From
the President . . . .
BCTF Roundtable with parents
Even though the number of parents and teachers who came out to this event was low, input was the same as that coming from across the province: teachers in ‘my school’ are great, teachers work hard, schools need more spec ed support, funding isn’t sufficient to support quality learning, concerns over FSA/false accountability…school closures, private schools…
BCTF Advantage program
Check it out from the BCTF website (lower left-hand corner of the home page), it is free to join, and you may save money on your home insurance and vehicle insurance – I sure have.
Provincial Contract implementation
As far as the application for the Recruitment and Retention allowance, there is no news beyond BCTF and BCPSEA not agreeing over the meaning of the term ‘employees’ – does it include TOCs?
Salary increases
2.5 % as of July 1 2008, plus an additional 2.5 – 3% AT MAXIMUM for each category as part of the harmonization of salaries.
Ed Change money
After a solid year of work, the Ed Change committee has successfully allocated all of the remaining Ed Change money for the use of EV/South Country teachers. Any of the allocated money not used by the end of December 2008 will be returned to the general pot, never to be seen again.
Lay-offs, transfers
As I write this, the outcome is ‘in process’. Here are pretty hard timelines: May 22 – CFTA meeting with HR. May 27th – layoff and transfer notices to EV/SC schools (Cranbrook 28th). Attempts are being made by the employer to avoid lay-offs through retirements etc – hope is no continuing positions to be lost (almost none)…. I have let Cynthia Stuart know of forced transfer histories so those should (will) be considered.
Arbitration win – freedom of speech/ professional autonomy – one teacher impacts all teachers!!!
Take time this month to enjoy the long days, the warmer weather, and the greening up of our forests and fields. Life is too short to miss out on being outdoors in May.
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The FDTA takes another step into the virtual world.
Check out <<fernieteachers.blogspot.com>> to see the newest form of union communications with members….. check it out, bookmark the site, and take the poll!!!!
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AGM News and
Election results
We have vacant positions on the executive: one member-at-large position, and we need a Local Elections Contact. If you are at all interested in either of these roles, please let Steve know by fax (423-6134) ASAP.
Bill Fite was recognized for a career-long commitment to the union, and to the teachers of BCTF through the granting of an honorary life membership in the FDTA.
The motions to amend the FDTA constitution were both passed (see previous newsletters and the posted agenda for the details).
Everyone had an enjoyable social evening. Thanks to those who found the time to participate in the running of their union, and who came out to spend time with their colleagues.
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Part–Time
Teachers and EI Benefits…
A BCTF colleague forwarded this story to me about
a teacher’s experience with the Employment Insurance bureaucracy.
I hope others can benefit from the experience.
“During the last two summers I collect EI benefits. In the fall of 2006 I took a part time contract at .35 FTE at a Middle School. I reported all of my working days to EI and kept making claims for the first few weeks in September until TOC work picked up and I was earning enough money. About a month ago I received a letter from EI informing me that I would have to pay back benefits I was paid for that September 2006. They said, when I called to ask why, that teachers are not entitled to benefits once they sign a contract. I asked if that applied even if the contract was only part time and the earnings were below the cut-off. I was told it didn't matter what FTE the contract was, once its signed, you no longer qualify for EI benefits. Well, that sounded pretty unfair to me and I immediately went through the process to appeal the decision. I sent off my appeal and within a week I received a letter telling me that they had reviewed my case and had dropped the case. I suspect that they are trying this approach with other part time teachers. If I hadn't appealed I would have been out several hundred dollars. I worry about other part timers or TOC’s who received this letter and just went ahead and paid the money.”
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Long
Term Disability Factor 90 and you…
I’m telling everyone about the importance if withdrawing from the long-term portion of the salary indemnity plan if you have 100 sick days, and any of the following apply:
Because all contract teachers are eligible to apply for short-term disability, and the combination of short-term disability and their 100 sick days will be sufficient to carry them through until they are either 65 years old or have reached “factor 90.” At that point, they will be ineligible for long-term disability.
You need to be aware that there are no retroactive payments for late withdrawals from the LTD plan. Members are eligible only if they meet these criteria and apply in writing to the BCTF. It is the members’ responsibility to make application for withdrawal, and should do so as soon as they are eligible to do so.
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So what is the FSA for anyway?
During the debate on the Ministry of Education estimates, April 15-17.
But I think what it does, and this is the critical piece of information that foundation skills assessment allows us, is not only do we have a number here generally; we have very specific numbers for children. What this would allow us to say is that if I’m in a classroom or in a school, the part I need to be concentrating on is the comprehension piece.
I think this is the information that drives the planning and the thinking about how to see not only the system numbers improve, but individually. They are marked individually, because in terms of those categories, they’re marked against the curriculum. So you can’t really look at them one against the other.
The primary driver of the utilization of that information is not the ministry; it’s actually…. What we’re hoping to ensure happens is that classroom teachers, administrators and parents use that information that is relevant to a child specifically for their plan.”
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Listed below are quotes from the minister of education, taken from responses to MLA David Chudnovsky as he posed questions about the “challenges” with the FSA electronic components during the education estimates debates:
Sources include: Canadian Teachers' Federation, Ministry of Education, BCTF website, BCTF research reports, BC Teacher-Librarians' Association, Finance Watch v.3. no.1.
BCTF E-news - April 18, 2008
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Summer classes stifle children's right to run free; Blue sky days with nothing to do not in cards for kids of today's competitive parents (Vancouver Courier Wed 16 Apr 2008 Section: Opinion, Barry Link [excerpts from…]
Thank you, Vancouver School Board, for helping to kill childhood.
The Courier reported last week that the school district will not charge fees for most of its summer courses. That's good for students who repeat courses because they failed them during the regular part of the year and need a do over. But for many citizens of Vancouver from ages five to 18, this is potentially bad, because too many parents are nuts.
…….
Offering summer courses for "free" (in reality, they're paid for through our taxes) will cost the district $2.2 million a year. Officially, it's a hit to the district budget. Unofficially, the district is overjoyed, as … Laurie Anderson, an associate superintendent, revealed. "We're encouraged by this because it allows us to provide students with the opportunity [to take classes]," he told the Courier last week. "We have the capacity obviously--we have lots of schools."
Bureaucrats hate unused capacity, even in summer. And more summer students strengthens the public school system's social role as warehouses for non-adults.
Schools are vital as civilizing institutions. Education should be our biggest financial investment. Teachers deserve to be well paid. But in truth, we lock up children and teens in schools because we haven't figured out anything more imaginative to do with them. They scare us. They're loud, they move too fast and would spawn babies at 14 if we didn't put a leash on them. So we lie to them by warning that if they don't go to school five days a week, the sun will explode.
That longstanding tradition of imprisoning children 10 months of the year worked for years because we let them out every summer. Originally, the annual furlough allowed kids to work family farms and bring in the harvest. The country got fed. But gradually, when we learned that we could get our food at the local Safeway and that Farmer Brown largely depended on immigrant labour, summer became prime time to be a kid.
I was a child in the '60s and '70s, and yes, it was a simpler, dumber time. We rode mastodons then and wore furs. And oh how we marvelled at the invention of fire. But I was also--and I believe myself extremely lucky--part of the last generation of North American kids allowed to run free. Summer was summer, with school a distant memory. Sometimes I went to camp or went on trips with my family, and as I got older, I took on summer jobs. But much of the time I did very little. It was bliss. When you're an 11-year-old boy, and your time is your own, a summer day of high heat and a cloudless blue sky seems like it can last for decades. For anyone past 30, contrast that childhood and even teenage sense of eternity with your life now, when a decade slips by as if it were a day.
Contrast also my quaint experience of childhood as unstructured and self-organizing with today's child, who's typical day resembles a spreadsheet of prescribed activities performed in highly guarded environments. Unfettered as children, my generation became parents and turned childhood for our own kids into a lesson plan. Even play became a teachable moment.
We've also increasingly refashioned our culture along social Darwinist lines, which is why summer for many parents cannot be allowed to fall into mere fun. Their kids are being raised to compete, and competition for a finite number of university placements means summer school for prep courses or to redo courses taken in the regular year to get higher grades. Free summer courses for them is mana from a heaven of extreme parenting. Their urge to compete through their children, and our relentless drive for efficiency, are also behind the concept of year-round schooling, as anti-child (or teenager) as any educational concept going.
Such thinking forgets the cycle of life. You are young, you play. You get old and then you die. Do not repeat. There's a saying that no person on their deathbed wishes they'd spent more time at the office. The same applies to the classroom.
Why our culture changed is a puzzle. But this much is true: we were kids once, and then we forgot.
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Here's
a laugh..... if only.... (from my “inbasket”)
These 16 Police Comments were taken off actual police car videos around the USA.
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School accountability claims another English life (Melanie Reid (2008, March 31). Did our culture of hypercriticism lead to a head teacher’s death? An Inspector calls….with fear and loathing in tow. The Times, London, UK.)
This item is on the BCTF’s web site in a list archive, at http://www.bctf.ca/publications/BCTF-research.aspx
The Times newspaper of March 31, 2008 reported the suicide of a 54-year-old head teacher following a five-day school inspection. Irene Hogg was much loved in her rural northern community, which has been shocked by her death. While the full details are yet to be known, she was reported to be “angered and very disillusioned” by what the school inspectors reported. Immediately after the inspection, she failed to report back to work after Easter and her body was found in a lonely part of the nearby countryside. The Times reporter Melanie Reid reported: “Bad enough that one admirable woman, with 30 years’ teaching experience, who had steered countless children on a good course in life, has been lost to teaching. But even worse is the possibility that she was driven to take her own life by what seemed like unnecessary or petty bureaucracy.”’
Reid documents the suicides of three head teachers since January 2007 following negative reports from English school inspectors. Such suicides are not new, as was reported in a BCTF Research Report of 2003, which reported evidence of several suicides following English school inspections, and that English teachers were the most depressed category of workers in the country, with 44% of their disability insurance claims caused by mental illness.
Reid describes the “savage ethos” of school inspections, with a “vicious circle of impossible standards, false expectations, and the communal sadism of beating up those who fail to reach them.”
The death of one more competent and respected English teacher is a direct result of an accountability system which has demonstrated the capacity to destroy not only teachers’ reputations but also their lives. The UK’s National Union of Teachers (NUT), Reid states, has described the inspection system as a “reign of terror.”
Perhaps it is time for England’s education system to make their accountability system accountable.
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Apr. 16--She was an assistant principal at a Boston-area high school three years ago when she discovered a MySpace.com page under her name -- carrying her photograph and a series of disturbing messages from students.
"One said, 'I want to kill her,' " said the woman, who asked that her name and her school's be withheld. "It was shocking. As an administrator, you have to roll with the punches. But a number of kids who posted these messages were kids I'd thought I had excellent relationships with. You can't say it doesn't hurt."
She is one of a growing number of teachers and administrators who have found themselves the victims of cyberbullying, a problem that has become widespread enough that it has caught the attention of prosecutors and police.
"It's a troubling outgrowth of what we're seeing not only in high schools but in middle schools, as well," said Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone, who addressed the issue yesterday at a Wakefield conference with teachers, guidance counselors and administrators. "What kids are finding is that the anonymity of the cyber world allows them to intimidate and harass people."
Leone cited numerous instances in which students have used their cell phones to photograph or videotape teachers and posted the pictures, accompanied by insults or threats, on Web sites such as MySpace or YouTube.
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Food Force from UN
World Food Programme teaches students about world hunger
Food Force is a free computer game developed by the UN World Food Programme (WFP). The project has been developed specifically to help children learn about the fight against world hunger and the work that goes into feeding people. Food Force is available as a free Internet download from its dedicated website www.food-force.com. Food Force is designed for children between 8 and 16 years of age, and has been downloaded over 5 million times worldwide.
While playing the game's six different missions alongside Food Force's crack team of emergency aid workers, players will be faced with a number of realistic challenges to quickly feed thousands of people in the fictitious island of Sheylan; piloting helicopters on reconnaissance missions, negotiating with armed rebels on a convoy run, and using food to help rebuild villages.
Delivering food aid often involves a complex series of tasks. Before each mission begins, the player is presented with an educational video segment about the reality of WFP's work in field, allowing them to learn and understand how WFP responds to actual food emergencies; where food originates, nutritional breakdown and how it is delivered. Then, it's the players turn to take the mission challenge. Each challenge reflects one key element of the food delivery process - from emergency response through to building long term food security for a community.
The 6 missions are:
At the end of each mission the WFP characters present their feedback on the player's performance and encourage repeat play where necessary. When players complete all 6 missions, the game is over and they can submit their scores to an international high score database on the dedicated Food-Force website and compare with other players around the world.
Additionally, the website houses further information, teacher packs and other ways for children to get involved with the work of WFP. The game is designed to run on a standard PC or Apple computer and features 3D animated movie sequences to ensure a rich multimedia experience.
Julie Marshall Canadian Communications Consultant UN World Food Programme WFP Communications Division http://www.wfp.orgWFP is the world's largest humanitarian agency: this year, WFP plans to feed 73 million people in 70 countries.
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http://www.freerice.com/
What is this you ask? Possibly the coolest, easiest way ever for your students – and you – to help feed the hungry. This is a website (free, supported by paid advertising and sponsors) that quizzes you on your vocabulary, and then donates 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program.
A teacher friend pointed this out to me. She has her class do it every day at the beginning of class for 5 minutes or so. She does it at home every day to donate at least 2000 grains of rice per day.
Its fun too!
From the site:
FreeRice is a sister site of the world poverty site, Poverty.com.
FreeRice has two goals:
This is made possible by the sponsors who advertise on this site.
Whether you are CEO of a large corporation or a street child in a poor country, improving your vocabulary can improve your life. It is a great investment in yourself.
Perhaps even greater is the investment your donated rice makes in hungry human beings, enabling them to function and be productive. Somewhere in the world, a person is eating rice that you helped provide. Thank you.
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Sitting in the public gallery at the legislature yesterday, [Sandra Giesbrecht] watched with satisfaction as Health Minister George Abbott finally moved to fix a law that gutted the contracts of thousands of health-care workers six years ago.
"It was very gratifying," Giesbrecht, who chairs the Hospital Employees' Union local at Royal Jubilee Hospital, said later. "It felt like an acknowledgment and a statement that an error was made."
Abbott introduced legislation erasing three sections of the controversial law known as Bill 29. The Supreme Court of Canada slapped the government last year for failing to consult with unions before passing the bill in 2002. The high court also struck down sections of the law that had removed limitations on contracting out and layoffs.
The court gave B.C. one year to fix the problems, and earlier this year the government agreed to give $85 million to health-care unions to settle the dispute.
[Abbott said] "The bill itself is a fairly simple one," … "What it does is repeal the three sections that caught the attention of the Supreme Court of Canada in its Bill 29 decision.”
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NDP critic Adrian Dix said the legislation fixes a "despicable" act by the Liberal government six years ago.
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