Why the focus on "fix the teacher?"

Response to "Collective Bargaining to Sustain a Strong Public Education System."

The Government’s presentation to the BCTF bargaining team has quite a few reasons for teachers , parents and students to be concerned.

1.    Focused on student outcomes rather than system inputs.  How does that work?  Inputs are extremely important.  Without the appropriate resources and supports the outcomes can not be as good as they should be and for some special needs and grey area students they will not be good.

2.    The list of visions is admirable and much of that vision is the vision of most teachers.  So why in the past 10 years has this government been fighting against this vision by insisting on standardized testing or “testing to assess” as they say, which keeps the learning in the classroom?  Ask any teacher, especially of Grade 10 Science, about the pressure to stay within the confines of the classroom.  The pressures of sticking to the curriculum because of the government tests has all but done away with "out of the classroom" experiences.  That’s not to mention the underfunding which has cut down on laboratory supplies, making the default system, out of date book learning.  Ask the Grade 10 Science teachers if that is their choice. Why has the government insisted on data, data, data over the last 10 years? Everything they have done in the last 10 years has been the opposite of what they claim to be their vision.

3.   Then there is the part about co-planning with parents.  Some parents will be able to do this and it will be welcomed, but many parents are not in a position economically or socially to do this.  Where does this plan leave the children of those parents?  This is an unrealistic goal of this plan.

4.    As far as all of the “fix the teacher” stuff.  We have a very  highly rated teacher training system in B.C. and our teachers must be good since our students are among the best educated in the world.  There is an agreed upon process for evaluation in every collective agreement in the province and professional development is best decided by the teacher him/herself. 

If the Ministry wants to support teachers, they can do so by making sure that the system and our students have the necessary supports to succeed.  They can make sure that class sizes and composition are workable.  They can make sure that those who know the students the best have the autonomy to teach in a way that is best suited to the students in the class. They can encourage and support teachers to use the aspects of “personalized learning” in their classroom that best suit the class they have in any given year.  The needs of students are different every year.  Their one size fits all version of personalized learning is not what will work.  The teachers in the classroom need to decide what system will work best.

Why is there such a focus on “fix the teacher” which the Ministry calls “Supporting teachers?” There can only be one reason why the Ministry wants to fix what isn’t broken.  That’s to gut the collective agreement of these very provisions.  They do not like teachers to have autonomy over their teaching styles.  They want control over their professional development, and they want to get rid of the fairest way of dealing with layoffs and recall, that being seniority.  They want to control the length of the day so that teachers can be available all hours of the day and they want to control class size so that teachers can be facilitators to many more students rather than teachers to 30 at a time.