BCTEA President’s Report
Heather Elliott
President
April 2019
Presidents Message:
Hello there, I hope everyone was able to enjoy some quality time with family and friends this past Easter long weekend. I thought it was about time I sent an update of the comings and goings of your BCTEA Executive and what we have been working on this last few months.
I am pleased to announce that the upcoming BCTEA Provincial conference will be held at Alpha Secondary in beautiful Burnaby. The conference will be held Oct. 25th, 2019. –Please note the date as Thanksgiving is late this year, so is our conference. This should align with your district calendar as the provincial professional development day for PSA Conferences. Stay tuned for upcoming details regarding the District Reps meeting, Conference presenter requests, Workshops and Registration Information.
Another big project for us this year has been the collection of data concerning the Wood shop dust collection system updates that many districts have made. These updates, to align with new Worksafe regulations were a large area of concern for many districts at our District reps meeting in the Fall. Andy Strothotte has spearheaded the project and has collected all of the data to date that was submitted via the survey, and has produced an excellent summary document with recommendations. It is our intention that the collected research will help support changes being made to installation procedures and equipment choices that ensure noise and teaching environment are taken into consideration. Look for this in the coming weeks to be posted on our Website, and the closed group Facebook page.
We are continuing to update the Website with new information, projects and images, as well as manage our Facebook page. Arnel Aliwalas, our Communications coordinator is also working on a members only section to our website. This will allow a secure place for project ideas and image sharing, as well as a location for BCTF –bargaining updates and other information that can only be shared in a secured portal.
We are also following through on making updates to the Heads up document, as we know there are some formatting issues. If you have trouble with the document please reach out and let us know. It is a slow process to make this happen, but it is happening. Updated versions will be available for September 2019. We are hoping that we will be able to provide members with a Word DOC version as well, this would provide teachers with the ability to update the images to ones from their own shops and add/subtract test questions.
There will be four positions available on the Executive come our Fall conference. Information regarding which positions and their roles will be coming out in the next month. If you are interested in any of the roles, please consider reaching out to learn more, it is great way to give back.
Nigel Reedman, has been collecting data from each district regarding class size and composition, in hopes that with this current round of bargaining we will be able to support districts that have little to no language. The information is posted on the Facebook page and will be added to the website. Please share the image Nigel created within your district .
Skills Provincials was another excellent day this year, with so many competitors coming out of all of your amazing programs. I love this day and it was great to see so many of you and your students as participants, in addition to the bus loads of students who just came to check out all of the cool stuff you can do in Trades and Technology. I would also like to thank all of the educators who go the extra mile to make this happen for our students, I know it is a huge undertaking and it doesn’t go unnoticed.
Enjoy these last few months of the year, as they always seem to fly by. Also if you have suggestions or ideas for things we should be working on or advocating for please feel free to connect. -Heather Elliott