Moving Paradigms

I taught in South Africa during the Apartheid-era, in underfunded schools for ‘coloured’ people, with crowded classrooms and very few resources.

I never felt as dispirited, distressed, and disrespected as I do now, teaching in British Columbia under John Horgan’s government.

In South Africa, I had hope for a better tomorrow. I knew that democracy had to come one day and that I was on the right side of history in the fight for it.

For years I hoped that B.C. would elect a progressive, NDP government so that we could rehabilitate the deteriorating situations in schools. During the 2014 strike, while walking the picket line, and during endless hours in advocacy meetings and online, the dream of the BC NDP forming government kept me going.

In the 2017 election, I went all in during the election campaign, canvassing and contributing in many ways. I was thrilled when they won.

But, right from the start, when Fleming refused to hire more teachers while hundreds of students were without a classroom teacher for months, the signs were there that my hopes would be dashed.

I’ve written a few times about the many disappointments and don’t want to repeat them here. Frankly, I’m so tired of talking about the multiple betrayals, and about my shock at what turncoats the BC NDP turned out to be.

Now I just want to curl into a fetal position and hide.

There’ve been about 30 exposure letters in my school. Multiple classes have been ‘monitoring’ or ‘isolating’. Colleagues have had the virus.

And now there’s a new variant that is highly transmissible and potentially more dangerous and our Public Health Office has done nothing to increase the meagre protection measures in place. There’s been an increase in the number of cases of the new variants, and that they don’t know how they’re spreading.

I keep buying new kinds of masks that promise more protection. It feels futile.

I keep checking my “In case of Death” folder to ensure that all the information is clear for my daughter.

In South Africa we had no union to protect our rights as workers. There was no Workers’ Compensation Board for us.

But, even though now I am one of 44,000 teachers in a union, I feel helpless and powerless and at the mercy of a public health officer who denied for months that wearing masks was effective protection against being infected.

In the Rachel Maddow interview of Dr Fauci on Friday, 22nd January, it became glaringly obvious how out of alignment with the renowned epidemiologist the BC CDC is.

Dr. Fauci is an advocate of mass testing of asymptomatic people.
Dr. Bonnie Henry continues to resist that idea.

Fauci created a video to promote mask wearing everywhere. Because of Henry’s views on masks, not backed by any scientific research at all, teachers struggle to explain to students why they don’t have to wear a mask in a classroom, an indoor public place.

New research suggests that talking can spread the virus just as effectively as coughing does. Talking is what I do all day in the classroom and I encourage my students to talk to me, to each other. It’s what is done in a 21st century classroom. But the BC CDC K-12 guidelines are more suitable for a Dickensian classroom where students sit, unmasked, silently like statues, facing forward.

I’m constantly worrying that my ethical obligation to act as a prudent parent in the classroom is being handicapped by people who have no clue about how schools work today.

I am so done.

I resonate with the nurses who recently said that those of them who don’t die are going to quit.

Yes, that’s where I am, while teaching in one of the richest provinces in one of the richest countries in the world, under a democratically elected government formed by a political party that spent 16 years in Opposition promising better days for teachers.

What a colossal lie.

Teachers Jen Heighton and Susan Chung joined me in creating the following verses to express how we’re feeling today on the eve of our return to school.

‘Twas the day before school start
And students through BC
Are readying themselves for Covid 19

There is a new variant,
The one that moves fast,
From child to child
In their BCEd class.

It’s evolved a new spike
And moves so quickly though schools
That the WHO even gave us
More school safety rules

Why won’t the BCCDC evolve with the virus?
Give students masks and distance
In class to protect us?

‘Twas the day before school start
And all through BC
Our teachers are begging
For much better safety!

Will Dr Bonnie Henry
Hear all of our cries?
We want to stay healthy,
We don’t want to die!

‘Twas the day before school start
And all through BC
Teachers were prepping and marking
While suppressing high anxiety.

What of this new variant,
The one that moves fast,
From maskless child to maskless child
In each overcrowded class?

Why won’t BC’s PHO
Take heed of the advice
That UK scientists are sharing
So others don’t pay the price?:

“UK hospitals are crowded
You don’t have time to waste
The variant spreads fast
So put better safety measures in place.

“Our schools had B.C-like policies
But that allowed the spread
Through children then households
We wish we’d thought ahead

“So politicians around the world,
You’d better not wait
Until your hospitals are full,
By then it is too late.

“This virus mutates when it wants,
And yes, a vaccine is on the way,
But UK, South Africa, Nigeria
Show mutant strains are here to stay

“So learn from our mistakes,
Be prudent and smart,
To keep schools open longer
Break the chains at the start.”

BC teachers paid attention;
Knew their classrooms were packed,
Thought, “What do we do with this info;
How should BC react?”

Mandate masks, allow for distance
Hybrid learning can be done
Open windows, clean the air,
Safety should be number one.

‘Twas the day before school start
And all through BC
Teachers were fretful and frightened,
Demanding more workplace safety.

Images by Julia Macrae:  @Julia_MacRae

For weeks now teachers have been receiving newsletters from the Ministry of Education that tell us in one way or another how important schools are for students. After the first few I started to get a visceral reaction whenever I saw one in my Inbox.  I couldn’t quite articulate why until the latest newsletter stated:  

Global research tells us that school closures disrupt the learning process and long-term outcomes of students. The adverse effects can go beyond learning loss and include implications like food insecurity or loss of access to health services that can be potentially harmful for students. As educators, you play a significant role that reaches beyond the classroom in children’s lives …

This one was the last straw.

To explain the impact of these newsletters, we need  a second definition for the term ‘gaslighting’.

The original meaning refers to emotional abuse where the victim is made to question their sense of reality.

What the Ministry of Education is doing is more like political gaslighting.

It’s as though teachers have not struggled for decades to get the attention of governments about the needs of students in schools.

As though we did not forgo salary increases in order to ensure there was class size and composition language in our contracts so that students would get the supports they needed.

As though we did not spend 14 years in a legal battle with the government to regain the class size and composition language that was stripped from us.

As though we have not decried the uselessness and emotional cost of the Foundational Skills Assessments that the BCNDP promised, while in Opposition, to end.

As though our hearts don’t break every day we are told there are no Education Assistants for our students who desperately need them.

As though we don’t keep food in our classrooms for our hungry students.

As though we have not been spending hundreds of dollars each  year on classroom supplies.

As though teachers have not held fundraising campaigns to provide what students need.

As though we don’t know that the shortage of counsellors leads to more suffering for our students.

As though we don’t know about the years of waiting for our students to see a School Psychologist.

As though we did not have to mount media campaign after media campaign for the past 20 years pointing out the needs of students in schools.

As if we have not been begging for years for our students to be funded at least to the Canadian average.

And now it’s someone’s job at the Ministry of Education to create newsletters telling us how important schools are for students?

We’ve been saying this for decades!

The Ministry of Education needs to stop politically gaslighting teachers and instead prioritize funding in schools.

If  public schools in B.C. are important for:

• the economy
• the mental health of children
• the social-emotional needs of children
• the education of children

why are they funded like this: 

Instead of publishing newsletters about the importance of schools, fund public education as though students’ well-being truly matters.

And stop gaslighting us.

Dear John,

In the spirit of the season of peace and goodwill, let’s talk about being friends again, shall we?

But first you’ve got to reconfigure BCPSEA.

Their actions as your bargaining agent with teachers do not reflect progressive values about public education. 

I would have expected a BC Liberal government to demand concessions at the start of bargaining, not you.

I would have expected a BC Liberal government to continue Foundation Skills Assessments, certainly not you, after the many years you agreed with teachers about the FSA’s inefficacy. 

It’s the style of the Fraser Institute to promote ideas like the prevalence model of funding, turning students’ learning needs into probability statistics.

The last thing I expected was all this from a BCNDP ministry of education. 

And then there’s the matter of our Supreme Court of Canada win.

For 14 years you stood by our side as an ally in our legal fight against the stripping of our Constitutional rights. 

Fourteen years!

And then, when teachers won, instead of acknowledging that struggle, you claimed the court-ordered hiring of 4,000 new teachers as your government’s idea.

That hurt. 

A lot.

It hurt so much that for the longest time we did not want to even look at our win from your point of view: your new government was saddled with the bill for the actions of all BC Liberal governments since 2002. You had to spend a billion dollars to clean up the mess that you did not make.

I now acknowledge that, and the spending on seismic upgrades, the opening of new schools.  Smaller class sizes and more schools are good BCNDP achievements for public education in our province.

But, can we talk about being the lowest paid teachers west of Quebec?

Can we talk about recruitment and retention with a bargaining agent that shares our values of public education being a sacred trust, of public education being the heartbeat of every community, of public education being about all of our futures?

These are values we believed you shared with us, the teachers in public schools in BC. They do not seem to be the values shared by the current configuration of BCPSEA.

So, in this time of season turning, of endings and of new beginnings, let’s be friends again … after you’ve realigned BCPSEA with BCNDP values.

With best wishes for the season,

Lizanne

In the classrooms at my school, students who get a $60,000 car for their 16th birthday sit next to students who walk an hour each day to and from school because bus-fare is an unaffordable expense. Students who go home to their own bedrooms equipped with the latest technologies, collaborate on projects with students who don’t have a bed to call their own. And students who struggle to read a sentence in the third language they’ve had to learn grasp desperately for meaning when their fluent peers speak. 

The conceit of public schools is that our classrooms will somehow be the levelling space of these stark socio-economic differences through the provision of an equitable education.

Teachers who spend an average of $1600 on classroom supplies each year do so in the hope that the right resources will magically bridge the chasm between what is funded and what is needed. 

Stories of families who have had to sell their homes in order to pay for learning supports for their children are heart-wrenching. Now just imagine what happens to those children whose families have no such assets, whose parents are simultaneously battling the legacies of colonialism and poverty.

Because public schools are often the only places where marginalized people can access support, insisting on classroom composition language in teachers’ collective agreement should not be seen as a luxury the government cannot afford.  Especially not a government boasting about billions of dollars in surplus. 

It’s astounding that a government that launched a Poverty Reduction strategy to great fanfare continues to ignore calls for more funding for public schools, the very places where the 20% of children who live in poverty in BC get their only meal most days. 

This BCNDP government has also made announcements to boost spending on mental health services even while the concessions it’s demanding from teachers would mean a decrease in the number of counsellors available for students in many schools. 

It makes no sense. 

In their latest survey of donors to their party, the BCNDP promise that they want to “build a better province”. 

How is funding students at $1866 below the Canadian national average going to do that? 

John Horgan’s plan to ‘build a better B.C’ clearly does not have public school students in mind.