'Behaviour mentors' promised in N.B.'s plan to address classroom challenges

The Higgs government is adopting a more gradual, incremental approach to addressing problems in New Brunswick's anglophone school system.

Education Minister Bill Hogan unveiled eight recommendations from a steering committee set up in the wake of his February decision to cancel the planned replacement of French immersion.

That proposal, and the angry public meetings that persuaded the province to abandon it, highlighted concerns that there aren't enough staff or resources in schools to create positive learning environments.

The recommendations, defined as "near-term" with implementation as early as this fall,  include:

• Hiring contract substitute teachers to address chronic vacancies in the system.
• Adding more teachers to focus on literacy and numeracy from kindergarten to Grade 5.
• Creating more behaviour intervention mentor positions. The department says in schools where they already exist, they've contributed to a 40 per cent reduction in behavioural issues.
• Setting up a centre of excellence for French second-language training, to provide students in rural schools in particular with more resources and more opportunities to practice the language.

"I would hope that when teachers have a chance to read the report today, they'll see the first eight recommendations holistically, as an attempt to sort of stabilize the classroom situations that they've been speaking of," said Ardith Shirley, executive director of the New Brunswick Teachers Association.

Shirley co-chaired the steering committee with Tiffany Bastin, the assistant deputy minister for education services in the anglophone sector.

 "I would hope … that they'll see a reinvestment in the respect for the profession, the importance of those frontline classroom teachers," Shirley said. "I would hope they'll see a hopeful future."

Hogan said the behaviour intervention mentors "help students learn to self-regulate, help staff and teachers and students learn to co-regulate, and they help them choose a more positive path with their behaviour and reduce the interruptions that happen in class."

The goal is for each school to have at least one position.

The minister said the contracts for supply teachers will make staffing more predictable. 

"Substitute teachers don't have a guarantee of where they're going to go everyday. … It makes it challenging."

If a supply teacher isn't needed on a given day, they'll pitch in at the school by helping teachers or students in other ways.

Longer-term recommendation coming

During the immersion controversy, Hogan and Premier Blaine Higgs said that the program was creating streaming in non-immersion English prime classrooms — a high concentration of students with learning difficulties, which made it harder for teachers to teach.

Teachers also complained that several major reforms over the years destabilized the system and called on the government to address problems without more big disruptions.

The steering committee heard from more than 1,000 people through virtual and in-person consultations and another 3,000 via an online survey.

The steering committee will release longer-term recommendations this fall.