I have a new colleague. He's in his early thirties and recently left a position in the private sector -- a position with vastly superior compensation, flexibility, and benefits -- for the classroom, a place where he can use his unique and formidable talent and sense of humour to do something he enjoys, and to accomplish something important to him. "After all," he recently said to me, "when you sign into online banking, you never see a security question asking who your favourite accountant was," or other important vocations, for that matter -- your favourite columnist, doctor, sales representative, lawyer, CEO, taxi driver, or Premier, for instance.
Teachers understand this, which is why most of us have a strong sense of our worth. Some might argue that sense is too strong, and they assert that because most of us love our work, we should be paid less. But intangible benefits like 'meaning' and 'importance' should not be seen as substitutes for other kinds of compensation.
Recently teacher compensation has been subject to intensified scrutiny because of the labour action in response to Bill 115. Families want to know why their children's extra-curricular activities have been withheld this year and, fuelled by a zeitgeist of hostility toward public-sector workers, many jump to the conclusion that teachers are spoiled and too parsimonious to accept their new contract and continue coaching little Johnny's basketball team.
Private sector workers have every right to be frustrated with inadequate wages and other alarming trends in their industries, but that frustration should not be directed at public sector workers. The predilection of some to 'bash' teachers only illuminates the inadequate understanding of what teaching entails. Before assessing whether the extra-curricular boycott is justified, it's important to know what our curricular responsibilities actually are, and why things have changed since the imposed contract.
First, let's talk about the basics of the profession. The belief that a teacher is a glorified babysitter, photocopier, or DVD player, would lead one to a belief that teachers are overpaid. However, our job entails so much more than standing in front of a class from 8:30 to 3:30.
Countless hours are spent studying curriculum, planning lessons and assessments, writing evaluations, marking those evaluations, calling home, doing paperwork, collaborating, attending meetings, organizing resources, working on relationships, and so forth. Seven hours at work is far more than seven hours of work. Further, the time spent actually teaching large groups of impressionable, distractible, dependent young children, or occasionally acerbic teenagers, is pressure-packed and takes a lot of skill and specialized training. Teaching, though rewarding, has never been easy or limited to the classroom.
Beyond all of that, teaching has changed; different times bring different challenges. Due to increased emphasis on "efficiency" and a glorification of everything quantifiable and standardizable, expectations and scrutiny have never been higher. Academic ability, curricular fluency, and pedagogical wizardry are no longer enough. We must differentiate instruction, assessment, and evaluation for the unique learners in our classrooms; we must demonstrate the ways in which we are confronting barriers to achievement; we must prepare and discuss appropriate success criteria to help every student succeed; we uphold a much more clearly defined code of ethics and our governing body's Standards of Practice; we have larger classes, fewer resources, and more administrative constraints; we are responsible for a growing list of mental, physical, and social needs that used to be the domain of counsellors, nurses, parents and communities; we help kids cope with the stress they feel, which is brought on not only by too much homework (strict limits on which are now legislated) or inflexible deadlines (which no longer exist), but by anxiety about the future.
Apparently, an austerity-obsessed world of precarious employment, in which technology replaces people and manufacturing takes place offshore; a disappearing middle class; the prospect of significant student debt just to enter the workforce; and the bombardment, vapid narcissism, and cyber-bullying of the online world make kids anxious. Who knew?
That's a lot of responsibility for teachers, and it's really just the beginning of the requirements, let alone 'extras'. To see such poor understanding of what teachers do predicate arguments that teachers somehow owe it to students and parents to volunteer their time -- work longer days, for free -- when the most basic aspects of the profession (done well) are more than enough to handle, and no one else works for free, is perplexing.
In the rants written about extra-curriculars, I haven't read any acknowledgements of what running clubs, supervising events, and coaching sports actually entails. There's an overemphasis on what families are losing. Teachers also have families, and when the family income is decimated in the short- and long-term by a new law, the desire to escort a basketball team on a bus in the winter or spend an entire Saturday judging a debating tournament, and to do all the associated paperwork, goes down.
Another thing that's missing from the discussion of extra-curricular activities is an acknowledgement of teachers' rights to set, in the only place possible, what they deem to be reasonable limits. Never mind volunteering for a moment. Are you willing to do the same amount of work for 10 per cent less pay? If so, are you willing to do it for 15 per cent less? How about 20 per cent less, 25 per cent less, 35, 50? When would your dignity and self-respect kick in and make you say "just hang on a minute. I'm a trained professional, and I don't work for free."
Bill 115 has already required teachers to do at least the same amount of work for significantly less and denied our democratic right to collectively bargain, so many of us feel that the only way we have left to show our displeasure is to withhold the work that we normally do for free. This is not an easy choice for most teachers. Teachers sympathize with students over the loss of teams and clubs, and students know it.
The split among individual teachers as to whether or not to resume extra-curricular activities is well-documented, and the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario and the Ontario Secondary Schools Teachers Federation are approaching the matter slightly differently, but most ETFO and OSSTF teachers are looking for something more tangible. Though Premier Wynne and Minister Sandals are undoubtedly preferable to Premier McGuinty and Minister Broten, a group hug, an admission that the government was wrong to circumvent collective bargaining, and a vague promise for a better tomorrow may not get the job done with respect to bringing individual teachers back to extra-curricular activities. When it comes to matters of professional involvement this important, accepting an apology is a pretty low standard, and it also assumes political promises are trustworthy, which everyone, regardless of ideology, must admit is a preposterous assertion.
People only work for free when they're being respected. I hope extra-curricular activities return very, very soon for every single student in Ontario. But I find it completely understandable why some people, because they are upset that nothing substantive was gained in discussions with the new Minister of Education before extra-curricular activities were deemed officially 'on' again, would choose to continue to withhold volunteering.
Irrespective of which side of that individual decision they're on, all teachers are continuing to do what they're paid to do: put students first and teach them well. Premier McGuinty was right about one thing: Ontario's teachers are the best at what they do.
Next week's Installment: Teacher-Bashing and the New Economy
A full version of this article appears on educateforgood.com, where you can sign up for e-mail notifications of new posts by Misha Abarbanel.
75, never had children. Complains bitterly about education taxes while sucking up healthcare. I mean, why should the young pay the pensions or the taxes that will just be sponged up by the elderly and the infirm. Why should the healthy pay for the sick? No one put a gun to piekeboe's head and forced him to be ignorant. No one pointed a weapon at him and told him he couldn't educate himself about the English language he esteems so highly - high enough, in fact, that he can't be bothered with even basic punctuation or sentence structure.
I mean, he's right; the problems of our society stem from the fact that people with multiple university degrees and an obscene amount of professional responsibility want a fair wage. Our problems couldn't possibly be that the ignorant and ill-informed make reactionary judgments about the subjects they know least about....could they?
The only thing I've learned from your selfish, entitled generation, Piekeboe, is racism, sexism, and war-mongering. You've been at it for years, P.. Why don't give us all a break.
Here is the pot calling the cattle white, black,yellow, chocolate.
I really must have touched a sensitive nerve.
Thank you.
p.s. I seem to have read this reply to my comments before only in a slightly
different wording.
All those years of extra curricular activity just being assumed were a part of teachers paid dutys are gonna become fee for service.
Get ready for a fight Ontario.
The rest of them, nobody held a gun to your head when you decided to become a teacher.
The salaries most make I find obscene but complaining constantly that they work so hard and in the schools the kids are so unruly and there are so many problems with parents, kids and laws.
But teachers you opted for many holidays, great salaries fabulous pensions and early retirement.
I am 76, of my own choosing, never had children but a lot of my taxes are still going towards education.
The school boards, which in my opinion could save a heck of a lot of money by sending half their staff home, with those left over being held accountable for doing an honest days work.
I worked till I was 69 and now live on a fraction of what teachers make.
I believe that any person over sixty five should no longer have to pay taxes for education, especially
those who never had children. To the teaching profession stop your whining and teach the little
darlings at least proper English which most kids and adults no longer can speak.
That is the least I can expect for my money.
By your own standards of selfishness, is it not time to move to an ice flow and drift away when you don't feel you need to contribute to the future of your own community anymore? A society is healthy when the elders plants trees that they know will not provide shade until they are long gone. You sound to me like someone who would rather burn the saplings.
You seem to be the fine result of what and how teachers teach the previous and next generation(s).
My point exactly, quote, "A society is healthy when the elders PLANTS trees",
should be the elders PLANT trees.
In case you are not aware of the fact that when people rent instead of own their
dwelling, one still pays taxes for education. In this case it is calculated into the rent.
As far as I am concerned I DO pay all kinds of taxes including education taxes, and
you are a prime example and result of what society gets in return for paying education
taxes.
I bet you do not even know how to use spell check, judging by your spelling.
I have done my share in supporting the educational system.
By the way I have planted at least 65 trees on my property, how many have you
planted lately. Perhaps you are just sitting in a classroom staring out the window,
contemplating when the union is going to call the next strike.
However, the normal teacher in Finland has their Masters degree....one in ten people that apply to teachers college get in.....only a fraction of those graduate (like Engineering at Waterloo, ) they work long hours and , if you fo not perform, you are relieved of your duties..
When we have teachers that have a Masters....that are hired for their enthusiasm, skills and dedication...when they work for a wage the public can afford and when the system can rid itself of those who do not perform.....then we too can have a world class education system.
We have many excellent teachers...we have many excellent engineers, but thosewho do not fit....must go.
Moral of the story, if your upset about the lack of extras, then why don't you go volunteer your time????
The entire reason we, the public fight this is that....instead of fighting the goverment to create a better overall system i.e. helping to change volunteer rules... instead they stand up every day and tell the majority of canadians that make less then them, have less benefits, have less vacation, less sick days, less pension and tell us that a) they're somehow more valuable then the rest of us and b) that you shouuld have more than the rest of us like no one else faces the same issues.
Hypocrits and selfish....couldn't even teach me to spell right!
Grammar points:
1. Fewer should be used when discussing benefits and sick days because these are plural.
2. You need to use whose. Who's = who is.
Google is your friend. It can help you if you register in courses to update your education so that you can get the same pay that you decry teachers having.
I'm quite surprised, to tell you the truth, that McGuinty didn't impose that in the contract as well. What would have been the difference? None. Either way you look at it, the government, as well as part of the public, do not appreciate teachers. If they did, they would stand behind them, instead of being jealous for what they EARN for a living!!
Why doesn't the taxpayer get a discount for that?
Their vacations are not paid.
Nor do they get the 4% vacation pay which non-contract employees are entitled to under the Ontario Labour Relations Act.
Nor are they paid for the nine statutory holidays which other Ontario employees are entitled to.
I hope you were being sarcastic.
They don't have to pay teacher's vacation pay at 4%, since by law employees are required to get vacation pay if they work a 12 month on a year full time contract. This is because they are not in fact paid for 12 months of the year, but only 10, with their pay cheques deferred over the summer vacation.
Not having to pay teachers for 12 months of employment means that "the taxpayers" save roughly Three Hundred Million Dollars a year.
We can all identify the performance and the time that it takes place in the classroom. Where does the preparation and the revue take place and how much time is required for those activities? Teaching is just the Behaviour part of the job. The job has an Antecedent, preparation and Consequences, revue. That's the ABC of teaching. The classroom part is only one third of the job.