Editor:
Teaching was once considered a noble profession. You did it because you loved the kids. Today, this idea remains embedded in the public’s mind. For teachers to ask for better working conditions and higher wages is somehow treated like an oxymoron. The two ideas cancel each other out.
How dare the teachers try to better themselves in their jobs! How dare they try to make their jobs “easier” by improving class sizes and class composition! This is about “greedy” teachers; not the students! The students are the losers in all this. And the parents are going to stand by the government to stop these teachers from demanding more tax dollars to benefit themselves.
Well, the government is not immune from their role in being the bad guy.
Locking out teachers from doing their jobs at a prescribed time is telling the public that teachers only work these hours anyway so nothing is lost to the students. All the marking, planning, meetings, communication around the job are somehow accomplished within this time frame anyway. Walk in the shoes of a teacher for a day to make this judgment.
And the insult of all insults to teachers is the “free work” they do outside class time. “You can continue to coach, do your musicals and band concerts, overnight on that camping trip, supervise planned field trips, and execute all extra-curricular activities because you don’t get paid for this outside the mandated lock-out times.”
In other words, you can stay on the school premises after the allotted lockout times and do your free job.
This is something the public should be very wary of. Why? Teachers are not fools. They will be negotiating extra-curricular activities in the future as part of their job. Who loses then?
Karin Tigert, Sechelt
