Sounds interesting, and not too much of a hardship, especially when teachers are expected to be available. A little give on one side, a little pull on the other side. Seems fair, but the teacher unions, would not be too please, attending on Saturday.

Yah, Nancy you’re right.  In our area, the teachers won’t even supervise the playgrounds during recess, so the board has to hire people to do so.  I don’t think this would be a go here…

Yeah, I never thought about recess in Ontario. I like the way they say, their interest is in the children’s education, yet with recess, they see no educational value of getting to know the children out of the classroom. When I was young,we had a 15 minute and 20 minute break. Often the teachers came out with us, to continue the scrub baseball game, or the volleyball game, or joined in with the skipping. In the wintertime, if we enough snow, we made the forts, and the teachers would join in, and we called them our snow wars. But that was back, when schools were fully equipped, so kids could play baseball, and such games. Not everyone had a glove.

When a window got broken, the janitor would determine if it was done on purpose or not, and if so, the principal would go to the child’s home, for payment of replacement of glass. It was the janitor that put the window pane. But again janitors could fix anything back then, including showing kids the scary furnace room, and show them the secret workings that go on down in the basement. Even down here, the janitor always seem to have a book or two, showing a good example to other kids, and even helping some to read, if he took a liking to them. But those days are gone too, where janitors was very much part of the school day, and he was the guy that fixed things right away, without having to wait to request a work order, get approval and await for the work crew to come and fix it.

Perhaps all the trouble began, when recess, gym classes were cut down, to opt more for class time. Throw in the cutting down of gym equipment, and sports equipment, since no one will have any use, with the cut in recess time. No time to start up a baseball game, by the time you get the equipment in a locked room, run out into the field, the bell is ringing to go back into class. In my days, there was no trouble with taking sports equipment home, All was clearly marked the property of the school, and the majority of parents would make their kid walk back to the school to return the equipment. Of course the school was always open, because the after school janitors were there cleaning each classroom 6 days a week, and there was always some community group using the gym for a meeting.

Now the doors are locked by 5, and we wonder why kids do not see school, as the teachers and the government wants them to. It has become a place of 4 walls, but no substance.

What happens when it’s the students are showing up for class ready and eager to learn but there’s no substitute teacher, or, the day is filled with activities unrelated to education - like fundraising assemblies, or the weeks before holidays when things get slow?

Everything in the school, is educational. Anything outside the school walls, is dubious in education value, unless approve by the school. or the upper levels.

Bev must not live in Ontario. Teachers in Ontario are required by the Education Act to provide supervision at recess, as well as before and after school. Teachers have 80-100 minutes per week of assigned supervision time. Many provide extra help to students at recess, lunch or before school. This is not counted as supervision time, it is voluntary. We are not allowed to keep students in after school.

By the way, most schools no longer have access to attendance counselors. Elementary students must be away from school for something like 30 consecutive school days before CAS or other authorities get involved. We already hold report cards to get parents to come in. However, we must by law send them by mail in due course if parents do not get them in person.

The move to cut supervision time dates back to John Snobelen slashing prep time in high schools and a general intensification of the job through testing and OBE based curriculum, teacher supervision etc. Something had to go so teachers took the position that ok, if we now have to do all of this then we are not going to do that any more. The secondary teachers led by Toronto began to negotiate reductions in coverage for absent teachers and hallway/lunch supervision.

Extra curricular has suffered a little. Parents have to realize that if they demand more of A they will get less of B. There are only so many hours in a day and so much energy.

To Urbanteach, as I was pretty sure about paid supervisors, I undertook to confirm, and yes indeed there is paid supervisors for the recesses and lunch times. The supervisors are under the head supervisor who is one of the teachers. Furthermore, in the schools’ newsletters, starting at the beginning of the new year, the schools begin to advertised for paid supervisors in the new school year, in September.

I ran across a blog, that there has been an increase in time, teachers provides supervision, but the unions in the last contract accepted this, with increase time for prep work. The increase in supervision is where a teacher must be in the classroom 15 minutes before the morning bell rings, and 5 minutes before the afternoon noon session starts. The board wins too, where there is no longer a need to hire as many supervisors as in the past.

As for kids skipping out, I can see now, that the parents and the kids are working the system. I am talking about parents, who are allowing their kids to skipped classes. These parents make it look bad for all parents, and on the other hand, it does not set a good example for parents. Parents who may decide to go away for a mini-vacation, without asking at the school, may do so, when there is not a big deal over other kids not attending school on a regular basis. We have one such family, in our small community, if things get heated up, the kids go to school for a while, and than it is back to not attending once more again. One day, about 5 years ago, I delivered homework to one of their children, and in the conversation, I learned that it is up to their children to get up in the morning to attend school. It is their responsibility. The age of responsibility in this household, begins at the age of 8. It is a good thing the majority of parents are not like them, but the majority of the parents pay dearly for the actions of a few.

Extracurricular in elementary has also suffered but the situations are different. We used to do lunch activities (clubs, untramural sports) but can no longer do so because the lunch period has been shortened to 40-50 minutes. By the time students eat lunch there is no time for computer lab, basketball, Scrabble club. In my last school the students ate lunch in shifts so there was no opportunity for clubs or sports at lunch. In my current school the middle school students get only 40 minutes for lunch. By the time they get to the lunch room, get seated, unpack lunches and eat, they have only 10-15 minutes left before classes resume.

Having clubs or activities after school is complicated because of busing. Teachers are willing to do clubs and sports but only the students who walk home can participate. This is a problem.

Another problem is all the meetings that teachers must attend after school. These can easily occur 2-3 days per week. Some are valuable but many issues could better be addressed by having announcements and discussion on the board’s intranet.

Secondary teachers may require more prep time than elementary: in our discussions most of my co-workers agree that secondary issues are not the same. We need to spend about 2-3 hours daily in preparation, marking and reporting, on average. Some come in early (at 7 a.m., as early as we are allowed in ), some stay late, some take work home, some come in on weekends if the building is open for community use. Usually my school parking lot has numerous cars there until 6 or 7 p.m.

I never said boards did not hire supervisors—they do, to increase safety, because there are not enough teachers available at specific times in certain schools. Nevertheless, teachers do recess and before and after school supervision, and always have. Supervisors are usually parents from the school community, which increases community involvement and parent contact. This is specially good in areas like ours with lots of diverse ethnic communities. The moms who work as supervisors are a link to the parents in that cultural group and help connect home and school.

Lunch supervisors are under the direction of the principal, not of a teacher. My school does not have recess supervisors, we have enough teachers who can go out with the students.

“ The increase in supervision is where a teacher must be in the classroom 15 minutes before the morning bell rings, and 5 minutes before the afternoon noon session starts. The board wins too, where there is no longer a need to hire as many supervisors as in the past. “

This is not an increase. This has been in the Education Act in Ontario for decades—since before I started school, so we’re talking 30 years or more. The number of supervisors a board must hire is based on a formula of number of students to number of adult supervisors, so it depends on school size and staff availability.

Remember that different provinces have different rules. Also, different boards in the same provinces have different policies, but must obey the law for their province.

Doug you bring up an interesting point, dating back to the Harris regime. At that time, I was following the education changes, with great interest, because I had a wee one, that would be impacted by all the changes.

The changes that were made, cause the major players to work against each other, rather than work cooperatively against the changes that impacts everybody, including the children and the parents. One of the changes, is regarding the use of benchmarks, which in practice it is generally the lowest one that is in use, regarding standardization of the school’s administration. I could never understand, why anyone was not opposing this change, that leads to hardships and promotes inequities, rather than the goal of equalization, based on each board unique circumstances.

For example, the costs of janitors and cleaning of schools, the lowest benchmark was used, and the figure was derived largely from rural schools. Places like Toronto paid dearly, because the figures were based on rural costs,where even property taxes are far less, than what it is compared to Toronto.

The changes made to the education system, cause the major players to work for their best interests, and a result, among many, all children received the same type of programming whether it does or does not applied to the individual school, or school board. Special education, and resources were tied in with universal benchmarks, and as a result, there was more children, not less not receiving services, other than what is supplied in the classroom.

What I could never understand, why the major players never united in one voice, because it did not take an expert to predict the future, common sense would have told anyone, it was the children that would be impacted, on a negative basis, and where targeted goals, would reach only a certain percentage of the student population.

The education system is intent to reach their goals, based on percentage points increases, or decreases, and there is no concern for the students who do fall within the increases or decreases. The system does not allow it.

Nancy wrote:

“Everything in the school, is educational. Anything outside the school walls, is dubious in education value, unless approve by the school. or the upper levels.“

This has not been my experience. I’m hoping this was a tongue-in-cheek comment?

urbantech wrote “By the way, most schools no longer have access to attendance counselors. Elementary students must be away from school for something like 30 consecutive school days before CAS or other authorities get involved. We already hold report cards to get parents to come in. However, we must by law send them by mail in due course if parents do not get them in person.“

We’ve never had attendance counselors, so we’re not missing them.

urbantech wrote:“Extracurricular in elementary has also suffered but the situations are different. We used to do lunch activities (clubs, untramural sports) but can no longer do so because the lunch period has been shortened to 40-50 minutes. By the time students eat lunch there is no time for computer lab, basketball, Scrabble club. In my last school the students ate lunch in shifts so there was no opportunity for clubs or sports at lunch. In my current school the middle school students get only 40 minutes for lunch. By the time they get to the lunch room, get seated, unpack lunches and eat, they have only 10-15 minutes left before classes resume.“

Oh, but the Balanced School Day was supposed to remedy all of this, plus, devote more blocks to the core subjects areas, AND improve attendance.

What’s gone wrong?

I was making a presentation to Gerry Caplan when the Royal Commission was doing hearings in 1993 or 94. He raised an excellent point in responce. He said “The research shows that no reform of the public school system can be succesful without significant buy in from the teachers. They can outlast the parents and the politicians any day because they are permanent and all others are temporary. If they see a reform they don’t like they will hit it from every angle, political, collective bargaining, communications, etc. They will spend a lot of money and eventually they will prevail.“

For example, Harris made teacher teach seven of eight periods instead of the previous 6 of 8. Since teachers believed this to be unfair they began a relentless campaign to change it. Part of it was political (get rid of the Tories) and part collective bargaining combined with lobbying and deal making. OSSTF is now resored to 6 of 8.

Yes the Harris funding formula was a tragic joke in urban areas Nancy because his policy was to move urban money from Liberal and NDP ridings to rural Tory ridings and thus deliver more to his folks without raising taxes.

At this point urban schools were almost instantly dirtier due to fewer caretakers and also began to fall apart because maintenance budgets could not keep up to deterioration.

The sad part is the $2 billion that Rozanski said Harris set us back has never been fully restored by McGuinty who will not fix the seriously flawed funding formula. Anybody who thinks I am a fan of McGuinty is seriously mistaken. He only looks good compared to Hudak, the mini-me of Harris. As far as I am concerned Andrea Horwath is too conservative.

My school is not on the Balanced Day timetable. Perhaps it does “remedy all this.“  I haven’t worked in a Balanced Day school and can’t speculate. I suspect, though, that 45 minutes is too short for a snack break AND an extracurricular that requires much set-up and student movement.

I used to run a lunchtime Computer Club an another school, but the lunch period then was 60 minutes, so with students eating, cleaning up, using the loo and coming to the lab we generally got a good 30 minutes of on-task time doing computer-based projects. I can’t see 45 minutes working out for that, though you could do some sports activities in a 45 minute period perhaps.

Oh Doug, the rural schools did suffered. The closures of schools, based on the formula, the number of students per square feet, for space allotment. Since the majority of rural schools, were built in a time, where classroom were big, to fit in 35 to 40 students, they apparently had all kinds of unused space. With declining enrollments, schools were shut down for that reason, and other reasons for not having the mandated specs for gyms, where the ceiling had to be a certain height, and floor space had to be a certain squared footage, for kids to properly participate in gym.

Where did these policies come from, of course from the urban areas, where over-all policies are formulated. Many of them being formulated by people who have never been in a classroom, let alone know the true reality of their policies, and the negative impact that occurs.

Urbanteach, stated: “I never said boards did not hire supervisors—they do, to increase safety, because there are not enough teachers available at specific times in certain schools. Nevertheless, teachers do recess and before and after school supervision, and always have. Supervisors are usually parents from the school community, which increases community involvement and parent contact. This is specially good in areas like ours with lots of diverse ethnic communities. The moms who work as supervisors are a link to the parents in that cultural group and help connect home and school.“

Safety and using that reason, does not translate for safety of any students. Not when the supervisors, as the teachers are restricted to what they can do. Plenty of things happen out of sight, and out of hearing, where bullying takes place. When the victim goes to complain, nothing is done about it, or tells the victim to avoid them, or if the supervisor feels that there is some substance to it, the children are involved are taken to the office, to sort it out. And than the whole cycle is repeated again, because the bully learns there is no consequences, and the victim learns there is no justice. The victim learns there is no value in reporting bullying incidents, because the adults are only concern with providing short-term solutions, and not the long-term solutions, in case of offending the parties involved.

“This is specially good in areas like ours with lots of diverse ethnic communities. The moms who work as supervisors are a link to the parents in that cultural group and help connect home and school.“

I disagree, it is another layer preventing long-term solutions to on-going problems. The inevitable biases of the parent supervisors play the major role, long with the degree of political correctness within the individuals. In a rural school, where different cultural backgrounds is not a major factor, and the population comes from a more or less common background, the policies imposed causes more friction, and disengagement from all parties. No one wants to put in the effort, and safety becomes whatever safety means to current staff in the ivory towers and the ministries.

As a result, some kids can insult more than others, depending on background, and other factors. And some kids cannot because they are perceived as being from a cultural background, that is more privileged than others in today’s society. In other cases, the smart kids get off scot free, while the LD kids pay for their crimes whether they did it or not, and usually are much harsher, than a simple apology. This is the bias, the misconception that kids with A averages, are seen as never doing bad things, but the kids who are struggling in learning, are seen as being bad from the get-go.

And people are wondering why, parents are suing in small claims court, to get some justice.

re: Balanced School Day.

We were told that all of Ontario was moving to this model.
We were also told that it was a union-driven intiative - thanks to the superintendent who didn’t paint it to be anything else, or that parents had a say in whether or not it was implemented.

Rozanski also said that money following the student was sound practice. That will not change anytime soon I’ll wager.

The extra-curricular issue is bound to comeback to haunt us. We have to remember at the time of the dust-up between OSSTF and the gov’t we were supposedly in a teacher shortage situation in the province (or were we REALLY?). That we’re now heading into teacher surplus at the secondary panel might change things.

It was suggested that in order for the extra-curricular issue to be remedied that first the professional role of a teacher needed to be determined.

It’s not necessary to have teachers supervising lunch.

I looked up the balanced School Day.Thank God, that won’t be coming to NL, anytime soon. The kids won’t even have time to digest any food, before it is time to go back to class. Let alone have some exercise. I can see, there would never be a need for supervising lunch time.

Here is a link, a parent outlining the issues with a balanced School Day.

http://www.withgoodreason.com/2007/10/12/what-do-parents-think-of-balanced-school-day/#comment-224