The Alberta Teachers’ Association

 When I was a kid, a ritual marking the winding down of the school year was the extemporaneous multiclass softball game. On a gorgeous early summer afternoon, when the temperature inside the classroom was soaring well past the 80s (this was the pre-Celsius and pre-PAT era), a teacher would round up a couple of classes and take us all outside to the ball diamond while his or her colleagues did whatever mysterious things teachers did when out of our sight.

Now the problem with softball, particularly when you have 25 or more kids on each team, is that there aren’t enough positions to employ everyone productively. You might have eight keeners in the ­infield; the remaining students would be distributed around the outfield, their distance from home plate inversely related to their ­enthusiasm for the game. Those of us relegated to the outer reaches would chat with friends, look around for four-leaf clovers and last season’s puffball mushrooms, or just lie on our backs in the sun.

It was a pleasant way to spend an hour at the end of the day, unless some junior Joe DiMaggio got it into his head to hit the ball in your direction. You’d hear the crack of the bat (these were also pre-­aluminum times), the cheer and know that somewhere up there in the sun and clouds a pop fly was hurtling your way.

Such an event elicits one of two reactions. I describe the first as “the turtle.” The thinking behind this reaction was that if you were curled up in a ball with your hands over your head, you probably wouldn’t be hit and, if you were so unlucky as to be hit, at least you wouldn’t be hit in the face. The second reaction was to actually play the game—look up, spot the incoming ball and try to catch it, or avoid it.

Pop fly. It’s a perfect metaphor for the situation so many teachers find themselves in today. Though it would be pleasant to spend our time in the outfield letting others take care of the game, sometimes the game finds us, and we have to decide how we’re going to react.

The ATA members’ survey completed in May 2010 asked a series of questions about members’ willingness to participate in fairly ordinary advocacy activities. The results suggest that when it comes to political engagement—the basic stuff of democracy—teachers have become a bale of turtles. The survey found that

• 71 per cent were not likely at all to attend a candidates’ forum,
• 44 per cent were not likely at all to write or phone the premier or a minister,
• 68 per cent were not likely at all to meet personally with an MLA and
• 75 per cent were not likely at all to join a political party.

Once again, education in Alberta is facing the challenges of underfunding. School boards are eliminating positions, teachers new to the profession are losing their jobs, classes are set to get bigger, cuts to programs are threatened, and classroom teaching and learning conditions are being eroded.

In the final analysis, these are political problems that require ­political solutions. Currently, three of the province’s political parties are having leadership races, and the prospect of a fundamental change in government direction is greater now than it has been in almost two decades.

Faced with this threat and opportunity, we have a choice. We can be turtles, curl up and hope we aren’t hit, or we can stand up and get into the game.

I welcome your comments—contact me at dennis.theobald@ata.ab.ca.