Teachers have more responsibility than ever
By Lethbridge Herald on October 8, 2025.
Shelley Robinson
For the Herald
Teachers cannot really talk about being on strike on social media given their union and professional guidelines, but I can as a retired Alberta teacher.
I remember being on strike in Alberta (AI only researches the history of Alberta teachers’ strikes superficially, but my memory is reliable). The most notable strikes happened to me in my first year of teaching in 1988, and then again in 2002. There were other work-to-rule job actions along the way.
What I remember most is that none of us really wanted to strike because it meant losing pay and falling behind in our classroom responsibilities with our students, but we did it because life in schools had become unmanageable.
Teachers are logical people and we often work for free because we love our students. Therefore, when we actually strike, things have hit a tipping point. It took me six years to recoup my monthly pay losses from the first strike I was part of in 1988 and another few years after the one in 2002.
What I did gain soon after the 2002 strike were better classroom sizes and employee benefits. Any actual financial gain benefitted the teachers that came after me.
There was a time when I taught 54 band students all on my own; 45 English students (12 of them without desks) with new students rotating through my classroom six to seven times a day; and we never had enough textbooks for everyone in one classroom at any given time.
Janitors were allocated seven minutes a day of cleaning in each classroom after all of these bodies came and went. My students and I were constantly sick from the viruses shared in these close quarters, but I kept working because teacher substitutes were hard to find.
What many people do not know is that teachers work a ten-month contract and are paid out over twelve months. It creates the illusion of teachers getting long summer breaks, when in fact, we do not. I also worked voluntarily in August, prepping my classroom and preparing my unit plans like so many other teachers do while off contract.
Teachers actually only get three weeks of paid holidays for Christmas and spring. In the summer, teachers are technically off contract. Teaching contracts are automatically renewed each year for those with tenure and negotiated for those who do not.Job insecurity has always been a constant plight for many of my colleagues.
What I see has changed for the teachers in the field now (and that I had a taste of in my later career as teacher and then administrator) is that there are more responsibilities for teachers now. Where I used to be able to focus on curriculum lesson plans and assessment, teachers’ roles have now morphed into those of coach, social worker, counsellor and babysitters, not to mention many other duties.
I stepped back from the profession that I loved in public education after 29 years because my body told me to do so. I was tired and had developed medical issues from the demands of my profession as teacher-administrator (which is a conversation for another article as administrators have a big job too).
Teachers in Alberta work hard. They work in “loco parentis” which is in “the place of the parent” each day, and operate on behalf of dozens to hundreds of children a day. As a secondary teacher with rotating classes, and often six to seven classes a day, I could sometimes see up to two hundred students a day. The pace was relentless.
What I will say, having taught out of Alberta and in British Columbia for the latter part of my career, is that the Alberta Teachers’ Association is a class act comparatively. The ATA has acted on my behalf over the years in very professional ways and even granted me scholarships when I chose to go back to school.
In the end, the ATA membership as a whole has something valuable to say about the schools and I hope the general public listens and supports these people who will educate the next generation of our society, hopefully sooner rather than later.
Shelley Robinson is a retired teacher and administrator with a PhD in education and a background in education journalism.
17-16
Thank you, Shelley Robinson.
I agree with you, that teachers have had responsibilities placed on them that have nothing to do with teaching. I believe we need to get back to the basics, removing politics and some of the radical societal ideologies that are being promoted in classrooms. Teachers should also not have to deal with someone who believes they are a cat, dog or some other animal they are imagining they are . . . yes, teachers have had to deal this!
Although teachers have always had to deal with some social issues with kids growing up, as stated, they are now expected to be counsellors/social workers and face abuse often by undisciplined kids who have no respect for others . . . yes, there were always the occassional bully, but it has become more prevalent.
Teachers should be there to teach the necessary skllls for prepare young minds to continue into post secondary or jobs when they leave high school, not indoctrinate into one policital or societal view, as it appears is happening. They should be allowed to decide for themselves which political party they would like, or what interests they would like to venture into, not have a teacher or later on, a professor indoctrinate them to their own ideologies.
Parents need to be more responsible for their kids, helping where they can with homework, and more importantly, with proper discipline so their kids respect themselves and others ( by discipline I do not mean beating your kids . . . there are non-violent disciplines ) . . . parents are part of the solution!
Teachers need to get back to focusing on the basics of teaching and the school curriculums must reflect this! Too many radical views are being promoted in these curriculums that teachers should not be forced to teach.
Get back to the basics of teaching! There are school counsellors, administrators and other resources which should be taking pressure off the teachers!
There will be a shortage of teachers for several years because of all the baby boomers retiring . . . it is Canada wide!
We need to adapt to this reality and work together to find ways to work smarter, more efficient, and focus on educating our young with math, reading/writing, social studies/history, science, art, shop/home-ec, psych/sociolody, tech, etc. and get rid of the radical garbage/ideologies.
You can promise to hire 20,000 more teachers, but you will not find them! More money is not going to take away the stress either!
3,000 more teachers will be hard to fill right away, so the government, the teachers and even the parents need to realize this.
All need to take responsibility and work together to find solutions!
Paying teachers 20% more will not take away the stressors! You must find a way to work better and the curriculum needs to be brough back to basics!
This needs communication! It needs a willingness to find solutions! Staff shortages are a reality now!
The teacher strike orchestrated by their Union is quite simply a travesty. Last weekend the demonstration along Mayor Magrath Drive in Lethbridge was an example of radicalism offering no solution to the strike rather creating hostility and disrespect to the government to whom they need to come to terms with in order to get back to work. Being on strike is not only losing pay for the teachers but “killing the children” by depriving them of the basic need to be educated and move forward in their lives. I witnessed a child probably in grade one or two, dressed in red and holding a vicious and insulting sign directed at our government. This is pathetic and was obviously dictated by an adult “using the child” as what? Meanwhile, connected to the teacher demonstration to the south was another demonstration, the annual prolife event. The number of those supporting prolife was far greater than those in the teacher demonstration and were there holding prolife signs that had prayers written on the backside dedicated to saving lives and supporting mothers during their pregnancy and the babies (children) that are born. So the contrast of the two demonstrations was ironic, one killing children by halting their education the other fighting for the children by protecting them from being killed by abortion!
very very few would care to prevent a body from carrying their fetus to term; however, pretty much everyone calling themselves prolife are all about forcing a body to carry every fetus to term. but, if one supports freedom and a free society, one has no place in the body of another.
moreover, your entry is further absurd as a consequence of terming a right to strike by teachers as “killing the children”. children, as we all do, are always able to learn in a very many ways and from a very many experiences. perhaps one is able to only equate learning with an orthodox conditioning approach coming from a proverbial pulpit.