A Bump in the Road

So, we've now experienced the first bump on Tertius' academic road...
When I dropped him off at Kindergarten today, there were no parents milling about outside the drop-off location. I found that odd, and assumed that we were later than I thought. I hurried Tertius and his little sister inside, and down to his classroom. All of the parents were stuffed into the room, as well as all the kids, two teachers, at least one EA and the vice-principal. It was chaotic in there, with so many bodies crammed into a space designed for no more than a couple dozen.

Once it seemed that everyone had arrived, the vice-principal thanked everyone for staying and began to explain why he was there. He announced that since the school had had lower than expected enrollment at the primary level, the district had decided to cut a teaching position at the school. As the newest teacher on staff, that meant that Tertius' teacher was being let go. If enrollment had been high enough in the other primary grades, they could have moved her around to another grade. BC teachers are all certified for K-12; they do try to place teachers in settings that they took specific training for, such as middle years or secondary, but they can teach any grade. Unfortunately, at our school, the numbers just weren't there.

My first, and most important question was to find out about Kindergarten enrollment. I had concerns, because I know that there is a hard cap of 22 students for Kindergarten. Still, I had visions of the school having to stuff 55 Kindy students into two classrooms as a result of this decision. The vice-principal assured me that they only have 43 Kindergarten students, so they're just barely under the class size limits for two classes. The VP also said that the school admin had gone to bat for her, but the district had final say. He encouraged parents to contact the district if they had any questions or concerns.

It was clear to me that Ms. M. was visibly upset, but she did a remarkable job of holding it together for her students. She can't have had more that 24 hours' notice of this. I asked the parents assembled to please give Ms M. a round of applause, and I hope that it communicated to her how much we appreciate how well she had prepared our children for school already, and how much we dislike the decision of the school district. I've written up a thank you card for her, and will be giving her a scarf that I made as a farewell gift when I pick Andrew up this afternoon. I'm actually in tears as I type this, and I'm not sure if I'm more upset for my son, or for his teacher.


Now Ms. M. is a DIT (District Initiated Transfer). She is owed a job by the district; if there is no job, she is placed on the TOC (Teacher on Call) list as a priority TOC, which means that she will be one of the first teachers called every day, as the district has to pay her, regardless of whether she works or not. I imagine that the district will want her TOCing as many days as possible, to avoid being out of pocket for a teacher who is being paid, but not working.

This creates a trickle-down effect for every other teacher on the TOC list. Teachers all get bumped further down on the list when there is a DIT on the TOC roster; DITs get first dibs on call-outs, and there are going to be new teachers who will have a harder time making ends meet until she is in a contract position. I know how this works – my husband did his time in the TOC trenches. In fact, while he has Continuing status, he does not yet have his own contract, and this is his seventh year in this district. Our school district is one of a handful that have been consistently showing modest growth over the last decade, but with districts having to stretch the insufficient government funding as far as it can go, classes get filled to their limits, staff get shuffled around within the schools, and that doesn't necessarily translate into more teaching jobs.


But for today, I can't concern myself with the larger picture. Today, I am the mother of a little boy whose school world just got turned upside down. By the time I pick him up after lunch, Tertius will have had to move to a different classroom, acquaint himself with a new environment, learn different routines and spend some time building rapport with a new teacher, along with 20 other kids.

What seems like a small change to the adults making the decisions is actually a monumental adjustment that they are expecting 4 and 5 year old children to just take in stride. I foresee some tears and confusion, and a lot of time comforting and explaining in the near future. And I don't know how long it will be before he can start to feel settled in school.

That's a lot to put on a little boy.

Blogging In A Public Venue

As if blogging itself weren't putting your thoughts out there for public consumption, I've been accepted as a contributing blogger for Huffington Post. I'm posting there under my real name, so I won't be putting a link here. I like this site to remain somewhat anonymous, as I talk about deeply personal things here, and I would like to preserve some measure of privacy for me, Hubby, and the Hobbitses.

The teachers' strike really stirred up the activist in me, though, and I felt like I had a lot to say on the matter. HuffPost put out a call for parent voices, so I started writing, unsure of whether I'd have the courage to submit it. I was profoundly inspired by so many people during that time, not the least of which were two other HuffPost contributors, L.F. and C.G.; their words motivated me to submit my first entry, on the off-chance that they felt that this parent's voice was worth sharing with a wider audience.

It has been tremendously gratifying to know that the editor does feel that I have something to share with the world, and it spurs me to write more. I find that I am really liking the process, and feel like it is truly honing my skills as a communicator.

I'll still post here, and share a bit of my life with you all, but if you know me in real life, please look for me on HuffPost, too.

Thanks!

Summer Retrospective, Part One

As families prepare for the possible return to school, I am inspired to sit down and write out my own reflections of this past summer. In countless movies, we see children, hard at work on their first day of classes, writing out their first essay of the school year. And so, I take a page from that to bring you...

What I Did On My Last Day of School, by Busy Little Bee

To begin with, this year ended abruptly. There was no year-end party in the classes, no wind-down, no closure for anyone in that school. It just felt wrong.

As the wife of a BC Public school teacher, I was in a unique position. I knew that I needed to pay close attention to the BCTF website on June 16th; when the announcement was made, I did a few things to end the year right:

- I had purchased the teacher's gifts at least a week before, so I made sure to wrap them up that night
- I tucked two fabric shopping bags into each child's backpack, to pack up their desk
- I stuffed a dozen plastic shopping bags into two other bags to take to the school for the end of the day
- I sat my school-age children down to explain to them what was happening, and to prepare them to say goodbye to their teachers and friends for the summer
- I gave them cards to write in to accompany the gifts
- I checked our pantry shelves and freezer to take stock of what food we had
- I prayed for fiscal responsibility, to successfully get us through to July 15th, when Hubby's summer payroll savings would kick in. And I prayed for strength.
- I prepared to call our landlord, to ask him not to cash our rent cheque for July

What do you mean, this doesn't look like your summer preparation list? Normally, it doesn't look like mine, either. But this year was different. I can't say special, because there was nothing exciting about it, nothing to look forward to but financial uncertainty and enormous stress and anxiety.

On the last day of school, I went in early for pick-up. Tertius and Quarta were with me, and we gave the bags full of bags to their siblings and sent them back to their teachers with offers to help deconstruct their classrooms. See, we knew they were only being given 45 minutes by the government before they would be locked out of their classrooms, or their schools, and I noted that most teachers had elected to park in the church parking lot just off the school property in anticipation of that deadline. Tell me, how exactly are teachers expected to clean out their classroom properly in 45 minutes? The quick answer is that they can't. I knew that when I walked into Secunda's classroom and asked, "What can I help with?". The look on her teacher's face was an odd mix of panic, sadness and mirth. She smiled wryly, and said, "Well, everything's got to be cleared out of the cloakroom. Can you stay to help with that?" I told her that we would stay the full 45 minutes, and it looked like she was about to burst into tears. I know she's not one for emotional outbursts, so I quietly took the kids out of the room and began work. We stayed as long as she had work for us, and at some point, she looked around the room, sighed, and said, "I think that's all we can do. The rest will just have to be done in September." That afternoon, I cried.

I cried for my children, who didn't get the chance to say a proper goodbye to their friends in the schoolyard, because unlike past years, people didn't stick around. Children were scooped up and whisked off school property like there was an outbreak of leprosy. I cried for their teachers, likewise denied the chance to give their students that important sense of closure, to give them one last supportive gesture to send them on their way. I cried for the other kids, who had come to school wholly unprepared for that day. Not in the, “Gee, sorry you forgot to bring a bag to clean your desk with” kind of way, but real grief for the confusion and hurt they might be feeling, the sense of disconnectedness, and the uncertainty about the following school year. I cried for my husband, who went through the same thing as the other 41,000 teachers in this province. He couldn't leave anything behind; his contract was only for that year, and we still didn't know where he would be teaching in September, if at all. I cried for a lot of reasons that day. And I did it while hiding in the bathroom, because I knew that I had to present a brave face for my kids, and a strong one for my husband, should he feel the need to cry.



I don't ever want to have a last day of school like that again. And as a citizen who has been fully awakened to the realities of public education in BC, I know I won't.

Cautiously Optimistic

I couldn't sleep on Monday night. Twice, I ran the battery down on my phone, checking for updates on the bargaining between the BCTF and BCPSEA. I had been experiencing some stomach discomfort, but I chalked it up to too much garlic in our dinner. Then the excruciatingly painful cramps started and I knew I was in the grips of a full-on colitis attack.This doesn't happen too often for me, thankfully. It is only in times of major stress that it rears its ugly head and renders me a whimpering blob of flesh, rocking incessantly back and forth, trying to self-soothe. 

And then the song starts. 

I blame it all on Amaz-Aine (name bungled to protect the individual). See, she made me a CD a few years back, and its my kids' favourite thing to listen to in the car. The first half of the album is Great Big Sea songs, but it's the second half of the album that has them so captivated. She knows me so well, and gave me a bunch of Arrogant Worms songs to enjoy. On this particular disc is a catchy little jazz number, called "IBS" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc6m0fqUzds&index=4&list=PLgX4Lji6mCw8OzgBrFJykd-ysqRikMw-t). Yes, whenever I have a colitis attack, I now have to suffer the further indignity of having this ear-worm stuck in my head until the colitis has worked through my system, typically, 24 hours or so. I suppose it helps to pass the time...

Anyway, all of this is to illustrate for you, dear reader, what the government's strike against teachers is doing to people. I'm not even a teacher, but I am married to one, and the stress of not knowing where rent was going to come from, combined with trying to be the taskmaster for the kids (teachers have earned even MORE of my respect for their phenomenal classroom management skills), keeping up with the housework and being a support to Hubby have taken their toll. And Monday night, I hit the wall.

And so it was that I was up in the middle of the night, in the throes of another round of "ohpleaseletmejustdiesothispainwillstop" when I refreshed my phone's Facebook app and saw that a tentative deal had been reached.

Colour me cautiously optimistic.

I knew that the BCTF would not let E80 stay in the language of the agreement, so I figured it was probably a good deal, or at least, as good a deal as the BCTF were ever going to get out of this government. And while I forsee this being ratified, I don't for a moment think that the BC Liberals have backed down from their plan to dismantle public education in BC.

As the wife of a teacher, and the friend of so many others, I can assure you that teachers want to be in the classroom as soon as is feasible.

This strike was not about pay raises, as the government would have you believe; it was about something far more fundamental - it has been about protecting the constitutional rights of teachers, and the charter freedoms of children. It was about preserving public education to prevent the ever-growing chasm of haves and have-nots. Teachers took an enormous financial hit to stand up for the right of BC children to receive the education that the Charter of Rights promises them. And it took an immeasurable emotional and mental toll on them all to do it.

I expect that these excellent men and women will need continued understanding and support, even encouragement, to move past such a fractious time and refocus their considerable energies on what they truly love: educating our children. So when you have the opportunity, hug a teacher and say thank you. I know I will.

What Class Size and Composition Issues Mean To My Family

We are now at the beginning of our third week of strike action in September. Exploratory discussions collapsed just over two weeks ago, with the mediator declaring that the two sides were too far apart for mediation. While they are once again holed up at a hotel in Richmond, discussing things, I'm not holding my breath for a satisfactory resolution. And so, it's time for me to talk about how the real sticking point for the government affects a real family.


I'm neither a teacher nor an EA. I am the stay-at-home parent of four, two of which (so far) have been designated gifted. I have watched as year after year, I sit in IEP meetings to set up goals for my children, only to have the year-end IEP print-out say "Insufficient progress to meet goals". This is not the fault of the teacher, who is forced to perform triage in the classroom daily; this is not the fault of the student, who would self-direct if only the resources were made available. This is the fault of the government who has sought to systematically underfund public education for over a decade. If my children's classrooms were funded properly, there would be an EA present to assist the struggling students, and the teacher would have enough time to implement the strategies put in place to augment my kids' educational experience.  

Time for The Tide To Turn

I was so heartened the other day to see an open letter from a Port Coquitlam school administrator to school parents, detailing the increasing fiscal constraints placed on the public school system here in BC by the BC Liberal party. Their school annual budget plummeted 87% between 2002 and 2014, from $181,000 down to a paltry $23,000 This is a district that had 30,000 students when Hubby worked there in 2007. Were he still working there, he would have been laid off this year, along with the 800 other teachers that had less than 8 years' experience in their district. To put it into perspective, that would be the equivalent of laying off EVERY SINGLE TEACHER in our community of 70,000 people.

This government is not putting families first. It is systematically destroying public education, attempting to break the teachers' union, and using shock doctrine tactics to prime the voting public for a privatized education system that creates a larger divide between the "haves" and "have-nots", and removes choice for children whose families cannot afford the private system.

Can we afford the BC Liberals?

Tertius explains his sign to the art teacher at his big brother's new middle school

Fighting Despair

We are fully in support of the teachers in the current labour dispute and government lockout. And we are going broke to do it.

And I'm sure we're not the only ones.

We were lucky; because Hubby had the foresight to sign up for payroll savings, 12% of his paycheques from Sept to June were banked, to be paid out over the summer months. Thank God for that. Even so, with no paycheque at the end of June, I had to get creative to keep us from going broke then - literally.

I have a unique skill set. Our family plays in the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), a not-for-profit society devoted to the research and re-creation of the Middle Ages. As such, I have developed the cross stitch I learned from my mother into pretty competent blackwork embroidery

I've also learned how to do tablet weaving, to make trim for Hubby's 10th century Norse persona.

Other people seem to want to buy my work.

I've made just over $500 selling trim, and it has gone either directly to the grocery store to feed us, or to the dairy for milk, or into our gas tank, or into our savings account, trying to set enough aside to keep a roof over our heads in October. I feel like I can't weave fast enough, because we're running out of time, and money.

And that strikes fear in my heart.

The hobbitses can see the strain Hubby and I are under, and I know that it's affecting them, too. Not being able to attend school is taking its toll. So I've developed some study units for them, and will try to implement them while trying to weave as long as my tendonitis will allow. Primus has been experiencing some insomnia this past week, and I know it's due to stress. I just wish I could make it better for him, but he was already given to feeling anxious about starting middle school; now we have to throw the uncertainty of an unknown start date and no orientation into the mix. Secunda is mostly just wanting to find out who her teacher will be - Ms C or Ms H - and is digging in to the material I've worked up for her. Tertius asks almost daily when he will be able to start Kindergarten; he seems to take the delay in stride, but I know he'd rather be at school. Quarta seems to be least affected by it, and I started her on printing practice and letter recognition today.

And it appears that my colitis has resurfaced.

The roiling, gurgling and excruciating pain assault me at night. I stay awake, hoping one more trip to the bathroom will settle it, and then I tell Hubby that I have insomnia instead of telling him that my guts are trying to turn themselves inside out so that he won't worry.

We have been fortunate in that we have received amazing support from people. Our church family gave us a gift card that has fed us when nothing else could. Our union local had a $50 grocery card to hand out to us. Friends have dropped by with vegetables and fruit, pasta and sauce, tea and sympathy, and one friend from over 8 hours' drive away is express-posting a grocery card as I write this. Other teachers in better financial situations have gifted us with money, and opportunities to work for money. All of this is appreciated more than I could adequately express. But I still don't know how I'll keep the power and heat on, how I'll keep the phones or internet running; how I'll keep the water flowing.

I am beginning to despair, and I am looking for something to hold onto.