Dear Mr. Abbott, Honorable Minister of Education,
February 29, 2012,
Allow me to re-introduce myself to you. My name is Vicki Weger. I teach grades 6,7,8 at Montgomery Middle School in Coquitlam. During your two visits to our school I tried to impress upon you how much I love teaching and how passionate I am in engaging my students in meaningful learning experiences. I also tried to impress upon you my concerns that the chronic underfunding of our schools is a detriment to learning for the students that I care so deeply about. I hope you heard that same message from out student presenters and the other teachers who spoke with you.
I have been teaching since 1998 and am currently the Monty Pro-D Chair and Project Based Learning Team Leader. I have a degree in Social Geography, Certificate of Liberal Education, Certificate of Professional Development, and a Post-Baccalaureate Degree in Literacy for Diverse Learners. I have also completed my coaches training, taken French Language summer school, and even learned Guitar at night school. I’ve attended numerous amazing Professional Development sessions and have been a member on several Learning Teams in order to better help the students I teach. I spend my summer and winter breaks reading children’s novels, reading Professional Development books, and planning upcoming units. I take my family with me to various locations to preview as field trip possibilities. I hope you can see how seriously I take my job and how I am a lifelong learner committed to being the best I can for my students.
I am very grateful to my district that works in conjunction with the Coquitlam Teachers Association for the fantastic Professional Development they offer and the choices I am able to make that best improve my teaching. My union dues go towards helping provide these opportunities. The proposed changes that would require me to be directed as to what Pro-D to take would very much upset me and would take away from my personal responsibility and personal ownership of my teaching practice. We want the students to take ownership of their learning and work towards their own goals – why wouldn’t you treat teachers the same way? People rise up to expectations or down to expectations. Treat us with trust and respect and you’ll be amazed. My staff at Monty would not have been nearly so enthusiastic with our journey towards Project Based Learning and becoming a United Nations Rights Respecting school if we had been forced into it. We needed time to grow and develop and gather momentum and learn together. This takes long term professional development and commitment from staff. One stumbling block for us is the constant lay-offs and re-shuffling of our staff. This takes away from teachers’ ability to learn and develop as their mental energy goes to more pressing matters.
I urge you to re-consider the harsh language around the imposition of Professional Development and use Coquitlam as an example of a Professional Development system that works to support teachers and students. We have choice. We have respect. We have a say in the planning of our PD days. We are supported by the district and the union and they work together to ensure all levels of staff have access to quality Professional development. We rise to the expectations and exceed them in this culture of Professional Autonomy.
When I came to Monty in 2000 I had a class of 29 grade 6/7 students. It was a tough group with many individual learning and social-emotional needs. However I did have support to help the students. There was one learning support teacher assigned to my team of 4 classes. This was true for all teams in my school. We also had a full time ESL teacher for the school and six full time Exploration specialist teachers (Tech-Ed, Music, Home-Ec., Art, Computers and P.E). The librarian worked full time in the library with the exception of one block per day when she worked with Skill Development students. The Gifted support teacher offered support for two blocks per week for every gifted student plus others who needed a challenge in the school. The counsellor was available most blocks of the day.
Today reality for me and the students I teach is much different after Class Size and Composition and Targeted Funding for identified students was stripped from our contract. This year our school has only three part time Explorations teachers (Music, Tech Ed, and Home Arts). The Librarian shares a classroom and manages the Library. Identified Gifted children receive only one block of service per week. The councillor has her full counselling job plus she now teaches two academic subjects and teaches the Gifted students. We have a part time ESL teacher who also works part time as a student support teacher. We have another ESL teacher available for the international students we need to recruit as a source of income. My team of four classes receives one or two blocks a day of support teacher time three to four days of the week (an improvement from last year when we had to provide the support from within our team and had zero extra support blocks available). On our team we have eight students with IEP’s (Individual Education Plan), two with IBP’s (Individual Behaviour Plan) and twenty-seven identified Gifted Students, we also have two ESL students. These are only the students that have been formally identified and labelled.
I have the most diverse, needy group of students I have ever had. Skills and abilities range from around grade three to beyond grade twelve across subjects. The social-emotional needs of the individuals I teach is huge. I spend much of my day helping students make better choices and work through their social-emotional issues that range from high anxiety, depression ,minor and serious bullying, family problems, self-esteem issues, impulse control issues, organizational troubles, friendship problems, etc.. Then I try to highlight what students are doing well and provide encouragement, role-modeling and support as best I can.
The students that have IEPs need me to adapt for them daily. Many of their adaptations include scribing and orally assessing them, breaking work into chunks, frequent monitoring, and allowing extra time to complete work. That is rather difficult to do in a 50 minute class when several children need me one-on-one and I have the rest of the children who also need my help and attention to learn. Several more of my students should have IEP’s , but we are limited on our funding for Psychological Educational Evaluations so we’ve had to tell them and their families that they are not ‘needy enough’ to make it on to the wait list. This means adapting for these students and trying to support them as best as we can without them officially counting for any additional funding. This also means that these unidentified students will not benefit from any adaptations in high school or on any provincial tests. This puts the burden on the families to spend their own two to three thousand dollars to have their child privately assessed and to try and support their child as best they can. This is another hidden tax on parents. It is unfair to those students who want to work to their potential and are frustrated with the scattered approach we must take to try and best meet their needs without fully understanding what their learning strengths and needs actually are.
Teaching in today’s world is not about having rows of students complete workbooks and textbook pages and scaring them in to behaving and failing them if they can’t jump through your hoops. It’s about sparking their imagination and passion and helping them follow their ideas and apply their learning to problems and real life situations while they develop and mature socially and emotionally. This is messy and time consuming and students need a team to help them with this. Kids are changing. They have less patience and need more one-on-one help, guidance and support. Kids who might have dropped out of school years ago because of an unrecognised learning disability don’t have the same types of jobs to fall back on. We now know that children with learning differences can achieve and learn at high levels and can go on to great success in life if they have the appropriate supports in place.
I strongly urge you to restore funding to Identified students and return to or improve upon the class size and composition language that was stripped years ago. We need our support teachers more than ever with the rapidly changing learners we see in our schools. It takes a village to raise a child. Specialist teachers have the extra understanding and skills that I need to better help my students flourish and feel successful in school.
When you visited Monty, you had said to us that you could have taught fifty kids and it wouldn’t have mattered. Today I heard you say that classes of 67 were in some cases easier for you. Could I please respectfully remind you that you taught in a college setting where the students you taught paid to be there and had already jumped through hoops to get into college? Furthermore your teaching was probably lecture style with them regurgitating it back to you with one or two papers, tests or assignments. You probably taught a few courses which you developed yourself and chose what the learning outcomes would be and how to assess them. You probably taught the same thing the same way year after year. You probably had technology that actually worked to use in your classroom. You probably didn’t have to carry armloads of outdated textbooks down the halls yourself to only have enough for the students to share. You probably didn’t need to collaboratively plan with other teachers on a daily basis. You probably didn’t need to give feedback daily to each student in multiple subjects. You probably didn’t need to ensure that all lessons met the needs of all learners in terms of Multiple Intelligences and Learning Styles. You probably didn’t need to go shopping after work to buy supplies for your next class out of your own pocket. You probably didn’t need to accommodate and adapt for many students in your class. You probably didn’t need to deal with bullying, exclusion, anxiety, theft, tardiness, incomplete homework because of home situations, ADD so bad that a child is off task more than on task, students not being able to afford basic supplies, field trips or even lunch, crushes that lead to silly behaviours, altering timetables to allow for assemblies, e-mails and phone calls to parents, and the countless other things that I have to deal with all the time as a middle-school teacher. Do you see why I don’t think that teaching college is the same as teaching middle school or elementary school? We do so much more than teaching and assessing the curriculum. We are helping society raise responsible contributing citizens.
How much timely feedback were you able to give your students? If I have a class of 30 students and I want to give each student only 10 minutes of feedback per week that takes me 300 minutes or 5 hours just for that one class. Middle school teachers teach five or six blocks per day. Do the math. Quality feedback and quality planning take time. Most teachers I know work from around 8:00 or earlier to 5 or 6 pm then take more work home to finish at night or on the weekend. The entire time I’m teaching I’m busy interacting with the children. I do not get to sit at my desk during the day. I usually work through nutrition break frantically talking to students or teachers about things that have come up that day or trying to set up for my next class. Lunch time is eaten up by Intramural activities, helping students, marking, photocopying or talking to teachers or students about more issues that have come up. Report cards add additional thirty or so hours to my work load each term just in checking and finalizing grades, conferencing with students, typing comments, merging comments from all team members, editing, photocopying and filing. E-mailing, phoning and meeting with parents take additional time. Some weeks it’s as little as half an hour while other weeks it’s around 3-4 hours of additional work. Committee meetings, staff meetings, and extra-curricular activities also add up to additional hours of work. When you taught, Mr. Abbott, how many hours did you put in on top of the class time? Teachers do not work 9-3. They work incredibly long days and give up many evening and weekend hours as well.
Please consider increasing teacher prep time. We are better teachers when we have time to think, plan and provide thoughtful feedback. When I become too busy and too overwhelmed with work I often end up sick and I am not as innovative and dynamic in the classroom. I need lots of prep time to meet with my teaching partners, students, parents and to ensure that my students get the best of me that they deserve.
Why do I and most other teachers have to subsidise the education system out of our own pockets? I own thousands of dollars in books that I use to teach with. I also buy hundreds of dollars’ worth of pedagogy books and materials so that I can improve my practice. I supply paper, pencils, markers, treats, hand sanitizer, cleaning spray, furniture, chart paper, posters, boarders, stickers and stamps, and paperclips out of my own pocket. I frequently raid the pantry at home or drag my family to the dollar store to buy supplies for science or math lessons. Not one penny of this is tax deductible. Why do I do this? Because I can’t do my job the way I feel it needs to be done without these materials and there is no extra money at my school. Then as a parent I again subsidize the system as I contribute to PAC fundraisers as my children’s PAC tries to raise money for what I consider basic learning tools – computers, cameras, buses for field trips, water for the portables, a playground, etc.
I feel sick asking families to continue to supply things that schools used to supply. Students reported that the school supply list cost around two hundred dollars per student this year. More and more students also have their own laptops to help them learn better. I have to ask my students to bring in photocopy paper, construction paper, white board markers, and Kleenex for everyone to use. We now ask students to contribute $10 per term if they play on a sports team to help fund equipment, uniforms and tournament fees. Last year the bulb in my overhead projector blew and I was told that the district would not buy anymore. I had a student on Craigslist trying to find me one and he was going to use his allowance to buy it for us. That is not the way education should be in a so called “developed” country! Schools need more money to purchase basic supplies. Last year we had only $58 000 to supply, maintain and repair the entire school. This budget had to pay for students that couldn’t afford field trips, emergency lunches, sports equipment, tournament fees, photocopiers which took nearly half the budget right from the top, ink, computers, printers, food and appliances for the Home Economics, tools and supplies to Tech Ed, materials for Art, toilet paper and paper towels, cleaning supplies, pens, paper and supplies for teachers, textbooks, library books, science materials, math manipulatives, hydro bills, phone bills, carbon tax, and all other such items.
I’m tired of paying out of pocket and asking students to pay for essentials. Please consider increasing school supply budgets to properly fund essentials.
Do I want a raise? Sure I do. I work very hard and I have invested many thousands of dollars and seven years of my life in to my university training. It seems as if I must work harder every year as the support for my students decreases and expectations of what it means to be a teacher rise. My benefits are being slowly eroded. My purchasing power is diminishing rapidly as all families in BC are paying more and more for basic necessities. I’m subsidising the education system more and more as a teacher and as a parent. My family is not living large. I drive a 12 year old car. We do not take airplane vacations. We save all year to get through the ten weeks of summer that I do not get paid. I choose to work 0.6 F.T.E.( 60%) because I need to parent my own children and I need to find a life work balance – teaching can consume you. I take home less than $30 000 per year. I do not consider that to be very well paid considering the education and experience and responsibilities I have. It is becoming increasingly difficult to live a middle class lifestyle. So yes I would like at least a cost of living increase.
I urge you to find a way to find money for this “within the corners of net zero” or in other ways. If I don’t get any raise I’ll be forced to stop supplying essentials to my classroom and will not be purchasing extraneous fundraising items through my children’s school. This will negatively affect many children and make me feel undervalued and wonder why I work so hard for so little. The less I earn, the less I spend, and the less tax I contribute back I to our Province. Please consider providing at least a cost of living increase to teachers.
Thank you for taking the time to read my letter. I really hope you meant it when you told us at Monty that you wanted to listen. I don’t know the ins and outs of the contract and the politics of this. What I do know is the kids I teach and what I need to teach them well. I want a great education system for my students and for my own children. The system has been cut beyond the essentials. There is nothing left to cut as you implied when you suggested we need to find creative ways to get around the Net Zero mandate. Teachers are very creative and we’ve shouldered the cuts while trying to protect the children as best as we can. We have nothing left. What was a very good education system is broken and needs an infusion of teachers and supplies. We need a properly funded education system. I do not want to end up with a terrible system like they have in the USA. I sincerely hope this mess comes to a conclusion that benefits both students and teachers. Please properly fund the Education system. Please show teachers the respect they’ve earned. Please restore our system for the students.
Sincerely,
Vicki Weger,
a passionate proud teacher.
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