Here’s a parent perspective on the issues in the school from Ginger Hartman. It would be wonderful if hers was the only story like this, but I expect an alarming percentage of our students’ parents can say the same.
I am trying to remember if it was at the school where I am now, of one of the previous ones, where over 25% of our student body had some government coded special need. You can be assured that there were almost the same number un-coded, but noted as needing help, and possibly even more demanding than the identified students.
I know I’m not meeting the needs of all my identified kids. I try to adapt and modify lessons for them, but I can’t stretch enough to monitor them every minute of the class, when there are 25-29 others in the room who also need attention. So many of these kids really need one on one support all day. Each would function best with a Special Education Assistant at their side in every class to keep them on task, guide their understanding, and articulate issues that the student can not articulate. I have one SEA in one of my four classes, but she’s attached to one wheelchair bound student, not the deaf student, or the learning disabled students, or the behavior challenged students, or the socially challenged students. I need to deal with them, and try to ensure that they’re all on target, learning, and meeting the prescribed learning outcomes.
I am just one body, and while I have a lot of strategies to encourage success in my students, I am only one body!
Teaching cost me over $500 last year in personally purchased books and supplies used/destroyed/stolen in my class room. Teachers are not allowed to list these expenses on our tax returns. That drives me crazy. Other professions are allowed to deduct for tools and supplies used on their job. I have never been able to figure out why we’re not. The only thing I can think of is that the federal government has already given the provincial government funding for these things, and so they believe we don’t need to purchase them. Well, we’re taking a stand. What’s our job? What’s not our job? Our job is teaching, and we’ll do it between the bells, until this government recognises that it is eroding one of the best educational systems in the world. We’re falling fast.
Shawn L. Bird 
help wanted March 12, 2012
Here’s a parent perspective on the issues in the school from Ginger Hartman. It would be wonderful if hers was the only story like this, but I expect an alarming percentage of our students’ parents can say the same.
I am trying to remember if it was at the school where I am now, of one of the previous ones, where over 25% of our student body had some government coded special need. You can be assured that there were almost the same number un-coded, but noted as needing help, and possibly even more demanding than the identified students.
I know I’m not meeting the needs of all my identified kids. I try to adapt and modify lessons for them, but I can’t stretch enough to monitor them every minute of the class, when there are 25-29 others in the room who also need attention. So many of these kids really need one on one support all day. Each would function best with a Special Education Assistant at their side in every class to keep them on task, guide their understanding, and articulate issues that the student can not articulate. I have one SEA in one of my four classes, but she’s attached to one wheelchair bound student, not the deaf student, or the learning disabled students, or the behavior challenged students, or the socially challenged students. I need to deal with them, and try to ensure that they’re all on target, learning, and meeting the prescribed learning outcomes.
I am just one body, and while I have a lot of strategies to encourage success in my students, I am only one body!
Teaching cost me over $500 last year in personally purchased books and supplies used/destroyed/stolen in my class room. Teachers are not allowed to list these expenses on our tax returns. That drives me crazy. Other professions are allowed to deduct for tools and supplies used on their job. I have never been able to figure out why we’re not. The only thing I can think of is that the federal government has already given the provincial government funding for these things, and so they believe we don’t need to purchase them. Well, we’re taking a stand. What’s our job? What’s not our job? Our job is teaching, and we’ll do it between the bells, until this government recognises that it is eroding one of the best educational systems in the world. We’re falling fast.
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