BSTU head: Teachers’ Professional Day has been under threat

WHEN it comes to the matter of Teachers’ Professional Day over the years, the actual day has been under threat and some teachers have even been bullied concerning their attendance at the BSTU events, as they seek to meet and collaborate on this day.

President of the Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union (BSTU), Mary-Anne Redman, revealed the above as she delivered remarks during the annual BSTU Grace Thompson Memorial Teacher’s Professional Day event held at Solidarity House yesterday, under the theme, “Stepping Into The Future: Re-defining Teacher Professionalism”.

“Over time, this day, our day has been threatened and our membership bullied as we have sought to collaborate together. There were threats to stop it from the level of the Ministry, but those threats were in response to some principals who pressured the Ministry to do so, because they felt a loss of control because their teachers chose to spend the day at the Union’s activities rather than at the schools,” Redman pointed out.

“The threats were also caused by some of the activities that some schools sought to engage in on that day, like spa days, beach picnics, even overseas weekend trips. Sad to say, this year, both of these things have resurfaced. There is a school that has planned a bus tour or bus scrawl today and let me say that the BSTU does not condone such activities on Teachers’ Professional Day. But there is also a principal who threatened his staff that if they do not provide proof of their attendance here today, they will be registered as absent from school with all the accompanying implications. But let me say that the teachers responded like true professionals who respect themselves, their status and their solidarity with their union and they have turned out in large numbers today,” the BSTU head remarked.

Pointing out that Teachers’ Professional Day is a BSTU initiative, Redman meanwhile noted that it is a day where teachers, like many other professionals in society, come together as a group to deal with issues that impact teachers as practitioners in the teaching profession, on a macro level.

She added, “There are some who argue that teachers are not professionals, as we do not fulfil all the criteria for the formal categorisation of such, even though we do for the most part. But we don’t set our wages and we don’t totally control our terms and conditions of service in the same way as the so-called real, real professionals do, like lawyers and doctors and accountants, and so they say that teaching is a vocation.

“As teachers however, we say that we do not have to conform to the criteria set by others, to establish our own standards and regard and project ourselves as professionals. Put many of the so-called real, real professionals in the school setting for two days and the conditions in which we work and see how long they remain, quote on quote, professional,” she maintained.

The BSTU meanwhile indicated that the day would be used to get some age-old problems in the system addressed and long outstanding issues resolved, so teachers would be motivated and re-energised to be the best professionals they can be.