I Am In The Current

Come and let me tell you an exceptional guy.

Tuesday of this week, at our contract negotiations, he gets asked if he would be a scrutineer at the presidential election. Being part of the executive of my local association, he knows the ballot count is Friday right after school of the same week. It’s between himself and another table officer. Who would be the second scrutineer? It wasn’t long and it was decided that he would fill the role. Not a huge deal but he has to be at the LINC meeting that was to commence directly following the elections. So now, on his Friday after working all week, one day which was spent bargaining for his local association and considerable time preparing for a substitute teacher during his absence from the classroom, he was going to go directly from the class to the STF office. After calling home he found out he was only missing out on bbq chops with his family. On Friday night, he would have finally gotten home at 8:45.

So what kind of time and effort is this guy dedicating to his local association? Getting home at 8:45 on a Friday night. Is this typical?

Well, he is a executive member of the local association which affords him several duties such as going to several meetings of the general assembly and executive at the local level and REMAC (group discussions with the senior administration of his school board regarding accountability measures and teacher welfare issues). He is a STF councilor that represents his local association at the provincial level at both yearly sessions of council. He is a table officer for his LINC team. Kinda seems like alot doesn’t it? He must be a seasoned teacher who is established in his career. He sure is. He is actually superannuating this year. In his last year he continues to work hard for all the members of his local association and all teachers of Saskatchewan. But why would a guy care it’s his last year of teaching. He’s on his way out! He can just lay back and someone else can do it, right? Well maybe he’s new to all this stuff. That could be the reason he’s doing it. After having committed huge hours to extracurricular involvement early, he started getting involved at different levels of his local and provincial associations. He’s been this committed for the better part of his career.

It has been a great pleasure working with Terry Frombach. He is one of 70 teachers superannuating from my local association this year. There is no doubt that the local association and provincial body of teachers will notice his absence next year.

He leaves the classroom, with significant hearing loss. After years of working in a shop class, he has damaged his hearing and requires hearing aids. Hearing aids cost a fortune and the damage is work induced, surely the hearing aids would be paid by the employer. He is in the last calendar month of the school year and he receives no response to his inquiries from the school board. They don’t even return his phone calls. He goes on with his life struggling with his hearing without the hearing aids he needs. How would you feel about this, if you were him?

I figured the picture of the old skating rink, in mid January during a light snow storm was no longer suitable for my banner.  As I am moving in the near future, I was looking for something that would reflect this reality. I wanted to keep my Saskatchewan theme as my geographic location continues to play a big role in shaping who I am.

I searched FlickrStorm for “Saskatchewan” under a “Share Alike” license. I found bribriTO’s shot of “Flat”. Have a look at it here. This picture is said to have been taken near Lewvan, SK.

I modified bribriTO’s picture using PicNik, which I use for most of my image modification. My second choice is GimpShop although I find it user-unfriendly.

I had to resize the image from 500 pixels wide to 740 and then cropped the image down to 140 pixels which is the maximum height and width for a banner on my edublogs template.  Afterwards I added my blog title onto the image and exported it.

Please leave feedback regarding the new banner. I look forward to reading any feedback.

This past week I attended the STF Spring Council in Saskatoon. Council was in session at the Radisson Hotel from Thursday, April 24th until Saturday, April 26th, 2008. Councilors from all the school division gathered to work cooperatively.

I was nominated by a councilor from my local association to the Professional Ethics Committee. Committees have had a limited response from the general membership (any contract teacher in Saskatchewan) as of late . The Professional Ethics Committee was the only one to have more then one nomination and so there was an election between Shawn Pearce Regina Catholic Schools Teachers’ Association) and myself (Regina Public School Teachers’ Association). Shawn was the incumbent in this election. Once councilors had voted, he had tripled me in ballots. I was happy to see that 47 councilors were confident in my ability to serve responsibly on this committee. This was the first STF committee for which I had ever let my name stand. Notwithstanding, 47 votes was a good show and I now consider this to be an advertising year for my name at council.

This year, council re-elected Dianne Woloschuck as President of the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation. I was pleased to see her reelected as president. I feel it is importatnt the STF has a bilingual president to represent French and English teachers in Saskatchewan. On a side note, President Woloschuck was my high school Christian Ethics teacher.

The president from my local association, Ron Holloway had this to say:

“This year Council dealt with 37 resolutions submitted by teacher including many from Regina. The resolutions that we submitted in support of our substitutes did not fare so well again this year.”

Mr. Holloway was correct to make this statement. For the past few years, the RPSTA (Regina Public School Teachers’ Association) has brought several resolutions that try and bring what some would call equity to the health, dental and retirement plan. Councilors had difficulties supporting these resolutions, especially when the chair of these committees recommend that Council makes no changes to the plans.

In one of my small group sessions, we had an extensive discussion regarding our fidicuary role as councilors. Here’s the definition from definir.com (my favorite online dictionary):

fiduciary (http://definr.com/fiduciary)

     adj : relating to or of the nature of a legal trust (i.e. the
           holding of something in trust for another); “a
           fiduciary contract”; “in a fiduciary capacity”;
           ”fiducial power” [syn: fiducial]
     n : a person who holds assets in trust for a beneficiary; “it is
         illegal for a fiduciary to misappropriate money for
         personal gain”

Councilors we encouraged to keep their fiduciary responsibilities in mind when voting on notices of motion and resolutions. Being a councilor is a big responsibility and requires many hours of preperation to ensure that each vote is a sound responsible one.

This year I am resigning my permanent contract with my school division (Regina Public Schools) and moving to the other major city in Saskatchewan- Saskatoon. I have applied to the Saskatoon Public School Division and currently have been hired onto their subsitute list. I hope to be able to obtain a teaching contract in this new school division. Having been hired to substitute teacher list I can let my name stand as a councilor of the Greater Saskatoon and Area. I hope to be elected so that I may serve the teachers of this local and the province.

Should you have any thoughts regarding this blog post, please do leave a comment. I would to get any available feedback.

Here is an old draft I never published. What the heck, there’s not much use keeping it cooped up in here. Time to set it free…

Thursday, October 18th, 2007.

I am in Saskatoon working with Rick Peace and Ron Holloway from my local association. We are attending the STF Forum on Accountability.

Topic of discussion: Accountability and the Contiuous Improvement Framework and Assessment for Learning Program.

What does accountability mean and what does it look like in a school. Are the things that are happening in schools measurable? For what are we accountable? Can we continuously improve, infinitely? Is this possible?

Sometimes I wonder why I blog. True it is a space for personal reflection. I would however like to host discussions on given topics on my blog. This has only happened on one or two of my blog posts. Kyle and I often discuss this as it is one of my biggest frustrations regarding my professional blog. Kyle keeps reminding me that I need to build my network and create a space that is inviting to people where they might want to comment and share their opinions regarding my blog posts. Here is a brief Skype text chat between Kyle and I from today regarding this very subject.

thekyleguy

9:54 PM
hello dude
9:55 PM
just caught your blog posts. Thanks for all the press. will comment soon

Charles Paul Bazin Webster

9:55 PM
no prob
once again the network is silent

thekyleguy

9:56 PM
well they will be until you build audience of subscribers. must be patient

Charles Paul Bazin Webster

9:56 PM
maybe

thekyleguy

9:57 PM
I think so. I still have very limited comments. They come with time and relationships

Charles Paul Bazin Webster

9:57 PM
yeah i guess so

thekyleguy

9:57 PM
and I only comment on 1 out of 25 posts I read.

Charles Paul Bazin Webster

9:58 PM
i usually comment if i read or visit

thekyleguy

9:58 PM
so even if people read, too much to expect boatloads of feedback on common posts

Charles Paul Bazin Webster

9:58 PM
its about leaving traces

thekyleguy

9:59 PM
I know. linkbacks etc.

Charles Paul Bazin Webster

9:59 PM
right

Do you feel this way about your blog and your posts? Is this feeling unique to me?

Sometimes I feel as if I am speaking to the mirror when I want to be talking to people…