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March 30, 2012 - No. 45 --
Supplement
British Columbia
Teachers Discuss Their Working Conditions
The following interviews are with delegates from around
the province
who attended the BC Teachers' Federation Annual General Meeting held in
Vancouver, March 17-20. The interviews are transcribed from Discussion,
broadcast
on
CFRO
102.7
FM
Vancouver
Co-Op
Radio
Wednesday, March
21. Full archive of the interview: http://coopradio.org/station/archives/35.
Host Charles Boylan talked to teachers about their
working
conditions and concerns with Bill 22. Over 60 delegates were attending
an AGM for the first time. Members have authorization to talk to the
media but make clear that their views do not necessarily reflect those
of the BCTF. The interviews have been
slightly edited.
Kevin Lee, Math
Teacher, Richmond, Started Teaching 2007
 I
really lucked out. That was a time right before the financial crisis,
so a lot of teachers, the baby boomers, were starting to retire and
there was an opening position. Then, right after my first year of
teaching, we really saw the
cutbacks, the results of the financial collapse around the world. Every
year I've always been on the line, worrying about "am I the next one to
be cut?" The administrators do their best.
This is my fifth year of teaching and I've noticed a
great deal of
attack on the public system and I feel more and more stressed and am
working more and more with the deteriorating working conditions. One of
the biggest problems I face is the constant push of increasing class
sizes. Previously, ... we would
have a consultation process, which was merely a discussion with the
administrator. If we disagreed, we just disagreed and we grieved it,
but nothing was actually done about it. So that makes our life very
difficult. We can have lots of students with special needs. There had
been caps on that, but there haven't been caps
on ESL students in our classes. In certain cases, I would have 6
students with special needs and three or four international students. I
have an hour and 15 minutes in every session, so there is not a whole
lot of interaction with the students on a one-to-one basis, which is
what we need, especially for those who need
that extra attention. So I would spend hours after school encouraging
the students to come in for extra help.
Speaking my personal thoughts, not for the BCTF, in
order for us to
educate the public, we need to reach out in their languages and their
communities. Advertising, radio ads with the local Chinese station,
would be a start. We are strapped for the number of resources we have
to allocate to this advertising. We
don't have the money the government is using. Right now, the government
is using taxpayers' money to put smear ads out on the teachers, which I
think is ridiculous. We don't have [those] resources so we need to make
a personal call to parents, telling them what the situations are.
However, because of the nature
of our work, I can only talk to so many parents and families and
generally my concern when I call them, is about their child's progress.
If they do ask, I elaborate a little further and try to educate them
and I try to educate my students as well when they ask me what is the
current situation.
I am optimistic about the BCTF Action Plan. There was a
lot of
debate, hours and hours of debate on how to approach this situation.
Right now, I believe, we are a very democratic organization so if the
members believe this is the way we're going to go, this is the way
we're going to go and if things need to
change we'll have to amend and oppose the government. What they have
done is, unfortunately, a legal process. We as teachers need to do what
we think is right and right now all of us, every single teacher -- and
the public knows that -- we're fighting for fairness and the government
is not playing fair at this point
or for the last ten years.
Harjinder Dhaliwal, Young
Teacher, Abbotsford
Abbotsford,
February 27, 2012
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Here
in Abbottsford, at my school, we have over 600 students and I would say
80 per cent are Indo-Canadian Punjabi-speaking students and we do get a
lot of
international students from China and Korea as well. Communicating with
the public, communicating
with the students, we as a membership have to do a way better job in
reaching ... parents. The public is not educated at all as to what is
happening.
The media is just, as you see every day on the news,
talking about
how teachers are demanding a wage increase, that's all they're saying.
Let's talk about class size and composition. When I talk to the Punjabi
parents at our school or out in the community here, I tell them Bill 22
has no class size limits from
grades 4 to 12 and so your child can be in a classroom of 40 or 41 one
day. They're appalled, and they say, "How come we don't hear this side
of the story?" In Abbottsford here, I'm always speaking to the
Punjabi-speaking parents and they say "can you inform us in a different
way."
So what we are planning on doing, a few of us teachers
here in
Abbottsford, we are going to translate everything into Punjabi, all the
information we get from the union, all the information we have as
teachers, and we are going to tell them "This is what Bill 22 says.
This is what Bill 22 is taking away. This is
what Bill 22 will do to the children now and in the future." So we're
going to translate it all into Punjabi. We are also going to go to the
temples here in Abbottsford and Surrey as well to educate the public. I
strongly believe this is the only way we have to educate the public and
then let them decide. Why fight
with the government through the media, lashing back and forth. Why not
educate the public, tell them what's really going on, where public
education is heading. It's heading down a very dangerous road. We
definitely need to get out there and reach the elders, so they know
what is going on.
I gave a simple example to a parent today saying, "I
have 31 kids in
my classroom this term. If I have 35 next year and a few more teachers
down the hallway have 35, one teacher is gone. They've lost their job."
So class size and composition is important in the Abbottsford area with
so many ESL students.
I have four ESL students in my class right now and I
have four [Individual Education Planning] (IEP)
kids in my class as well so, as you see, out of the 31 students that I
have, that's a pretty high percentage. Now, with no class size nor
composition limits, it's easy for a principal to come and approach you
and say, "Do you want to take 33,
34, 35? Come on." Teachers will be pressured to take these kids. When
teachers do start saying, "Hey, you know what, I'll take a few more
because at the end of the day it's going to increase my paycheque" [a
component of Bill 22 -- Ed.]. Then we all know public education
is in
big trouble. How can you teach
with 35 or 36, even 37 kids in your classroom? In my classroom I can
barely fit 31 desks.
I'm very optimistic that we can educate the public, tell
them what's going on and what will happen in the future and let them
make
the decision. I'm very positive and optimistic that they will support
teachers.
Eva Wicha, Teachers
Teaching on Call, Representative, Dawson Creek
I
am the union representative for Teachers Teaching On Call (TTOC) in my
district. Our population sometimes is up and sometimes down, depending
on the economy. Dawson Creek is pretty stable because there are farms
around, so it's more agriculture. They also have the oil industry, so
it's booming. In Chetwynd there are mills and in Tumbler Ridge there
is a huge mine. So depending on whether they are up and running or
whether they lay off a couple of hundred people and they all move out
of
the area, it could be either booming
or absolutely dead. The situation right now is pretty stable. The mine
is running in Tumbler, so there are new people moving into the area.
Dawson Creek is really booming. ... Last year there was some
reorganization [in the school district] and reorganization usually
means that there are jobs lost, and some of the
schools were closed down ... so instead of having smaller schools now,
all the open schools are technically full.
One of the difficulties for a TTOC is that you have to
find a job
somewhere and you have to get started. Down in the Lower Mainland it's
absolutely impossible. Some of the districts don't even hire TTOCs
right now. So most young people would come up into our district, up to
the north, and they would start
their career there.... Some people prefer to be TTOCs, but for young
graduates it's a way of getting into the profession....
Regarding Bill 22, there is one thing that I can tell
you now that
is going to have a huge effect on the TTOCs and all teachers. Bill 22
basically removes our seniority. The way the jobs are given right now
is that if you are on the TTOC list and you apply for a job you can get
your first contract, then from that
moment on you start gathering seniority days. So the following year you
have some seniority and again, if you apply for a job, and you are
qualified, which is the first thing they look at, then they will
compare you to all the other candidates and whoever has the highest
seniority will get the job. This allows TTOCs
to stay in the region, look for the smaller contract and get their
seniority built to the point that they can actually get a continuing
contract if they wish.
Now, if you remove the seniority, then anybody can get
those jobs.
Anybody. So there is not going to be any point to coming up and working
as a TTOC. It will not make any sense for people to move up north and
work there. So I'm really scared that what it's going to mean for us is
that it's going to be somewhat
similar to the lack of doctors up north. It won't be just TTOCs. It
will be qualified teachers who will be able to apply anywhere. It won't
really matter. You won't have to be loyal to the district that you work
in because it is not going to give you any advantage [in establishing
your career as a teacher].
Matt Pierce, Math/Science
Teacher and President,
Prince George Teachers' Association
I'm
happy with the [BCTF] Action Program. I think our members really want
to have a say on what they're going to do and the Action Plan gives
them that ability. We're going to have a province-wide vote
on the Action Plan and teachers are very, very angry. I've never seen
teachers so angry about legislation this government's put forward, and
they've put forward a lot of [anti- education] legislation in the last
ten years.
We've closed schools [in Prince George] and lost a great
deal of
service to children in rural areas. Those areas have largely been
abandoned by this government. I don't think they care about having
schools for kids if the population increases. Here the school is the
hub of the community and often in small communities
every event that happens, happens at the school. When you take away the
school, young families don't move there anymore, so you really destroy
a community.
We see a broad front of resistance building towards this
government.
We recently had a walk of over 1,400 teachers and supporters of public
education. It was the largest demonstration in Prince George in the
past decade, and I think we're going to see more of that. This
government understands they're on their
way out, and they're taking shots at every public institution they can
on their way down. I think our community is going to rise up and
rebuild.
Janice Neden, President,
BCTF Learning Assistants
Teachers' Association, Kamloops
[As]
a Learning Assistance Resource Teacher, I am a case manager for all the
students with Ministry designations. That means any child who has been
identified as what the Ministry refers to as low incidence
or high incidence. That includes students in the category of autism,
learning disabled, physical disabilities, chronic health [problems],
visually impaired, deaf or hard of hearing, moderate or severe
behaviour
[problems]. As well [I manage] all those other students that have yet
to be identified, and all the students who
are struggling with learning.
We've been devastated, as have all the specialized
positions. Back
before our contract was stripped, we had caseload limits. Bill 22
ensures that there will be no caseload limits. The caseload limit back
in 2002 was one learning assistance teacher for every 395 students. It
did not come close to meeting the need,
but at least we had some boundaries in place. Now the school boards are
under no obligation to provide learning assistance support for students
in the schools.
It [has become] a two-tiered [education] system for sure
and we see
that a lot already. Many of my parents that can afford it are getting
tutoring outside the school to help their children be successful. My
job has been cut, like most learning assistance teachers. With 30 years
of teaching experience my job was
reduced to 0.9 learning assistance which means less than full time. So
I
also do another role in combination, English as a Second Language,
District teacher, and that's typical of learning assistance teachers.
Part of the problem is that at one time the learning
assistance teacher was sort of the sage. This was the person who had a
lot of
experience, a lot of qualifications, but experienced teachers are
fleeing the field because it's so unmanageable. It's becoming an
entry-level position. People just use it to get into
the system; then they leave as quickly as they can. Teachers leave
because the job is unmanageable. A really important factor here is when
you have your employer using all its funds and resources to criticize
the people that are charged with this very difficult role, when they
can spend millions of dollars on ads to
attack the people in that profession rather than support them, it
boggles the mind.
What balances that out, of course, is our day-to-day
work with the
students and the parents who are tireless advocates for their children.
We [understand] that, and we are too. We do everything we can with the
limited supports. Last week I had a school based team meeting and the
parents of a student who had
been newly identified as autistic said, "What kind of supports can we
look forward to," and I said, "Well, you're sort of looking at it. I'm
it. That's it. That's all you get. I'll do everything I can and I will
access supports as I can but there are not a lot of supports anymore."
The Matthew effect is alive and well in
British Columbia.[1]
When Christy Clark was the Minister of Education, she
had a nursery
built next to her office so her child came to her work every day.
Wouldn't average British Columbians like to be able to do that instead
of struggling with child care needs? And don't even get me started on
the wages of MLAs. There's no
money for education but there is lots of money for Ministry of
Education staff. The Deputy Minister went from $164,000 in 2006 to
$228,000 in 2012. Really? There's no money for education? But there's
lots of money for our top end earners.
One thing that's really troubling is that I have heard
our Minister
of Education say repeatedly that we're going to have more and more
teaching assistants. Remember folks that these are people with maybe a
year, a couple of courses, in some cases two years of community college
courses. I have a Masters degree.
What's going to be happening is that they are going to keep cutting us
and replacing us with teacher assistants, and that's very troubling.
When [Education Minister George Abbott] talks it's more what he doesn't
say. What he doesn't say is that we've lost over 700 learning
assistance teachers in the province since
2002, yet special needs numbers continue to climb. We will lose more
and more. We will be replaced with teacher assistants. That's what's
happening.
Jocelyn Bagg, Special
Projects Teacher, New Hazelton
I
am based in New Hazelton with School District 82, Coast Mountain, and I
travel through the Gitxsan territory. I go to Kispiox and I go to
Gitanyow. Gitanyow is about an hour and 15 minutes away from Hazelton
and Kispiox is about
half an hour. We go into the communities. They don't come to me. I go
to them. For example, I go to Kispiox two days a week and I try and do
about 8 subjects. It could be that day we work on English or whatever.
But I also have a community worker. We also have a special program in
Hazelton where we have
cultural teachers. They've gone to school to learn to teach kids about
their culture. In Kispiox [a woman] comes in and ... teaches the kids
about their culture. She gets people to come in and do things like
drumming and singing. She is looking for someone to come in to do
weaving with the kids. We're doing programs
like making moccasins. After spring break, we're also having the kids
make vests that they wear to feasts. Just at the beginning of February
we did a unit on feasts, what the protocol is ... then, to wrap it up,
we actually held a mini-feast where the kids put it on and they invited
their families to come in. It's about
taking ownership and pride about themselves and identifying who they
are. It works.
We have kids in there that have never been to school,
that have had
problems at school. The bell system doesn't work. The success that
we've seen comes out in their faces, and how they speak. We talk to the
kids about what school means to them.... They report back to us that
this is what it looks like. It's about
learning about other cultures as well but also their own. I have kids
in there that have come from the high school. There's nothing at the
high school [for them]. They just didn't fit. It didn't work for them
because you're on a bell system ... whereas I have that same kid come
in and say to me "it's not working today."
I can say, "Do you need to go for a walk? Do you want to just sit over
there and work on your moccasins? Do you want to do math? Do you want
to just kind of hang out?" He has that ability to say, "I just need to
go for a walk and can I go with someone." Usually that's our rehab
worker, our special services assistant.
They'll go and talk about why it's not working today.
Bill 22 is a complete threat to our program. I do 21st
century
learning without computers. How do you do that? I don't have internet
access. So, as much as I would love to put these kids in front of a
computer and take them wherever they want to go, I don't have a
computer to do that. Bill 22 coming in is a
total threat to these kids learning the way they want to learn. They
asked me why we went out on strike and I said to them, "Think about
your most favourite class," and they said shop, and I said, "Now
imagine putting double the kids in there," and they even said, "Well
that's just wrong. You can't do that. That's
not safe." And that's exactly what we're fighting against. They want to
be safe. They want to be heard and they can't do that with Bill 22.
Susan Ruzik, School
Librarian,Coquitlam
In
our district if you are in a small-sized school, the libraries in most
elementary schools are open one day a week. [This means] librarians are
funded to work one day a week. The library is the portion where I
teach, so the library is reduced to that one day.
The rest of my week, I'm teaching ESL, so my library appears to be open
because I teach all my students in the library. But the actual time
allotted to library is one day a week. Our school is so overcrowded as
the result of school closures in our district that we do not have one
spare room.
Our Parents' Advisory Committee (PAC) is in a small
closet called
the "PAC room." Our staff room is a small kitchen area that the PAC
used to use, and yes, the library is my classroom. Therefore, teachers
cannot just come throughout the day to bring their classes [to the
library] as they normally would be
able to because every single room in the school is being used.
You mentioned before about parents fund-raising for
computers. Well, [teachers and parents] haven't really even finished
fund-raising to properly equip our one computer lab where we do have
wireless. I don't have wireless in the library so, even though I have a
few computers, we can't get on for research. Like my colleagues said
before me, the kids want to get on the internet and do research, which
they can do when their teachers sign
up and get them into the computer lab, but we do not have any wireless
or
computers working to do research in our library.
It's amazing really how we still say [we have] the
number two
education system in the world with how little we have. It's really a
tribute to the hard work that BC teachers are doing. The media that's
controlled by the right wing is really bashing those people who are
working hard in public service. I think my
colleagues before me mentioned how this is privatization of our public
services. The model citizen now is a consumeristic person who consumes
and pays for what they want. It's a model that's just not going to work
unless you've got a lot of money. There's going to be a lot of people
and a lot of kids left behind.
Chris Stewart, Counselor,
Vancouver Technical High School,
BCTF Executive and Nisga'a Nation Member
First,
Charles, I want to thank you for interviewing us on your program. One
of the struggles students meet in the Inner City is just making ends
meet. Having affordable housing is
a challenge. There isn't a lot of affordable housing for a lot of
people. In particular, you have aboriginal families moving to the
city from all over the province and the country, either for work or
for medical reasons, or they want to start a fresh life and they want
to start over in the city because they believe
there are opportunities here. It's a challenge because they are often
leaving smaller communities where people know them. Here, they have to
worry about taking buses everywhere. Although up north hitch-hiking on
a highway is dangerous. Housing, inadequate resources, racism, those
are a few of the obstacles First
Nations youth face in our East Side Vancouver schools.
I think the [BCTF] Action Plan is going to go over well
with our
members. It's well thought out. As far as the public goes, we still
have a lot of support from the public. I think we'll always be
supported by our students and community. That's what's critical
throughout all of this. It's unfortunate we have a government
that despises us, and our collective agreement.
Luc Ouelett, Shop Teacher,
Nanaimo*
Decreased
budgets and increased class size and composition issues have resulted
in a sharp decline in the quantity and quality of shop programs in the
province over the last 15 years. As we approach an eminent
crisis regarding the lack of skilled workers to build new projects
coming on line and to replace retiring baby boomers, school shops are
being decimated. Class size in the shops has increased to 30+ students
and up to 10 of those students may be identified as having a learning
disability.
In many other provinces shop classes of this size and
composition
are considered unsafe. We are dealing with high school students working
with power equipment and completing a multitude of tasks requiring
constant supervision. To ensure a full complement of students in each
class, administrators routinely
combine multiple grades and different subjects, all of which are
expected will be taught simultaneously. At one school, a teacher is
expected to teach 24 students, grades 10 and 11 electronics and
grades 10 and 11 drafting all in one class at the same time. These
are academic subjects; we would not expect a teacher
to teach physics 11 and 12 or Math 11 and 12 in one block.
Students in a class such as this do not get a quality
experience nor
do they leave with a realistic idea of what a career in these fields
may be like. Reduced funding and increased class size composition
ratios have also reduced the numbers of teachers willing to teach in
these areas. As major projects are slowed
due to a lack of skilled workers and governments call for changes in
immigration laws to bring in skilled foreign workers, why are we not
willing to provide our students with the educational programs they need
to fill these positions? In many provinces and states there is a
recognition of the importance of these programs
in preparing students to be contributing members to the society and
support for technology education has been increasing. Why not in BC?
*
Interview
conducted off air and not at the BCTF AGM
Note
1. Matthew effect (sociology), the
phenomenon in sociology
where "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer." Matthew
effect (education), the phenomenon in education
that has
been observed in research on how new readers acquire the skills to
read. Wikipedia.
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