I’m new to Chilliwack, but I hear the newspapers here hate teachers. I imagine that you think we’re a bunch of overpaid, under-worked whiners. I imagine that you would tell us that we should all be fired, or that if we don’t like our jobs or our pay, we should quit and find a different job.
I am very good at what I do. I am intelligent, articulate, and disciplined. I work hard every day to inspire and educate kids. I also teach in a very practical field, with job opportunities abundantly available outside of education. I love teaching, but when my employer does things like cut my wages by 10%, and restrict my ability to do the job they still expect me to do, I feel they’re saying “we don’t want you here. If you can be somewhere else, you should.”
Sadly, that’s exactly what they’re saying. This government, the one that the people of this province foolishly elected, is determined to eliminate public education. This government, sponsored and controlled by the owners corporations such as yourself, want obedient workers. Obedient workers. You want to, and have worked towards it for the last 30 years, eliminate the middle class and concentrate wealth among the owners of said corporations. You aim to remove all agency from those beneath you.
If I leave teaching, Chilliwack, the kids, and the schooling industry will lose yet another passionate, competent, caring educator. If you insist that we leave, indeed we will; the ones who most have something to offer will do so, and those that are left will exist only to further justify your demand for suppressed wages and poorer working and learning conditions.
At this point I’m at an impasse. I could stay, because I care and your plans disgust me – but you’ll use that against me too. Or I could leave, which I’m inclined to do, because if that’s what the people of BC want, as foolish as I think they are, who am I to question it?
Daniel Gore
