To the Editor,
As a retired school counsellor, I am in the enviable position of no longer being subject to censure by the school board for speaking publicly.
The spin coming from our teetering provincial government is being ramped up to quite staggering heights.
Teachers are portrayed as being greedy and militaristic, where the opposite is true.
I should know – I spent a dozen years on the Nanaimo teachers’ executive and getting our flock to actually take concrete action was like pulling teeth.
Many teachers vote the conservative ballot and some would rather not even be in a union. Even one of our long-term executive members didn’t support union membership.
Second, a large percentage of local teachers don’t, and won’t ever, make top of the wage scale. We have hundreds of low-paid substitute teachers and many more on temporary, short-term contracts.
My average teaching income for 15 years as a substitute was the equivalent of full-time minimum wage.
Having taught in New Brunswick in 1970 – where there was no union and the full-time wages were pitiful; where the province had to bribe us by paying the tuition for teachers’ college students – it was no wonder that even in such a poor province we had a huge teacher shortage.
Yes, the children were far easier to teach, difficult students quit school early and staff got a lot more respect from parents. But that didn’t feed our own families, and a big percentage got out of the profession just as fast as possible.
The modern classroom environment is far more challenging than in 1970.
As a counsellor, I was involved in getting challenged students designated for extra support. I have seen more and more classrooms become unmanageable because supports are removed.
The learning environment for all students suffers. And most bizarre of all, elementary counsellors have almost no time to work with individual children.
No wonder we still lose one-third of new teachers in their first five years of certification. What a waste of six years of expensive training and talent.
Now new legislation will remove all job security and most seniority. Wages and benefits are frozen.
Teachers have become disposable cogs in a dysfunctional machine. And the children are being terribly short-changed.
But there is hope for some. Those with the cash can buy a seat in private schools –the same ones where the politicians’ children attend.
Dave Cutts
Nanaimo