Ok, this is just interesting and horribly frustrating all at the same time, so I thought I'd share it with you folks. I've highlighted my favourite parts.

NB Telegraph-Journal | E-Brief As published on page A1 on October 7, 2002

Supply teachers blast province
EDUCATION: Group members told they earn half of counterparts' pay

ROGER LEBLANC
Telegraph-Journal

There was frustration in the air at the annual meeting of substitute teachers this weekend.

About a dozen members attended a meeting of the Substitute Teachers' Association of New Brunswick meeting Saturday. It didn't take long for the part-time teachers to start talking about opportunities outside this province. During a break, one new supply teacher was floored to learn he could nearly double his pay and gain benefits unavailable here if he moved to the West Coast to do the same job.

Substitute teachers can go to any other province and be treated like government employees, one teacher said, or stay here and be viewed as a casual worker without benefits and paid half of what their full-time colleagues earn doing the same job.

The chair of the meeting, Diane Reid, led off with a morale-crushing report that had an obvious impact on many of the young teachers. With poor pay, no benefits, and no government movement on initiatives that would help them do their jobs better, substitute teachers are turning away from New Brunswick and that's harming our children's education, Ms. Reid said.

The association, which has 1,500 members, made huge gains in pay in the recent past, she noted, but that progress has stalled with this current government.

"Right now the attention seems to be on building roads and creating infrastructure that creates jobs," she said. "What we need to do is make our province an attractive place so the professionals will come here . . . What's more important? Kids or highways?"

Substitute April Churchill would like to see the province invest more funding into hiring teachers. She's been working out of the St. George area as a supply teacher since 1991, and since getting her degree in 1996, Ms. Churchill has been applying for jobs with no luck. The sporadic work and heavy pressure to keep quiet means the situation has started to deteriorate.

"You're just not in the class long enough to make a difference," Ms. Churchill said.

Ms. Reid said school administrators either can't find teachers or are choosing to hire casual employees in order to save much-needed funds.

Statistics collected by the STANB show by hiring a substitute teacher instead of someone permanently, the school can save at least $20,000. That, Ms. Reid noted, doesn't take into account the savings of not paying benefits to supply teachers.

Taken a step further, a school can hire what's called a "local permit" supply teacher who doesn't have an education degree and earns even less than a substitute teacher with a BA. So in an effort to save money, she hinted, people with only a high school diploma are teaching and are expected to do so at the same level as someone who graduated from an education program.

A few years ago, she said, there were fewer than a half-dozen local permits working in District 17-18. Today, that's grown to 25 per cent of the substitute list and in the Saint John area that's grown to 50 per cent, she noted. That's having an impact on the quality of our education, she said.

"Kids are coming into the classroom wanting to talk about their sexuality. They want to talk about the environment and world issues. We need good people there to handle it," Ms. Reid told the group. "Once again after the latest settlements, your supply teachers are making less than bus drivers . . . For a system that's starving, what choice do they have?"

But pay and benefits aren't the only thorns in the sides of the teachers.

After more than a year of lobbying, supply teachers haven't even been able to get guidebooks into the classroom. These would be available for every class a supply teacher entered, giving them a detailed profile of students and school policy. It would list everything from emergency plans to which students can be a handful and who can be counted on for help.

Simply having a seating plan could eliminate the trouble substitutes find, said behavioural specialist Nick Plimmer. The guest speaker said children act out when confronted with change. But that can be stopped immediately when the teacher shows they know who's who.

Not having a classroom manual that clearly spells out the school's policies is counterproductive when fighting bullying, hinted fellow speaker Marilyn Noble. We constantly tell kids if they're being bullied to go tell an adult.

"The problem is, most of us then are just like deer in headlights. We don't know what to do," she said.

Children need well-trained teachers who can not only help with academics, but deal with emotional and medical issues, too, Ms. Noble said. Despite this, Ms. Reid said, it's been the STANB that's pushed to develop a guidebook, not the Department of Education which is charged with ensuring students get a quality education.