Unions must play their part
Now that we know students in Ontario won’t be returning to schools this academic year, everyone in the education system needs to take a step back from their old inclinations, whatever they may be, and step up to this new reality.
That includes teachers’ unions, which have done precious little embracing of anything new. If that doesn’t change, it’s students — some two million of them — who will be the losers.
On Tuesday, Premier Doug Ford made official what most people already suspected — that school doors won’t reopen before the end of June. “I’m just not going to risk it,” he said.
That means the schoolwork students are getting assigned by their teachers remotely is not just a temporary fill-in — it’s the only education they’re going to get for the rest of the year. So we can’t afford the next five weeks to look like the past five.
And for that to happen, the big unions representing elementary and high school teachers need to stop balking at the tools that can make the most of online learning: live video-conferencing.
No one thinks that’s a perfect replacement for in-person interactive classrooms. It’s not. But it’s the best option that’s available right now, thanks to COVID-19.
It’s beyond unhelpful, then, to hear Harvey Bischof, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, call live learning a “risk to staff and students.”
When the schools first closed in the middle of March, there were legitimate concerns about how to support students with special needs and ensure that those who don’t normally have access to technology at home weren’t left behind. But while school boards have been trying to solve this by getting as much tech as possible into the hands of students in need, the unions aren’t trying to solve anything.
The excuses they’re trotting out for why a classroom can’t be held as a videoconference go well beyond concerns of equity and fall into the ridiculous camp. Lack of privacy is a concern, they claim. Are they really concerned that someone other than a student is going to accidentally see a Grade 10 math lesson? Kids might act inappropriately, they say. Sure, they might. In fact, a few kids can probably be guaranteed to misbehave. They do so in regular classrooms and it’s not used as an excuse to end class for everyone.
It’s impossible to see this ongoing refusal to even try to make education during the pandemic better and more consistent than the hodge-podge students are getting now as anything but union leadership playing the long game.
Bischof and Co. don’t really want online learning to work well lest the Ford government use that as a reason to revive its misguided money-saving plan to dramatically increase elearning and reduce teacher positions. But it’s an unnecessary battle and it’s hurting students.
Parents have already made crystal clear that in a normal world they want a teacher at the head of the classroom. That’s why the Ford government was forced to roll back most of its previous plan.
But these are not normal times and no one knows when we’ll get back to anything approaching normal. So being flexible and adapting to the pandemic times is what’s needed now.
Educators don’t have to like e-learning, but they need to do the right thing for students today and in the days ahead.
Union leaders need to support the teachers who have already made the leap to real-time conferencing and encourage the rest to make the move. And they need to be flexible going forward because no one knows what schools will look like in September. We just know that they’ll look different than what we’re used to seeing.
Now is not time to fight the battles that were a big deal in education before COVID-19 showed us all what a really big deal looks like.
We can’t afford the next five weeks to look like the past five