That pattern followed me into adulthood. I entered a marriage I did not want and tried to leave, but my voice was not heard. It did not matter. It has been that way for more than thirty years. Only now am I beginning to understand that I was never given the emotional vocabulary to express what I feel. The anxiety I live with now is fuelled by that very gap, not having the words to speak up for myself. Most of my life, what I have known best is anxiety, or numbness when I shut everything down. I let people steamroll over me all the time, because I do not know how to name what I feel or how to ask for what I need without prompting and help.” Name withheld

A Personal Word

This is where my story intersects with this topic giving me insights into the reaches of this pattern, and I also know something about being one of the lucky ones.

Unlike my colleague, I did not grow up without the language of emotion. My mother was my voice of reason, my stabilizing force. She gave me words. But my father grew up in an alcoholic home shadowed by violence. He came into my life without the alcohol, but also without the tools to regulate his own feelings, because his feelings had never been acknowledged. His childhood had taught him to go numb, to go hard, to survive.

Over the years, my father softened. He worked through his own history, and today he and I share a relationship I am deeply grateful for. I hold both of my parents with love. But I know, too, that not everyone is so lucky. Many children sitting in our classrooms today are not.

It was in my twenties when a book cracked something open for me, The Dangers of Growing Up in a Christian Home by Donald Sloat. I read it twice and bought copies to give away to friends who had grown up in the same tight world of legalism and religious fear. The author named something I had lived but never articulated, growing up in a system of guilt and shame, always aware of a watching God, always bracing for judgment.

What struck me most was this. The author observed that how you saw your earthly father was how you would see God as Judge, and how you saw your mother was how you would see God as Grace. I could so relate to this. I could not feel God as love. That single insight, followed by John Bradshaw’s work on the inner child, by the long, honest work of forgiving my father, eventually brought me to a place I had never imagined reaching, the radical, transformative realization that I was a person God and others could even like.

I share this because it matters to the conversation. For many of us raised in religious homes, and for many of the families whose children are in our classrooms, faith and emotional neglect are deeply intertwined. The theology of shame, the God who watches and judges, the silence that is holy and the feelings that are sinful, these shape children in ways that linger long past Sunday school. You cannot separate the emotional story from the spiritual one.

What We See in Our Classrooms

Look around your classroom. Every child in that room comes from a home you will never fully know, because as any of us who wore our own childhood masks can attest, we learned young how to pretend everything was fine. We smiled. We performed. We got on with it.

But increasingly, I am encountering something different. Students who are not performing “fine.” Students who cannot explain how they feel, not because they are being evasive, but because they genuinely do not have words. Students who appear numb. Apathetic. Disconnected not just from learning but from themselves. This is childhood emotional neglect made visible in a classroom, the emotional vocabulary was never built, and so the shelf sits empty.

We know too that teachers themselves carry their own histories. The teachers and teacher assistants who most need to provide emotional language for their students may themselves be operating from homes, and pasts, just like the colleague who shared earlier, where that language was also withheld. Many of these individuals are trying to pour from cups that were never filled.

Our Responsibility, and Its Limits

We cannot fix what happened before a child walked through our door. But we can do something profoundly important. We can provide the language.

When a child cannot name what they feel, we name it for them, gently, without pressure, without shame. “It looks like you might be feeling frustrated right now. Is that close?” When conflict erupts, we do not just manage the behaviour, we narrate the emotion underneath it. We model that feelings are information, not weakness. We build emotional vocabulary into our daily classroom culture the way we build literacy, word by word, moment by moment, year by year.

Jonice Webb’s hope in Running on Empty is precisely this, that people would have the words to talk about emotional neglect, so they can see it in themselves and others and ensure they do not unwittingly pass it down to their own children. That is our work as teachers. We are the interruption in the chain.

Is What We Are Doing Enough?

I recognize we have social emotional learning programs in our schools. We teach mindfulness. We post feelings charts in primary classrooms. These are good things, maybe even great. But emotional literacy cannot be an optional add on or a box we check once a week. It must be treated as a core developmental right, as foundational as literacy and numeracy.

When a child cannot read, we do not blame the child. We build a system of support around them, we assess their needs, we meet them where they are. A child who cannot name their emotions is in the same position. The missing skill is just harder to see, because, as Jonice Webb so precisely understood, it is defined by what is absent, not what is present.

The child running on empty in your classroom today is not broken. They are simply waiting for someone to hand them the words.

Looking Ahead, A Web App for Emotional Language

As part of this work, I am also creating a simple web app for students and adults to use freely. Its purpose is to help users identify what they are feeling, learn clear definitions for a wide range of emotions, and practice putting those feelings into words through sample phrases.

My hope is that it will serve as a small, accessible tool that anyone can pull up on a phone, tablet, or computer, whether in a classroom, at home, or in a counselling office. If we are serious about breaking generational patterns of emotional neglect, then we need practical tools that help people find the right words in real time, not only good intentions. (When I have it completed and working properly, I will share the link for you to use and share.)

A Resource for the Journey, Running on Empty

If anything in this reflection resonates with you, as an adult, as an educator, or both, I cannot recommend Jonice Webb’s Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect strongly enough. Webb gives language to what many of us have felt but never named and offers practical exercises for beginning to reconnect with our own emotions and stories.

Her work is especially powerful for teachers and caregivers who suspect that their own emotional neglect history may be shaping how they show up in the classroom. The more we understand our own emptiness, the more intentionally we can respond to the emptiness our students carry.

You can learn more about Jonice Webb, her books, and additional resources, including an emotional neglect questionnaire and articles, on her website: drjonicewebb.com. It is a helpful starting point for anyone who wants to go deeper into understanding Childhood Emotional Neglect and, importantly, how to break its generational hold.

Last week in Part 2, we named why questions now feel dangerous. This part is about what we can do next. I think of a conversation I had recently with a colleague. We disagreed on a charged issue. In another setting, it could have turned into a debate or quiet avoidance. Instead, something different happened.

I took a breath and said, “Could you help me understand how you came to see it that way? Only if you’re comfortable sharing.” The invitation was open, not pressured. They paused, then began to tell a story from their childhood, a personal loss that shaped their view. I listened, really listened, without preparing a rebuttal. At the end, I said, “Thank you for trusting me with that.”

The disagreement did not vanish, but the distance between us did. The question had opened a door, not to winning or losing, but to knowing and being known. That is the kind of questioning we need more of.

When Questions Go Wrong in the Classroom

I see the opposite dynamic play out too often in schools. There was a teacher at my school, socially awkward to begin with, who thought they were drawing students out with what they believed were positive questions. “Tell us, Sarah, why do you think that?” they’d ask in front of the whole class. In their mind, it was encouragement. To Sarah and her peers, it felt like being singled out, exposed, embarrassed. Shoulders hunched, eyes dropped, and a piece of her curiosity shut down. Questions meant to spark learning instead created silence.

I’ve watched teachers in staff meetings too. A young teacher raises a hand with a genuine question about a new policy: “Can someone explain how this helps with our smaller classes?” Before the words settle, the room tenses. Someone deflects with jargon, another chuckles nervously. The question dies, and so does the chance for real clarity. These moments teach us all that digging deeper carries a cost.

Principles for Questions That Invite, Not Invade

If we want to restore curiosity and connection, we need to change how we approach questions. Here are some guiding principles I am learning to practice:

• Ask to understand, not to win.
  Before asking, check your motive. Are you gathering ammunition, proving someone wrong, or confirming what you already believe? Or are you truly open to being changed by what you hear? Questions asked to validate our own assumptions rarely feel safe. Questions asked with a willingness to be surprised do.

• Signal consent and care.
  Instead of launching into a sensitive question, acknowledge that it might be personal. Phrases like “If you’re comfortable sharing” or “You don’t have to answer this if it’s too personal” give the other person agency. The freedom to decline is part of what makes a question feel safe.

• Listen more deeply than you speak.
  How we receive an answer matters as much as how we ask. Deep listening means we are not mentally drafting our response, not interrupting, not hijacking the story. We notice tone, pauses, what is said and what is not. We let silence do some of the work.

• Mirror curiosity.
  Show others that being asked is an honour, not an interrogation. When someone asks you a question, respond generously and then ask one back: “What about you? How did you come to see it differently?” This mutuality shifts the dynamic from extraction to exchange.

• Ask yourself first.
  Some of the most important questions are the ones we turn inward. Why am I so triggered by this topic? What story am I telling myself about this person? What am I afraid might happen if I really listen? When we question our own motives and biases, our questions to others tend to become gentler and more honest.

Practices to Try This Week

Here are concrete steps to experiment with:

• Choose one relationship where you sense distance or misunderstanding. Ask one sincere, open-ended question about their story, and listen without defending your own position.

• In your next difficult conversation, preface a question with a note of care: “I’m asking because I want to understand you better, not to argue.”

• Notice a moment when you feel defensive. Instead of reacting, ask yourself: “What am I protecting right now?” Let that question soften your response.

• Once this week, ask someone a question about something they care deeply about: their work, a passion, a memory. Watch how they respond when they feel seen.

Curiosity as Courage and Love

Reclaiming the art of questioning will not be neat or quick. We will still misstep. We will still ask clumsily at times, or receive questions on the wrong day. But if we give up on questioning entirely, we surrender one of the most human ways we have of reaching toward each other.

Curiosity, at its best, is an act of courage and love. It says, “I am willing to risk not knowing. I am willing to come closer. I am willing to see you as more than a label, more than an argument to win.” In a defensive world, that is radical.

Here is my invitation to you as this series closes:

• Think of one area in your life where you have gone silent. A relationship, a topic, a part of yourself.

• Ask one honest, caring question there this week.

• Let it be small. Let it be slow. Let it be rooted in respect.

Then pay attention to what happens in you and, if you are fortunate, in the other. This is how we begin: one question at a time, asked from the heart, trusting that knowing and being known is still worth the risk.

Thank you for walking this journey with me. If this series has stirred something in you, share a story of a time a question changed you, or a time you wish you had asked but didn’t. Let’s keep the conversation going in the comments. Together, we can rebuild what questions can be.

Not long ago, I was in a conversation where I thought I was doing something simple and human. I asked some questions. It was about their life experiences growing up in Canada coming from another country and culture. I genuinely was curious. My intention was to listen, to learn, to bridge a gap. Instead, the question landed awkwardly for them. Their shoulders stiffened. Their eyes narrowed. The air changed.

They answered in short, clipped phrases, never quite responding to what I had actually asked. Later, I heard through others that my question was taken as invasive and unsafe, even racist. The story of that moment grew longer and more charged than the question itself. I replayed the conversation in my mind, searching for the harm in my words, wondering how curiosity had become a threat.

Unfortunately, this is often not an isolated moment. Today, questions can be loaded. The same “why” that once signaled a desire to understand can now be heard as a challenge, a judgment, or an attempt to expose weakness. We live in a climate where many carry deep personal pain, layered with histories of discrimination, injustice, and erasure. In that context, a question from the wrong person, at the wrong time, can feel less like an invitation and more like an opening for harm.

How Pain and Politics Reshape Inquiry

Our public life has become a minefield. Identity politics, culture wars, and polarized debates have changed the emotional meaning of questions. “What did you mean by that?” can sound like a trap. “Can you help me understand?” can be heard as “Defend yourself.” When people have been mocked, dismissed, or stereotyped for years, even a sincere question can echo past wounds.

There are also power dynamics at play. Who is asking whom, and from what position, matters. A person from a dominant group asking a marginalized person to “educate” them can feel like unpaid emotional labour. A boss questioning an employee can sound less like curiosity and more like surveillance. A teacher asking a student in front of peers can land as exposure rather than care. It makes sense that people start protecting themselves by shutting questions down.

On top of this, our online culture has trained us to assume bad faith. We have watched journalists, activists, and ordinary people torn apart in comment sections and quote-tweets for a single clumsy question. We learn quickly that it is safer to stay silent than risk being misunderstood or publicly shamed. Just last week, I saw a teacher post a genuine question about curriculum changes on social media. The pile-on was swift: accusations of ignorance, bad faith, even calls for her to be fired. She deleted the post within hours.

Preconditioned Sensitivities: The Roots of Resistance

These reactions often stem from preconditioned sensitivities, wired deep from childhood or amplified by social media peers. Think back to that shame we felt as kids by the canoe or in the car with a new sibling. Those moments teach us early that questions can humiliate, that our curiosity embarrasses others and rebounds on us. We carry that forward, flinching at inquiry because it once meant rejection. A simple “why” now triggers the old sting of being too much, too nosy, too vulnerable.

Social media pours fuel on this fire. Peers online model defensiveness as survival: viral threads where one question spirals into outrage, doxxing, or cancellation. We see friends or strangers retreat behind walls of snark or silence after daring to dig deeper. It conditions us to preempt attack, interpreting neutral curiosity as the first salvo in a battle. No wonder we hesitate. We’ve been trained to see questions not as doors but as weapons others might turn against us.

And we see this daily with politicians. They face real questions about policy or truth, only to deflect with spin, half-truths, and innuendoes. We watch them dodge accountability, and it normalizes our own retreat. Why probe deeper ourselves if leaders model evasion? We accept face value because digging risks the same backlash they sidestep so smoothly.

Why Asking Now Feels Risky

All of this creates powerful barriers to inquiry. We stop asking because:

• We fear judgment: “What if I say this wrong and get labeled forever?”

• We carry trauma: past experiences of being mocked, attacked, or dismissed make any vulnerable question feel dangerous.

• We are socially conditioned: many of us were subtly told our voice doesn’t count, or that we should defer and be quiet.

• We grow cynical: we convince ourselves that people won’t change, so why bother asking and listening at all.

The result is relational distance. We walk on eggshells. We make assumptions instead of asking. We talk in our own echo chambers where we already know the answers. Curiosity, the very thing that could help us bridge divides, gets replaced by suspicion and defensiveness.

I have seen this in classrooms, staff rooms, community meetings, and online threads. People sit with questions burning inside, but the cost of speaking seems too high. They nod, they move on, they retreat into safer, smaller worlds. A part of them goes silent. As the saying goes—sometimes linked to Confucius—to remain silent is to give consent. One of the great risks of not speaking up is letting untruths stand unchallenged.

This Is Not the Death of Questioning

Yet I do not believe this is the end of questioning. What we are living through is a painful transition. Old ways of asking that ignored power, pain, and history are rightfully being challenged. Some questions that once passed as “neutral curiosity” were in fact invasive, dehumanizing, or rooted in entitlement. People are saying no to that, and they should.

The answer, though, is not to stop asking. It is to learn a different way of asking. One that takes seriously the impact of our words. One that recognizes the wounds and fault lines in our world and moves with care. One that understands that the person in front of us is not a topic or a case study, but a whole human being. Not only avoiding questions for ourselves, but boldly asking them, digging deeper, refusing face value. That’s the courage we need, especially after watching politicians evade truth for so long.

This moment is a call to a new kind of curiosity. A curiosity rooted in empathy rather than entitlement, in respect rather than control. It asks:

• How can my question honour your dignity?

• How can it signal safety rather than threat?

• How can it make space for your “no” as much as your “yes”?

In Part 3, we will explore what that looks like in practice. How do we ask from the heart in a way that restores connection instead of eroding it? How do we become the kind of people with whom questions feel safe again?

If you have a story of a time a question felt dangerous, to ask or to receive, I invite you to share it. Not to assign blame, but to name honestly what we are up against as we try to reclaim curiosity.

Why I’m Writing About Questions

I’ve been listening to politicians face questions lately, only to watch them deflect with spin, half-truths, and innuendoes. It raises a deeper unease in me: why are people so uncomfortable with honest questions from individuals simply searching for truth, trying to understand the why? While I’ve written a lot of political pieces lately, this feels more personal, more universal.

As a principal, a teacher, and a writer wrestling with the world’s noise, I’ve spent years teaching students to think critically, to probe deeper, to not settle for surface answers. Yet everywhere I look, questioning feels under siege. Curiosity, once my lifeline, now gets labeled as intrusive, unsafe, even threatening. We’ve traded wonder for defensiveness, and it’s costing us connection, wisdom, self-knowledge.

This three-part series, The Art of Questioning: Reclaiming Curiosity in a Defensive World, is my response. Starting today with Part 1, we’ll journey from the child who asks “why” to the adult who dares to again. I’ll share stories from my life, my classroom, my years learning to stay silent and then unlearning it. My hope is simple: to model a way of questioning rooted in care, not judgment, that helps us know others, the world, and ourselves better.

If you’ve ever felt your curiosity shrink, or sensed a world quick to shut down honest inquiry, this is for you. Join me weekly. Ask in the comments. Let’s rebuild what questions can be.

A Boy and the Birch Bark Canoe

I was a young boy riding up to Metepenagiag Mi'kmaq Nation (Red Bank, NB) to meet Mike Brisk, a highly respected elder in the community. Mike was building a birch bark canoe the way his Mi’kmaq ancestors had, taught by his grandfather as a child. There it rested on sawhorses before my eyes: an incredible handcrafted vessel of birch bark strips stitched with split spruce root, sealed with pitch, and framed by hand-hewn alder strips.

I stood mesmerized, awe flooding through me, questions tumbling out. I don’t remember every word, but I couldn’t stop. How do you split the spruce root so fine? Why alder for the ribs? How do you know when the pitch is ready? Mike answered patiently, demonstrating as he went. For what felt like hours, he met my hunger to know with quiet knowledge. I absorbed every detail, the smell of pitch thick in the air, the canoe gleaming like a living thing.

Then we climbed into the vehicle, me in the passenger seat, Dad behind the wheel. We weren’t two minutes down the road when he turned to me, voice tight. “Vince, you ask too many questions. You asked so many I was embarrassed.” The words landed like a stone. Shame burned deep, a feeling of failure on a grand scale. I shrank into silence, the canoe’s beauty now shadowed by rejection. In that moment, my natural curiosity clashed with an adult’s discomfort, and something shifted.

For years after, I vowed to keep my mouth shut, to stay invisible.

When Questions Meet Resistance

That day was one of many small scenes where I learned the world did not always welcome a child’s why. Questions had always spilled out of me naturally, like breathing. Why does the neighbour’s dog growl only at night? Why do the nuns strap us in the front of class when we laugh? I can remember leaning over the front seat in the car, clearly not buckled, peering at my brand new baby sister in my mom’s arms as we came home to Whitefish Lake First Nation #459 (Atikameg, AB). “But Mom, why is she Indian?” I asked innocently at five years old, unaware then of my father’s Mohawk heritage. Each one was my way of mapping the strange terrain around me, piecing together people and patterns into something that made sense.

Children ask without agenda. A question is not a challenge or a demand; it’s a reaching out. Yet so often, it meets resistance. Parents hush us to avoid embarrassment in public. Teachers redirect to keep class moving. Elders share generously, but family afterward draws a line. Authority figures wield discomfort or fear as tools to maintain order. Over time, we internalize it. Questions become risky. We trade wonder for compliance, learning to nod along rather than dig deeper.

The long-term cost is steep. That spark dims. We grow into adults who scroll past complexities, accept surface explanations, and retreat from the unknown. Curiosity, once our birthright, feels like a relic of childhood indulgence.

The Feeling of True Curiosity

But what if we lingered on what curiosity actually feels like? For me, it was electric. Standing by Mike’s canoe wasn’t idle chatter; it pulled me toward something ancient and alive, the pitch’s earthy tang mixing with spruce root’s clean scent. His answers lit me up inside, like quenching a thirst I hadn’t named.

That joy of discovery is universal. It’s the rush of a puzzle clicking into place, the warmth of seeing someone anew through their story, the quiet thrill of self-revelation when a why uncovers your own hidden assumptions. Curiosity hungers to make sense of the world not to control it, but to connect with it. It whispers that we are part of something larger, and knowing it helps us know ourselves.

In my classroom today as a principal and teacher, I see echoes of that boy in my students. The ones who ask bold questions often face the same pushback, yet they glow with purpose. Those who don’t ask have often learned it’s safer not to. Either way, the world loses when we stop reaching.

Curiosity as the Root of Wisdom

Here’s the truth I’ve come to hold: curiosity isn’t childish. It’s the root of wisdom. Children model it effortlessly, unburdened by pretence. As adults, reclaiming it means defying the lessons that taught us to stay quiet. It means asking again, not to pry or prove, but to understand and care.

Pause for a moment. When did you stop asking? Was it a parent’s sharp words, a teacher’s dismissal, a moment of shame like mine by the canoe? Picture that younger you, full of whys. What question burned inside that you never voiced?

This week, try one small act: ask yourself a gentle why about something ordinary. Why does that coworker always rush away after meetings? Why do I avoid certain conversations? Let the question sit without judgment. Notice what stirs.

Next week in Part 2, we’ll explore why questions now feel dangerous in our defensive world, and how pain and fear reshape them into threats. If this resonates, share your “stop asking” moment in the comments. Let’s rebuild curiosity together.

Welcome to this three-part series. New here? Start with Part 1 (this post). Part 2 drops next Saturday.

Across Alberta classrooms, from the Rockies to the coulees, a proud new creed decorates our bulletin boards: “I can...” statements.
“I can identify literary devices.”
“I can explain the water cycle.”
“I can solve linear equations.”

It’s the vocabulary of competence; bright, cheerful, and mercifully aligned with outcomes. Parents see them and nod approvingly: evidence, at last, that learning has structure. But beneath this polished language of capability lies a subtle problem: “I can” may measure confidence, but not necessarily comprehension.

Like many Alberta Education initiatives, it began with good intentions. “I can” statements were meant to make learning visible and attainable, empowering students to articulate their growth. In theory, it’s democratizing. In practice, it sometimes feels like trying to measure literacy with a bumper sticker.

The Word That Promised Too Much

Linguistically, can is deceptively innocent. The Old English cunnan meant “to know” or “to be able.” Have you ever asked your teacher, now or in the past:
You: “Can I go to the washroom?”
Teacher:“I don’t know—can you?”

The teacher’s reply, half-joking and half-exasperated, strikes at the word’s weakness. Can is about possibility, not action. When a student says “I can explain photosynthesis,” we haven’t yet seen proof that they have. It’s the educational equivalent of a campaign promise—technically correct, aspirational, and difficult to audit.

From Learning to Ledger

Somewhere along the line, “I can” slipped from pedagogy into paperwork. We seem to have a special knack for this. Although the Alberta Assessment Consortium reminds us that true assessment is triangulated, through observation, dialogue, and documentation, somehow the “product” has managed to climb to the top, preferably charted, colour-coded, and ready for export to Excel.

Students, savvy as ever, pick up the rhythm. They learn that “I can explain” is less about doing than about declaring. It signals compliance within the system, not necessarily engagement with the content. A neatly worded “I can” becomes a kind of credential: evidence of reflection that, ironically, requires no reflection at all.

In this way, “I can” fosters what our current Alberta government does best: procedural precision without passion. We check the boxes, declare success, and reassure everyone involved that progress is measurable, even if it isn’t visible.

The Absence of Evidence

“I can” fails, at heart, because it lacks proof. A student may insist, “I can evaluate the risks and benefits of solar energy,” but the statement alone tells us nothing about their reasoning, their evidence, or their ability to wrestle with complexity. It’s self-awarded credit, a declaration of potential rather than performance.

This linguistic sleight of hand mirrors a familiar dilemma across our schools: mistaking the appearance of productivity for the substance of it. We adore systems that look efficient, even when they don’t quite deliver on their promise. “I can,” in educational form, becomes assessment by optimism.

From Declaration to Demonstration

The remedy isn’t to abandon outcomes; it’s to reclaim the verbs that make them meaningful. Every curriculum outcome already contains its own measure: analyze, explain, justify, create, compare. These verbs depend on action, not potential.

Consider an Alberta Science 3 outcome:

• “I can describe reversible and irreversible changes to materials.”
  Now rewrite it as:

• “I described reversible and irreversible changes to materials by baking cookies and then melting ice.”

The shift from hypothetical ability to concrete evidence transforms the entire statement. Learning becomes verifiable, personal, and specific; qualities no rubric or spreadsheet can supply on its own.

The Alberta Way Forward

Perhaps it’s time our classrooms borrow less from corporate affirmations and more from the language of craft. Real learning, like real work, produces something tangible. Instead of wall-to-wall declarations of possible competence, imagine portfolios filled with sentences such as:

• “I explained how chlorophyll captures sunlight.”

• “I justified my essay argument with three historical examples.”

• “I compared two approaches to environmental policy.”

These are not slogans. They’re records of actual thought.

In the end, we pride ourselves on pragmatism; on proving, not merely proclaiming. But our assessment language has wandered into the territory of self-congratulation. “I can” was meant to empower students. Used carelessly, it only flatters them.

Perhaps the next evolution of Alberta education systems will replace “I can” with something sturdier, truer, and closer to home: “I did.”

If there’s a takeaway for those beyond the classroom walls, it’s this: parents can play a vital role by asking not just what their child “can” do, but how they know. Ask for the story, the example, the connection that shows understanding in action. The same challenge extends to teachers: our best assessment practice remains the one most often overlooked: triangulation. When we balance observation, dialogue, and documentation, we see the whole learner, not just the portion neatly captured in a spreadsheet. In the end, real learning reveals itself not in how confidently it’s declared, but in how deeply it can be demonstrated.

Because, as every Albertan knows, saying you can build a barn isn’t quite the same as standing back and seeing it built.

There’s a loud argument these days, especially from alt-right voices, that teachers are indoctrinating children with left-wing “wokism.” The irony is that if the mainstream ideology of classrooms reflected an alt-right agenda, they would be perfectly okay with it. Yet, as teachers, one of our key priorities is to help students become independent, free thinkers. We don’t teach students what to think—we teach them how to think. Our aim is to help them look at issues from all angles, to think critically and objectively, and to decide for themselves what they believe, but only after they have looked at all the facts.

We also teach students about the history behind issues so they can see the patterns that often lead to certain outcomes. Interestingly, earlier forms of today’s alt-right agenda can be traced back to the evangelical movements of the 1960s and 70s. I remember going to school in Grade 9 and being assigned the book The Pigman. When I brought that book home, my father rifled through it, pointing out words he deemed unsuitable according to his Christian beliefs. I was forced to read an alternative book that would supposedly prevent my morals from being corrupted and keep me from being led astray. That moment became the beginning of a pattern until I graduated: every book I read was censored, all under the guise of protecting me from the “liberal, non-Christian indoctrination” of teachers. That was the 1970s—more than 50 years ago.

The arguments may change over time, and they come from different groups—not all of them Christian—but the underlying sentiment is always the same: any opposing position from a group other than themselves is labeled as indoctrination. Yet, from my personal experience growing up, I was raised in a culture that truly did indoctrinate me, teaching that our way was the only way, with no openness to other ideas. Too often, the message was “love everyone” as a doctrine, but in practice, that wasn’t the reality.

These extreme groups have always seemed, to me, like cults of doctrine, showing little to no true interest in understanding or accepting those who are different, but holding to their ideas as more important than life itself. In fact, the humanity of those with “liberal” or opposing ideas seems to count for very little. These are the people who you heard say, or plastered on their trucks with big bold stickers, “F@$k Trudeau,” or even go so far as to say, “someone should kill Trudeau.” Where is the morality in this message? And what are they teaching their own children? No consideration was given that Trudeau was a human being, with a family and children. That didn’t matter. All that mattered was strict adherence to the doctrine of closed-mindedness.

There’s a longing for a past—perhaps a myth of a past—when children were meant to be seen and not heard, and spanked for noncompliance or breaking the rules. The hypocrisy was overwhelming: those shouting the loudest about rules were often the ones who most insisted no one could tell them what to do or how to think. Gripping their guns—sometimes a semi-automatic rifle, certainly excessive for shooting gophers, when a single shot would suffice—they claimed to defend tradition, but rarely questioned their own traditions or the logic behind them.

In 1987, I read Alan Bloom’s new book, The Closing of the American Mind, where he warned about the dangers of narrowing people’s thinking, stifling curiosity, and blocking the exploration of new ideas. This isn’t a new problem. In reality, it seems that groups like the alt-right or any fascist group have closed their minds to the ever-evolving nature of change, to the reality that we are always learning and discovering new things. They would rather bury their heads in the sand and live in a world that, perhaps, never existed. In the end, theirs is an indoctrination of fear and control, not freedom or independent thought. There is no progress in this approach.

History gives us many warnings about this. From the persecution of Galileo for challenging church dogma, to the burning of “dangerous” books in Nazi Germany, to McCarthy-era blacklists targeting supposed Communist thinkers—censoring ideas and controlling what is taught have always been tools for those afraid of change. And history shows, every time, that societies which foster curiosity and critical thinking move forward, while those stuck in rigid doctrine stall out or collapse.

The question really isn’t about teachers “indoctrinating” students with left-wing ideology. It’s about whether we as a society value free inquiry, independent thought, and open-mindedness—or whether we stick with the comfort of the closed mind. The irony is hard to miss, even if some would prefer it stay hidden.

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The phrase “what if” is a tricky one. Too often, it’s the gateway for worry, self-doubt, and wearying repetition of worst-case scenarios:

“What if I fail?”

“What if they don’t like me?”

“What if this change ruins everything?”

But what if, just for a moment, we put down our old, scratched, broken lens and tried on a new one?

The Problem with Catastrophizing

Catastrophizing isn’t just a fancy word for worrying; it’s a mental habit that distorts any unknown into potential disaster. The brain, wired for protection, spends endless energy scanning for threats, replaying past stumbles, and keeping us safely within the margins of comfort.

This thinking keeps relationships cautious and guarded, careers on standby, and dreams tucked away for “someday”.

A health scare becomes a spiral of imagined diagnoses.

A difficult conversation at work morphs into visions of being fired or shamed.

We might not even notice how these tired, restrictive lenses filter out hope and creativity.

A New Lens: “What If” Means Opportunity

Imagine the simple shift:

“What if I tried something new, just to mix things up?”

“What if I explored a new concept, just to learn?”

“What if this change opens a door I’ve never noticed before?”

This lens is fresh, a little bit playful, and deeply pragmatic. It doesn’t ignore risk; it welcomes growth.

Relationships: From Fear to Connection

Old lens: “What if I say how I feel and get rejected?”

New lens: “What if I share honestly and we become closer than ever?”

Many people shrink from vulnerability, letting fear write the script. Yet, possibility lurks where vulnerability lives. Sharing feelings, even about discomfort, can lead to understanding, not just conflict.

Work: From Safety to Growth

Old lens: “What if the new role is overwhelming?”

New lens: “What if this stretch develops skills I’ve never used?”

That internal candidate, the half-drafted proposal, the new software: each is a chance to experiment and learn. Sometimes, failure becomes the foundation for a breakthrough.

Health: From Dread to Discovery

Old lens: “What if I start this exercise plan and can’t keep up?”

New lens: “What if I find out I actually enjoy moving my body and feel stronger each week?”

Instead of fearing embarrassment or discomfort, a mindset of possibility invites small steps. Opportunities often start as experiments, such as “what if I try walking three times this week?”, that build confidence and momentum.

Life in General: From Limits to Horizons

Old lens: “What if I leave my comfort zone and regret it?”

New lens: “What if this leap leads to the adventure of my life?”

So many regret never having tried at all. Whether moving to a new town, learning a language, or picking up a guitar, hope grows in the gap between certainty and the unknown.

Ways to Practice the New “What If”

1. When you catch yourself saying “what if” in fear, pause and name one hopeful possibility instead.

2. Keep a “new lens” journal, writing a positive “what if” for each challenge faced.

3. Share this shift with friends or coworkers, since possibility-thinking is infectious.

Final Thoughts

Life demands more of us than staying tethered in the past or hidden behind old habits. Every day, the choice is available: look through that cracked and tired lens, or try on the new one, even if it’s just for today. Because the best “what if” isn’t the story of what might go wrong; it’s the beginning of everything that could go gloriously, unexpectedly right.

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