Danella Aichele is a former teacher with the Calgary Board of Education with a Master’s of Public Policy from the University of Calgary.I attended the September 29 Alberta Next Panel, which is to say that I witnessed “spanker-gate” firsthand. The United Conservative Party set up a series of province-wide consultations on a variety of topics, all of which were pre-released and assigned to different nights, allowing Albertans to register based on interest.The topics for the September 29 event included discussions on the establishment of a provincial police service, the creation of an Alberta pension plan, proposed changes to tax collection, matters related to immigration, potential constitutional reform, and issues surrounding federal transfers and equalization..MacLEOD: Is it time for Alberta’s independence referendum?.Once the reportedly 1,000-person-long line had passed through security and taken their seats, moderator Bruce McAllister opened the event by laying out the house rules. Topics would be addressed one at a time, each person was allowed a maximum of 45 seconds to present their question, and anyone who went off-topic or exceeded their time limit would have their microphone cut — without exception.The panel began at 6:00 pm. At 6:10 pm, Alberta Teachers’ Association members were informed that at 6:15 pm, ATA president, Jason Schilling, would host a media conference, and encouraged teachers to tune in. .However, it became clear that audience members had come prepared with ATA talking points, so they didn’t need to tune in. This included the student who McAllister said should be “put over his parents’ knee.”Because the agenda continued to get hijacked by angry teachers and students, Premier Smith broke with house rules to address the strike announcement and acknowledge teacher concerns, including class size and complexity, even though doing so took time away from other issues. After this, further education questions were cut off..LAFRAMBOISE: The persecution of Canada’s ‘other’ Freedom Convoy truckers.However, had teachers and students framed their class-size concerns as an immigration issue, they could have avoided the horror of having their mic cut. Canada is among the world’s fastest-growing countries despite having one of the world’s lowest birth rates. As such, one needn’t be a math teacher to recognize that record levels of immigration are resulting in record-level class sizes.Despite this, yet another student chose to rush the mic, unlock his phone, and read from the same ATA talking points that had already been aired, leaving one to wonder if he was among the “increasingly complex” students Premier Smith acknowledged to be a preeminent teacher concern..According to the 2023/24 Alberta Teachers’ Association survey results, nine in ten teachers reported that the complexity and diversity of student needs have increased, and that the greatest levels of complexity were found in social-emotional challenges and behavioural problems.Witnessing a high school student become emotionally dysregulated when the rules that applied to others were also applied to him did not surprise me given that I’m a tenured teacher. Nor was I surprised to see a student shout at an adult in authority who refused to let him control the agenda for the other 999 people in attendance. .TOKEN LEFTY: The UCP manufactured teacher’s strike.What was concerning, however, was to see the same behavioural problems described by teachers, modelled by teachers, many of whom chose to shout over others’ questions, become emotionally dysregulated themselves, and attempt to make the night all about them. It was also concerning to see that the following day, Janis Irwin, a member of government, circulated an out-of-context clip not in the interest of addressing issues in education, but in the interest of advancing the ideology that created the behaviours on display that night. When feelings are prioritized over facts, and rules are considered optional, we get “complex classrooms.”It goes without saying that Bruce McAllister shouldn’t have said in public what teachers say in private: that parents have failed when it comes to disciplining their children. However, on the upside, it proved that UCP moderators and NDP-supporting teachers may have more in common than they realize. Danella Aichele is a former teacher with the Calgary Board of Education with a Master’s of Public Policy from the University of Calgary.
