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The grievances of teachers have been piling up for some time.
Underfunding, growing class sizes, expansion of private and charter schools at the expense of public education, removal of protections for 2SLGBTQ+ students, a lack of engagement and transparency, backwards curriculum, cuts to supports and programs, and a hostile unwarranted and unneeded pension takeover.
Not to mention the abandonment of responsibility last year and this to manage the spread of COVID in schools and the laying off of thousands of education support staff workers in the spring of 2020.
It has felt for some time now that public education has been under attack. The government has brought in numerous reckless changes that have threatened the whole system. Moreover, the changes are putting our students and their futures at risk.
Enough is enough. Teachers can no longer stand for it. And we know that parents and the public are on our side.
That is why, for the past four months, the Alberta Teachers’ Association has been hard at work on developing a wide-reaching and hard-hitting public relations and advocacy campaign to push back.
We knew that parents were our most important ally in this fight and so early on we reached out to our friends at the Alberta School Councils’ Association to see if they would join us. They enthusiastically jumped on board.
We undertook public opinion polling to find out how the public felt about important education issues and then we engaged in online focus group sessions to dig deep on the issues. We carefully constructed a target audience and we hired an innovative campaign team to build out the strategy, messages and content.
For the past two months we have been working hard with them to bring all the pieces together and to completion.
Two weeks ago, we filmed a beautiful flagship commercial that is rolling out this week on television, YouTube, streaming services, Facebook and Instagram. We also have posters, documentary interviews, digital ads, radio ads and a comprehensive social and email strategy. It all directs people to our campaign website at standforeducation.ca.
This is the most comprehensive and extensive campaign I have ever been part of.
But wait, there’s more — and this is where you come in. We are going to have a sequence of escalating engagement activities that we will be asking teachers, parents and other supporters of public education to help with. The campaign is designed to turn up the pressure on education decision makers and to achieve real change to how education is handled in this province.
It starts by asking you to sign our open letter to Premier Kenney and Minister LaGrange. Check it out at standforeducation.ca.
After that, grab our social media frame, share it with your friends and family and then stay tuned for the next steps.
We cannot stand down, stand back or stand by while one of the world’s best-performing education systems is attacked. Instead, we must stand up and stand for education. ❚
I welcome your comments. Contact me at jonathan.teghtmeyer@ata.ab.ca.
