It’s time for Ontario’s teachers to remove a union management that is clearly out of step with its members before the deep respect within the community that they have taken decades to develop is completely destroyed.
As a parent and theatre owner who has had the opportunity to deal with hundreds of teachers in Ontario, I have discovered that our teachers are by and large committed to their jobs and to their responsibilities to the children we entrust with them. They love their jobs, are very happy with their working conditions, their hours, their salaries, their benefits, their pensions, and perhaps most of all the love, respect and gratitude they have earned.
Their union management, however, shows no such commitment and is clearly out of step with the profession they represent.
The Ontario teachers union management have shown themselves to be ruthless, greedy, self-centered and wildly out of touch with the reality of the public purse – and with the heart of the professional they claim to represent. It’s time for the teachers to step up and replace them with people who reflect the values of our education system.
The teaching profession seems impervious to the advances of technology, but one only has to surf the Internet to discover a great deal of education could be offered online.
If teachers continue to align themselves with a ruthless union management that treats taxpayers, parents, students and teachers with such complete disregard they should not be surprised to find us seeking alternatives in the very near future.
Lee Fairbanks
Dundas
Lee Fairbanks is correct about teachers being very committed to their students. One reason I’m able to dedicate so much of my time to my career is that I have a federation behind me that is fighting so that I am able to continue to do the job that I love. The teachers federations have not shown any greed in this round of broken negotiations. They have fought and continue to fight just to maintain what we have negotiated over many decades. They represent me and I am very proud of them and the job they do. Because of them the rest of us can do our jobs – teaching the children in our classes. The comments about teachers being impervious to technology is clearly based on his own ignorance. Go to the HWDSB website and look at all of the ways teachers are using technology in the classroom. Teachers use every kind of technology available to try to find new ways to reach our students. The HWDSB Commons page has access to all kinds of new technology. Teachers are using blogs where students are able to respond to comments from both teachers and other students. We’re using technology like Twitter to create spaces where dialogues can take place. There are all kinds of new technologies available to us and our Board is making them available as quickly as they can. It’s an amazing and exciting environment to work in – not one that puts our jobs in jeopardy at all. Taxpayers are being well served by the teaching profession and the school boards that are making new technology available to be used.
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