For the Love of a Strike...

©Kathleen Tennant 2014

You know that saying "stuck between a rock and a hard place"? Well that is how I feel with respect to the teachers strike.  I get the issues, I really do. I have friends who are teachers, I have volunteered in classrooms, I have contributed to school based fundraising projects and I have kids in the public education system.  The bottom line is schools need more funding from our government.  I have no solution to offer.  Two parties battling it out like a bitter divorce is not going to solve any problems either.  I have written letters and signed petitions.  I have even gone to a rally. Our public education is in the shitter and there is no toilet paper to be passed under the door.  

In British Columbia a strike by teachers never seems to solve anything.  We simply find ways to put a princess bandaid over the problem and it holds for a little while, then it falls off and we are back to fighting about money and resources again.  I wonder if anyone in government has walked through our public school hallways without media in tow?  I know various members of government have been but it's always with that perfectly captured photograph that is suppose to make you think all is well.  I wonder if they could walk through the hallways of inner city schools and see how creative teachers have to be in order to find resources to create their lessons and count how many kids per textbook or how much duct tape is being used to hold the textbook together?  I wonder if anyone in government has ever asked a teacher how much they have spent, on average, for their classrooms?  My biggest question though is whether anyone in our government has ever tried to hold the attention of a classroom with 25 students which will include three ESL students and one kid with a disability that interrupts the lesson several times a minute on their own?  I wonder if this government has ever stood in the hallways of a school during lunch to see who actually has a lunch.  Has anyone in government ever asked a student what he or she wants and needs to help them do better in school?  In the event of a natural disaster and our kids are at school it is our teachers who we will rely on to keep our kids safe.  We, as parents trust teachers with our most valuable assets...our children.

Children with learning issues need help.  It's hard to get your child help, really hard.. like, really really hard.  Homework becomes a battle as it has been put on the parents to pick up where they left off in class.  I have had countless teachers try and teach me math so that I could then teach my child the math lesson at home.  My math ability is less than poor so the blank stare they get from me is slightly funny for my kids to watch especially since it diverts the attention away from them.  The bottom line is unless you are homeschooling, parents shouldn't have to teach their kids.  In fact, they shouldn't because it often creates a war.  

In the Coquitlam School District they laid off a boat load of teachers, special education teachers, counsellors and they annihilated the librarians, cafeterias and bus services.  I was never a fan of library classes when I was in school.  Learning about the dewy decimal system was dry as hell but for the love of god kids need libraries in schools. Our school library was the only way I got to read many of Judy Blume's books growing up.  Are You There God, It's Me Margaret had me glued to the pages.  And counsellors, our youth need their school counsellors at all levels of education.  I think they need them now more than ever before.  How is it even possible for a school to not have one or two?  In this fast paced everything at your finger tips world our kids need a place, a safe haven to retreat too and sometimes that is their school counsellor's office.  Had it not been for the school counsellor my son would not currently be getting the testing done that he needs ~ well... it has been started and then the strike happened so now we wait.  What I am getting at is if this battle is truly about kids and their futures then we really need to think about what is needed to fix the problems at hand and stripping kids of their resources to save money isn't the answer.  Our government and the teachers union really need to ask what is best for our future and yes, that answer will probably cost money BUT our future is worth it, right?  It is an expensive world we live in but what if that kid in public school right now has the answer to fix the economy of the future?  What if that kid never gets the chance.....

---