The British Columbia Teachers’ Federation contract is about to expire and teacher bargaining talks with the government will soon begin. I am once again disheartened that teachers are being misunderstood by the general public.
Being a teacher is supposed to be a noble profession; unfortunately, I am still amazed that so many people in our province are misinformed about the responsibilities and the “benefits” that teachers have that I want to set some things straight.
• As teachers, we are not paid for our time off in July and August. Some districts in B.C. offer a 12-month payment plan for 10 months of work but that clearly does not mean we are paid for our time off. We receive smaller cheques throughout the year if we choose that option.
• Teachers do not receive extra benefits or income for the amount of work we do for our students and for our schools. For example, coaching sports, organizing school events like music concerts, science fairs, assemblies and Sports Day is all done out of our own will and time.
• Teachers’ work hours are not from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Teachers use their own time after work hours, such as the evenings or weekends, to evaluate their students’ work, to plan their lessons, to gather materials for projects, to phone parents, to Xerox papers, to coach sports, etc. Also, teachers in B.C. do not receive extra time or income to write report cards which can take weeks, as teachers in other provinces do.
• Teachers do work on Professional Development days. For those misinformed individuals who think that teachers are off work when the kids are off school, I encourage you to re-examine the definition for “professional development.” On Pro-D Days, teachers are in schools or conference centres the whole day learning about new teaching materials or strategies to better educate their students.
• Teachers face a shortage of educational resources daily and we use our own money to buy supplies for our classrooms, which is not right.
As a teacher who loves my job, I hope those misinformed individuals will do their homework first before they become angry at teachers for some common stereotypes they have of them.
S. Ng
