In the past 10 years, there have been various moments when I thought that the time had finally come for me to pack my bags and seek pastures new but I don’t think that I ever felt that feeling as powerfully as I did this morning stuck in traffic for two hours on what should have been a 20-minute commute.
As I inched forward and saw pedestrian after pedestrian move faster than I, my patience in shreds and my exasperation at an all-time high, I wondered yet again at what point everyone else is going to get as fed up as I am and force our authorities to take tangible steps to fix this ever-growing issue.
Many continue to act so unbothered that I’m genuinely starting to wonder whether everyone is unemployed or if there’s some underground network of roads that I don’t know about.
Eventually, I parked my car at the side of the road and decided to scroll aimlessly on social media till the traffic thinned and I didn’t feel like I wanted to tear out my hair. It was at this point that I came across a collage of statuses from a few MCAST students that really had me scratching my head in dismay.
According to what was being shared, the directives given to MCAST teachers in the wake of the expired collective agreement matter remaining unresolved include them not being able to communicate with students outside of lesson hours, not being able to inform students they are sick and not being able to hand out assignment topics.
Students are anxious, overwhelmed, unmotivated and exhausted, and they’re only two weeks into the academic year. They’re making trips to school for nothing to find out that their lessons have been cancelled and worrying about their deadlines and whether they’ll be able to make them.
What makes matters so much worse is that teachers have ended up getting caught up in the crossfire through no fault of their own. As usual, it’s always the wrong parties who bear the brunt of other people’s sins in this country.
This is a ridiculous situation that should have been resolved literally years ago but, somehow, here we are. It’s like this country thrives on constant uncertainty and instability, on making us feel hopeless, helpless and drained. If we can’t even provide an education for our children without everything falling into chaos, what hope is there for anything else?
I don’t know what is going on with this country anymore. It’s becoming traumatic just to leave the house and carry out the most basic of tasks. Should students really have to attend a protest for a resolution to be reached? Why do things in this country only temporarily improve if we take to the streets and scream for attention?
Everything our authorities do is reactionary, with no forethought or consideration of the cost to the nation’s mental health. And then we wonder why the number of citizens living with depression keeps climbing.
Students deserve better. We deserve better. And what a shame it is that our authorities don’t seem to think so.