Special Ed Teachers Gather On Eve Of Job Action
Prince George, BC – More than 600 special education teachers from across the province have gathered in Vancouver for an annual professional development conference on the eve of teachers’ three days of job action on Monday.
The conference is sponsored by the Special Education Association (SEA), an arm of the BC Teachers Federation. SEA says with support for students with special needs at the heart of teachers’ concerns in the current labour dispute, it is taking a strong stand against Bill 22.
Vice-President, Alison Ogden, says, "The current legislation not only fails to restore the resources so cavalierly withheld from our children with special needs for the past decade, it further threatens our ability to meet their needs."
Ogden will join with BCTF President, Susan Lambert, and several special ed teachers to speak out about what they see as a further erosion of services to students with special needs, deeper cuts to come, and their reason for taking strike action at a news conference in Vancouver later today.
Comments
Meanwhile, the heavy lifting for special needs students is being handled by SSAs, who earn 1/3 what a teacher does. Many teachers with special needs students ignore their special needs students and leave them to an SSA to completely handle for them. If a child doesn’t have an SSA because they do not have a diagnosis, their teacher will pressure the SSAs of diagnosed kids to help look after the other kids. Basically stealing from a (funded) kid with a diagnosed disability.
As the child ages and hits highschool, eventually they get thrown in a holding tank classroom with other disabled kids and one teacher more or less sits and reads a book while kids act out. Nothing gets done in these holding tanks; correctional facilities have more meaningful education. Teachers don’t want to deal with special needs students, so they push them away whenever and wherever they can.
If teachers get a pay hike, it won’t help the SSAs one damn bit. Our NDP official opposition knows this (former Education critic Robin Austin was an SSA), but the party is so very, very quiet on this subject. They support the teachers for the publicity in forming the next government, but twist the knife slowly in parents and children.
And you know all this how, exactly?
Pojeb_sa can you back that up?
Go ask any parent of a diagnosed child in elementary school if they have to share their SSA with other kids. Next, go ask any parent of a special needs student in high school if their kids sit in a classroom full of other special needs students, and what they do there. Special needs falls on a pretty big scale, a kid with schizophrenia is special needs, a kid with asperger syndrome is special needs, and so is a kid with cerebral palsey.
There are special needs advocacy groups across BC, all it takes to be informed is caring even just a bit about other people to see the reality of what their learning environment is.
Google Robin Austin.
Go look at the posted positions on sd57’s web page for SSAs and Teaching Assistants and see what they earn compared to teachers (usually for part time hours). SSAs are not covered under the BCTF’s collective agreement.
People who don’t believe what I wrote probably aren’t affected or don’t know anyone affected.
Isn’t it funny how I’ve been asked twice to give proof, but anyone singing the praises of the poor overworked, underpaid, bullied teachers never have to back it up with anything but anecdotes?
Comments for this article are closed.