Reported on Bill Good Show, CKNW radio during an interview with Susan Lambert, President of the B.C. Teachers’ Federation.

Senior Vancouver teacher salary plus benefits costs the taxpayers $97,000 per year. Vancouver is not the highest and not the lowest paid district.

Time off includes 9 weeks summer vacation, 2 weeks Christmas, 2 weeks Spring Break, 4 weeks paid sick leave, 7 statutory holidays for a total of approximately 18.5 WEEKS OF PAID VACATION TIME.

52 weeks less 18.5 = 33.5 weeks of work for $97,000 = $2,895.52/week = $579/day. Assuming an 8 hour day = $72.35/hr; 10 hour day = $57.90/hr.

I have been a teacher standing in front of classes, I have family members who are current teachers, an additional sibling who was a teacher and moved on to become a provincial teachers’ federation two term past president, two term Canadian teachers’ federation past president and during my adult life I have lived with 7 different teachers (and I mean teachers, not student teachers during my practicum days). I have never met a single teacher that averages a 10 hour day for a full school year. Sometimes for example, a team coach will put in some 10 hour days but only for the very brief time that sport is in season or a drama teacher leading up to a school play or production.

I don’t want to hear any more anecdotal stories about some teacher or teachers you know that do a lot of work at home or in addition to class hours, etc., etc., etc.

First of all who said you can do your work at home? You can do marking and prep work at school. You’re all given a certain number of free classes in your schedule for just that reason. Stay at school where we can actually see if you’re working or not. Don’t take off home where you will be distracted by your own kids, make dinner, maybe do a little embroidering for Aunt Hilda.

The end of your last class is not the end of your working day. Well, for some of you it is, but it shouldn’t be. I know for some teachers class time amounts to 4 hours per day, some days even less and absolutely none teach for 8 hours a day ever.

Current teacher sponsored tv ads say you want more one on one time with students. STAY AT THE SCHOOL. How is a student supposed to find you if you go home? You claim to work a 10 hour day so get to school at 8, get ready for class instead sitting in the staff room having coffee, teach your classes from 9 to 3. With an hour off for lunch, (or do we have to pay you to eat, too?) you’ve worked 7 hours; 8 to 3 minus lunch. Stay at school for another 3 hours where your students can get some help from you. Like that ever happens.

PRO D DAYS. WASTE OF RESOURCES

Over 40,000 teachers x $579 = $23,160,000 / day x 5 Pro D Days / year = $115,800,000.
Officially teacher attendance is mandatory but it is not enforced. They check in in the morning, eat the free lunch then leave. I have frequently been a member of 3 foursomes at the golf course during a Pro D Day in nice weather where I and one other are the only two that are NOT TEACHERS ABUSING A PRO D DAY. Similar situations arise for ski trips for those winter Pro D Days. If you think attendance is enforced on Pro D Days, go to the Coquitlam Costco on a Pro D Day and ask the staff why it’s so busy that day and every Pro D Day.

Pro D Days are not evaluated from the taxpayers’ perspective. The teachers’ committees organizing the Pro D Days will discuss if the teachers ‘enjoyed them, had fun at them, found them engaging, etc.’ So what?
The taxpayers want and DESERVE to know;
1. Did ALL teachers attend (and ALL day) and if so,
2. Did ALL teachers pay attention and if so,
3. Was the material relevant to their classroom situations and if so,
4. Did ALL teachers learn the material presented and if so,
5. Did ALL teachers take their new found knowledge and incorporate it into their lessons and if so,
6. Did ALL teacher find that it affected the learning outcomes of the students and if so,
HERE IT IS !!!!
7. Were the learning outcomes of the students affected in a positive manner?

That’s a novel idea. Make sure Pro D Days produce positive student learning outcomes.

The answers to all 7 questions should be a resounding “yes” however, in the entire history of Pro D Days they have never been evaluated in this manner.

After decades of Pro D Days if the teachers unions cannot PROVE Pro D Days have had and continue to have positive effects on the learning outcomes of the students they should be abolished because after all, THAT’S WHAT THEY’RE FOR.

Pro D Days need to change their funding. The Operating Engineers Union has a training school to upgrade and improve the skills of it’s members. It is funded by the union, not by businesses, developers, taxpayers or anybody else. Similarly, Pro D Days should be funded from the teachers’ union funds. If the teachers are paying for the seminars they will either attend them in good faith or they won’t have them at all. Then we’ll see if they think they’re ‘worth it’.

Alternatively, they can apply to the school districts for a Pro D Day. They would be required to demonstrate the need for one, the objective/s, the projected learning outcomes, how the material will be presented, the exercises the teachers will do, how they will test to determine if the teachers learned the material and how they will follow up to see if the learned material was incorporated into lesson plans and had positive effects on the students’ learning. This is all the same planning and preparation that teachers are taught and supposedly required to put into their own daily lesson plans for school. Shouldn’t be a big deal for them. However teachers will oppose this, particularly the followup testing, for the same two stupid reasons they put forth against standardized testing and merit based pay, both of which should be implemented. More on those later.

There isn’t a corporation, association, organization, business or any other group that would spend it’s own $120 million per year without ensuring ALL of the above steps. The teachers love Pro D Days because it’s another day off work, a chance to chinwag with their colleagues while drinking their Seattle’s Best coffee (or sneak off and golf or shop or ….), they ALL GET A NICE CATERED BUFFET LUNCH, (that’s right taxpayers, we can’t expect a teacher to make their own sandwich and take it to work. How demeaning), all at the taxpayers’ expense.

SICK PAY

20 paid sick days per year whether they’re sick or not. This is almost 2.5 sick days per month worked using 8.5 working months per year ( didn’t factor in their 4 weeks of sick days when calculating the working months ) Teachers can accrue years’ worth of sick days. I don’t know the exact number but I know it’s at least 3 years worth at a time.

Teachers argue that they should have paid sick days so that teachers don’t come to school when they’re sick to avoid losing a days pay. Better they stay at home so as not to infect students and others. Reasonable enough. They also argue they should be able to accrue them in case they go several months or years without being sick and then unfortunately are struck by a serious illness that affects them for a prolonged period. Again, sounds reasonable, but is it?

If a teacher wants to retire with full pension at 60 and they have three years worth of sick days ‘in their bank’ they can retire at 57 and coast home to 60 using their sick days. This motivates teachers to hoard their sick days and come to school even when their sick. If they use their sick days for being sick they can’t use them to retire earlier. Accruing sick days produces the opposite of the desire outcome.

Similarly, some districts pay the teachers for their accrued and unused sick days when they retire. This creates the same problem as above. Now they are motivated to come to school even when sick so they can get paid for the day AND get paid an additional day’s pay when they retire without working for it. This is particularly painful in the case of deadbeat teachers. They come to the school and just go through the motions for the day when they’re sick. We have to pay them as if they actually worked and then we have to pay them again because they didn’t phone in sick and instead sneezed all over our kids. Great system.

Sick day benefits also need to be revamped. Teachers should only be allowed to accrue about one months worth of sick days. If they suffer some prolonged illness then it can easily be confirmed by doctors’ and hospitals’ records. They can take as long as they need to recuperate fully and then work off the sick days they used. If they don’t work them all off before they retire then there can be a formula applied to their pension to ‘pay them back’ at least to some extent. It doesn’t necessarily need to be eye for an eye, Flawless system? No, but it’s a whole lot more equitable than the current system which isn’t equitable for the taxpayers at all.

TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION

I frequently hear about teachers’ 5 to 10 years of university education as justifying their lucrative salaries and benefits.

Don’t be too quick!

Many current teachers earned their degrees at UBC during the 70′s, 80′s and beyond by getting a four year Bachelor of Education degree. This qualified them to teach elementary or secondary school depending on which they had specified at the beginning of the program.

Alternatively, you could get a four year Bachelor’s degree in just about any other school at UBC such as sciences, arts (English for example), or P.E. Then you could transfer into Education and take what was called 5TH YEAR ED, a one year teacher training program. Now you’re a qualified teacher and in many cases can teach elementary or secondary.

It can be argued based on this alternate route, that the knowledge portion of the five years of university teachers’ qualifications is the four year bachelor’s degree. There is no teacher training during these first four years. The teacher training is a one year program only. So to teach elementary school you should have the knowledge portion nailed down if you pass grade 10, certainly it’s a lock if you graduate from high school. (grade 3 geography – those bumps to the north of us with snow on them are called mountains; English – the ‘a’ in “tap” does not sound the same as the ‘a’ in “tape”)

In this case an elementary school teacher’s degree is little more than a one year teacher training certificate course that could be offered at any number of community colleges. Sorry, to all you elementary school teachers out there but that’s the way it is. I’m not suggesting that handling a classroom of grade 5′s is easy but the education requirements are what they are and not what you purport them to be.

PENSIONS and MASTERS’ DEGREES

Did you know that if a teacher gets a Master’s degree anytime during their career they automatically get a raise of about $15 to 17,000 per year? I might be a little off on that number but I don’t believe so. If one of you teachers want to correct that number, be my guest but don’t bother if it’s only insignificantly different. That’s about $2,000 per month worked and they don’t have to show that it helps them be a better teacher. They don’t even have to show they teach or do anything differently. We just have to pay them another $2,000 per month for doing exactly what they did before they got a master’s degree. That teacher that took an online University of Phoenix course and upgraded their Bachelor’s degree to a Master’s degree by using the school funded computer during class time is now a better teacher and our children are better educated for it.

Don’t question it you lowly lay people. You don’t know anything. Just accept the argument that they must be a better teacher because they got an online Master’s degree. Oooohhh! Think I’ll get me a degree in laser eye surgery at Phoenix University. Yes sirree. Any teachers want me to fix your eyes for ya?

HERE’S ANOTHER BEAUTY that ties nicely into sick days and pensions.

I believe a teacher’s annual pension salary is 75%, again I might be wrong on that amount, of their annual working salary based on their 5 best years of earnings. It’s bad enough we have to give them a raise for that Master’s degree but we also have to pay for it for decades after they retire. Consider this; a teacher gets his/her Master’s degree at age 55 and has saved up 3 years of sick days. This teacher teaches for 2 more years and then stops working at 57 by cashing in 3 years of sick days and coasts into full ‘age 60′ pension. They don’t receive their pension for three years until they turn 60 but they receive full pay for those sick days based on their salary with the new raise. Then their pension is also 75% of their salary AFTER they received the Master’s degree raise. Now that Master’s degree has been in the classroom for a mere two years but we have to pay for it through sick days and pension salaries for decades to come. ABSURD!! AND IT HAPPENS FOLKS, if not exactly on that timetable, close enough that it should be CHANGED.

EXTRA CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

Is this their own spare time or isn’t it? They consistently argue that it is. Always, always, always. OOPS! Well maybe not. Now it’s job action time to gain bargaining power at contract negotiations. Now they take a vote to withdraw their support of extra curricular activities. ‘Work to Rule’ they call it. If the vote passes with 51% NO TEACHERS ARE ALLOWED TO SUPPORT EXTRA CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES even if a teacher voted AGAINST withdrawing their support. That’s like you telling me what I can or can’t do in my spare time. If it is truly my spare time then it’s none of your business what I do with it as long as it is not immoral or illegal. However, if a teacher defies the union vote they can lose their teaching certificate and obviously then their job.

REVELATION: It’s easier for the union to effectively fire a teacher for not towing the union line than it is for the school district ie. taxpayers, ie. you and I; to fire a teacher for being a useless, deadbeat teacher year after year.

Either extra curricular activities are part of the teachers’ job requirements or they’re not. I say they are or should be. So if a teacher wants to get paid as much as other teachers they better make sure they get off their butts and coach, participate in, sponsor and otherwise support these activities as much as the truly professional and dedicated teachers do. They don’t all have to be superheros but the 9 to 3′ers should only be paid accordingly. ie; part time. 9 TO 3 IS NOT A DAYS WORK. Not even close.

I have coached two different sports at four different schools, none involving children of mine and all without being paid as a teacher. All because a teacher coach within the schools couldn’t be found. And God forbid, a teacher from a neighbouring school couldn’t possibly fill the void. That would mean he or she would have to get into their car and drive a short distance to the other school. That’s simply asking too much of a teacher and too difficult to work into their schedule and all sorts of other reasons. But it’s ok for a private citizen to work out these issues and fit it into their schedules all for free.

When a teacher coaches a school sport, all the players are in the school where he works. Practices, meetings and games are all scheduled to accommodate the teacher’s work schedule. Practices and meetings are held at the school right where the teacher coach works. All of the school’s resources are available to the teacher coach. It doesn’t get any more convenient than that. Want to call a meeting? Easy! Send a kid from your class to the office with a note and an announcement is made for all to hear. Schedule the meeting for your own classroom and you don’t even have to get off your a…. Sit at your desk and wait for the players to arrive. Beautiful!

When a private citizen coaches a community or school sport it means travelling from work (after working for 8 hours) to practices, paying for your own gas and wearing out your own car, etc. Calling a meeting means making multiple phone calls, sending emails from home, waiting for responses to see if everyone got the notice. Not so easy for a private citizen. And for every teacher coach there is, there’s two genuine volunteer community coaches. There are entire leagues of various sports in the community all run by true volunteers not pseudo volunteers

STRIKING FOR OUR KIDS / PUTTING KIDS FIRST

What a joke!
If you care about your students why did you ask for and receive coverage for your Viagra and birth control before getting smaller class sizes? Why do you ask for bereavement leave and compassionate care leave in addition to sick days before ensuring there’s more funds available for more resources?

Don’t you see the hypocrisy of asking for Viagra AND birth control? Hey if you’re too old to do it, then DON’T DO IT!!! YOU’RE TOO OLD, TOO OLD.

WANT MORE MONEY TO UPGRADE SCHOOLS?

NO PROBLEM I SAY.

Got lots for you!!! One of your teacher responses, Norm, says 10% (4,000) teachers are on the “lazy train to retirement plan”. GUESS WHAT. That’s not OK. Got it? NOT OK.

Just fire those 4,000 useless, deadbeat teachers and you have saved $384,000,000 of salaries to spend every year on making schools safe. (4,000 x $96,000)

Those deadbeats sick days alone cost us $46,320,000 per year (4,000 x $579/day x 20 sick days/yr.) $46 million a year to keep deadbeats out of the classroom at home if front of their tvs while we pay for a substitute to actually teach their class.

A Vancouver school for autistic children needed $236,000 to keep open but was being closed for lack of funding. Only a private donation kept it open. Now that’s someone who cares about our kids. Wouldn’t it have been nice if the teachers had contributed the cost of only one Pro D Day? They didn’t work that day anyway. That would fund the school for a whopping 98 years. ($23,160,000 / $236,000/yr = 98.1 years) I didn’t hear any teachers being genuinely concerned about that school closing.

WANT MORE MONEY FOR BOOKS?

Cancel one Pro D Day per year. 23 million dollars buys a lot of books, computers, etc.

STANDARDIZED TESTING AND MERIT BASED PAY

Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.

The two most common teacher advanced arguments against standardized testing and merit based pay:

1. The results of the tests consistently follow the socioeconomic conditions of the schools and students and have nothing to do with the quality of teaching.

Well, the data you use to differentiate between schools with dissimilar economic conditions is the same data you use to group schools together with schools of similar economic conditions. Then you’re comparing apples to apples. Over time your results will be as accurate as political polls are; + or – 3%, 19 times out of 20. That’s close enough for these purposes. The more years of data you have the more accurate your results will be. Soooo, the sooner you get started the sooner you’ll reach that level of accuracy.

2. To improve results teachers will teach to the test.

Great!! Now all you have to do is make sure the test is a good one and we’re done. The curriculum is the same province wide or supposed to be. However, just in case the curriculum varies slightly in some areas then have the test only test the parts of the curriculum that are consistent throughout the province.
Even without any adjustments to the test the results over years of testing would be very reliable and useful for many reasons.

It’s very similar to a course and daily lesson plans but on a larger scale. Figure out what you;re going to teach in the course, break it down into daily lesson plans for a week and then on Friday test your class to see if they learned the daily lessons.

Other reasons advanced by teachers against merit based pay include animosity amoungst teachers might develop if teachers think they’re not being paid fairly relative to another teacher, teachers won’t share good ideas with one another, etc. etc. etc. Yada Yada Yada. I though you were there for the students, not the pay cheque.

Well grow up and suck it up. You’re adults and supposed to be professionals highly educated in dealing with people, communicating, teaching and learning, etc. If you have a concern deal with it professionally. Put all your evidence on the table, meet and discuss. If you can’t convince the powers to be that you’re worth more maybe you’re not. You haven’t convinced me.

TO CONCLUDE;

Teachers are generally overpaid, under worked and under accountable.

Every benefit you ask for at the negotiation table has to be funded by more money. You already waste half a billion dollars a year right now. $384 million on deadbeat teachers and $115 million on Pro D Days

Reported on the Bill Good Show last year: New Westminster School District has not done a single teacher evaluation in over 10 years.

Why? Because its a waste of time.

The test to fire a teacher for being a crappy teacher is too onerous.
The teacher has to be evaluated, given a report on that evaluation that includes techniques to improve their teaching, give them time to incorporate those techniques into their lessons and then evaluate them again. After this lengthy evaluation process heavily weighted in the teacher’s favour we have to prove the teacher is still grossly incompetent. It’s not enough that you’re incompetent, you have to be grossly incompetent.

Definition of incompetent: Miriam Webster – “inadequate or unsuitable for a particular purpose”;
Synonyms: “incapable, unfit, unable, unqualified.”

If you are any or all of the above you’re good enough to be a teacher in B.C. and you get a hefty raise if you get your Master’s of incapableness.

And you can’t be too hard on that incompetent teacher because they might claim a ‘mental health day’, not to be confused with a sick day, and take the day off work with pay. Otherwise, the incompetent teacher gets paid the same as the lazy train to retirement teacher who gets paid the same as the good as gold teacher who gets paid the same as the run of the mill teacher. It’s a great system if and only if, you’re a teacher.

No doubt the total lack of teacher evaluations is very similar throughout all the school districts of the province.

Ask Susan Lambert to publicize the number of teachers that have ever been fired through this process for being ‘grossly incompetent”. Guess what? She won’t because she can’t. I challenge any teacher and/or administrator to publish the number, district, date, etc. of teachers fired through this process. Bet you no one does it because it doesn’t happen.

Basically teachers, we’re fed up. We’re tired of listening to your whining. You work in a very dynamic and social environment. You can interact with your peers and others. You have considerable autonomy. No one’s constantly looking over your shoulder. You’re not subjected to inclement or harsh weather. You’re not stuck in a cubicle. You can and do ‘play’ on your computers throughout the day. You aren’t facing a punch clock every day. Are there some problems? Of course there are. That’s life. Every job has its issues. All in all it’s pretty good gig. So suck it up, shut up and get on with it. If you don’t like it, then quit.

You have an unbelievably cushy deal given your minimal education. If you think your Bachelor’s degree is worth so much, then quit teaching and go out into the open market with it and see what kind of a job you can get. You know you wouldn’t dare do that because many of you know you might be asking “Would you like fries with that, sir?” and for a full 8 hours a day.

BTW, If it’s me you’re asking, no thanks, but you can call me “sir”.

If you’re local, there’s a meet & greet / autograph session Friday evening, and it’s open to the general public. You can stop by and meet your favourite authors, get your well-loved books signed, and maybe even have a drink with him/her! The best part? The event is totally free and open to everyone, not just conference attendees!

PS Diana Gabaldon is totally amazing to talk with in person!