Unlearn16: Class is in Session - The One Where I Kindergarten Teacher Takes Politicians To School

00:00:00.000 class is in session how you doing and welcome to unlearn 16 class is in session guys

00:00:09.200 oh it's almost the end of summer it's almost the end of summer and i gotta roll into an

00:00:17.400 important subject matter only because politicians in ontario and quebec are absolutely positively 1.00

00:00:25.340 well, just plain stupid. And I use the term stupid because again, I use that term when it's 1.00

00:00:32.820 a choice. When they're saying things and standing behind things and then doubling down on things, 0.99

00:00:39.460 when it comes to issues they know to be false or they're not educated on, either way,

00:00:47.000 you have chosen a lane. So let's get into it a little bit because I think this is important.

00:00:52.420 I mean, Ontario is set, just so everybody knows, Ontario is set to possibly have a strike from what I understand in the elementary school district, which will, you know, go up to the secondary as well, in the public schools of Ontario on the basis of a number of things.

00:01:09.760 I'll get to that in a second because I want to talk about where the route is and the route is super, super clear.

00:01:18.660 And I'm going to say it out of Quebec. Out of Quebec last week, the minister of education had the audacity, the stupidity, the ignorance to state that he believes that people, teachers, should start with the easiest job as a teacher to gain some experience. 0.98

00:01:44.800 and he says the easiest job in teaching is kindergarten. 0.99

00:01:54.920 I have no words.

00:01:57.980 I have no words to talk to individuals that speak about teaching in this regard.

00:02:04.000 So let's dive into kindergarten for a second.

00:02:06.480 What are we talking about?

00:02:07.180 We're talking about what, five-year-olds?

00:02:09.800 Five-year-olds, okay?

00:02:11.380 And the average size of a kindergarten class in Quebec, give or take, 20 students.

00:02:19.140 So 20 students, one teacher.

00:02:25.140 Forget curriculum.

00:02:27.460 Forget teaching.

00:02:29.260 Forget every other aspect, all of the academic aspects to what that job is going to entail.

00:02:37.180 How important, how difficult, how foundational.

00:02:39.740 And I am going to come back to that.

00:02:41.380 because so help me we need to start understanding what a teacher does and heaven help me pay them

00:02:48.660 a hell of a lot more let's just think of one person being responsible for 25 year olds

00:02:59.380 are you crazy 20 of them i would consider a success if i was able to make sure nobody

00:03:07.140 got, you know, nobody was injured by the end of the day. I didn't lose one on a walk or they

00:03:13.700 didn't trottle off to the bathroom, never to be seen of again. Like there is absolutely no way

00:03:21.240 that taking care of that many littles in anybody's definition is freaking easy. I spend time with my

00:03:31.780 friends kids for like an hour and I am done. And if you're not watching them a hundred percent of

00:03:38.700 the time, they've turned the stove on. They've walked out the front door. They're using tape

00:03:44.260 in weird positions. They've got the dog by the tip. They're supposed to do that, right? That's

00:03:55.160 their job. And that's why we should only have a couple of them at home because having 20 is 0.72

00:04:01.160 psychotic. But what does this idiot do? Well, in his efforts and his attempt to demean and 1.00

00:04:08.940 demoralize and minimize the vital, important job of all teachers, what does he do? He attacks

00:04:22.280 the foundational base point of everybody's education, which is, for the most part,

00:04:30.420 full-time daycare. I'm beside myself, absolutely beside myself. I've said for a very, very long

00:04:38.600 time that not only am I, as a teacher of 20 years, not capable of taking care of young elementary

00:04:48.120 school kids, kindergarten to grade three, that the special skill set, the level of intelligence,

00:04:56.620 the level of emotional intelligence, the level of classroom management, and oh my God, the ability

00:05:06.180 to multitask. I don't have it. I don't have it. And what we're doing is we're undervaluing who

00:05:16.600 they are. Want to know why? So we can pay them less. Politicians create this image of teachers

00:05:24.640 as glorified babysitters, mommies.

00:05:28.920 And by the way, in doing so, not only are you demeaning teachers, 0.68

00:05:32.780 you're demeaning mothers or stay-at-home parents

00:05:35.780 who actually take care of and raise their kids.

00:05:38.860 It's this underpinning of sexist, bigoted, and let's be perfectly honest, 0.98

00:05:47.040 absolutely ignorant perspective and educational theoretical, you know, onset. That's not the 0.98

00:05:56.500 right word, but you get what I'm saying. I love it when I mess up academic words and I'm trying

00:05:59.860 to make an academic point. I'm spun, okay? Think, okay, five years old, by zero to like seven,

00:06:10.580 zero to six. Kids, all kids, are learning how to be people. They say that by five or six years old,

00:06:23.020 75% of who they're going to be is set. And we have the audacity to undervalue elementary school

00:06:33.960 teachers? Are we dumb? No, we're not. Well, we are. We are. Because what we don't understand 0.99

00:06:42.980 is the social, psychological, emotional, academic underpinnings of an individual's brain gets very

00:06:54.980 much set in that age bracket. And if they don't have the best and the brightest and the most

00:07:03.580 active and integrated forms of education and parenting and family. Guess what? We're going

00:07:10.300 to pay for it in grade 10. Because in grade 10, everything's going to go to hell. And everybody's

00:07:16.480 going to be like, well, grade 10 got real hard. No, it didn't. Want to know it was really,

00:07:19.820 really hard? In grade two, we overloaded a class because we thought they were just babysitters.

00:07:28.100 in grade one we're like well they're just learning how to do their any idiot can do that 0.98

00:07:35.900 they minimize what kind of a teacher is brilliant and foundational at making these young people 0.96

00:07:45.600 a understand things number one sure but let's be honest understanding concepts and and educational

00:07:55.140 sort of levels as you progress through your entire career as a student, those are different

00:08:03.960 for each kid. Kids learn how to read at different rates, how to write at different rates, mathematics

00:08:08.340 at different rates. They understand concepts differently, spatial intelligence. They formulate

00:08:14.560 questions and put things together differently at different times. Okay, so number one, a kindergarten

00:08:21.080 classroom, you'll have 20 kids at 20 different stations of development. Easily. And as parents,

00:08:30.480 you know this because you've seen your kids develop. And you wonder why kid A developed this

00:08:37.440 way at a second kid totally different. Well, for many, many reasons. Now put 20 of them in one room

00:08:44.060 and try to devise a plan to accurately or succinctly or with any kind of structure,

00:08:51.220 treat them all exactly the same, put them on the exact same path and expect the same results. 0.99

00:08:58.160 It's asinine. Good teachers don't do that. They know that that's impossible. They've been 0.96

00:09:02.000 shouting it from the rooftops and all the government's been doing is calling them

00:09:06.880 babysitters, minimizing what they do in order to pay them less. And when I say pay them less,

00:09:12.380 they're not getting reduced pay, but they are getting more kids in the class. They are getting

00:09:17.260 a bigger diversity of learning styles and capacities in each class. They are getting

00:09:23.260 fewer and fewer resources, right? So technically, they're being asked to do way more for the same

00:09:31.500 pay that they were engaging in last year. That's a reduction. You can get a pay cut or you can be

00:09:41.480 asked to do more work for the same pay. You're still losing money. And that's what the government's

00:09:46.720 looking to do. So forget all of that, where they are on math, where they are on reading, writing,

00:09:53.100 all those things, because they're all very, very important. I'm going to come back to that

00:09:56.260 foundational ability to teach and to imbue knowledge at that age, because it takes a 0.93

00:10:02.020 freaking magician, not me, an educational magician. Let's talk about the really important parts and

00:10:10.500 the parts that we are now coming to terms with as a society, and instead of coming to terms with

00:10:17.380 them and making space for them and understanding it's going to cost more, but it's going to give

00:10:22.220 a greater end result, they're trying to sideswipe it. They're trying to push it off to the side,

00:10:28.460 saying, oh no, that's just woke. That's just being easy on kids. That's just blah, blah, blah.

00:10:33.000 What it is, is ignoring brand new educational, philosophical, and academic perspectives that have been studied, that have been researched, that have been formulated, that have been seen in the world around us.

00:10:48.620 And we want to ignore them because the new way is too expensive, too demanding.

00:10:57.180 Government wants to figure out how to get 30 kids in that class, not just rest with 20.

00:11:01.460 But I'm telling you right now, you want to make a kid a great learner, passionate about academics, passionate about knowledge, passionate about school in every sense of the word, by the way, every sense of the word.

00:11:19.220 you need to make them understand that the the emotional and the mental side of learning

00:11:28.780 is foundational before you get to step into the math class the science class the whatever

00:11:35.780 feeling good about learning understanding it's a progress understanding that when you don't do

00:11:42.000 as well as the kid sitting next to you it's no big deal understanding that whatever issues you

00:11:49.200 have, you need to find them out as quickly as possible in order to not just placate to them,

00:11:56.540 not just ignore them, but to overcome them. Because the quicker we can address it,

00:12:01.640 the proven fact, the quicker we can address anybody's learning exceptionalities,

00:12:07.920 the quicker we can help them mitigate those exceptionalities, overcome them, and be successful.

00:12:13.620 they're having trouble reading

00:12:16.940 voiced all efforts in order to get to understand why could be just a progress thing could just be

00:12:26.780 a brain development thing could be a form of dyslexia could be a form of could be a form of

00:12:31.500 a whole bunch of things we should be figuring it out then because if we figure it out then

00:12:37.240 mitigating it for the future and giving them the best possible educational outcomes

00:12:43.120 and an educational sort of personal health so they know they feel good about it, it happens

00:12:50.480 then. And if we don't do it, guess what? Those kids drop out. If we don't do it, those kids

00:12:56.680 never think they're good enough. If we don't do it, their self-esteem gets shut down. If we don't

00:13:01.300 do it, their attention starts to get, you know, get lost. If we don't do it, we will see breakdowns

00:13:07.980 in society as they happen in real time and today more than ever you can like it or hate it i don't

00:13:15.500 it doesn't really matter to me but today more than ever the ability to have transitional skill sets

00:13:23.500 to be able to quickly adapt to an ever-changing workplace and international system

00:13:31.900 you need to be able to be multi-focused the days should be gone of just doing one thing

00:13:39.660 doing it well and doing it for your whole life because i'm telling you

00:13:42.940 that's not how that's not how the the world's working right so the quicker we can get at all

00:13:50.720 that the better off everybody not just the kids if you don't care about kids fine don't don't

00:13:57.160 care about kids care about the future care about the workforce care about the economy carry about

00:14:03.520 the global system because all those kids that you're ignoring telling to buck up handle their

00:14:09.440 own crap they're that's where they're going to be right and in order to have a kindergarten teacher

00:14:16.180 and again magic of teachers in order to have a kindergarten teacher that is capable of 0.99

00:14:22.880 understanding that and and recognizing that and then segmenting that and helping fix that

00:14:29.040 and addressing that and getting help from here and help from there all of that requires

00:14:34.960 a brilliant teacher a very well-funded system and access to resources at the drop of a dime

00:14:47.440 people say all the time well i'm gonna send my kid to private school when they get older i'm

00:14:53.620 like don't i mean sure you can but you want to know when a kid develops a super healthy

00:14:59.720 ability to understand and to feel confident in who they are in the classroom and that doesn't

00:15:07.300 mean make them perfect by any stretch but to make them confident and healthy and understand that

00:15:14.140 when they're up against problems, they can figure out how to handle that problem, how to come up

00:15:19.240 against it, how to overcome it. All of that happened in elementary school. All of that

00:15:25.620 happened. You will talk to people who hate and love school. And I tell you, I swear to you,

00:15:31.040 it comes down to in grade three, I had a teacher. I had a math teacher. I had a gym teacher. I had

00:15:38.020 I had somebody that got me and that bigged me up and that made me or watch it all crumble

00:15:45.620 because the same kid that hates grade 10 and you say, why do you hate school so much? It's not

00:15:51.880 really grade 10. It goes back to in grade, whatever. They had a horrible teacher. They

00:15:57.800 had a horrible circumstance. They were in a split class. They were ignored. They had a bad teacher

00:16:03.380 in, you know, whatever, because there were bad teachers. I'm not sitting here saying we're all

00:16:07.040 great teachers. I've had my days. But I am saying we need to understand that not only are they not

00:16:16.800 babysitters, that elementary school teachers, especially in those younger years, are the people,

00:16:25.840 are the foundational building blocks for every single person in society. They just are. They're

00:16:35.680 the thing that they're going to be enriched by or minimized by. They are going to figure

00:16:43.280 out ways in order to be successful because of. Now, a lot of things that get in the way

00:16:51.320 of this, well, the biggest thing is money. They can have 20 kids. Anybody can teach math.

00:16:57.320 No, no, no, no, no. Foundational mathematics should be taught by an expert.

00:17:05.680 We're not even really building these experts yet.

00:17:08.160 Why?

00:17:08.480 Because it would cost the educational system. 0.99

00:17:10.020 They don't want to do that.

00:17:10.760 It's too much money.

00:17:11.860 In my opinion, there should be educational experts that are there that understand child

00:17:18.180 psychological development, academic progress.

00:17:21.600 They should understand any sort of learning exceptionalities.

00:17:24.680 They should be experts as much as they can in levels of social work.

00:17:29.220 Because you want to see an at-risk kid, you're going to see them in grade one.

00:17:32.000 now none of our educational um none of our teachers our educational sort of format the way

00:17:40.060 that we the way that we do this right now are doing that but it but why aren't they doing that

00:17:45.740 well because it's more money don't you think it would serve us pay them more money

00:17:52.020 allow them enable them demand of them more education more expertise minimize class sizes

00:18:02.380 so they can quickly sift through and see who needs this who needs that who needs to be built

00:18:07.460 up here who needs to be built up there isn't that what we want don't we want a future goal

00:18:13.640 of that kind of success because all we're getting and time and time and time again

00:18:19.880 we're calling these teachers and educators babysitters. I've often said, I've said for a

00:18:25.500 very long time, even when it comes to high school teachers, is that the two years of teacher's

00:18:30.320 college, that is an utter freaking waste of time, should be two years of child psychology,

00:18:35.300 emotional, child psychological development, and at-risk youth education. That should be it.

00:18:44.920 shove your rubric the rubric i'll figure out later understanding kids development understanding how

00:18:53.500 to quickly point out a kid that's battling with dyslexia understanding how to how to quick

00:18:59.840 quickly point out a kid that has you know that's facing horrific things at home how to quickly

00:19:05.680 point out what they're facing how they're facing it how to overcome it isn't that the goal

00:19:12.560 make that the goal. You make that the goal. Take my two years of teacher college where I learned

00:19:21.980 how to color and talk about group work and give me actual academic pieces and knowledge and

00:19:32.540 education surrounding child psychology, child development, and at-risk students.

00:19:36.680 our whole workforce gets bigger and better tomorrow tomorrow and the teachers that should

00:19:45.400 be paid the most and the teachers that should be most specific with the smallest class sizes

00:19:49.700 and the most attention to each of those kids are elementary school teachers because I haven't even

00:19:55.380 talked about the kids that have huge emotional problems because they're not quite ready to go

00:20:01.360 to school and how do you deal with that as a teacher I'm not talking about the students the

00:20:05.480 the kids that aren't ready to use the bathroom properly and you have a teacher having to deal

00:20:10.260 with that. I haven't talked about the separation anxiety that goes on with kids. I haven't talked

00:20:16.520 about the inability for some kids to manage their emotions so they get angry and they yell and they

00:20:24.020 scream and sometimes they get physical. I didn't even talk about that. I didn't even talk about

00:20:29.940 Like getting a, you know, getting all these kids out to go outside to play and play well,

00:20:36.240 and then mitigate all of the different realities that you have going on there.

00:20:40.260 I haven't even spoken about that.

00:20:42.540 And what are we doing?

00:20:44.160 We're minimizing our very young elementary school teachers.

00:20:51.800 So that's what he's doing.

00:20:53.040 But make no mistake.

00:20:54.940 By doing this with kindergarten teachers, by saying everybody should start easy at kindergarten,

00:20:59.940 So what that minister is trying to do is minimize everything, is minimize what teachers do in general. I promise you. How do I minimize what teachers do so that later when they want a raise or they want this or they want that, I can very easily say, listen, you know, your jobs, you're a babysitter. I mean, this is the easy stuff, right?

00:21:25.640 You just like take care of kids. You sit down, you have snack time, you read them a story and the day's over. Idiocy. Idiocy. And it's not just problematic for the way they're treating teachers. That's one thing. Okay. And obviously I stand with teachers, even though I'm not in the union.

00:21:43.700 the bigger problem the more significant issue is the fact that if we're allowing this foundation

00:21:52.560 to be gutted to be cracked to be demolished the house is going to come down and the house is

00:21:59.500 going to come down in in the future economy the future job force the future um of our country

00:22:07.760 our international that's when that's when it comes down everybody's talking about back to

00:22:13.160 basics they're talking about back to basics to save money and i know i did that before but i

00:22:17.160 really want to focus on these younger foundational teachers now there's a lot about the system i

00:22:23.400 would change if an education minister stood up and said you know what i think we should start

00:22:28.680 educating elementary school teachers to be math teachers math and science teachers let's say and

00:22:35.480 to be english like like if you're an english teacher then you need to take all these courses

00:22:43.160 on on figuring out who could be dyslexic what what kind of reading issues all that i use dyslexia

00:22:49.640 only because i'm ignorant to the the multitude of reading exceptionalities and difficulties

00:22:57.240 but wouldn't we like an english teacher in grade one when you're teaching that

00:23:01.320 to be able to recognize that shouldn't that be their education shouldn't they be more specialized

00:23:08.200 right if we want to do education right if we want to do education better let's not pretend

00:23:15.240 we were doing it perfectly in 1957. back in those days people were still hitting kids for

00:23:23.320 not getting the right answer and by the way back in those days the kids that couldn't do

00:23:27.560 well in school we just ignored them anyway let them drop out and get a job somewhere else

00:23:31.400 but what we probably could have done is just ignored and just you know brushed aside an

00:23:39.900 individual that had all of this capacity and potential in the world but we didn't quite

00:23:44.920 understand the exceptionality that they needed to overcome so we tossed them aside to let them do

00:23:49.700 something else but we could toss we could have been tossing aside genius and we'd have no freaking

00:23:54.880 idea. It's all about money. How do we do it big? And how do we do it bad? And how do we do it fast?

00:24:01.940 Right? That's it. Pump them through. Everybody should start it. It's exhausting is what it is.

00:24:11.880 Absolutely exhausting. And teachers can't stand up and talk about this. Teachers can't stand up

00:24:16.860 and talk about this on social media. Why? Well, because they're, they work for the government.

00:24:21.780 So when they criticize the government, technically they're criticizing their employer. And that is something that they could face penalty for in their system. And their union says, don't do it because we can't protect your job that way. What? What?

00:24:36.900 we aren't allowing the very people that are in the job right now doing it every single day the

00:24:45.560 ability to talk on a national universal global level oh no thank you no thank you

00:24:55.460 what i will say is that for these elementary elementary teachers for these kindergarten

00:25:03.040 teachers understand the incredibly difficult vital job that they do it is unlike any other

00:25:13.600 understand they should have more money more education more expectation smaller class sizes

00:25:20.080 to do it right to benefit your kids to benefit this province to benefit this country this world

00:25:27.920 that's where it starts i'm telling you right now talk to your friends talk to your family

00:25:33.760 say what where was the time where you knew you loved school or you hated school

00:25:40.880 the foundational realities are there we need to alter the the educational system

00:25:48.960 and the teacher's college system in order to make teachers college more academically driven

00:25:57.360 More, more driven to understand the psychological, the development and the physical, like the, the, the mental needs of our students at different age brackets, whatever you're going to teach. That has value. By the way, that applies to many jobs. I've said that before about policing as well.

00:26:13.160 that's where it is but don't you dare don't you dare undervalue a kindergarten teacher don't you

00:26:23.120 dare allow people to sit around and say well it's the easy teaching job they're just babysitting

00:26:28.220 all day go babysit 20 kids and get back to me go babysit 20 kids 25 year olds try to teach them

00:26:35.120 something for an hour i dare you i dare you and when you come back in utter disaster 0.78

00:26:46.320 put your money where your mouth is start funding teachers properly start minimizing how many kids

00:26:52.320 in a class start upping the resources that are given to them and for the love of god start

00:26:58.000 respecting and demanding respect for the foundational building blocks of our entire society

00:27:09.680 that's it for this week i encourage you to ask me questions

00:27:15.440 um disagree with me if you would like bring up different ideas in the comment section below

00:27:21.840 Because this, this is the biggest foundational, structural, economic, and governmental fight

00:27:30.420 that we're going to face.

00:27:31.580 And we're going to face it in Quebec.

00:27:32.720 We're going to face it in Ontario. 0.95

00:27:34.000 Look, all over the United States, it's a freaking disaster. 0.79

00:27:37.640 Ask yourself why.

00:27:40.640 Ask yourself why and ask yourself what kind of damage are we going to do when we underfund,

00:27:46.900 gut and diminish the importance the power of our educational system and our teachers

00:27:54.500 and on that note thanks for hanging out with me and i will see you

00:27:59.080 next tuesday same bat time same bat station dismissed

Unlearn16: Class is in Session - August 29, 2023

The One Where I Kindergarten Teacher Takes Politicians To School

Episode Stats

Transcript