Teachers’ professional development – it’s for the students

Island school children are enjoying a long weekend. The break was due neither to a storm nor a holiday. Their teachers spent Friday attending Professional Development Day presentations: a day of learning for their teachers.

Of course, that’s nothing new. Every day is a day of learning, for students, for teachers, for everyone. It’s just a matter of packaging it all together for group learning.

What a PD Day does, is get teachers altogether, from different schools, for focused sessions and best practices. It’s important for the teachers and for their students.

Having the PD days during the school year, when topics are front of mind, makes sense. But teachers have the whole summer off; why not do the professional development then? some would ask.

Teachers are no different than any other group of workers who participate in professional development during working hours. Besides, teaching is a stressful, demanding profession. Teachers need the summer off as much as their students do, to relax and recharge. Our students require well rested and re-energized teachers. Many teachers, though, do dedicate part of their summer to preparing for the next school year and to obtaining additional courses.

Safety first

A close call in Hardy’s Channel, near Freeland on Monday, lobster setting day, drives home the importance of safety for our Island fishermen. Hardy’s Channel simply wasn’t safe that day, certainly not as the water level dropped, especially with the extreme full moon tides. Fishermen returning to port empty reported their boats were touching bottom. Imagine how much more dangerous it is trying to sail out through that channel loaded with gear. One boat became hung up on the sandbar and went sideways. The pressure from the falling tide caused the boat to list to its starboard, and the incoming waves quickly swamped the vessel. Luckily there were other boats in the area whose crews were able to rescue the fivemember crew from water reported to be just 3.5 degrees Celsius. The cold water made the crew practically powerless to help themselves. There have been calls for channel dredging, but to be fair, ice only left the area about a week before that. Dredges can’t perform their duties there, or elsewhere, when the harbour is filled with ice. The logical response, then, would have been to delay the opening of the fishery until boats could safely get out of their harbours. The snow crab fishery, which opened 30 hours prior to the lobster fishery, had been delayed due to ice conditions in northern New Brunswick. All boats couldn’t get out so none of them went, and that is a fishery controlled by quota.

Had the lobster fishery been delayed because boats could not safely get out of Hardy’s Channel, imagine the pressure that would have been exerted to get a dredge in there as soon as the ice was gone.