How Teacher Sally is Seen as a Villain

‘All TTUTA and Tehka-DeFreitas accomplished this week was villainising our teachers, painting them as heartless, don’t care about their students, money hungry slackers, which is the complete opposite to what many of our teachers stand for’

SALLY works hard. There are many days she takes her work home, both emotionally and physically.

Her place of business is often lacking critical tools, so she either uses her own money to buy equipment or makes do with what little she has. She often has to deal with difficult clients, some of whom can be abusive. When the pandemic hit, Sally had to work from home. She was forced to learn a new way of doing her duties with little or no training. Like many parents, she had to balance her work duties and her children’s online schooling. Sally’s job is a vital one, but despite her hardest efforts her employers do not pay her what she is worth.

I think we can all sympathise with Sally. Many of us have been in her position and understand her struggles.

But Sally is a teacher, represented by the Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers Association (TTUTA). And as a result of TTUTA’s actions in their fight to get Sally the financial compensation she is worth, Sally has become a villain.

On Monday, when schools should have been welcoming their students back, TTUTA called on teachers to stay away from classrooms to express their dissatisfaction with the 4% wage increase offered to them by the Government’s Chief Personnel Officer (CPO) Dr Daryl Dindial.

According to TTUTA,  more than half of our nation’s teachers stayed home on Monday. They called it a success, but in the courtroom of public opinion, they were torn to shreds.

‘Without teachers, we would be a mess of illiterate, unruly people’

In a time when we have seen the lowest SEA, CSEC and CAPE grades, the highest number of school dropouts and numerous children falling behind due to the pandemic school closures, TTUTA sure did pick the wrong time to rest and reflect.

You see, if I was protesting my work conditions or salary, I would go the extra mile to garner public sympathy. If I could get people to empathise with my struggles, then my fight would be more successful.

TTUTA and its president Antonia Tehka-De Freitas, failed to realise this. TTUTA  should highlight some of the issues our nation’s teachers have had to endure.

But like all things I suppose, that would take hard work and plus nothing makes you seem more like a true trade union leader than calling a strike.

Let me be clear, I 100% support everyone’s right to protest, especially when it comes to demanding fair and equitable pay. What I have an issue with is when you bring children, especially those who have suffered due to school closures, into your bacchanal.

All TTUTA and Tehka-DeFreitas accomplished this week was villainising our teachers, painting them as heartless, don’t care about their students, money hungry slackers, which is the complete opposite to what many of our teachers stand for.

Instead of empowering our teachers, TTUTA has stained them. What they should have done is remind us how vital they are in society. Forget the whole “without teachers we would not have doctors, lawyers, and so on.”

Without teachers there would be many children without stable adult figures in their lives and there would be children without someone to provide them with the guidance they may not receive at home. Without teachers, we would be a mess of illiterate, unruly people.

We have lost our compassion for teachers and thanks to the backwards, misguided union that leads them, we have lost respect for our nation’s educators.

You could not pay me my weight in gold coins every month to teach a hot sweaty classroom of petulant teenagers without expecting at least three of them to fall victim to murder. But there are amazing men and women out there who can, who give their all to uplift our future generation.

Sadly, it’s not a rotten apple that’s spoiling the bunch, it’s the basket they are in that has made them unpalatable. I urge TTUTA to rethink their strategies, and stop holding our nation’s children hostage, because you are doing more damage to the teaching fraternity than good and dragging our children down with you.

I also urge the Government to give our teachers their dues. Get yourself in order, these men and women are vital to the development of our society and it is time you, our might leaders, treat them with the respect they deserve.