Veteran Cape Breton teacher resigns
System is ‘full of holes’ she says in online video
It’s like rowing desperately for shore in a dory riddled with holes.
That’s the way veteran Cape Breton teacher Adrianna MacKinnon described classroom conditions under the Liberal government of Stephen McNeil before announcing in an online video that she is resigning from her elementary school job.
“Never made a video before but I thought I should make one today,” said MacKinnon, her voice breaking with emotion throughout the three-minute video posted on Facebook.
“We are all sitting around wondering what is going to happen next. Well, I decided what’s not going to happen next for me. I resigned from my job that I have loved for 27 years, because the parents fell for all the lies last February, and here we are, it’s February again and the lies are still being put out there and maybe they are being believed but I am not being fooled anymore.”
Last February, the Liberal majority government led by Premier Stephen McNeil passed legislation to impose a contract on the province’s 9,600 public school teachers after three tentative agreements recommended by the Nova Scotia Teachers Union executive had been rejected by the membership over a 14month period.
The early-morning House session to pass the law was preceded by a rally on Granville Street behind Province House. It was one of several rallies held by parents and students in support of teachers and against the controversial Bill 75.
Re-elected last May with another majority, the Liberal government announced two weeks ago that it will eliminate the province’s seven English language school boards and remove principals and vice-principals from the teachers’ union as part of sweeping changes to the education system. Education Minister Zach Churchill said the government’s decision to adopt all 22 recommendations included in a report by consultant Avis Glaze will change the education system “for the better” and improve student success.
But MacKinnon and other teachers are not buying it.
“The only way that I can describe what it’s like to be in a classroom with students in the province of Nova Scotia would be to paint a picture in parents’ minds of being in a dory, just off the shore, but in sight of everyone standing on the shore and that dory is full of holes, and I’ve been standing in that dory with the children, trying to bail the water out and screaming for someone to hear,” MacKinnon said in the video.
With her resignation, MacKinnon said she has decided to jump from the dory into the water to try to swim ashore.
“So parents know just how bad it’s been in that little dory that’s full of holes,” she said. “And as I’m trying to swim to shore, Steve and his little band of pirates are trying to drown me before I get there. That’s the only way I can describe it.”
MacKinnon lives in Membertou and teaches grades Primary and 1 at Coxheath Elementary School. In the past, she has made an unsuccessful run at the Victoria-The Lakes provincial legislature seat for the Green Party. MacKinnon is on a term leave from the Coxheath school until March but she has said she won’t be returning.
“I have no doubt in my mind that if this government is allowed to continue its path of complete and utter destruction of the education system and all of the people in it, my resignation will be something that I will not regret,” MacKinnon said in the video. “I know that I cannot go back into a classroom knowing that it is going to get even worse than it already is.”
Originally from Ontario, but raised in Sydney Mines since the age of five, MacKinnon said in her video that department changes are not for the better.
“Please don’t believe anything that this government tells you about changing things for the betterment of your students, your children,” she said. “That’s not the plan.
“Do something. I did.” The Facebook post drew support.
“As a fellow educator in Alberta, originally from N.S., this breaks my heart,” said one message.
“Congratulations on your courage and dedication to children and their education,” read another “By your very brave actions you are a role model for how to stand up for your beliefs, how not to be bullied, and how to take care of yourself.”