Tag: Ontario

The Opposition grows in Ontario to Health Curriculum Changes – Minus a Catholic Voice

On By paulmcguire2013In Catholic Education, Catholic Schools in Ontario, leadership, Ontario Election 20183 Comments

 

The summer is usually a quiet time for education news in Ontario.

Not this year. The declaration by the new Conservative Government of Doug Ford rescinding the current (2015) Health and Physical Education curriculum is causing a virtual firestorm in the province.

The story just gets more interesting by the moment. Andrew Campbell is doing an amazing job at keeping track of the school boards in Ontario that are coming out with statements in support of teaching the 2015 Health Curriculum.

Here is a portion of the TDSB (Toronto Public) statement:

We want to let the TDSB community know that regardless of the Health and Physical Education curriculum, we have a responsibility guided by the Human Rights Code, the Education Act and supported by TDSB policies, to ensure that each and every student, such as LGBTQ students, feels included and reflected in our schools and classrooms.

Similar statements are being put out by many of Ontario’s Public school boards.

It is important to note that none of the boards making public statements are Catholic school boards. Before I go on, I want to state that I was a Catholic educator for 31 years in Ontario, the last six years as an elementary principal.

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Principals Council of Ontario seem to be silent on this very important issue. They may have made statements, but nothing is available on their websites or twitter feed. These two organizations are important components of the Catholic voice in this province. Just like the bystander who doesn’t stop the bully, these organizations are becoming part of the problem when it comes to delivering an important curriculum to our children.

Liz Stuart, the President OECTA, the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association has made a positive step to become the lead Catholic voice in the province.

And I say again Teachers need relevant, up-to-date information and resources to help students manage relationships and personal well-being.

She was interviewed by CBC Toronto a few days ago. In the interview, she makes it very clear that the current Fully Alive Program taught in Catholic schools complied with the 2015 HPE Curriculum. Why then are Catholic school boards reluctant to publicly support the retention of the 2015 curriculum?

Good for OECTA and Catholic teachers in the province. However, the Catholic hierarchy seems to be taking the position that a return to the earlier 1998 curriculum is a relief. No mention of cyberbullying, same-sex couples, issues relating to LGBTQ people, consent or sexting. No uncomfortable conversations.

Huron-Superior Catholic District School Board chair John Caputo was quoted in the Sault Star as being satisfied by the current regression by the province.

“Being Catholic, we don’t agree with the lifestyle,” Caputo said. “(But) we’re not here to judge people or to crucify them for their lifestyle. We’re here to educate, and that’s what we’re trying to do with our children is try to educate them so that they’re well prepared for the real world.”
There was, however, a “sigh of relief” within his board, Caputo said, when the new government announced the older curriculum would be brought in.
“It was a lot easier to deliver it, based on our faith,” he added. “The newer one did have some challenges and we were struggling on how we were going to present it.”

While it is inspiring to see the position the Public boards are taking, it is very discouraging to see Catholic boards favouring a position of abstinence rather than speaking out for the protection of their students.

It seems to me there are two reasons for the silence. First, this is uncomfortable ground for the Catholic leadership. As school board chair John Caputo stated the 1998 curriculum was easier to deliver, it was based on Catholic faith.

I would argue that our faith is much more inclusive than that. As Catholics, we have a responsibility to support those who are underrepresented in society – that should come first. Respect for the Dignity of the Human Person should come first. Instead, we are falling back on old ideas.

Second, the Catholic boards do not want to say anything to anger the current government at a time where the idea of amalgamating Public and Catholic school boards is gaining currency.

Hardly surprising, but troubling.

When so many voices are missing from a crucial public debate you have to ask if the Catholic voice in public education is losing credibility. As a former Catholic school principal, the absence of Catholics in a debate that really centers on what is best for our students is a loss for everyone.

Students, parents and teachers deserve better than this. There should be a stronger, braver Catholic vision in Ontario right now.

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Who Gets Hired in Ontario’s Education System?

On By paulmcguire2013In governance and public education, Innovation, leadership, school reform1 Comment

Most of my friends are teachers. My wife teaches grade 7 and 8. I feel that I am a strong advocate for teachers and I did whatever I could for the teachers I worked with while I was an administrator at four elementary schools over a twelve-year period.

I feel I need to put this right out in front when writing about the topic of hiring and seniority.

I know this is a very thorny issue, especially in Ontario where government regulations have restricted who school boards can hire based on seniority. I am taking part in a debate on Voiced Radio this morning on this topic, so I am using my blog today to prepare for this session.

While I write, I am also checking out a Twitter conversation on seniority and hiring. Here is one comment that gets to the point – a hard thing to do using Twitter!

As an outsider, I can’t help but feel there should be a middle ground. I’m instinctively uncomfortable with the idea that you get hired because it’s your turn. But I also see scope for abuse in a free for all situation

The writer is not an educator, he is a concerned parent and he makes a great point. While the old way of hiring was open to abuse, do we really make things better by putting in place an arbitrary system that blindly imposes limitations on school board when it comes to hiring talented people?

School boards are terrified of teacher unions so there is no way to get around regulations that are negotiated between boards and the government. They know to do so risks legal action. So boards and more specifically principals follow the mandated hiring practices without criticism.

If I was still a principal I wouldn’t be writing this. Criticizing provincially mandated hiring practices, no matter how ill-considered is a really good way to get you sanctioned by your employers.

If you have read my blog, you know that I have a big problem with large public institutions, school boards in particular. Unions are big organizations as well and while they do great things for their members, they are susceptible to the same foibles as school boards.

Unions sometime promote policies that are great for their membership without seeing how these policies do not serve students. In Ontario, they are now using seniority as a blunt instrument to protect their membership. It is blunt and blind. There is no guarantee that you are getting an excellent teacher when you rely on seniority to hire.

Excellence, however, is what we should be demanding from our education system. Our kids deserve it.

The obvious retort that I will be hearing soon will undoubtedly be – well what would you replace it with.

To this, I don’t have a good answer, but that is no reason to make seniority the main factor in deciding who gets to teach our children. Sure there were abuses in the past. People got hired who shouldn’t have. This was because the people who were doing the hiring were abusing the system. It was dishonest and wrong.

But, this is not a good enough reason for developing a policy that is also wrong and protects a particularly privileged group of people.

We need excellent educators and excellent administrators who do not abuse the system. Maybe we get the system we deserve, but I have to argue we could do so much better than this.

 

Conversations on Assessment in Ontario – Should We Start Again?

On By paulmcguire2013In EQAO, governance and public education, school reform, voicEd RadioLeave a comment
By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday, September 3, 2013

So, we are finally talking about EQAO and possibly how we can do better.

Last week we started some interesting conversations on Voiced Radio spurred on by the call to get involved in the provincial consultation on assessment. The first conversation was a great panel discussion and you can listen to it here.

Next, Derek Rhodenizer added to the conversation with another podcast on Sunday Night. Because of the varied nature of this conversation I have been really interested in following the evolving discussions. These are really useful broadcasts. A good panel discussion captures so much. Real radio makes a big difference.

Twitter does too. I have Storified a portion of the conversation using the hashtag #ontedassessment. You can see the conversation here.

While it is not part of the mandate to get rid of EQAO, I am most interested in comments like the one above. While we may want to discuss how we can arrange the provincial deck chairs on the Titanic, I like the comments that challenge the entire testing system.

Andrew Campbell may have said it best when he suggested we look at the reality of EQAO’s role in our education system:

EQAO isn’t an assessment tool. It’s an accountability tool.

People have used some interesting words and phrases over the past week – ancient, industrial era, what EQAO doesn’t know, invasive, ranking, wicked problem. Pretty strong words for a test we are not even considering getting rid of!

The Twitter conversation is really worth reading through. It is impossible to summarize here but there are is a great deal to consider.

One theme has to do with diverting some of the vast resources assigned to EQAO into teacher research:

This point has been made very well over the past few weeks. While we do get a static report on how the student has done, we only get the results the following year. How does this actually do anything useful? How do students and teachers learn anything from results that take months to get back to the school?

The tweet above speaks volumes to me. I think we are sowing a huge amount of distrust in the province. The test discriminates against poor schools, ELL learners, students in the Far North. It pits urban schools against suburban schools. It gives some schools a false sense of security while it blames others.

Why not start over? Why not do as Lynne Hollingshead suggests?

Let’s be a global leader, let’s begin again.

 

Stifling Dissent Through Blocking?

On By paulmcguire2013In Catholic Schools in OntarioLeave a comment

Should politicians block citizens they don’t happen to agree with, or who are clearly partisan, from following them on social media such as Twitter and Facebook?

That’s a question being asked in Canada and the United States. The answer is simple: No.

Globe and Mail: Politicians are wrong to block people on social media

Today the Globe and Mail came out with a great editorial on the ethics of blocking. This has become an issue of some concern as legitimate dissent has been stifled on politician’s social media feeds when people have been blocked on Twitter or Facebook.

The comments were really interesting too. One reader commented that they had actually been blocked by Elizabeth May when they were a Green Party supporter. The reader subsequently left the party and never voted for May again.

I was blocked by Elizabeth May some years ago when I actually held a Green Party membership.

I did not renew and did not vote for the Green party in the subsequent election.

Globe and Mail, August 7, 2017 Comment

Good for that reader -there are consequences for stifling dissent.

As a principal of a Catholic School in Ottawa, I did block people on Twitter – it was the wrong decision.

I blocked someone on the Catholic Right who was very critical of the Catholic School System. I had had enough of right-wing commentators so I blocked them from my Twitter account. I did this out of frustration and anger and while they were effectively silenced from my feed, my action showed my lack of tolerance for an opinion that was different from my own. It was certainly a weak decision.

Once I retired, I began to write a series of articles that were critical of my former employers. The Catholic Board in Ottawa is a public entity, supported entirely by the tax payers of Ontario. I have come to believe that we no longer need separate schools in our province and that we could do a better job for students if we had a single, strong system that caters to all students in the province.

This opinion was not popular with many of my former colleagues, and to their credit, many voiced their opinion on Facebook. I did not block them – they have the right to express their dissent.

To my surprise, a senior member of the school board blocked me on Twitter. This action was no doubt due to the series of articles that I had written.

How is this right? A superintendent is a public official, their salaries are paid out of the public purse. As public officials do they have the right to stifle legitimate dissent by blocking people on social media?

I would extend what the Globe has written to all public officials,

No MP, or even a cabinet minister, will be criticized for blocking anyone who posts hateful messages or engages in harassment.

But barring that, it’s wrong for elected officials to choose which Canadians can see what they think, and which ones can’t.

In an age where public comment is seen by the highest authorities as ‘fake news’, we need to have even greater respect for public opinion, not just those who happen to agree with a particular mindset.

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#ecoo Cube for teachers

On By paulmcguire2013In ECOO - FridayLeave a comment

Cube for Teachers is a collaborative platform designed exclusively for Ontario educators. Here, K-12 teachers are sharing thousands of links pertaining to curriculum-based resources, digital tools and teaching strategies as well as creating powerful PLNs. In this session, teachers will participate in an interactive workshop to fully understand the power of effective collaboration and learn how the features are saving educators valuable time.

Professional bookmarking for teachers - and its free!
Professional bookmarking for teachers – and its free!
  • Based on Ontario curriculum – search by specific topic areas, includes teaching resources
  • search returns ranked by relevance
  • data is current and relevant
  • searches 4 data bases at the same time – Province – Board – Groups – Favourites
  • groups can be any topic and you can invite people in

register at Cubeforteachers.com

Summary:

  • too many resources
  • too many providers
  • not enough time
  • not enough awareness

solution – use this as a resource for finding resources and contributing resources.  When you add a resource, you can tweet about it to create more awareness

David Miller

David.Miller@cubeforteachers.com

1-647-CUBE (2823)

go explore!