This article was not meant to be what it is now, but much like teachers, the government forced my hand. I was going to write all about the things that teachers do for students, and how they are not getting nearly enough support; but then I read the headlines this morning.

          Early Saturday morning, the Liberal government let everyone know that they were going to close all Nova Scotia schools, with the expectation that teachers still come into work. This is in direct response to the NSTU’s announcement earlier this week, saying that teachers were going to be taking job action on Monday.

          The government claims that this is in the interest of ensuring student safety; however, as a student myself, I can tell you that is completely ridiculous. They claim that due to the fact that teachers are not to be supervising student activity over lunch, and more than 20 minutes before and after the bell, over 47,975 students will be at risk. What they fail to mention is that most of those student's schools get lunch monitors to watch them anyway. The few schools in Nova Scotia (such as my own, MSMS) that use the teachers as lunch monitors will be getting outside lunch monitors for the duration of the work-to-rule anyway. Under no circumstances will students be left without support and supervision. Also, if teachers working only their contractual duties is not enough to keep students safe, then the contract needs to be changed, that's not the teacher's fault.

           With that out of the way, what is the real reason why the government chose this course of action? Prior to all of this, the government held Bill 148 over the heads of the teachers as a way to make them sign a tentative agreement. In essence, it was a threat to make teachers lives much more difficult. In the press statement the Minister of Education, Karen Casey, said that the government would try to get teachers back to work as soon as possible. I feel that the government is closing schools to remove power from teachers while they work to push a different Bill, 75, which forces teachers to sign the contract through and end the strike before it even has a chance to begin. If the government closes schools, there is almost no strike that the teachers could do that would have any lasting effect.

           I've seen teachers do great things for students every day, from spending their own money, to giving up their own lunches to give extra help. They do all of this without the support they desperately need. I am in a school that is so overpopulated that I have had classes in the cafeteria. That was what the work to rule was supposed to demonstrate, all the things teachers do for us that they don't have to, and to hopefully get students and teachers the resources and funding they need; it was not meant to ruin kids education.

           While I did not want to write such a negative article, the government has to be held accountable. They can't take away the rights of workers to negotiate, to fight back against unrealistic expectations, they can't force them back to work; that's criminal. Besides, if you have a school full of teachers that don't want to be there, it’s then that students really suffer, not when you don't let them have a Christmas concert. Please help me support our teachers, let the government know how you feel; and remember that education doesn’t just affect teachers, it affects the next generation, it affects all of us.

Thank you for your time, Richard