The Alberta Teachers’ Association

Alex Newhart and Jim Parsons

Senator Ethel Cochrane, in her keynote address at the conference of the Social Studies Specialist Council of the Alberta Teachers’ Association in October 2004, highlighted her teaching career. Senator Cochrane noted that when she finished school at 16, women could aspire to only two professions—nursing or teaching. So, Cochrane travelled by train to St. John’s, Newfoundland, to become a teacher. Her training involved six weeks of summer school, after which she received a probationer’s licence, which qualified her for classroom teaching. In fact, the first September following her own graduation, she became principal of a two-room school, and for $96 a month, Cochrane simultaneously taught Grades 5, 6, 7 and 8.

Over her long career as a teacher, Cochrane linked her motivation to a simple desire: “[I] wanted to leave my community better than I found it.” While she couldn’t control or influence much of what she saw happening in the world on the nightly TV news, Cochrane believed that she could guide her own community through her leadership. As a teacher in rural Newfoundland and Labrador, Cochrane found that people looked to her and her teaching colleagues to assume community roles. No matter what the position, it seemed that the local teacher was equipped to perform the task. “I don’t think this was unique to my community, nor to my generation. I think we continue to look to teachers for leadership,” she said.

Cochrane’s experiences echo in the memories of many Canadian teachers. Throughout our history, teachers have held a respected position in the community and have been central to the activities of their communities. Next to parents and preachers, teachers probably have had more impact on their communities than anyone else.

Such is the case with Alex Newhart and Jim Parsons, both of whom have been teachers for more than 35 years. Early in their careers, whether they liked it or not, they were schooled to be aware that they were role models.

Obviously, some things have changed. Gone are the days when a rural Alberta teacher arrived daily at the schoolhouse between 7:30 and 8 am to sweep the classroom, clean the blackboards, build a fire in the stove and ensure that the classroom was ready for teaching 10 different subjects in 8 grades to 15 children—the entire future of the community. But some things have not changed. Newhart’s and Parsons’s experience with the new Master of Educational Studies (MES) program in the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Education suggests that teachers remain the mainstays of leadership within their communities. The individual research of current graduate students highlights the deep and abiding relationship and influence that teachers have on their communities.

In some ways, teaching is an aggressively lonely experience. Though the classroom door is shut, the demands of curriculum are ever-present. When teachers are asked, “What is the one thing you want more than anything else?” they answer: “Time!” Teachers have little time to collaborate or to discuss educational issues on a daily basis with their colleagues. Short discussions in the hallways or at lunch whet the appetite for meaningful debate, but such discussions often feel like guilty diversions from the real job of teaching. Teachers’ conventions and PD days serve to further professional dialogue, but too soon the coffee is gone and solitary tasks, such as marking, begin anew.

Still, the desire to be in a community and be part of that community remains. And the affect that the MES graduate students/teachers have had on their communities has not diminished. They care. One only has to listen to the excited buzz of their conversations to realize how much they care about their profession and, most of all, their students.

That graduate students/teachers would take to community is not surprising. In fact, it is expected that the social aspect of a cohort graduate program would be appealing both personally and professionally. But Newhart and Parsons were surprised by how this venue to promote the camaraderie of professionalism worked to edify and encourage. The U of A’s MES graduate program, based upon the triple tenets of community, agency and service, has reached into Alberta’s community in powerful ways.

Meeting the needs of working professionals

The U of A’s Faculty of Education began the MES program to meet the needs of teachers and administrators in a way that working professionals could access. The faculty knew that the program should provide an alternative and innovative way to obtain a master of education degree and provide an opportunity for professional dialogue as students worked through the program. Building on the success of two cycles of AISI (Alberta Initiative for School Improvement), the faculty focused on site-based action research to create opportunities for working professionals to research projects to improve their schools or districts. The cohort-based summer residency first worked to create a sense of community within each residency, then to build from that residency community toward service in the greater communities in which teachers and administrators lived. That community has, in turn, grown in the online culture throughout the fall and winter sessions. Online discussions about course material have cemented personal and professional relationships as the year progresses.

An added feature of the MES program is the benefit of research for the larger community. Reminiscent of a bygone era, these projects are doing more than just influencing schools; they are having an impact on communities beyond the schools. As noted earlier, teachers have always been strong pillars of the communities in which they teach. Obviously, this relationship has always been two-way. Community members share their expertise and support the educational goals of the schools. In turn, schools affect the community with a variety of worthwhile projects.

Site-based action research is relevant to the classroom and school community. The graduate students’/teachers’ research projects act as catalysts furthering research by a larger group of people within the community. In turn, real change occurs when the community and school focus on common needs.

The research projects undertaken by graduate students/teachers in the first MES cohort dealt with classroom and school issues and had an immediate influence on the schools and the schools’ communities.

Featured here are just five of the many research projects that have improved students’ communities.

Selected Research Projects

Feeding Students’ Bodies and Minds

David Bouma, Assistant Principal at St. Joseph High School in Edmonton, was concerned about the nutritional needs of the school’s students. Like many educators, Bouma believes that students need energy to learn, and he saw what appeared to be a nutritional wasteland for students. He wanted to create a school that fed students’ bodies and minds, but he also believed that one cannot preach to students and parents to change their lifestyle. Bouma knew that he needed to find out what students were thinking and how they saw the issue of nutrition in their own lives.

What better way to find out than to go to the students themselves? To understand student thought and behaviour, Bouma studied data collected from students attending H.E. Beriault Catholic Junior High School in Edmonton. He surveyed about 400 students on the nutritional choices they made for school lunches. Who brings bag lunches? What is in those lunches? Who packs the lunches? What do students know about eating nutritionally? His work expanded parental involvement and promoted conversations between students and their parents about nutrition. Bouma’s project has changed the way the school, parents and children eat and think about eating.

The Whole Community Teaches the Child

Karen Sliwkanich, a veteran kindergarten teacher at Evansdale School in Edmonton, teaches in a multiculturally rich school. Her young students come from a wide variety of ethnic, cultural and economic backgrounds. To address students’ learning, Sliwkanich researched how professional collaboration between social services and schools helps overcome barriers to the academic success and potential of young students. Her goal was to better understand how these organizations can work more successfully with children to help them overcome learning difficulties.

Using focus groups of educators, parents and social workers, Sliwkanich sought ways to have professionals from the community work together effectively to benefit her students and their families. The data collected from these focus groups clarified the perceptions of each group on how collaboration between agencies and the schools could be achieved most effectively. Her study also helped lay the groundwork for future collaboration and, ultimately, greater success for her students as they advanced through school.

Serving Students Whose Parents Serve

Canada’s military presence as world peacekeepers is more than just the stuff of myth—it personally affects families in communities north of Edmonton. The current deployment of Canadian military personnel to Afghanistan and other parts of the world has significantly affected the children of those families serving. Marlene Pelletier, Assistant Principal at Georges Vanier School in Morinville, undertook a research project examining the effects of deployment on children and their parents. Approximately 10 per cent of her school’s student population come from families connected to the military.

Using questionnaires to collect data, Pelletier surveyed teachers, parents and students. The data she collected helped the school build and improve its Changes Program and provided a space where children can express their feelings and emotions in appropriate ways. Parents in the school’s community responded enthusiastically to the research. Their strong participation provided information that the school can build on as well as use to establish further links between the school and the community. Pelletier’s research has forged curriculum changes and improved the lives of young people in her school.

Sharing Aboriginal Knowledge

Ermineskin School in Hobbema is a Cree community school. Principal Debbie Stockdale has used Sharing Circles to not only obtain information from her staff and the community, but also to build community within her school. Focus groups of parents, teachers and Elders are based on an Aboriginal understanding of sharing knowledge within a community. Using these groups as a primary source for gathering data, Stockdale examined, with the wider Cree community, what the community perceives to be the best educational goals for children within an Aboriginal school.

The data she collected will enable the school and the community to gain insights into working together to build relevant educational experiences for each child within the community. One promising result of her research rests in the potential connections and relationships developed among the stakeholders that work to strengthen the community as a whole. The insights promise to help the school make sound educational decisions that will enrich the lives of its students.

Beating Down the Bullies

Sadly, the school is not always a safe place for everyone. Many students fear school because they are subject to abuse and fear tactics. Bullying is more than a school issue; it is a community problem as well. Linda Wigton, a teacher at Percy Baxter Middle School in Whitecourt, addressed bullying in her research project. Her research attempted to define what constitutes bullying and how it might be stopped. Her hope is to create a schoolwide action plan to address the problem within her school.

To gain greater insight into bullying, Wigton brought together focus groups of teachers, parents and students. These groups tackled the definition of bullying from each of their own perspectives. They worked to achieve a common definition that would help the school build policy furthering the cause of safe and caring schools and improving life for bullies and the bullied. Wigton’s research opened a dialogue that is both proactive and needed in any community or school in the province.

Summary

This small sample of research projects illustrates the potential far-reaching affect that site-based research can have within a school and its surrounding community. Like a snowball gathering momentum as it rolls downhill, the projects undertaken by the Faculty of Education’s MES cohort at the U of A reach into communities with ideas that enrich the lives of community members. Students have engaged in opportunities to contribute practical solutions to problems within their schools and the larger community. As Senator Cochrane noted, teachers have historically been leaders within their communities. This is also true of teachers/graduate students.

Alex Newhart is a retired teacher with more than 34 years of experience with the Elk Island School District. He works with the Master of Education in Educational Studies program at the U of A. Jim Parsons has taught at the U of A for more than 30 years. He is currently Director of the Master of Education in Educational Studies program.