It's Monday morning. Typically I'd be racing out the door with a bag full of marking, some of it left undone as I just ran out of time on Sunday night. My mind would usually be running through the to-do list of items that I needed to accomplish when I arrived at work. A last-minute check to make sure I've packed the worksheets I created last night for science. Wait. Did I grab my lunch?
Today is anything but a typical morning. In fact, there have been a lot of mornings like this lately. Too many.
I am usually excited about going to work. To see my students. Sure, I wake up some Mondays wishing there was one extra day on the weekend to get things done or that I'd gone to bed one hour earlier. But once I'm on my way, I am already in teaching mode.
Ever since teachers began rotating strikes and the government responded with a partial lockout, my Mondays have been different. And every day for that matter. Ever since the government imposed a 10 per cent wage roll back, my Mondays have been different. Work suspended. Duties not performed. Reduced hours of work. Their letter comes across as punitive. Do they have any idea the hours I do work?
So now, on Monday, I drag myself to work. I kill time in the morning at home so I won't arrive at the worksite before 8:15 a.m. I feel a pit in my stomach the minute I get in my car. It worsens as I pull into the parking lot. I have never felt this way about my job before. Ever.
This is not what teaching is about.
I don't know what the solutions are but I do know solutions are needed. We are on a very slippery slope downward in our public education system. I have seen significant changes during my twenty years of teaching. Some are good. Some are downright scary.
When I started out teaching, I used to arrive at the school at 7 a.m. There are many teachers who still do that. Even today, my car is still one of the last in the parking lot. I have made a personal rule not to stay past 6 p.m. This is hard to do. Because a teacher's job is never really done.
There's always more we can do. Marking. There's always marking. Especially now that I teach intermediate. Assessment. You can't just put a mark on a piece of paper and be done. Once the work is marked, it is time to look closely at students' work. What errors did they make? Is there a common thread amongst all 27 students? Do I need to prepare a follow up lesson?
Preparation. This also takes time. Curriculum is laid out for teachers by grade in something called the IRPs. These are a series of learning objectives categorized by different subjects. In Grade 4, we teach seven different subjects: Language Arts (comprised of reading, writing, listening, and speaking), Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, Fine Arts (music, visual art, drama, and dance), Health and Career Education, and Physical Education.
Each of these subjects requires a plan. A yearly plan. How am I going to cover the IRPs over the school year? A unit plan. What is my theme or unit for the next three months? Lesson plans. Plural. How do I get from the beginning to the end? What types of assessments will I use? What materials will I need? Where will I find the resources if I don't have a textbook and a teacher's guide?
These seven subjects do not come with a book of instructions telling me how to teach. They are an end result. To figure out how to get students to that end result teachers need to do several things. We need to understand where students are coming from, what they typically are able to do at their current age, and where they are going next. We need to find out what students already know (this gap typically spans across three grade levels) and what they think they know (uncover their misconceptions). We need to find out what will get them excited or interested in learning. We need to find out if they are learning what we are teaching them during the lessons. We need to find out if they learned what we taught them after the lessons. After the unit.
This planning, teaching and assessing cycle is continuous. Every day. Every lesson. Every subject. All seven of them.
But this is what we are trained to do. We are good at this. Teachers have embraced the power of the Internet to store vast resources of ideas at the tip of our fingertips. All we have to do is search for them. This takes time. This time is usually at the end of the day in the classroom when the marking is done and the planning is done. This time is more typically done when teachers are at home. In the evenings. On the weekends. In the not-so-visible times when our cars are not in the parking lots.
The partial lockout by our employer told us we were not to do this. Not to do any of it. No marking, no planning, no preparing outside of 8:15 a.m. and 3:45 p.m. No working at recess or lunch (and yes, many of us do that) to get this done. No taking work home with us.
And yes, we chose to be here. 86 per cent of teachers voted yes to a full-scale strike. Not because we wanted to. But because we had to. And even those of us who voted no, we still knew that we had to do something.
Because our system is not working the way it used to. Every year there are more and more cuts. Less and less resources. Too few teacher specialists and too many students for them to service to make their time productive. Too many changes to curriculum and too few dollars funding the replacements to textbooks and teacher's guides that will be obsolete.
Too many students falling behind. Too many students not getting access to the help they need in a timely manner. Too many needs for teachers to meet them. All while we attempt to plan, prepare and teach in the same manner we always have. Or better.
We need help. We need people, regular people like you, to hear our stories. Talk to us. Ask us questions. Read our blogs. There are common themes that keep rising over and over again. There must be some truth in there somewhere?
And we need something else. Something I try to teach my students. We need open minds and open hearts. This polarization of two sides, teachers' union versus the government, does not serve anyone well. It does not serve our students well. We need you to consider that maybe, just maybe, we do need to reinvest in our education system. Maybe what is needed is for people like you to pick up your phone and call your MLA (or email them).
It takes a village to raise a child. I don't know where this saying comes from originally, but it remains true to this day. Parents. Teachers. Administrators. School Trustees. Government.
Everyone needs to do their part. Teachers are attempting to do their part right now. We would rather be in our classrooms doing our job. We would rather students be in classrooms getting an education. But we also know that for us to do our jobs and have all students succeed in education, we need more.
So here it is, Monday morning. Today I find myself sitting down at the computer to write to you in hopes that you will hear my plea. Hear our pleas. As I head to my school site to stand on the sidewalk with my sign that reads "All students deserve the right to a quality education," I am hoping that you will do your part. Please.
Because I'd rather be on the other side of fence with the kids.
Related blogs on The Huffington Post B.C.:
- The Robbery Of Class Composition Is B.C.'s Dark Secret - Elisha Bonnis, Teacher
- B.C. Teachers Are Only Asking For What Was Taken Away - Ashley D. MacKenzie, teacher
- https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/jordan-bateman/simple-math-bc-teachers-bctf_b_5507410.html?utm_hp_ref=canada-british-columbia - Jordan Bateman, Canadian Taxpayers Federation
- This Is My Strike Pay - Kat Ling, teacher
- A Student's Questions For Christy Clark - Justine Taylor, high school student
- B.C. Government Compares To South Africa Apartheid Era - Lizanne Foster, teacher
- What You See in Today's Public School Classroom Is A Mirage - Carla Friesen, teacher
