AN OLIVE BRANCH TO THE TEACHERS

Congratulations to Luisa D'Amato for her Opinion piece in today's Waterloo Region Record titled "Teachers must keep students away from this fight". I would characterize it as one of the most beautiful and eloquent testimonials to teachers that I've ever read. This is coming from a reporter who has literally years of experience on the education beat at the Record and who has seen both the best and the worst our education system has to offer. She has written scathingly about various flavour of the month educational theories as well as having covered various nasty legal setbacks to the reputation of our educational system. For example I wish the Ron Archer scandal and criminal conviction was the only one but alas it is not.

Luisa basically tells teachers what many already know and that is that good teachers literally are caring for the citizens of our future. Their influence is monumental. She advises them that overall they have earned huge public respect and they have been compensated very, very well by the school boards (read taxpayers). She also advises them to take the high road despite Premier McGuinty's "heavy-handed" Putting Students First Act. Yours truly has been extremely critical of one of the local school boards and also of the various teachers' unions. That being said I agree with everything Luisa is saying and I would be thrilled to see the teachers take the high road in this dispute with the provincial government.