Policy changes over the past six years have added to the workload that is pushing teachers to the brink of a strike, says the leader of the union representing them.
The Alberta Teachers' Association's 51,000 members have given notice of their intention to strike on Oct. 6. The union rejected a new labour contract that would have included a 12% wage increase over four years. But it's not just wages that are at play, Jason Schilling, the president of the ATA, told Taproot.
For example, a ministerial order that requires teachers to catalogue all books and remove ones with graphic sexual imagery is one more thing teachers don't have time for, he said.
"I'm a high school English teacher — I have about 500 books in my classroom," Schilling said. "I'm not sure when or where I would find the time in the fall to do that inventory, put it online, and then maintain that through the course of the year."
Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides revised his original order on Sept. 8, after a list of titles that Edmonton Public Schools had created for removal attracted nationwide criticism. Beyond cataloguing and removal, the order requires schools to seek permission for which books to remove and figure out what to do with them when they come off the shelves.
Nicolaides told Taproot the order will remove images of masturbation, oral sex, child molestation, and sex toy use from school books, and that the revision protects classic literature. He added that the public-facing digital catalogue means Albertans can review titles and voice their concerns. "We are always open to having additional conversations with school boards if other books are of concern," Nicolaides wrote in an email. "Furthermore, any member of a school community can challenge a particular title and raise their concerns with the school and the related school board."
Recent policy changes over pronoun use and transgender participation in sport have also added to teachers' burden. But policy-related problems date back to 2019, when former premier Jason Kenney's United Conservative Party government was in power, Schilling said.
In 2018, before winning the provincial election, Kenney promised to put the curriculum created by the previous NDP government "through the shredder" because he deemed it to be ideologically driven. Once in power, Kenney's government scrapped the curriculum reviews underway and began anew.
Schilling said the schedule for the curriculum reviews has been accelerated, and this has caused headaches for teachers. "In the past, we used to (update) new curriculum on a three-year cycle, one subject at a time, and it would scaffold and build on something," he said. "Now we're introducing several subjects at once for teachers to rework all of their units, their lesson plans, and all of their resources for these different subjects. It's been heavy ones, like language arts and math."
Jason Schilling is the president of the Alberta Teachers' Association, which has given notice of its intention to strike on Oct. 6. (Supplied)
Teachers can review draft curriculum, but are no longer allowed to help write it, after the UCP government terminated an agreement in 2019 with the ATA that the previous NDP government created. Schilling said teachers are frustrated with the results of new curricula and asserted they are creating problems for kids.
"With this new math curriculum, (Alberta's government) brought down concepts from junior high into elementary school," he said. "It's developmentally inappropriate for kids — they're not doing well. I hear the most from my (kindergarten to Grade 6) colleagues about the math curriculum and just how disastrous it is."
In 2022, Alberta's government said it was making the curricula changes based on feedback from the public, teachers, and experts, and that standards in high-performing jurisdictions like Singapore and Massachusetts inspired some of the changes. The government also pledged $195 million in implementation support for the new curriculum between 2022 and 2026.
The root of much frustration comes down to funding, Schilling said.
Compared with other provinces, Alberta ranks among the lowest when it comes to per-student funding for public schools. Both the ATA and the right-leaning Fraser Institute say Alberta spends the least per student; Statistics Canada ranks Alberta third-last for its combined per-student funding for public and private schools. The fact that Alberta funds private schools at the level it does is another thing the ATA doesn't like.
Schilling said teachers are also struggling with growing class sizes, which exceed recommendations that Alberta's Commission on Learning made in 2003. In brief, those recommendations were to keep student numbers below 27 for any grade, and below 17 for kindergarten to Grade 3.
Where are the numbers at today? Schilling said he's taught classes with more than 40 students, for example, and the ATA found classrooms with as many as 56 students within Edmonton Public Schools during the 2023-to-2024 school year. The ATA also found that the average class size was larger than the Commission's recommendation for every grade range during that period.
Alberta's government stopped reporting class sizes in 2019.
Growing class sizes are compounded by new provincial requirements for literacy and numeracy screening assessments for grades kindergarten to 3, Schilling said. He estimated the assessments cut into about 25 hours of instructional time per grade.
"We're the first jurisdiction in all of Canada that is doing a standardized test with kindergarten students," Schilling said. "Class sizes have grown to about 30 students, and (teachers) have to do each of these assessments one-on-one with the students. If they can't get a substitute, then they're doing them at the back of the room while the rest of the class is doing what 29 Grade 1s are going to do."