Mr. Abbott,

I heard your comments on CBC last week about class size and preparation. (Available here on the CBC website: http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/podcasts/bcearlyedition_20120229_59101.mp3)  You said that it doesn’t matter about a class size – that a 60-odd-member class is the same amount of prep as a 12-member class.  You seem to base your assumptions about teaching and learning on your experience in post-secondary education.

Mr. Abbott, the future of BC Education, as described in your documents on http://engage.bcedplan.ca/ must be more than lecture-hall style education. Do you really think a room full of 13-year olds is the same as a lecture hall full of young adults who successfully passed through an admissions process to get there?  And how is the marking for over 60 people the same as marking for 12 people? Do you think that public school teachers have Teacher Assistants to do their assessment for them?

Mr. Abbott, I invite you to do a job swap with a public school teacher one day. Please come see what teaching in public schools is really like.

Personally, I hope you fall in love with the kids like we all do. I also hope you start to see why we see Bill 22 as an attack on quality education.

Tanya Baron
Burnaby, BC

Don’t be fooled. The legislation to end the teachers’ work action does WAY more than that.  Read it for yourself here. Here’s a synopsis. Please read Part 2. It’s the freaky part.

PART 1

There’s a cooling off period until the end of August. Mediated negotiations, no work action, no strikes, no lockouts.

Check this section out:
d) any declaration, authorization or direction to go on strike given before or after the coming into force of this section becomes invalid
I think that means they want to reach into the past, to time before the legislation gets passed, to rule out any strikes. (Will they “retroactively” penalize us?  This section MUST be illegal. It’s certainly illogical.)

If anyone contravenes the strike/lockout ban, they get fined. For teachers, that’s a $475 per day fine if they strike.  Union officers get fined $2,500, and the Union itself gets fined $1.3 million. Our employers also have fines if they lock us out.

Our contract is extended until a new one is made.

The Minister of Education appoints the mediator. The mediator MUST work with these guidelines:

1. net zero
2. teacher evaluation
3. ministry-directed pro-d
4. “scheduling and selection of teachers suited to student needs” – gives principals more power to choose who they want, with fewer limits re: qualifications and seniority

PART 2

They edit class size rules in the School Act. The “average class size” limits are gone. Now there is a basic limit of 30 for Grades 4-12.
Principals and superintendents can exceed the limit anyways. 
There is no limit on the number of students with IEPs in any class (it used to be limited to 3). An IEP is an Individual Education Plan. It’s for kids who have extra needs (learning disability, gifted, behavioural intervention, etc) and need extra support. Please trust me: they really NEED the extra support. Packing more than 3 into a class is a silly idea.

I get it. The Minister of Education is using this opportunity to fix his Bill 33 problem and follow through on the “Learning Improvement Fund”  promised way back when.

The fix is nasty though. We are so tight on staffing and funds overall that it was only the rules that kept our classrooms at a manageable size, with a manageable number of higher-needs students. Taking away the rules has all sorts of far-reaching effects. The bottom line, though, is this: there’s less in our system to protect high quality education for our kids.

- Change his brother’s diaper: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToS7hXgfDpA

- Take a photo on the iPhone and send it as an email to someone (all he needs from me is to type the person’s email. The rest is all him.)  Here’s an example of a message he types with the pictures (which are often horrible, blurry shots of me…) “k /bkbz,v gkfxgzkzgjz  gvghkjzldgjg  zjzjjldxfg glfjglls;skjjdxl;jdglk gdffdl hjkdljdkd lgdllsseleheslellsdsdfnjmdfkguidiszdfiusz ueieddfhcjhcxjhcxcxhjhjdcjchc”

Oh, yeah. That’s quality.

- get his own milk, yogurt, and spoon from the fridge, pour his own cereal and milk, and put a reasonable amount of jam on his waffle

- measure the correct amount of xantham gum and baking powder into the waffle or pancake recipe

- carefully dib seeds when planting (unlike his brother, as seen here: http://www.facebook.com/andre.baron)

I like this kid. I like his brother, too.

Hello loyal reader!

I will now begin to list the things that are UP in this excellent world that I call “Baron-land.”

The kids are doing lovely, as always. Xavier’s haircut delights me every day.  I miss his curls, but I don’t miss the muttered self-fulfilling prophesies that can come with a wild-looking child. He’s an amazing person. Really amazing.

Warren and Xavier have been perfecting their performance of the Alphabet Song. I’ll try to get a video of it – I quite like their rendition. Warren also identifies letters pretty well. Tonight, he pointed out all of the letters on my guitar case: “Mom! W-E  R-O-A-R.  What does this letter mean?” (pointing to the three exclamation points).  I told him that it means you say it loudly and with an excited voice, and so then he spelled it louder.

Oh, and speaking of guitar, Andre helped me buy my new guitar this Christmas. It is AWESOME. Tara said that its sound is like taking the sound of my old guitar and putting it into HD.

We had a lockdown at work today.  Thankfully, it was only 2 hours, but it felt really long. I kept my guitar kids with me and we stayed pretty quiet, and the room got nice and toasty. It was no fun not knowing at all what was going on, and the visit by 4 armed police officers and a dog was unusual. Probably the silliest part of the day was knowing a colleague tweeted partial information about it to the media. I’m really frustrated about that.

Andre’s Swiss Grandparents BOTH fell at church on Sunday and his 90-year old grandfather has broken his hip. That’s a really big deal.

Our church may have found someone to hire as a lead pastor, a mere year and a half later. We’re voting on it at the end of the month. That’s pretty exciting, eh?

Ok that’s all I’ve got for now.

How are you?

You’re right, Carole! The blogosphere is light on reading these days.  I love it when real life wins!

But for you, my solitary reader, here is my answer to your question: What’s up these days?

I’m back at work, deep in the throes of another school year, and I’ve almost completely forgotten the sloth-filled days of my Summer vacation.  We’re on strike, sort of, which in most ways makes thing at my school smoother and simpler.  Not as many meetings, but we all are so nice to each other and really like working together, so it’s the same great place to work as always.  As far as I can tell.

I’m taking a course in Teaching ESL (a little late, perhaps, since I’ve been doing it for close to 7 years? bah!).  The course is online, so I cut way back on evening commitments and I’m aiming for outstanding marks in the class. Tonight, I’ve been reading and reflecting on the Filipino culture here in Canada and honestly, the whole reality, mixed with how I see it in the lives of my students, is completely overwhelming me tonight.

I’ve you’ve been following my mom’s blog or Facebook feed, you know my parents’ home is a gong show this week.  My Aunt (who lives with them) had her hysterectomy today as step one in her fight with stage 3 aggressive endometrial cancer.  Dad’s knee surgery is tomorrow and mom starts chemotherapy for her (hopefully already eradicated) breast cancer on Friday. Maybe that’s also overwhelming, too? Yep.

Warren and Xavier are amazing, amazing, amazing people.  Xavier has picked up the talking thing way earlier that Warren did — XP is still 6 weeks from turning 2, but he has way over 50 words and spontaneously works at speaking to us in sentences. He’s full of energy, and very very physical. He’s a total riot.  Warren is of course amazing and adorable. He and Xavier are great friends who bicker and push each other around like pros.

Andre was away all weekend at a choir retreat.  AND he had the car with him. The kids and I had a lovely time together and I just made sure not to plan anything.  It was of course a great time with the kids, but life is waaayyyyyy better with Andre here.

What else?  Tara’s busy and fantastic as usual. Her excellent husband spends his days being excellent.  I see Lara less than once a week, when we can steal an hour in one of my prep days.  I miss her kids.

We’re working on our next trip to France. We were thinking Christmas next year, but we have a line on a very good-looking house exchange that tempts us to go for the summer next year instead.  What do you (dear solitary reader) know about house exchanges?

And for the record, since I’m thinking of you, Carole (and ripping off your husband’s “solitary reader” thing) I muss confess that I keep misspelling “solitary” as “sillitary”. Silly!

Back to you, Dear Internet! Keep up the good work!