High School Experience in the Time of COVID-19

Written by a BC stepdad. Closure of BC schools due to coronavirus marked a sudden double transformation in lives of school-aged children: their homes became classrooms, and their parents became their teachers. During the last two months much has been written about the difficulties teachers and parents encountered since long-distance learning commenced in BC. In […]

Continue Reading

COVID-19, War and Economics

The metaphors of war have been in abundance since the onset of COVID-19. In Britain, the Queen, in a speech, evoked the WW2 song, “We’ll Meet Again.” The Italian Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, also invoked WW2 when he used Winston Churchill’s words to talk about Italy’s “darkest hour.” Donald Trump has described himself as a […]

Continue Reading

BC Schools: COVID Canaries

Written by a BC teacher. After weeks of hearing about the nightmare of states in the US reopening their economies amid the COVID-19 pandemic, we knew it was coming. The reopening of the Canadian economy! Granted, the pandemic has not been as devastating in Canada as in the US, but that doesn’t say much. The […]

Continue Reading

Synchronicity, Teaching and the struggle for an equitable education system

In 1983, The Police, recorded a song called “Synchronicity.”  Some of the lyrics: We know you, they know meExtrasensorySynchronicityA star fall, a phone call,It joins all,Synchronicity The word synchronicity generally has positive connotations and is briefly defined as a “meaningful coincidence.” Could it be a coincidence, meaningful or otherwise, that the Ontario Minister of Education […]

Continue Reading

160,000 Ontario Teachers Out on One-day Strike

Tim Heffernan is a retired Ontario Teacher. Friday, February 21, saw the biggest show of united action by Ontario teachers since 1997. All 4 unions (elementary, secondary, Catholic and French) representing 160,000 teachers, in a one day strike closed down schools that affected 2 million students. In Toronto, an estimated 30,000 teachers, education workers, parents […]

Continue Reading

Ontario teacher strike

Tim Heffernan is a retired Ontario Teacher. Two months after the first one day strike by Ontario High School Teachers, the two sides are still miles apart. (This article gives background to the strike.) The High School teachers in the public boards, organized by OSSTF, were the first to take action with a series of […]

Continue Reading