This year will be the first in six that Kamloops teachers are expecting lay-offs. David Komlijenovic, president of the Kamloops -Thompson Teachers’ Association, said teachers are managing as best they can.
“It’s unnerving,” he said, “[teachers] don’t feel like there’s a lot of certainty and it is having an effect on morale.”
Komlijenovic said that the association has been trying to meet with the Ministry of Education to discuss some of the concerns of teachers but the meeting was denied. He said they received a letter that basically said the minister (Margaret MacDiarmid) was too busy.
After hearing from Annette Glover that budget cuts would now be affecting teachers and therefore effectively the students, I approached Komlijenovic to get an idea of how exactly funding or lack thereof was reaching classrooms on a day-to-day basis.
“The effect for teachers is less programs, less choice, larger class sizes, more difficulties in teaching the unique needs of students, addressing issues of special needs students and lack of specialist teachers,” he said.
All of those things combined he said, “has created stress on classroom teachers that have to pick up the work load of teachers that were assigned those roles.”
Here’s the part where I would comment on my experience as a student in the system but my apologies as I cannot because I wasn’t schooled in Kamloops.
Moving on…
Komlijenovic went on to say that historically, B.C. teachers spend the most money on the classroom supplies, “something like $2000 a year” that is not covered and comes out of their own pockets.
“Teachers are trying to manage the classroom the best they can and if the resources are not there than teachers are providing those resources through their own funds,” he said.
Do you think Komlijenovic has given too much undeserved credit to teachers?
I don’t think that Komlijenovic has given too much undeserved credit to teachers. I still think that the majority of people who go into teaching are doing it for the right reasons and are genuinely interested in teaching kids the best they can. Of course, like in any profession, there are a few “bad apples” who may not be 100% dedicated to their job- but I think teachers are one profession that probably has a very small number of those types of people.
As you showed in your blog, many teachers are spending money out of their OWN pockets to improve their students’ education…how many other professions would we see people using their own money to make their job better? I would argue very few.
On the other hand, as some people have pointed out (eg- Terry Lake), because of the way the union works, teaching is a profession based on seniority; this means that essentially there is no “rewards” for good behaviour/teaching, and no “punishments” for bad teaching practices…
If those teachers who were giving 110% were rewarded for their hard work, and those teachers who were only giving 50% were “punished” in some way (probably financially), then we might have an education system that would be a lot better with students seeing greater results.
However, there are pluses and minuses to both methods I think.
At the end of the day, I would argue that B.C.’s teachers do a great job with what resources they are given, and the fact that they are constantly facing cut-backs and layoffs is sad. The current environment may even result in less university-aged British Columbians choosing to go into a teaching career in fear that they wont be able to find a job after graduation. Who knows.
It seems like our province has given up on our education system. It needs to realize that teachers are necessary in our society, and if our kids aren’t in a comfortable learning environment, then the future of the Western world is doomed.