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Every September, students at A. Lorne Cassidy Elementary School in Stittsville join thousands of other children across the country in the Terry Fox National School Run day. This year, however, the school scrambled to save the popular charity event for cancer research while abiding by the work-to-rule sanctions imposed by teachers as part of their contract dispute with the province.
Usually, kids run on the streets surrounding the school, but that would be considered a “field trip,” which is on the teachers do-not-do list, said the school’s parent council co-chair, Tanya Hein. So the run was postponed until Oct. 2, and will be held in the school yard instead, she said.
It’s typical of the disruptions at Ottawa public elementary schools as teachers ramp up their work-to-rule campaign. There have been inconveniences, and more work for administrators, but so far apparently no major impact in classrooms.
The information pickets held by teachers at some schools Wednesday were the first in-your-face sign of the labour unrest. There is some hopeful news, however, after weeks of sniping from both sides in the dispute that has seen the province’s 78,000 public elementary teachers without a contract for more than a year. Tuesday night, The Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario accepted an offer from Ontario Education Minister Liz Sandals to go back to bargaining, which broke off Sept. 11.
In the meantime, meet-the-teacher nights and field trips have been cancelled, although extra-curricular activities are going ahead. Teachers have been asked not to collect money or permission forms for such things as school milk programs, pizza days, and cross-country track practices, or participate in fundraising activities. School administrators have taken on extra work at some schools. At others, things are shifting online, rather than forms being collected by teachers.
“There are all these little things, nothing has been catastrophic,” says Hein. Her school’s meet-the-teacher barbecue, usually held in September, was put off. The teachers and principal at A. Lorne Cassidy are “wonderful” and working hard to ensure things work as smoothly as possible, she says.
The school council’s big fundraiser, an entertainment coupon book, is going ahead, with parent volunteers lined up to distribute the books and collect the money, as teachers won’t do it, she said.
“Honestly, I’ve been through a few of these labour situations, and there is zero impact on the classroom at this point in time,” says Andrew Canham, the principal at A. Lorne Cassidy. “I mean, there haven’t been any field trips, but there aren’t that many field trips in September anyway.”
He and the vice-principal handled the permission forms for the school’s popular cross-country running club, and will do the same for the football and soccer teams. That’s typical at many schools. “However, student safety remains our first priority and if the school administrator does not believe appropriate safety mechanisms are in place, the extra-curricular activities may be cancelled,” says a statement from the school board.
At Hopewell Avenue Public School, parents are being asked to pay for pizza and Subway lunches online, rather than having the money collected by teachers.
Chantal McEvoy, who has two sons at Bridlewood Community Elementary School in Kanata, says it seems to be business at usual. “So far they haven’t done anything that’s negatively affected the kids.” Her son in Grade 5 is taking part in the cross-country running club, and the school milk program is already run by volunteers, she says. McEvoy is disappointed about the cancellation of field trips, however. “The field trips are a really nice treat for the kids to get out. It would be nice if they could get out at least once this year.”
Her children’s teachers are “amazing,” she says, and they still communicate by writing in the children’s agenda, and respond to any comments she makes there.
The disruptions may increase in October, when the union has threatened rotating one-day strikes if “sufficient progress” hasn’t been made in negotiations. A spokesperson for the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario, speaking before the two sides agreed to go back to bargaining, said the union had set no date for the rotating strikes and the parents would be warned before hand.
“We will provide sufficient notice should there be an escalation of strike action,” the official said.
The Ottawa-Carleton District School board also warns there may be change to the “timing and/or distribution” of fall report cards, usually sent out in November. The work-to-rule prohibits teachers from providing comments or packaging the “progress report,” which contains general comments rather than marks. Teachers will provide a hard-copy list of ratings for each child to the administration, says the union.
Last spring teachers staged a similar job action with final report cards. It took Ottawa school board staff the whole summer to compile and mail out a list of marks for each student.
Union officials hope information pickets such as those held Wednesday will get their message across about issues they say are key in the dispute, such as class sizes and working conditions for teachers. Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has urged elementary teachers to accept the province’s offer, saying it’s essentially the same deal already ratified by high school and Catholic board teachers. The province, which is facing a big budget deficit, has also warned that any contract must be “net zero”, so monetary gains must be made up by savings in other areas.
Half a dozen parents interviewed as they dropped their kids off at First Avenue Public School recently all said they strongly supported the teachers. None had noticed any changes in their Glebe school because of the work-to-rule campaign.
“Really, it needs to be done,” said Jennifer Wilson, who has a son in Grade 5 at First Avenue and a daughter in Grade 8 at Glashan, an intermediate school on Arlington Avenue. “The teachers deserve a fair working experience.”
Parents said they were confident teachers would let them know if their children had any problems, and no one seemed too concerned about report cards.
“If I have a problem, I can always just go see the teacher. I won’t hesitate, and I know they will listen. I support them,” said Karine Leblanc. Her kids, in Grade 1 and Grade 5, are just “ordinary” and don’t have any particular learning issues. “The report card doesn’t change anything.”
Class sizes, and support for children with special needs, were issues of concern to everyone.
“If the teachers are being threatened with the prospect of bigger class sizes, I’m completely on their side,” said Patricia Reilly-King, who has three kids at First Avenue, in grades 1, 3 and 5. “The disruption (of a work-to-rule) to me and my life is really minimal.” Even if the teachers take the strike to the next level and withdraw all services, “we’ll all have to figure out how to take care of our kids during the day.”
As for field trips, they aren’t as important as a good teacher, she says. “At the end of the day the kind of teacher you have is much more important than whether you get to go to the NAC to hear the orchestra, as lovely as that is.”
The escalating work-to-rule campaign
The list of things teachers are being told not to do has been lengthening since the school year began. A sample of the do-not-do list issued by the union Sept. 21:
• Prepare report card comments or package the “Progress Report” sent out in November, which does not include letter marks, but assesses “learning skills and work habits” on a scale that ranges from “needs improvement” to “excellent.” It also gives a general indication of how well students is doing in various subjects, with a scale from “progressing with difficulty” to “progressing very well.” Teachers can provide school administrators with a hard copy of those assessments. And teachers in alternative programs can provide “one brief comment per area.”
• Conduct parent interviews related to the Progress Reports, unless the teacher has identified a concern about the student.
• Update classroom websites or blogs, create and distribute classroom newsletters. (In September, teachers were told not to contribute to school-wide newsletters, websites or social media accounts such as Twitter.)
• Update the Individual Education Plans for students with learning disabilities and special needs by the deadline of the 30th instructional day of school. Instead, teachers will “take the necessary time to complete EIPs at their own pace during the instructional day.” (This appears to be a paperwork slowdown, since the guidelines say teachers should still make modifications needed for their students.)
• Respond to email, electronic or phone communication from administrators “at any time,” unless it’s a safety issue, or the teacher is going to be absent or is relaying day plans. (In September, teachers were told to restrict such communications to school hours.)
• Refrain from “any activities that take them away from their classrooms” during “Wynne Wednesdays,” when teachers are also asked to wear a solidarity color. Wednesday, some teachers at Ottawa schools held information pickets.
• Fill in for an absent teacher. (Responding to suggestions that this might endanger student safety, the union issued a clarification saying teachers could fill in “under protest” to make sure students are not left unattended.)
Here’s a sample of things teachers were told they could not do as of the start of the school year:
Participate in meet-the-teacher, parent information nights for kids in Grade 8, or school barbecues, if they are outside of school hours.
Take kids on field trips. This includes outings to outdoor education centres.
Collect money for anything, such as school fees, agenda fees, milk money, fees for extracurricular activities.
Hand out forms, such as the permission forms for technology and social media, track and other clubs, forms to order milk, and information about class pictures.
Take part in professional development sponsored by the board.
Talking to the teacher
Some parents are confused about whether the work-to-rule campaign restricts teachers from communicating with them. There’s no easy answer. As anyone with a child in school knows, communication varies widely depending on the teacher. Some provide a tsunami of class newsletters, notes, and personal jottings in children’s agendas, and respond quickly to emails. Other teachers are less communicative.
As part of the work-to-rule campaign, meet-the-teacher nights held outside school hours were cancelled. The union also advised teachers not to send out class newsletters or update websites and blogs. There’s also a ban on conducting “parent interviews that are related to the progress report card” issued in the fall, “unless the teacher/OT identifies a concern about a child’s progress.”
And if a parent has a concern? That’s not clear.
The Ottawa-Carleton District School board issued a statement with this interpretation of the union sanctions: “Communication with parents is now restricted to situations where there is a safety concern or where a teacher has a concern about a child’s progress; teachers are not engaging in regular communication including email, newsletters, websites or other apps/programs that may normally be used.”
That upset the president of the Ottawa-Carleton Elementary Teachers Federation, Peter Giuliani, who told CBC that teachers are not refusing to communicate with parents.
That still leaves a lot of room for confusion. What if a parent wants to discuss a child’s progress report, or any other issue? Is the teacher obliged to respond to an email query, or to schedule a meeting during the school day? That question was posed to the school board, and here’s the answer: “Yes teachers are expected to communicate with parents in various ways,” said a statement from Jennifer Adams, the board’s Director of Education, “including through regular class newsletters and also by responding to parent questions about their child, and to initiate communication with a parent as required, for example to alert them to any particular difficulties or concerns a child is experiencing at school.”
“This is one of the sanctions that was referred to in (the union’s) phase 2 sanctions (no parent/teacher meetings) and phase 3 sanctions (no blogs/newsletters/email, no completion of the IEP documents, no communication with parents on student progress unless initiated by the teacher). This is the partial withdrawal of services.”
查看原文...
Usually, kids run on the streets surrounding the school, but that would be considered a “field trip,” which is on the teachers do-not-do list, said the school’s parent council co-chair, Tanya Hein. So the run was postponed until Oct. 2, and will be held in the school yard instead, she said.
It’s typical of the disruptions at Ottawa public elementary schools as teachers ramp up their work-to-rule campaign. There have been inconveniences, and more work for administrators, but so far apparently no major impact in classrooms.
The information pickets held by teachers at some schools Wednesday were the first in-your-face sign of the labour unrest. There is some hopeful news, however, after weeks of sniping from both sides in the dispute that has seen the province’s 78,000 public elementary teachers without a contract for more than a year. Tuesday night, The Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario accepted an offer from Ontario Education Minister Liz Sandals to go back to bargaining, which broke off Sept. 11.
In the meantime, meet-the-teacher nights and field trips have been cancelled, although extra-curricular activities are going ahead. Teachers have been asked not to collect money or permission forms for such things as school milk programs, pizza days, and cross-country track practices, or participate in fundraising activities. School administrators have taken on extra work at some schools. At others, things are shifting online, rather than forms being collected by teachers.
“There are all these little things, nothing has been catastrophic,” says Hein. Her school’s meet-the-teacher barbecue, usually held in September, was put off. The teachers and principal at A. Lorne Cassidy are “wonderful” and working hard to ensure things work as smoothly as possible, she says.
The school council’s big fundraiser, an entertainment coupon book, is going ahead, with parent volunteers lined up to distribute the books and collect the money, as teachers won’t do it, she said.
“Honestly, I’ve been through a few of these labour situations, and there is zero impact on the classroom at this point in time,” says Andrew Canham, the principal at A. Lorne Cassidy. “I mean, there haven’t been any field trips, but there aren’t that many field trips in September anyway.”
He and the vice-principal handled the permission forms for the school’s popular cross-country running club, and will do the same for the football and soccer teams. That’s typical at many schools. “However, student safety remains our first priority and if the school administrator does not believe appropriate safety mechanisms are in place, the extra-curricular activities may be cancelled,” says a statement from the school board.
At Hopewell Avenue Public School, parents are being asked to pay for pizza and Subway lunches online, rather than having the money collected by teachers.
Chantal McEvoy, who has two sons at Bridlewood Community Elementary School in Kanata, says it seems to be business at usual. “So far they haven’t done anything that’s negatively affected the kids.” Her son in Grade 5 is taking part in the cross-country running club, and the school milk program is already run by volunteers, she says. McEvoy is disappointed about the cancellation of field trips, however. “The field trips are a really nice treat for the kids to get out. It would be nice if they could get out at least once this year.”
Her children’s teachers are “amazing,” she says, and they still communicate by writing in the children’s agenda, and respond to any comments she makes there.
The disruptions may increase in October, when the union has threatened rotating one-day strikes if “sufficient progress” hasn’t been made in negotiations. A spokesperson for the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario, speaking before the two sides agreed to go back to bargaining, said the union had set no date for the rotating strikes and the parents would be warned before hand.
“We will provide sufficient notice should there be an escalation of strike action,” the official said.
The Ottawa-Carleton District School board also warns there may be change to the “timing and/or distribution” of fall report cards, usually sent out in November. The work-to-rule prohibits teachers from providing comments or packaging the “progress report,” which contains general comments rather than marks. Teachers will provide a hard-copy list of ratings for each child to the administration, says the union.
Last spring teachers staged a similar job action with final report cards. It took Ottawa school board staff the whole summer to compile and mail out a list of marks for each student.
Union officials hope information pickets such as those held Wednesday will get their message across about issues they say are key in the dispute, such as class sizes and working conditions for teachers. Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has urged elementary teachers to accept the province’s offer, saying it’s essentially the same deal already ratified by high school and Catholic board teachers. The province, which is facing a big budget deficit, has also warned that any contract must be “net zero”, so monetary gains must be made up by savings in other areas.
Half a dozen parents interviewed as they dropped their kids off at First Avenue Public School recently all said they strongly supported the teachers. None had noticed any changes in their Glebe school because of the work-to-rule campaign.
“Really, it needs to be done,” said Jennifer Wilson, who has a son in Grade 5 at First Avenue and a daughter in Grade 8 at Glashan, an intermediate school on Arlington Avenue. “The teachers deserve a fair working experience.”
Parents said they were confident teachers would let them know if their children had any problems, and no one seemed too concerned about report cards.
“If I have a problem, I can always just go see the teacher. I won’t hesitate, and I know they will listen. I support them,” said Karine Leblanc. Her kids, in Grade 1 and Grade 5, are just “ordinary” and don’t have any particular learning issues. “The report card doesn’t change anything.”
Class sizes, and support for children with special needs, were issues of concern to everyone.
“If the teachers are being threatened with the prospect of bigger class sizes, I’m completely on their side,” said Patricia Reilly-King, who has three kids at First Avenue, in grades 1, 3 and 5. “The disruption (of a work-to-rule) to me and my life is really minimal.” Even if the teachers take the strike to the next level and withdraw all services, “we’ll all have to figure out how to take care of our kids during the day.”
As for field trips, they aren’t as important as a good teacher, she says. “At the end of the day the kind of teacher you have is much more important than whether you get to go to the NAC to hear the orchestra, as lovely as that is.”
The escalating work-to-rule campaign
The list of things teachers are being told not to do has been lengthening since the school year began. A sample of the do-not-do list issued by the union Sept. 21:
• Prepare report card comments or package the “Progress Report” sent out in November, which does not include letter marks, but assesses “learning skills and work habits” on a scale that ranges from “needs improvement” to “excellent.” It also gives a general indication of how well students is doing in various subjects, with a scale from “progressing with difficulty” to “progressing very well.” Teachers can provide school administrators with a hard copy of those assessments. And teachers in alternative programs can provide “one brief comment per area.”
• Conduct parent interviews related to the Progress Reports, unless the teacher has identified a concern about the student.
• Update classroom websites or blogs, create and distribute classroom newsletters. (In September, teachers were told not to contribute to school-wide newsletters, websites or social media accounts such as Twitter.)
• Update the Individual Education Plans for students with learning disabilities and special needs by the deadline of the 30th instructional day of school. Instead, teachers will “take the necessary time to complete EIPs at their own pace during the instructional day.” (This appears to be a paperwork slowdown, since the guidelines say teachers should still make modifications needed for their students.)
• Respond to email, electronic or phone communication from administrators “at any time,” unless it’s a safety issue, or the teacher is going to be absent or is relaying day plans. (In September, teachers were told to restrict such communications to school hours.)
• Refrain from “any activities that take them away from their classrooms” during “Wynne Wednesdays,” when teachers are also asked to wear a solidarity color. Wednesday, some teachers at Ottawa schools held information pickets.
• Fill in for an absent teacher. (Responding to suggestions that this might endanger student safety, the union issued a clarification saying teachers could fill in “under protest” to make sure students are not left unattended.)
Here’s a sample of things teachers were told they could not do as of the start of the school year:
Participate in meet-the-teacher, parent information nights for kids in Grade 8, or school barbecues, if they are outside of school hours.
Take kids on field trips. This includes outings to outdoor education centres.
Collect money for anything, such as school fees, agenda fees, milk money, fees for extracurricular activities.
Hand out forms, such as the permission forms for technology and social media, track and other clubs, forms to order milk, and information about class pictures.
Take part in professional development sponsored by the board.
Talking to the teacher
Some parents are confused about whether the work-to-rule campaign restricts teachers from communicating with them. There’s no easy answer. As anyone with a child in school knows, communication varies widely depending on the teacher. Some provide a tsunami of class newsletters, notes, and personal jottings in children’s agendas, and respond quickly to emails. Other teachers are less communicative.
As part of the work-to-rule campaign, meet-the-teacher nights held outside school hours were cancelled. The union also advised teachers not to send out class newsletters or update websites and blogs. There’s also a ban on conducting “parent interviews that are related to the progress report card” issued in the fall, “unless the teacher/OT identifies a concern about a child’s progress.”
And if a parent has a concern? That’s not clear.
The Ottawa-Carleton District School board issued a statement with this interpretation of the union sanctions: “Communication with parents is now restricted to situations where there is a safety concern or where a teacher has a concern about a child’s progress; teachers are not engaging in regular communication including email, newsletters, websites or other apps/programs that may normally be used.”
That upset the president of the Ottawa-Carleton Elementary Teachers Federation, Peter Giuliani, who told CBC that teachers are not refusing to communicate with parents.
That still leaves a lot of room for confusion. What if a parent wants to discuss a child’s progress report, or any other issue? Is the teacher obliged to respond to an email query, or to schedule a meeting during the school day? That question was posed to the school board, and here’s the answer: “Yes teachers are expected to communicate with parents in various ways,” said a statement from Jennifer Adams, the board’s Director of Education, “including through regular class newsletters and also by responding to parent questions about their child, and to initiate communication with a parent as required, for example to alert them to any particular difficulties or concerns a child is experiencing at school.”
“This is one of the sanctions that was referred to in (the union’s) phase 2 sanctions (no parent/teacher meetings) and phase 3 sanctions (no blogs/newsletters/email, no completion of the IEP documents, no communication with parents on student progress unless initiated by the teacher). This is the partial withdrawal of services.”
查看原文...
