Your Federation: a Roundup of Federation News

Equality day

Education  Minister  Sandra  Pupatello  was  the guest  speaker  ETFO’s  Equality  Day  celebration. Sponsored jointly by ETFO and the Women’s  Future  Fund, the  day  commemorates the enshrining of  equality  rights in  the  Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1985. One of WFF’s newest member groups is the National Eating Disorder Information Centre. Executive director Meryl Bear described the organization’s efforts to promote healthy body image among women and girls.

Men in education

Justin  Trudeau  was  the   keynote speaker  at  ETFO’s  conference  on male teachers. More than 250 participants also heard from education researchers studying the importance of   men  in  elementary  education. Look for a full report on the conference in the Fall 06 issue of Voice.

ETFO supports national child care campaign

Keira Heineck (centre), the executive director of the Ontario Coalition forBetter Childcare (OCBC), spoke to presidents and delegates at the May representative council meeting about the national campaign for a universal child care program. ETFO is actively supporting the national Code Blue Campaign (see the General Secretary’s column in the Spring 06 edition of Voice).

In a significant collaboration, ETFO, the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association, the Canadian Teachers’  Federation, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, and the Ontario Federation of Home and School Associations signed a joint news release on May 2, the day of the federal budget. Educators, parents and  trustees expressed their dismay that the Stephen Harper government is abandoning the federal provincial agreements signed last year. The agreement with Ontario would have created 25,000 new child care spaces in this province. To sign the Code Blue petition go to, childcareontario.org.

The best place for grade 7 and 8 students is in an elementary school

Some school boards have started moving grade 7 and 8 students into high schools in order to keep up the student numbers in  those  schools.  ETFO  believes  –  and research  shows  –  that  young  adolescent learners do  better  in  elementary schools. Boards are thinking about dollars not the well being of students. A new ETFO pamphlet explains the Federation’s position. It’s available on our website, etfo.ca.

ETFO helps colleagues in Peru

Proyecto de Mejoramiento en Educación Básica de Piura (PROMEB)works with teachers, schools, and about 9000 children in Piura, Peru an impoverished area north of Lima. Schools there have few or no resources. Illiteracy rates are high. Teachers walk three to five hours to reach the schools and lack housing to stay in during the week.

The PROMEB project began a literacy campaign and a festival for children and parents so that they could read and write stories and produce their own books to use as classroom resources. ETFO has donated $14,000 to the project. In March President Emily Noble and General Secretary Gene Lewis had an opportunity to visit the project.

For Spanish language information see promebpiura.org.pe.

Bargaining skills for women

Twenty-two members attended the “Negotiating skills for women workshop” held at the ETFO provincial office in April. Statistics on participation in ETFO programs have consistently shown that women are underrepresented in collective bar- gaining. The workshop  was designed to address this  imbalance  by  helping  women  hone  their negotiating skills and encourage their  increased participation in bargaining. Participants included members  who  are  early  childhood  educators, teachers and occasional teachers. Coming into the workshop they had varying degrees of expertise. They  participated  in theoretical and hands on learning, including a bargaining simulation.

Grand Erie Bargaining Success

Grand Erie ETFO and the district school board have agreed that effective next September all teachers will be employed on either a 0.5 or a 1.0 basis. As a result 48 teachers who had less than half- time assignments – some as low as 0.01 – will have their teaching time increased to 0.5 and 59 teachers with assignments between 0.5 and0.99 will have full-time status. This move is clearly advantageous to ETFO members. As well, the local demonstrated that the board will save a significant amount of money. Grand Erie teachers will further benefit by having the full 200 minutes of preparation time in September 2007 as opposed  the negotiated start date of September 2008.

Connecting with new teachers

ETFO regularly provides conferences and workshops for beginning teachers, that is teachers in their first five years. In April 70 teachers attended Connect 2006 in Sudbury. It was presented by ETFO in partnership with the Rainbow Teacher Local,  the  Rainbow  Occasional  Teacher  Local and the Rainbow District School Board. Work- shops included presentations on techniques for classroom  management,  core  French  teaching strategies, software licensed by the Ministry ofEducation, and daily physical education.

Summer of Hope

The challenge issued by the Simcoe County Teacher local (see Spring 06  issue  of  Voice)  has been taken up by three locals. Grand Erie, Upper Grand and York Region teacher locals have voted to support Lieutenant  Governor  James  Bartleman’s Aboriginal literacy program. As well the York Region Local challenged its school board to make a matching donation, which the board did,  bringing the  total  donation  from  York Region to $5,000. For more information on the camps go to lt.gov.on.ca.

Global action week

More than 100 million children around the world don’t have a chance to go to school. The United Nations estimates that to give every child an elementary education, the world  would need 15  million additional teachers. Global Action Week April 24–30 draws attention to the lack of educational opportunities for children around the world. It is a project of the Campaign for Global Education, Education International, and the Canadian Teachers’ Federation. As part of the campaign, federation leaders, including ETFO President Emily Noble, spoke with Canadian members of parliament and senators to alert them to the needs of children and teachers around the world.

Michelle Muir – Champion poet

ETFO member Michelle Muir (aka Nuff Said) is the winner of CBC Radio’s Canada-wide Poetry Face-Off  Competition  2006.  Muir  has  been  a teacher with the Peel District School Board for the last 12 years and currently  teaches grade 4 in Mississauga. Her goal is to promote literacy, cultural awareness, and  empowerment through spoken word. Michelle’s company “Nuff  Said,” provides shows  put on by Michelle’s storytelling alter ego “Auntie Michie.” Michelle has performed on professional and non-professional stages in Toronto and New York. She is currently writing and  working to compile her poetry and children’s stories. She has also lectured on numerous occasions at YorkUniversity and the University of Toronto.

Kaleidoscope 2006

Humourist and Toronto Star columnist Linwood Barclay was the keynote speaker at ETFO’s kaleidoscope conference. A strong advocate for teachers (and the husband of one) he entertained partici- pants with stories that reflected the humour and poignancy of life in the classroom. Seventy ETFO members attended the conference which included workshops on collective bargaining, use of tech- nology in  effective communication and effective strategies for handling student assessment. Shown with Linwood Barclay are ETFO President Emily Noble and Karen Chow, a participant in the collective bargaining mentoring program who introduced Barclay to the audience.

Correction: In the January federal election Maret Sadem-Thompson ran for the NDP in Oshawa-Whitby, the second time she has done so. We inadvertently left her name off the list of ETFO members who ran for office in that election.

ETFO Award Winners 2005-2006

ETFO is proud to announce the winners  of its awards and honours for this year. Award winners  will  be honoured at the 2006  annual meeting.  Congratulations to recipients and thanks to all those who submitted applications.