Heroes? Who are the real heroes in the education system?

I was shocked and dismayed to read an article in the Province, written by Joy Ruffeski, retired administrator and past president of the BC Retired Principals and Vice Principals association?

She insists that principals are unsung heroes in the current teachers’ job action.

Giving the title of hero to a group who has kept silent about the cuts to the education system for over 10 years seems a bit of an overstatement. 

We might not be in this situation if the principals, vice principals and superintendents had stood up to the government. We may still have our teachers of the special needs, our librarians and more reasonable class sizes and workable class compositions. We may not have health and safety issues in our labs and shops because of overcrowding. In fact we may have improved on what we had in 2001 if principals and other administrators had the courage to stand up and work as hard as teachers have to maintain and improve services within the education system. Their silence has NOT helped the students.

Instead they have left the job to teachers.


It is astounding that someone, who worked within the system, could not see that the workload of teachers is untenable with or without the few jobs that the principals/administration have had to do during the job action.  The administration is now adding to their workload what teachers have been doing forever (with constant additional tasks being added over the past 10 years).  If administrators can’t handle it for a few months, just imagine what it has been like for teachers for 10 YEARS!

And don’t ever think that the administration has not cut back on what teachers usually do.  Some districts have eliminated recess to avoid supervision.  Others have refused to do paperwork and money collection for field trips, thus causing trips to be cancelled (and then blaming the job action). But somehow it is okay to burden teachers with this extra work?

There is a positive to this article however.  What it is doing, is admitting to the public that a teacher’s job is too difficult.  Just think, a teacher who works close to an average 50 hours per week, has all this to do as well.  Perhaps now that administrators have experienced a bit of the reality, they will, instead of agreeing to pile even more on to teachers, work to support teachers. Perhaps they will realize the need for adequate preparation time for teachers. Perhaps they will join the fight for adequate funding and workable class sizes and compositions instead of checking off the hundreds of forms saying that class sizes and compositions are suitable for student learning when they clearly are not.

Perhaps they will join the true heroes of the system and become heroes themselves as well.

We can hope.