The Alberta Teachers’ Association

Do caps on hours of work kill rural schools or does their very ­absence kill rural teachers?

I grew up in Edmonton and attended some of the city’s largest schools, with all their challenges related to class size, diversity and bureaucracy. Despite those challenges, I always wanted to teach in one of those big
city high schools.

So I had a lot to think about as I drove back to Edmonton from the village of Breton (population 500+) after completing my first interview for a teaching position. Even though I had gone into the interview thinking of it as a practice interview before the real one in Edmonton, they actually offered me a position on the spot. I asked for time to think about it.

On the drive home, I thought about the many great things about working in rural schools. I loved the idea of the perfect assignment, small classes and the high level of autonomy available in a small school in a small division.

I loved rural teaching so much, I stayed for seven years, during which time I learned a lot about rural teaching. In particular, I learned how big a workload rural teachers have—every year, I had between seven and ten (sometimes more) different courses to prepare. I often taught different grades in the same classroom. I developed all my course materials—handouts, lessons and assessment tools—on my own. As the only high school math teacher, there was little opportunity for collaboration and work sharing. Outside the classroom, many small schools try to offer a full range of extracurricular programming and services to students with only
a fraction of the staff.

How troubling then that Education Minister Jeff Johnson continues characterizing Association proposals on teacher workload as unacceptable because of the impact on rural schools. In his offer to teachers in ­February (see page 4), Johnson said: “We can’t risk the viability of small rural schools to reach a labour agreement. That is simply not in the best interest of our kids.” The minister suggested that smaller boards would not be able to change teacher assigned time. But he’s missing an important point—if small rural schools are thriving today, it is because of the extra work and dedication of our rural teachers. Johnson acknowledges this by implying that reasonable workloads for rural teachers would result in school closures. But what is really not in the best interests of students is to continue overloading teachers, as we know from a recent national study of workload and work–life challenges by Linda Duxbury, who found that the average Alberta teacher spends 41.3 hours per week at school and that nearly all teachers take work home—the average amount of work done at home is 13.9 hours per week. About three-quarters of teachers report high levels of work role overload. Duxbury says that work–life imbalance affects productivity and energy levels, and increases absenteeism. Almost half of Alberta teachers report that they are often depressed. This is really not in the best interests of kids.

One problem for rural schools is the high turnover of teaching staff. Duxbury found that about one-third of Alberta teachers do not intend to stay in the profession (for more on Duxbury’s report, see page 6). The sustainability of any school, rural or urban, depends on having a staff that is committed to students, school and community in the long term.

The cause of rural schools is not helped when the minister of education suggests that the ATA’s proposals in provincial tripartite discussions would kill rural schools. The ATA’s November 30 offer included reasonable exceptions for schools that were trying to reduce teacher workloads but could not because of the circumstances in that school.

Teachers believe in and support rural schools, but they don’t believe that the survival of rural schools should be on the backs of rural teachers alone. If the government wants to demonstrate a real commitment to rural education, it must find the funds necessary to hire more staff and provide more resources for rural students and teachers.