A couple years ago, my oldest son went to preschool. He was a bright kid, and also my first, so I spent a lot of time with him before hand, teaching him the letters, numbers, shapes, etc. By the time he started preschool, he knew all the letters, and of course he knew how to write his name beautifully. I was so proud of him, and was excited for him to go to school and continue his learning.

Of course, at preschool, they (re)taught all the letters and numbers. And at home I continued teaching him about letters, and then also about words, how they are composed of letters, and how each letter represents a sound, etc. By the end of preschool, he was able to read some words, especially phonetically.

Then, he went to kindergarten. Since he went to French school, the emphasis was on teaching oral French as opposed to written language. He still had me on his back with the writing and reading, and in Polish School (on Saturdays) he learned to write and even handwrite words. But at his daily school he wasn't even expected to write his name on his artwork. Later in that kindergarten year, the teacher finally started teaching the alphabet, and again, he learned his letters...

I couldn't believe it. I was in shock when I actually looked it up. This last year, I was making $30,000 less in Quebec than if I was working as a teacher in Alberta. I used to live in Alberta, and therefore I can't believe that I am worth so much less, just by living a few provinces down; and this doesn't even include the huge taxes that are taken off here in Quebec as opposed to Alberta.

Previously, I wrote a post about salaries in Canada and how they compare to test scores. Higher Teacher Salary = Better Education. In that post I was stunned at how correlated those two values were. But it seemed like the pay scale were somewhat comparable (plus or minus a 5 thousand dollars). But I was comparing statistics from 2001. Not now! Just a few years later and now there's a HUGE difference in the salaries.

Since it was not so easy for me to look up the most recent salary grids for all the provinces (a lot of clever internet searching, including emailing some schools for first hand information), I thought I would post all the provinces' teaching salary scales here (as a comparison), for future reference, for myself and anybody else that wants to know.

Just a few guidlines:

Judging from the comments from the article Teacher Pay Scale Across Canada, many people covet the schedule of a teacher and believe that they are paid too richly for simply reading textbooks. I think that teachers are not paid enough!

At the most abstract and philosophical, people get paid for value. How much would you pay me for a map to a long-lost gold nugget worth $1,000 that was buried in your backyard? Unless you have a logic deficiency, it would be some amount under $1,000. You might think it fair to split it 50/50 and offer me $500.

Hey! I have an MBA! I went to university for 6 years. Furthermore I invested 500 hours searching the old library archives to piece together the location of that lost nugget. My education entitles me to $50/hour, so for the 500 hours I'm going to need $25,000. You're lucky I'm not a lawyer at a big firm otherwise you'd be paying me $125,000 for that map.

Recently I went to the doctor for my son's yearly check-up. Our doctor is fantastic, and I am so lucky that I was fortunate enough to get him. Everytime we go, I learn something very interesting, this time was no exception.

The Doctor started asking standard medical questions: Was Jakub seriously ill this past year? Any ear infections? etc. Then he turned to his mental, social and physical development. And he asked me:

"Does Jakub know how to draw a person?"

What is the purpose of homework? Why do so many kids suffer from homework anxiety? Why do we teachers assign so much homework?

Last year, one of my favorite students' father wrote all the teachers a note through our online communication system. The note went something like this (all in capital letters):

Introduction

This paper focuses on externalvisual representations and how they are used by expert and novicescientists.  First, I define the term“expert” as used in this paper.  Then Ilook at representations in sciences and math.  Finally I compare the novice and expertdifferences as they relate to interpreting and constructing visualrepresentations.  Along the way, Iexamine a very interesting and applicable extension of the informationprocessing theory, the cognitive load theory, and how it relates to visualrepresentations and expertise. 

The Expert Scientist

Introduction
Some things are easier to learn than others. Piaget, one of the fathers of the constructivist movement, talked about two types of learning: assimilation and accommodation (Atherton, 2009). Assimilation and accommodation are the two complementary processes through which awareness of the outside world is internalized (Atherton, 2009).
In assimilation, the perceptions of the outside world are incorporated into the internal world model without changing the structure of that model, but potentially at the cost of "squeezing" the external perceptions to fit (Atherton, 2009). In accommodation, the internal world model has to accommodate itself to the evidence with which it is confronted and thus adapt to it, which can be a more difficult and painful process (Atherton, 2009). Accommodation has everything to do with conceptual change, and is the starting point of the many theories concerned with misconceptions.

At the beginning of December, I assigned my grade 8 students to build a machine / model using hydraulics or pneumatics. They are due this week, and some have already come in. So far I am extremely impressed.

At the end of the week, I'll take pictures of them all to show what projects they built, but so far there has been an excellent selection of machines. From the simple yet elegant dentist chair to a powerful crane to a digging machine, bridge, and a mechanical claw. I have all the projects displayed at the side of my classroom. Whenever other classes come by, they look, play around with the machines, and are all jelous that they weren't assigned this project. The students that didn't hand in the projects yet are all very inspired by the creations and some even have decided to scrap their original ideas/models to make better more complex designs.

An interesting observation:

I am reading an awesome book on Cognitive Sciences and how it applies to teaching students in the classroom: Schools for Thought - a Science of Learning in the Classroom by John Bruer. I will write more on this book later, but I wanted to focus on an idea I got from it to teach in the classroom. One chapter of the book relates to teaching science, and specifically, teaching Newtonian Physics... exactly what I'm teaching right now to my grade 11 physics class.

Anyway, the author emphasizes the importance of understanding the concepts, and demonstrates that students, when coming into a physics class, have sporadic knowledge of physics, and that some of their knowledge is scientifically accurate, but other intuitive knowledge is false, and has to be adjusted with a type of "aha moment" - usually a demonstration or experiment that blows away their arguments / their intuitive beliefs completely.

I went to see what's happening at www.mathfair.com and I found this cute little puzzle. Try to solve it yourself or see if your kids can do it faster than you:

The dragon of ignorance has three heads and three tails. However, you can slay it with the sword of knowledge by cutting off all its heads and tails. With one swipe of the sword you can cut off one head, two heads, one tail, or two tails.

But . . .

When you cut off one head, a new one grows in its place.

When you cut off one tail, two new tails replace it.