This morning I took a few minutes to enjoy the November edition of the Saskatchewan Bulletin. It’s not the type of publication that is found here or there. Unless you are a teacher under contract in Saskatchewan, you might have to go looking for it. I am lucky. I can find my own copy in my school mailbox as soon as it becomes available.
This morning I really enjoyed reading the President of the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation front page comments in the article titled Woloschuk insists that teachers need to defend professionalism. I encourage you to take the time to read it. Many of these comments allowed me to reflect on past events and conferences in my teaching career. Here’s are an exerpt from the original article for your consideration:
(T)he Federation’s emphasis on teacher professionalism is timely in view of the national and international political and economic agenda focused on educational accountability that can contribute to a deprofessionalization of teaching. She is particularly concerned about the “bottom line” emphasis on the education process. “For teachers, the purpose of public schools is to support and enable the holistic development of children and youth for the social good. Consequently, teachers have questions about an accountability agenda for teachers which seems to be at least partly grounded in the belief that Canada has to compete economically with emerging world economies.”
The quote from the STF President is especially powerful for me. Everything I do as a teacher is to support my students’ growth, wether planning for lessons, working with students outside of class hours or anything in between. In conversation, I often joke: “I am not a producer of widgets!” I am bothered when people denigrade education, learning, and teaching to a simple process similar to adding pickles to a burger. I am concerned when I hear people say that if we want kids to be more successful at school, it’s really up to the teachers, somehow insinuating that teachers are purposely limiting student outcomes.
In the book Overschooled but Undereducated, the authors outlines clearly how the fraying social fabric of societies forced schools and teachers to take-on additional duties. I firmly believe that teachers alone cannot infinitely improve student outcomes. In my opinion, Abbott’s analogy of the three-legged stool clearly describes this. The school, the community, and the family have equal responsibility in the upbringing of future generations. A single leg working alone to hold up a structure is quickly bound to catastrophe. If our communities desire higher student outcomes, a focused agenda on educational accountability that drowns teachers in paperwork and holds them highly accountable for student outcomes will not be successful. Lets look at alternatives!
At my last home-school staff meeting my principal passed around a copy of this article from Macleans. The principal had also copied a few comments that were posted in response to the article. Here is one comment that really stands-out.
I find it paradoxical that as more young people become ‘bibliophobes’ they are graduating from universities, high schools and colleges in ever greater numbers. My university degrees are absolutely useless, largely because the guy sitting next to me refused to read but received a degree.
Moreover, I’ve taught high school History for 6 years and the only thing this generation is interested in is technology. To complicate matters, we aren’t allowed to confiscate their toys, apply late marks or speak to them without positive reinforcement. Public schools, from k to 4th year university, are nothing more than baby-sitting centres where narcissistic parents threaten, and attempt, to character assassinate anyone who criticizes their self-indulgent and mediocre children.
Don’t worry Canada: the Chinese and Indians will solve our education problem for us. Remember, their kids want to work and they don’t use psychiatrists to make excuses. (Posted by Kona November 10th, 2008)
Obviously these are strong comments and are by no means my own. The comment referring to Chinese and Indians made me think back to a podcast that I had listened to last year by Alan November. I believe the podcast’s name was The New Global Economy. I encourage everyone to find it by searching iTunesfor November Learning. This podcast is definitely worth a listen. Alan November outlines the differences he observed while visiting Chinese schools and the new global competitiveve market that students will have on North American students. STF President Woloschuk alludes to this reality in the quote above.
During the STF Forum on Accountability (Keynote speaker Dr Andy Hargreaves) Canada and Saskatchewan was compared to emerging world economies and PISA results were discussed. Teacher Accountability in education was presented as a mislabelled term. What should be on the lips of politicians and talk show hosts is Teacher Responsibility. The reality is teachers are responsible professionals. They honour the public trust invested in them to be a members of a profession bound by a social contract. Teachers are committed to high professional standards. As a provincial organisation, teachers in Saskatchewan have recently drafted and passed this code in part due to demand from it’s members and in part due to it’s professional independence and responsibility for the conduct of its affairs.
In the public’s opinion education is not the issue. Locally, provincially, or nationally people have bigger concerns. They are concerned about their access to proper health care. (could you imagine if we had American style health care!) If you believe in polls, Canadian citizens are more worried about the state of the environment so long as the words “at the cost of the economy” aren’t found in the same sentence. Recently, at the top of the list of concerns you can find the Candian Economy. This dated document was interesting to read keeping in mind it was published prior to the Education Act.
Nearly all Canadien citizens have gone through a public eduction system. During my recent surgery the nurse that looked-over me afterwards was an expert in education and it’s current issues. I tried to my fullest to present her with an alternate viewpoints but I was unable to sway her cemented opinions. I left the hospital mad and frustrated by my conversation with this nurse. Days later I realized that I wasn’t mad at the nurse but at how vocal she was about many educational issues. She had formed her opinions from her personal experiences and conversations with others and refused to consider other opinions. But what opinions is she supposed to hear? The debate surrounding access to quality public education and other current educational issues is mute. What if all 12,000 members of the STF were as vocal as this nurse about educational issues? Would the public opinion of publicly funded education be the same in Saskatchewan and Canada?
Finally, it is disheartening to see teachers who are overworked, overloaded, uninterested, or any combination of the three who immediately throw their own copy of the Saskatchewan Bulletin in the garbage or recycling bin as soon as they find it in their mailbox. After having signed the 2007-2010 Provincial Agreement, STF President Diane Woloschuk stood before STF Councillors (a considerable percentage of which were upset that the agreement was signed) at Fall Council and stated: “Who is the STF? We are the STF. All teachers in Saskatchewan are the STF.” I encourage all teachers to embrace their responsibility to be advocates and to create and lead discussions expressing the collective beliefs of teachers surrounding the issues that affect public eduction.
