October 10, 2008

As the BUFA strike and lockout enters its third week, and despite a university-wide lockout imposed by Brandon University, Dean of Education Jerry Storie has ordered Education students to cross the picket line and begin their student teaching as regularly scheduled.

This action violates both the employer's own announced lockout and the reasons for which they claim to have imposed it: to avoid confusion, and differential treatment, and to avoid placing students in awkward situations. (As the university administration has acknowledged in its lockout notice, uneven cancellation of classes disadvantages some students, while privileging others). A steady stream of students have expressed concern to BUFA members, both about Dean Storie's directive and about the suggestion that failure to comply with it may somehow jeopardize their professional futures as teachers.

Students' rights, some might say their obligation, to decide on ethical grounds whether to enter the classroom on Tuesday has been violated by Storie's action, with the implication that students may face adverse consequences should they decide in good conscience they cannot.

This is no way to treat students, let alone future educators.

Consider, first, that this cohort of student teachers includes many who are brand new to the teaching profession. Faculty members in the Faculty of Education at Brandon University have carefully designed a program that delivers five weeks of instruction, four days per week, before students enter the field. Students directed by Storie to report to the public school classroom have received only three of the required five weeks preparatory instruction. In other words, they lack 40% of the instructional preparation that Education faculty (and presumably the Senate of Brandon University) deems necessary before entering the public schools. Thus, the order to report to their public school placements not only violates their rights to follow their own principles and consciences, it forces them into situations for which they are not adequately prepared.

Add to this the fact that student teachers are members of Manitoba Teachers Society, an organization that supports BUFA in this current strike action, and Storie's action is still more disturbing. This is hardly the way to help aspiring professionals learn to exercise their responsibilities as members of MTS.

MTS, for its part, has gone to great lengths to explain to its teachers that in its view, students who enter the public school classroom next Tuesday will be doing so not as student teachers in a credit-earning course from Brandon University, but strictly as 'volunteers'. As volunteers, they will not be there as student members of their professional society, MTS, nor will they be covered by the Society's liability insurance. We understand that Dean Storie has told students who expressed concern about this that "that's never been a problem." Understandably, not all students find that very reassuring. The MTS position is that these students are unsupervised - since those charged with supervision, evaluation, completion of assessment forms, and so forth, are locked out by Brandon University. Until the strike is ended, their status is solely that of classroom volunteer. They are not student teachers, earning student teaching credit, delivering instruction, and so forth. Since the Public Schools ACT requires that public school teachers admit to their classroom students who are in teacher training programs, MTS cannot direct its members to turn these students away. However, MTS is clear and resolute in its position that its members (the classroom teachers) will NOT perform any of the instructional, supervisory, or evaluative functions that would normally fall to Brandon University employees.

Students, parents, or the members of the public at large who wish to consult the text of MTS's position on the matter can find it here. Those with further questions may contact Diane Beresford at the Manitoba Teachers' Society.

BUFA is deeply concerned that Brandon University has taken these actions without apparent regard for expressed student concerns, the concerns of public school teachers, or the professional integrity of its programs.