I’m writing this editorial shortly after 8 p.m. on the Sunday of the Victoria Day long weekend. With me in the banquet room of the Westin Edmonton are more than 450 of my closest personal friends: local delegates, Provincial Executive Council members and Association staff. What has brought us together is the ATA’s Annual Representative Assembly (ARA).
ARA is the parliament of our organization—the body representing teachers from communities across Alberta. ARA delegates have the job of setting broad policy directions for the ATA and establishing its budget—no easy task. Delegates have been meeting for two days now and they will continue meeting late into the evening. Anyone who has not attended the event might conclude that it’s a meeting of masochists.
But ARA has its moments of humour, most of which are of the “you had to be there” kind. It also has its moments of inspiration. For example, Saturday morning, the Assembly recognized Noel Jantzie, a retired teacher and former district representative, and Brian Jordan, who is retiring after 38 years of service as the Association’s chief financial officer. We listened to Heather Welwood, past president of the Alberta School Boards Association, speak about the power that school boards and teachers can exercise when they respect each other and work together. And delegates voted to establish a relief fund to assist teachers who were victims of wild fires in the Slave Lake area.
Saturday afternoon, local presidents described the consequences on their jurisdictions of underfunding. They spoke about teachers new to the profession who, working on temporary and probationary contracts, will find themselves on June 30 without guarantees of ongoing employment. They talked about part-time teachers whose assignments were cut and about experienced teachers who, having given years of their lives to education, were being handed termination notices. But above all, they spoke about their students and classrooms and communities, and the effect that education underfunding would have on them.
Talk, however, is cheap. So the highlight of the 2011 ARA for me was when after 5 and 1/2 hours of debating the Association’s budget, delegates agreed to maintain current staffing at the Association. Delegates talked about the foolishness of cutting ATA staff and, hence, the ATA’s ability to tackle the rapidly mounting challenges facing Alberta’s teachers. They talked about the human cost entailed by cutting staff and about fundamental values that teachers and their profession believe in.
ARA then voted to increase membership fees by eight per cent to cover the resulting costs. Although it is not a great sum of money, with this small gesture, teachers chose to do exactly what the Alberta government has consistently failed to do. Teachers understand that leaders must have the integrity and confidence to call upon their constituents to act for the common good, even if that means financial sacrifice. When they gave themselves a standing ovation for making that decision, it was because they understood not only the price but also the value of the work that needs to be done.
Chancellor Otto von Bismarck observed that those who like sausage and law are best advised not to watch either being made. I’m quite fond of sausage and, as I write this sentence, surrounded by hotel staff dismantling the meeting room, I have to disagree with the “Iron Chancellor.” I quite enjoyed watching this year’s ARA do the work it needed to do.
I welcome your comments—contact me at dennis.theobald@ata.ab.ca.
