TORONTO, Ont. – Ontario public elementary teachers will not resume extracurricular activities any time soon, their union said Thursday.
The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario said it will not ask its 76,000 members to resume voluntary activities, including sports teams and clubs.
“While we have experienced a marked and welcome change in the Wynne government’s approach to addressing its relationship with teachers, this has yet to translate into real change,” ETFO President Sam Hammond said in a statement.
“In these circumstances, ETFO’s advice regarding voluntary, extracurricular activities remains unchanged.”
But Hammond said the union is still willing to work with the governing Liberals.
“We want to focus our attention, we want to find solutions and we want to get through this together with the government as quickly as we can,” he told 680News.
Education Minister Liz Sandals said she is pleased that the union is committed to continue to work with the province to repair the relationship.
“But [the government] is disappointed that ETFO has decided not to resume the voluntary provision of extracurricular activities at this time,” she said in a statement.
“Extracurricular activities enrich the educational experience of both students and teachers.”
Last week, the union representing public high school teachers urged its members to return to voluntary activities. But the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation said the majority of teachers do not want to resume activities because they are still angry with the province imposing contracts.
The unions urged their members to stop extracurriculars after the province used the controversial Bill 115 and imposed contracts on teachers that cut benefits and froze the wages of most instructors.
Gas Prices
680News Android App
Weather Guarantee
Advertiser Directory
For those of you (Alison and Fed up!) who think that teachers are the ones preventing parents from volunteering their time in our schools think again. Volunteers from the community require a staff member to be on site and in the location, meaning the same room, of the event so unless an administrator decides to sit and watch parents are being prevented from volunteering as a result of board policy.
Why do we have to keep reading about how teachers at their end of their 6 hour classes have to go home and grade papers and plan lessons and whatever? You are not the only profession that goes home at the end of their 8 hour (minimum) day and continues to work. If you don’t want to do the extra curricular then don’t do them ever again it’s quite simple really. If you think all you do is babysit someone’s child tell the parent that’s how you feel. If you really don’t like the kids you’re teaching then don’t pretend you do because that’s cruel to the kids. If you think a parent is a lousy parent report them to child services, I believe you’re required by law to do that. If you’ve lost site of why you became a teacher maybe it’s time to look for a new profession. If you don’t think you’re appreciated on your job then join the rest of Ontario’s workforce.
I think the old saying, “you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone” is appropriate here. Did you appreciate teachers when they were volunteering their time to offer extra-curricular activities? If you did not, then please don’t complain now.
Bill 115 was undemocratic. The government knows this and that’s why they took it away once they got what they wanted. This is a clear abuse of power. It was also the MP’s who voted that they not lose any of their wages and benefits.
I chose teaching because I like to learn and I had to pick a career so that I could support myself. Everyone who thinks things are not even for everyone, they’re right. Perhaps we need to consider a socialist society.
Go to teacher’s college and get a big pay check and have all that time off. YOu’ll soon see how hard it is. I”m struggling on my pay and it took 12 years to get there. Some of you need a reality check.
No, I did not take part in extra-curricular activities. Those that were offered were only for the best athletes.
Since your solution is simply to ban the experienced teachers, I hope that you will have eternal youth in your life and that no one will replace you with a young person. I am a better teacher now that I have experience-much better. I prefer when my children are in an experienced teacher’s class as things run much smoother. I don’t mind them missing any extracurricular as they do enough outside of school.
Teachers must fight against government cut backs to sick days, pension and wages. If they don’t, the government will continue to chip away at the profession until there is nothing left. Teachers deserve to be paid according to their education level. And I didn’t run up the deficit, the government did. I already went through this with Bob Rae days and took home 780 biweekly for four years in a row. I couldn’t live on this even back then after spending thousands on five years of university.
Don’t forget that those of you not in a union, your coporation bases it’s wages on union workers as they’re the competition. If unions are taken away, everyone in Ontario loses.
Do you want a retrurn to the way things were before unions? That’s where we’re headed. Learn your History.
Extracurricular activities should be made mandatory and part of a teacher’s job function.
We have a lot of new graduates coming out of Teacher’s Colleges. I am sure they will be excited at getting a new job and wouldn’t mind ‘volunteering’ their time. Ban the unions and fire the people who want to strike. This is ridiculous. Who is going to tell these children who graduate this year that their prom and their grad ceremony was stolen by these so called ‘thief’ teachers? FIRE THEM!
It seems to me in reading some of the comments (apparently from teachers) that they feel the only ones that voluteer their time are teachers. What about all of the service clubs (Lions/Rotary/Optimist/Masons/Kiwanis)? Not to mention all of the others at food banks to hospitals to the SPCA. These dedicated and generous people voluteer, without any recognition. They do so mainly because they care for their community and in most cases the underprivileged children in the community. I belonged to a service club in a town of 16,000 there was not one teacher that was a member – not once did a teacher help us out on any project. I now understand teachers feel they should only give their time for pay not for paying forward. Come on teachers wake up and pay forward like so many others do. You do not have a monopoly on voluteering – never have and never will. Give sonething back without strings attached do it because you want to like so many others do, in your communities, that you benefit from.
Nobody arbitrarily took away their rights, or changed their working conditions. Nice try, though.
My daughter is in Grade 8 this year. It’s her graduating year before moving on to a High School and a new school.
She was looking forward to joining the year book club as well as others. Oh, did I forget the school trip to Ottawa. Well, needless to say there is no year book club, no trip to Ottawa, no extra curriculiar activities period.What a sad way to end your middl school years. What a great example these teachers are setting for our future generation of workers. Yes, they should be ashamed. If you go into teaching it should because you want to help kids.
I guess their big pay cheques, their defined benefit pension plan that will provide them with a nice cushy retirement, their two months off in the summer, their 2 weeks off at Cfristmas, their 1 week off in March…..need I go on, is not enough to put in a little extra time on extra curriculiar activities.
I work on average 10 hour days and rarely have time to take a lunch. If I went into to work tomorrow and said I’m not doing that task anymore, I’d be fired on the spot. So how and why should they be allowed to do what they want?
They’ll get no smypathy from this parent. In fact, I have very little respect left for the public school system. And we wonder why more and more parents are moving their children into the private school system.
P.S.
I have volunteered teaching children in Africa at my own expense and I have participated in other activities to give back to society. In Africa, I was appreciated. If I could afford it, I’d only teach in Third World countries.
Ok, so lets treat teachers like everyone else. Lets serve them lay off notices each year while they are idle at home during the summer break. Why not… What makes them different….
I say the teachers have had a very good ride and it’s time for them to suck it up.
Remember the Postal Workers who use to hold us hostage. Look what happened there.
Change is good and perhaps the teachers are ready for change. I believe the general public is and its time for creative thinking on both sides.
Good idea. They used to do that, in fact, which enabled teachers to claim unemployment benefits during July and August, since their contracts only dictate that they work from September to June. Then they decided that having teachers on year-round, and on longer-term contracts saved the government a significant amount of money.
I just have a question for the Union Leaders and the Teachers, for those who were educated in our school system did YOU participate in extra-curiculars? Did YOU benefit from them during those years? Did you celebrate a Graduation? Did the teachers back then strip any of them away from you? No they didn’t, then how Dare You deprive Our children and use them as Pawns for your benefit!!!! Now I’m sure there are teachers who truly do enjoy participating in these events and are Not happy with this outcome either, so I do not discredit those, but prasie them for their dedication and Hard work and maybe You should be the ones to tell your Union Reps that their actions are simply Not Acceptable. Let us move on in the best interest of our Children and all future children to come.
Interesting. Did those teachers have their rights and working conditions stripped? No? Well I guess your comparison is completely invalid, then, and you’ve obviously missed the point of this protest.
Extra-curricular is just that-extra. Teachers have for quite some time freely given of their time to make school more interesting for children and now, some parents and students feel entitled to these services. Personally, I’ve never had one student or parent thank me for doing anything extra but I have received some complaints that I don’t know the basketball rules well enough or that their child didn’t get to play enough in the game. Many students do not complete homework because they have hockey or dance at night. It doesn’t seem that students need more activities but rather fewer. Let’s get back to focussing on academics. As for those who think we work from nine to three, we all know that is not true. I challenge all of you to teach thirty students with the behaviours and needs that are in the classrooms today, and see just how long you last. Some parents can’t even handle their own children. No wonder some children have such little respect for teachers when their parents don’t value the efforts of educators. It seems the more priveleged the society, the less they appreciate what they have.
You all who comment have no clue! You are pissed off and complain about teachers and put words and ideas into the minds of those you don’t even know. MY union, ETFO, has NOT mandated anything. They have given ADVICE on what they believe we should do to protest. We are NOT shunned or embarassed. There are no sanctions. No union officer watches my actions day in and day out. You are listening to news and media and then think YOU KNOW! We teach Media Literacy…some of you need to join a class or 2! Yes a LOT of professions ask for extra work and volunteering. No one disputes that. What being a UNIONIZED worker means is that we are part of a group that mandates for better workload, better working conditions and fair and just pay. Those of you ANGRY about unions are angry at yourselves as you chose careers that don’t have unions. You are alone and if your boss says no, well there’s no one who has “got your back”. That’s too bad! STOP being rude and ignorant. STOP calling for the firing of thousands of people. That’s truly just IGNORANT. Why not be productive and organize your own extras. My kids go to extra programs, not school ones. Why don’t you seek out some of those. If you have nothing nice and/or productive why not shut up and LISTEN to those people in the job and then TALK.
What about the families who are unable to afford extra activities?? The families that depend on the extra activities at school so their children can enjoy sports/clubs which otherwise would not be available to them?????? I’m so glad your kids go to extra programs, it’s nice that my tax dollars can pay for them to go to their extra programs! My husband lost his job due to a plant closure, he is well educated and had a good job now we are barely able to put food on the table let alone pay for extra activities. Now our kids have nothing!!!!! Furthurmore….Some parents did get together to organize some after school clubs and were shunned by the teachers because those parents were not supporting the teachers! STOP USING THE KIDS TO BETTER YOUR FUTURE!!! What about the kids futures???!!!!
Teachers play an important role in shaping our children; however, it is really the parent(s) that have the most influence. This includes activities outside of school. It is a parent’s responsibility to provide for extracurricular activities.
You are correct and parents do provide extracurricular activities outside of school time.
But that is very different than participating in clubs and teams within a school community. It is unfair to take the experiences that we had as kids and that have always been there, away from this particular group of students who are in public education 2012-2013.
A school community is a special place where kids do a lot more than learn academics between 9-3pm. When you take away the sports teams, dance and drama clubs, choir and band, robotics, tech crew, yearbook, trips and numerous other activities, you are taking away the life and spirit of the school.
“Enhanced Curricular Activities” needs to be explicitly entered into the job description of each teacher in Ontario and their work day extended to 4:30 at no extra pay to cover the time required.
That’s the way it’s always been. It’s unfortunate that it has come to needing it all spelled out in the contract.
That is not exactly true. A lot of parents are running into pushback from their schools when they try to volunteer. They already have the background checks, but the administration in the school is not allowing them to run the EC activities. I can only guess that they want the effects of the pause to ring through. I’m not saying this happening everywhere, but it sure is where I am.
I applaud everyone involved in making this decision to continue the boycott. Do the words “IMPOSED contract” ring a bell. If Kathleen Wynne really wants votes, then get back to the bargaining table. After, isn’t that what “COLLECTIVE” bargaining means?
Ron,
So you want to fire all of the teachers and hire construction workers and engineers to build you a ‘dam’? I’m a little confussed? But I totally get your point, lets fire all of the educated trained teachers, and replaces them with any Joe Schmow with a highschool education and tell them to ‘have at ‘er’, that sounds like a fantastic plan.
Come on! Give me a break, teachers work for free. You have no idea what real work is. I wish they would do what Regan did and fire the all of you and hire people who give a DAM about our kids because teachers say they do but when the rubber meets the road they only care about themselves.
Sure ron bring on that failed Reganomics which has done little more than concentrate America’s wealth at the very top and leave everyone else either stagnating or falling backwards. This sort of thinking that has allowed RBC to just post $2.07 billion in profits and we can all see our bank fees falling…NOT! Is that the kind of monetary policy that will attract and keep the best teachers? Nobody gives a DAM about anybody when the capitalist bean counters are pulling the strings.
In 18 years of teaching, I have never had a parent thank me for voluntarily running teams or clubs, although some have seen fit to loudly complain about coaching decisions. Now, however, you attack me for withdrawing these free services, which I’ve done in response to my democratic rights being arbitrarily stripped by politicians. The incredible lack of gratitude and sense of entitlement on the part of these parents is disgusting. I don’t think I’ll ever return to extracurriculars after this.
Have you ever thanked a nurse/personal support worker/physician/therapist who worked on holidays because of their passion for their job and volunteered their own personal + family time for the sake of caring for others? I bet you’ll be the first person to whine about our health care system because you waited a few hours in the hospital to treat a runny nose.
i totally agree with your view and as ron above you states your working for free so sit back and relax!!! At least wait until they give you your rights back.
@kim
I am a parent who has spent hundreds of hours volunteering both in my children’s schools as well as in minor sports, church, and other community services. Volunteering is NOT unique to teaching. No one has a problem with a teacher’s right to choose whether or not they want to volunteer their time. The objection is to the fact that teachers are being mandated to not volunteer. It’s a disgusting power play by the Union that makes our children the true victims in all of this.
Communities could not be the great places they are without volunteers. Isn’t that one of the reasons our children are completing their 40 hours? To teach them that volunteering is an important and meaningful part of society?
Very well said Sarah!
Yes I think we all need to demand that people like tada and Queenie MUST volunter their time. I know your angry because you’ve lost your free child-sitting.
Oh by-the-way Queenie the U.S. style ‘The Right To Work legislation’ as which Herr Hudak is proposing won’t help at all with the extracurriculars. At the most it will do is give us the right to work for less money. Its just a way of taking even more money out of the middle class.
As with the other comments, I’m NOT surprised. This union is about as democratic and reasonable as most dictatorships, which is why McGuinty had to take out the hammer. Teachers not following the union’s demands and doing these activities on their own time are shunned and reprimanded at the school. Oddly enough, at the same time elementary schools are going overboard on “anti-bullying” policies and education. If we think this is bad, lets wait for the fallout when the TDSB has to lay off teachers to balance the budget. (i.e. They went ballistic after wage freezes were imposed after getting 20% increases in pay over the McGuinty term.)
pre-school & elementary education is already very well behind in our Country compare to all other G8 & even other asian countries.(red mark level…)
where are kids of elemenatary teachers go to learn? private or international schools?
who do pay their fees there? ofcourse ourselves.
shame on them. what to say……
dream lost in our kids’ education …..
It still surprises me that people expect teachers to work for free! Parents have taken it for granted for years. These are VOLUNTARY activities, not a mandatory, paid part of their job. Teachers have been sacrificing their own families for yours, and now you’re mad that they aren’t doing that anymore. If you would like to volunteer your free time to supervising teams and/or clubs, please by all means, step up! If you have a valid police background check, time and skills to spare, you’re local school needs you.
Exactly, thank you!
Many parents do take the time and coach teams and lead groups such as Scouts or Girl Guides, Junior Achievement, etc on evenings and weekends. Teachers are supposed to be there because they want to help children succeed and grow, not to show up and punch a clock. There are many other occupations out there where the workers are not compensated for over-time and these occupations have far less effect on society and the children living within it. I don’t think anyone expects teachers to work for free, but as part of our curriculum we teach that community involvement and giving back are important values everyone should poses. So what kind of a message does it send to our youth that because teachers aren’t getting paid for their time (which in my personal opinion is a farce when you compare Ontario teachers wages to those of our neighbors south of the border, but that is off-topic) they shouldn’t have to give back to the students?? I don’t think it is fair that the teachers AND the government are using children as pawns in their negotiations, the only ones loosing out here are the students, isn’t it time we show the children it is important to value something more important than the almighty dollar? Isn’t it time we taught the students the importance of coming together as a community? And wouldn’t it be a much stronger message to the government if teachers continued to inspire volunteerism and community by continuing to run extra-curriculars rather than “throwing in the towel”? I think teachers and the Ontario government really need to re-examine their priorities, and in the end who all this is for…and if the answer isn’t for the students then there is something fundamentally wrong in our society.
Too bad Tada and Queenie…the world has changed and so to have the attitudes of teachers which now reflect a society that requires people paying for services and this includes extracurriculars…what a shock!!
Wow, am I ever surprised by this. Not!! It will keep on, until The Right To Work legislation is enacted. I hear about so many teachers who want to do extra-curriculars, but, the union tells them no. Where is the democracy???
What a shock!
Great thing for the elementary school teachers to be teaching the children, if you don’t get what you want kick up a fuss and throw a tantrum, eventually you will get it.
Good plan!
It is amazingly shocking and extremely sad to read some of the comments of parents…The teachers’ fight is not with parents and so I will refrain from commenting further on that score. However, and suffice it to say, teachers, after completing their 6 hour work-day often work another 4 hours, (or more) marking papers and planning to ensure that children learn and become responsible citizens of this nation. I am at a loss as to why people are being so hard on teachers for not sacrificing their personal time for extracurricular activities. Teachers are gracious and giving people and to have all this negativity hurled at them means little in comparison to them having to face the government dictating their contract. Parents, and the public at large, will only understand this only when they stand in teachers’ shoes.