An Open Letter to the People of BC by David Nicks, Studio Program Coordinator

Post date: 02-Jun-2014 03:57:36

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PEOPLE OF BRITISH COLUMBIA:

May 30, 2014

To the People of British Columbia:

I have been struggling for a week to put my finger on what exactly is wrong with me. Today, I have figured it out. I am depressed. I am writing this letter to share my feelings with you, in hopes that you will consider what I have to say as you form your own opinions about what is going on in our schools right now.

First of all, let me remind you of something that I think often gets forgotten. I am not a union. I am not an organization. I am not a political party or a special interest group. I am not a group of any kind. I am a person. A teacher, yes. But I am first and foremost a person.

The person that I am happens to work as a secondary school teacher in Vancouver. For those of you who don’t know, the typical secondary school teacher sees between 200 and 210 students every two days. For someone like me, who believes passionately in treating every student as an individual and not just as a cog in a machine (something that the parents I deal with tell me they are extremely grateful for), imagine what a challenge it is to deal with that magnitude of “individuals”.

To put it into numbers, if I spent ten minutes per week dealing with each of those individuals (and by “dealing with” I include marking their work in a way that provides meaningful individualized feedback to them) that would be 2000 to 2100 minutes or about 35 hours. Per week. That, in most places, is close to a full-time job in itself. And let me assure you that most of my colleagues spend a lot more than 10 minutes per week marking each student’s work. As a parent (for those of you who are) is it alright with you if I only spend a grand total of six hours per school year thinking about your child as an individual? Because that is all 10 minutes a week averages out to. It’s not alright with me. And it’s not alright with most of the teachers I know. And it’s for that reason that I would guess that most of us spend a lot more than 10 minutes per kid per week outside of classroom time.

In addition to that time mentioned above, I spend approximately 1450 minutes per week actively teaching classes. That is an additional 24 hours. And I am assuming you don’t just want me to make up things as I go along. I am guessing that as a parent, or even a citizen without children, you would advocate that I actually have a plan. Since I teach an average of 18 class periods a week, let’s assume for a minute that it takes me only 20 minutes to prepare each of those classes (and I can assure you that I spend A LOT more time than that on most of my lesson plans). That is another 6 hours a week of planning.

So far we are up to 65 hours per week.

In addition to teaching my regular classes, I run an active healthy theatre department. Not because anybody pays me to do that. They don’t. I do it because someone did that for me when I was in high school and it changed my life. I stay after school for 2-3 hours probably about 80% of thedayss out of every school year working on that. At least 25 of those nights I am at school until 9:00 or 10:00 at night. And I routinely see other teachers here at that hour (coaches, science teachers, English teachers marking essays, student council sponsors chaperoning activities, etc.). Let’s not even bother adding up those hours. Although, I can assure you that my partner could tell you how many of those hours I spend away from home.

I am also the administrator of a Special District Program for gifted kids. I receive no extra pay for performing that job. I do it because I hold an M.Ed. in Special Education with an emphasis on teaching gifted kids and it is my passion to serve these often over-looked students. I do get a block of time to assist me in the administration of the program. That covers about half the time I spend working on the program. If I am lucky.

I am not telling you this so that you will think I am some great person. I am just a guy trying to make a difference. There are MANY others like me in schools all across the province. MANY. It is sometimes easy for people to demonize teachers. I am sure we can all remember a teacher that we didn’t like, or who didn’t like us. I am sure that we can all remember a teacher who we believed was unfair or in whose class we think we learned nothing. Teachers aren’t saints. We are people. We are all different. Just like you. I try not to treat every student like the most difficult student I ever taught. I would just ask you to do the same when you think of “TEACHERS”. To remember us as individuals and not as incarnations of your worst nightmare of what we can be.

So, why am I depressed? Not because of my job. I love my job. I love the students I teach. I came to teaching in my mid-thirties after successful careers in two other fields. I can assure you that I did not become a teacher for the money.

I am depressed because right now I feel so disrespected by the government of the Province I have adopted as my home.

I am depressed because I feel like the people who determine the learning conditions for the students I care about so much, don’t truly understand the implications of the fiscal decisions they make in their quest to remain in power.

I am depressed because I have witnessed fifteen straight years of cutbacks to education services and I have watched teachers continue to try and find ways to “make it work” anyway.

I am depressed because so many seem to not notice that.

I am depressed because I believe that education is an INVESTMENT and not an EXPENSE. I believe that great societies become great because they are willing to invest in their future. Unfortunately, I believe that many British Columbians just see spending on education as an inconvenient necessity, roughly equivalent to paying the home Hydro bill.

I am depressed because I believe passionately in equality (meaning everyone gets what they NEED) and I have watched the education system of British Columbia wither to the point where that is essentially impossible to promise.

I am depressed because I believe the real agenda of our government is to break the teachers union, who it perceives an as enemy, and to encourage as many people as possible to enroll their kids in private schools, which makes sense for the bean-counters because every private school student only costs the taxpayer fifty cents on the dollar. And while that may be fine if we believe that the rich are entitled to an education that the middle class and poor are not entitled to, I chose Canada as my home largely because I thought this country believed the exact opposite of that.

But more than anything, I am depressed because today at lunch I had to tell the kids in my spring drama production that they cannot have a closing night performance of a fantastic show that they worked their butts off for. Not because I don’t care. Not because of a strike called by my union. My show was not effected by our Stage One job action. Other than a one-day rotating strike, I have been available to those students all during the labour dispute. I, and many others like me, have lobbied hard over the years to persuade our fellow-teachers to leave these kinds of activities out of our labour disputes. I had to cancel this performance because the government decided to lock me out.

The Premiere, the Education Minister, and the government’s chief negotiator can stand in front of the media as much as they want and try to convince the public that what they said is not what they meant, but the reality is that the letter that was issued locks out of my workplace prior to 7:55 and after 3:48. (Oh, and lest I forget, also at lunch and during my break, when I know most of you are hard at work for your employer. I won’t go on and on about the lineup of kids that are usually at my door at the beginning of lunch every day, needing my assistance with something. Assistance which I am currently prohibited from giving.) I know there have been some attempts to say “oh we didn’t mean to lock out extra-curricular activities”, but what exactly was it that they thought they were locking out? Planning time? Marking time? Have I been violating the lockout by continuing to plan and mark student work after 3:48? Whatever it is that the government thinks they meant or didn’t mean, they went ahead and withheld money for it off my pay cheque even while we all await an LRB ruling as to whether the lockout is even legal. And I, like many of you, rely on every penny of my pay cheque to help me pay for my expensive Vancouver life. This weekend, I will spend some relaxing down time figuring out whether I will be cutting $300 out of my food budget or just putting it on my credit card and hoping for the best.

But I digress.

In fifteen years of teaching, I have managed to never have to cancel a student performance. Believe me when I tell you that it was not easy for me to succeed in that and that many of my colleagues disagreed with my position over the years. I have always championed my students, even at my own expense. I know many, many teachers like me. So do you. I am sure if you think about it, you can even remember some of their names.

So, in closing let me leave you with the image of the young woman who plays the lead in my show, walking down the hallway with tears streaming down her cheeks because that is the image that is burned into my mind right now.

Yours in hope,

David Nicks

Person