Discipline for teachers needs a revamp
Thirty-six years.
If the Alberta Teachers’ Association is right, that’s how long it took them to kick out a teacher their investigation paints as a vindictive, disdainful bully. That’s got to be a wake-up call. Frieda Anne Mennes lost the right to teach this week at age 65, about the time most people are looking to retire.
If she had 30 students each year, that’s more than 1,000 southern Alberta students exposed to a woman found guilty of belittling and humiliating at least some of them to the point where the manifestations of anxiety were physical. The charges date back to 1981.
Mennes says she’ll appeal — that she’s not at all the person described.
But witnesses said students complained of headaches and stomach aches, one cried each morning when forced to get out of the car for school. As the association’s presenting officer Konni deGoeij said, that kind of stress can cause mental health problems for years.
That makes me sick. Alberta has thousands of wonderful teachers doing their best in classrooms growing ever larger and more complex. We don’t celebrate them enough.
But these stories of poor teacher behaviour are disconcerting because there’s so much trust involved in sending a child to school. You coddle and love them for years, then hand them to a stranger.
You can’t sit in the classroom to watch, can’t check in with a live-stream video, like many daycares now offer.
The disciplinary hearing was unprecedented in scope. It took nine months, involved 60 witnesses, and included support staff who said they’d go home in tears and lose sleep over her behaviour. But they felt powerless to complain.
Mennes taught in the Grasslands school division, in a small school in Bassano for most of her career.
From the witness testimony, it appears she was manipulative — changing her behaviour when a new adult was in the classroom. When parents complained, they would run into trouble themselves. Anonymous complaints were filed against them with the regulatory bodies that oversaw their careers.
Staff in Bassano got this treatment, too. She falsely accused one of assault, and, according to the charge sheet, sent an anonymous letter with “highly inflammatory” comments about the librarian to the district superintendent and/or school trustees.
Her behaviour was only stopped when she transferred to a nearby school in Brooks and someone complained directly to the teachers’ association.
So is this a crazy, one-off story about a woman who effectively played the system? I don’t know. But the consequences are severe enough that we need to know.
Did parents know they could complain directly to the ATA? Clearly the support staff did not feel empowered to act when they saw something wrong. Grasslands school division needs to find out why.
RETHINK THE UNION ROLE
From a provincial perspective, maybe now is the time to recognize having the teachers association both prosecute and represent teachers as a union is a conflict of interest.
Separate branches of the association handle these functions. But I doubt that’s clear to parents and support staff — often women who have a front-row seat, but lack the stature of a teacher and could be afraid of retribution for speaking out.
Certainly, Mennes doesn’t feel it was fair. She had no representation and feels her union failed her when she needed it most.
“It’s my union that’s supposed to help me,” she said when I reached her.
The hearing process itself is shrouded in mystery. The dates are not posted publicly. The charges are only available after a reporter or member of the public comes in person to the hearing, almost always held centrally in Edmonton, and the final report is only shared by request.
That makes it hard for parents and staff to follow what’s being done.
The association called for those improvements in 2014, after the latest provincial task force on teaching excellence. But it believes that requires changes to Alberta’s Teaching Profession Act.
It also proposed a new “complainant advocate” to increase public awareness and help people file complaints.
But that conversation happened under former premier Alison Redford. It fell by the wayside when former premier Jim Prentice took over and has not been revisited by the NDP.
In a statement emailed this week, provincial spokeswoman Kate Toogood said it believes the current disciplinary system works well. “The ATA is the appropriate body to govern teacher behaviour, while still allowing the minister the final say on whether a teacher’s certificate is suspended or cancelled.”
These debates take away from the real issue: supporting teachers dealing with ever more complex needs.
They need a disciplinary system that’s known and trusted — efficient at both dismissing false allegations before they ruin a career and dealing with problem teachers.
Let’s fix the system and move on.