[andyt]

Probably some good learning in that for them, teaching can certainly wind up teaching the teacher as well. But on balance I'm sure they lose out.

[Brenda]

andyt andyt:

Probably some good learning in that for them, teaching can certainly wind up teaching the teacher as well. But on balance I'm sure they lose out.

Above average kids are not learning on their level. That is never a good thing.
Not everyone is a teacher. The above average kids have no choice. It does not make for a fun or good learning experience.
They are still bored and feel used. Just because they understand material faster than others, they have to help others, ALWAYS?
That makes that above average kids go slacking. They need attention too. Why don't they get extra material, but do the 'slower' kids get extra help? That THEY have to provide?

[andyt]

No, I agree.

[Jonny_C]

B.C. teachers are among the lowest paid in the country.

They asked for an 8% salary increase over 5 years (hardly an unreasonable demand) and the government came back with a 10% wage reduction.

When an employer treats you like a brainless serf, why not go on strike if you can.

[andyt]

That's not true. The teachers claim the govt reduced the amount of raise they were offering. Others say that's not true either. While the govt may not be clean here, they didn't do what you say either. It took a long time for the teacher to come down to their latest wage demand. Also they want a $5000 signing bonus and various other benefit increases.

The teachers got screwed last time by getting 0 percent. It seems that the latest wage proposals on each side are very close and could be resolved by mediation. Where the govt is not willing to budge at all is in class size and composition (ie how many special needs per class). The govt has lost two court cases on how they arbitrarily removed bargained for class size/composition from the teachers contracts some years ago, but they keep appealing to a higher court in order to delay having to deal with this.

The teachers should have much earlier come down to reasonable wage demands. Even if they are among the lowest paid in the country, they're not exactly hurting. They should give on the wage front but hold firm on the class composition issue. They would get more sympathy from the public that way, although so far they do seem to be winning the public relations battle.

[Delwin]

That is not my understanding from having read.

$1:

The two sides: What they want

TERMS AND WAGES

B.C. Teachers’ Federation (BCTF)

• a five-year term (July 1, 2013 — June 30, 2018).

• a $5,000 signing bonus.

• wage increases of eight per cent over five years.

B.C. Public School Employers’ Association (BCPSEA)

• a six-year term (July 1, 2013 — June 30, 2019) with an optional seven-year term (expiry June 30, 2020.

• $1,200 signing bonus per full-time teacher if agreement reached by June 30, 2014, prorated for teachers who work less than full-time or who started during the school year.

• wage increases of seven per cent over six years, plus an additional 1.5 per cent for an optional seventh year.

CLASS SIZE AND COMPOSITION

BCTF

• proposed class size and composition fund to be used to hire more teachers and improve learning conditions in local districts. No value was given for the fund.

• a retroactive grievances fund, which is money to improve working conditions, preparation time, teacher benefit improvements. In exchange, the BCTF would drop hundreds of potential retroactive grievances on class size and composition. No amount was given for that fund either.

BCPSEA

• The $75-million Learning Improvement Fund moved into the collective agreement to address issues of class size and composition.

• A joint fact-finding committee to gather better information on how to spend the Learning Improvement Fund.

• Class sizes currently contained in the School Act to be included in the collective agreement. That means class size caps currently in law would be included in the contract with teachers. Current caps in place state that there are no more than 22 students in kindergarten, 24 for Grades 1 to 3, and 30 for Grades 4 to 12 (with some exemptions for some types of classes).

• The government proposes that either side can terminate the contract and renegotiate its terms, after future court decisions and appeals on class size and composition issues. The province says it’s a way to put contentious issues aside until court rulings.

BENEFITS

BCTF

• Top-ups and increases to teacher benefits, including extended health coverage on fertility, vision and massage services, as well as a 100-per-cent salary top-up for pregnancy leave.

• Increases to professional development funding, including a recruitment and retention allowance.

• Increases to preparation time for elementary and secondary teachers, at full discretion of teacher, with similar prep time for teachers on call.

BCPSEA

Negotiable, subject to the residual compensation allocation (a collaborative process to allocate the remaining $11 million from the total compensation package).

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Ne ... z34xj820sY

Also, I read that the union was initially asking for 13.5% over 3 years which is double what the other public sector employees are getting. The government said they need to come back with a costed proposal. You can be sure if they got it, the other public sector unions would be all over it like a republican on a pro-gun bill.

[andyt]

Govt claims to return to the class size and composition that was arbitrarily removed from the teacher's contract would cost 2 billion. Teachers say 200 million. Nobody seems to say if this is per year or over length of contract. 2 bil a year would certainly be a major chunk of change that the govt doesn't have.

[Brenda]

Jonny_C Jonny_C:

B.C. teachers are among the lowest paid in the country.

They asked for an 8% salary increase over 5 years (hardly an unreasonable demand) and the government came back with a 10% wage reduction.

When an employer treats you like a brainless serf, why not go on strike if you can.

The 10% reduction is for the time they are on STRIKE. When the kids are LOCKED OUT of their school and there is NO INSTRUCTION.
Which is what the school counselor told me personally.
She also mentioned she thought that that was ridiculous.

[herbie]

Think of the children!
The fucking BC Liberals sure won't. 12 years of fucking around spitting out anti-teacher crap.
You know they had a grand opening of the rebuilt native school here? No classes, tours, coffee, donuts. Some of their teachers took the elementary kids down beside the highway and had them wave anti-Enbridge signs. That night they blew off 45 minutes of fireworks.
That's OK, huh?
Meanwhile, up the street at the regular school everythings 'ridiculous', 'unaffordable', etc.
And the teacher next door is home after a breakdown. THE remaining special needs teacher in a town next to 3 rez's with a score of FAS kids in every school on top of the ones banging their heads on the desk, drooling and screaming curses 24/7
Glad my kids are done.

[Xort]

Offer them a consumer price index locked pay raise for 5 years. No signing bonus, and performance reviews to identify good performance, and those in need of new jobs.

No class size hard limits. The Kansas City experiment more or less proved that class size has nothing to do with student performance.

[OnTheIce]

Jonny_C Jonny_C:

B.C. teachers are among the lowest paid in the country.

They asked for an 8% salary increase over 5 years (hardly an unreasonable demand) and the government came back with a 10% wage reduction.

When an employer treats you like a brainless serf, why not go on strike if you can.

Did you even read anything about this?

[OnTheIce]

herbie herbie:

Think of the children!
The fucking BC Liberals sure won't. 12 years of fucking around spitting out anti-teacher crap.
You know they had a grand opening of the rebuilt native school here? No classes, tours, coffee, donuts. Some of their teachers took the elementary kids down beside the highway and had them wave anti-Enbridge signs. That night they blew off 45 minutes of fireworks.
That's OK, huh?
Meanwhile, up the street at the regular school everythings 'ridiculous', 'unaffordable', etc.
And the teacher next door is home after a breakdown. THE remaining special needs teacher in a town next to 3 rez's with a score of FAS kids in every school on top of the ones banging their heads on the desk, drooling and screaming curses 24/7
Glad my kids are done.

Barf.

Nobody cares about the children besides the parents. The teachers care more about their paychecks, unions care more about more membership and dues and the government cares about saving money.

Let's not pretend that the teachers are the ones who care about the kids. That's laughable.

[Gunnair]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

herbie herbie:

Think of the children!
The fucking BC Liberals sure won't. 12 years of fucking around spitting out anti-teacher crap.
You know they had a grand opening of the rebuilt native school here? No classes, tours, coffee, donuts. Some of their teachers took the elementary kids down beside the highway and had them wave anti-Enbridge signs. That night they blew off 45 minutes of fireworks.
That's OK, huh?
Meanwhile, up the street at the regular school everythings 'ridiculous', 'unaffordable', etc.
And the teacher next door is home after a breakdown. THE remaining special needs teacher in a town next to 3 rez's with a score of FAS kids in every school on top of the ones banging their heads on the desk, drooling and screaming curses 24/7
Glad my kids are done.

Barf.

Nobody cares about the children besides the parents. The teachers care more about their paychecks, unions care more about more membership and dues and the government cares about saving money.

Let's not pretend that the teachers are the ones who care about the kids. That's laughable.

Nailed it.

[Jonny_C]

I taught for 34 years. You bet your sweet bippy I cared about my paycheque; I had a family of my own to raise. But the main reason I got into teaching was that I thought I would be good at it, and I was. And here's a revelation: In order to be good at teaching you have to care about kids.

Teaching isn't standing at the front of a room cracking a whip and spewing forth gems of wisdom. It's an amalgam of hundreds of personal interactions in a day, where you try to build knowledge, attitudes, skills and self esteem in every child for whom you are responsible. It's a skill and it's an art, and it stems from proper training, perseverance, empathy and pride.

There are lots of people who think they would be good at teaching; after all they're parents, aren't they? But there's a big difference between raising your own children and being responsible for the proper education of (at a mimimum) two to three dozen children who depend upon you every hour of every school day to provide a safe, disciplined and yet personalized learning environment in which they can grow.

Some of you will never understand the difference. I get that. It's too bad, but I get it.

[andyt]

Good post. People of all stripes who are sure eager to get any and all raises/profits they can get for their own endeavors somehow expect teachers to be self sacrificing ascetics living on bread and water. Teaching is a very important profession for a well functioning society and should be well remunerated. It should also, tho, have higher standards than it does for training teachers and continual evaluation of their effectiveness, and not just by test scores of their students.

That said, BCTF has to get realistic about wages, which they finally did. If they care about the kids, as they say, they should accept a wage settlement that's in line with other settlements on the public sector. The school support (CUPE) workers were able to settle after five days of bargaining. Instead, the teachers should have focused on class composition. If class size makes no diff, why are there legislated caps in place? And it sure makes a diff if 1/4 of the class is made up of special needs students.

Both sides here are the problem. There is very bad blood between them. When Christie Clark was education minister, she arbitrarily removed class size rules from the teachers contract, provisions that had been bargained for. The govt has lost twice in court about the legality of doing that, and it was shown in court that the government purposely acted so as to provoke a strike by the teachers. It is now appealing the ruling once again. In this matter, it certainly seems that the teachers have the best interests of children in mind vs the govt. Tho it must be said the interests of the children coincide with the teachers interests.

But the teachers are no angels either. They've politicized the whole deal, actively coming out for the NDP, and seems to be infested with radicals much more than the other govt unions