As strike looms, union says provincial policies have worn teachers down
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."
