u/ScarJo_YummyPop

Just moved to Calgary from BC this summer and started with the CBE this fall. I am astounded by the hours upon hours of extra paperwork and documentation we are expected to do. Especially as an English teacher, it is absolutely atrocious. At least in the CBE, there are no dedicated resource teachers to do (or even assist) with IPPs. There are also no dedicated EAL teachers. So we’re expected to ALL of the EAL benchmarking and annotation of the working files ourselves. It boggles my mind. I’ve barely marked any assignments for my students or spent any considerable time making my lessons better so far this year because I’ve spent every moment of free time on paperwork. Whoever is making these decisions within the CBE, they have absolutely zero fucking clue what life is like for teachers. It’s all busy work that takes away from things that actually matter.

This system is so, so broken. How can this be sustainable? It makes me angry for those of you who fought to strike last year, only to be in the same spot one year later. How do we make this better??

Hi everyone. I’m sorry, I need to get this off my chest and hope that some of you can commiserate with me. I’m a third year jr high humanities teacher in Alberta. I love my job so much (even though I don’t have all of my constitution rights anymore!) but there are of course several administrative tasks that drive me crazy. The most time consuming and, in my opinion, utterly useless, one is writing report card comments. Seriously— what is the point. Parents have 24/7 access to grades the entire year/semester. We have to follow such strict guidelines and formats that what you end up with is just garbildy gook that doesn’t actually mean anything. You can’t comment on behaviour or how they’re 4 years below grade level or personalize anything or use normal language that parents could ever really understand. Yes, I use AI (even though I’m kinda of morally against it). Yes, I repeat comments across students. It still takes me hours. I teach 3 different courses (times 2 classes each). No matter how you slice it, it takes up several evenings and weekends. Unpaid. And the kicker? PARENTS AND STUDENTS DO NOT READ THEM.

So seriously, why do we still have to write them?? It’s busy work and it’s insulting. A proficiency indicator or a percentage should absolutely be enough. If there were any concerns about the student’s learning, they would have already been addressed throughout the year. I’m sick of it!