Alberta Teachers Are Not OK

Last year, after 15 years teaching in the Edmonton public school system, Shelby Davies decided it was time to walk away from her career. Burnt out and exhausted to her core, the high school English teacher had reached the end of her proverbial rope — she had no more tricks up her sleeve or clues as to how to improve the education system within which she worked.

Davies is one of many Alberta teachers leaving the profession.

“I’m not alone,” she said, referring to the professional burnout she experienced alongside her colleagues. “When I left, I had two friends that also left at the same time for exactly the same reasons.”

A June 2023 study by the Alberta Teachers’ Association found a lack of support was driving teachers out of the profession. A 2021 survey by the same group found that 31 per cent of the 1,248 respondents either didn’t want to teach in the same position next year or felt unsure about it. And in 2017, a graduate student at the University of Calgary’s Werklund School of Education found that 40 per cent of new teachers planned to leave the profession in five years.

“If [the government’s] not going to address anything — because it doesn’t feel like anything is being addressed — then the biggest thing I would say is the class sizes are way too big. It’s impossible to manage 35, 40 students at the same time,” Davies said.

Maren Aukerman, a research professor at the Werklund School of Education, shares Davies’ concerns. Aukerman’s research focuses on literacy learning and pedagogy, and elementary and middle years education.

“This government has shown strikingly little interest in supporting the needs of children,” she said. “There is no doubt money matters, and children who have access to reasonable class sizes, properly maintained facilities that are not overcrowded, and teacher salaries that attract and retain top talent are going to fare better in the long run.

“Alberta is a terrible place to raise a school-aged child right now if one is dependent on public schools, as most parents are.”

Most recently, teachers’ cries for help, which have manifested in a vote to strike, have been muffled by the provincial government headlining parents’ concerns over four graphic novels in public school libraries that they claim are inappropriate for school-aged kids.

Alberta Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides brought the concern to the public’s attention during a press conference May 26, when he announced that the province is re-evaluating school library book regulations. He launched an online survey to gather Albertans’ feedback on what is appropriate content for school libraries.

To be clear, he later told The Tyee via email, “The rhetoric around this being a book ban is irresponsible and false.” The province’s “engagement is not about banning books or silencing diverse voices,” he said.

The book controversy has been the subject of extensive news coverage. During that period, the, Alberta Teachers’ Association, or ATA, held an initial strike authorization vote among its membership from May 22 to 26; over 99 per cent of the membership voted in favour of holding the vote, which took place among Alberta public school teachers from June 5 to 8. The results, announced Tuesday, showed 95 per cent of teachers in favour of strike action. Nearly 39,000 teachers voted, according to the ATA.

In a news release on Tuesday, the ATA said its members are refusing to “hold up a crumbling public education system” any longer.

“Classrooms are getting more challenging every year,” ATA president Jason Schilling wrote in an email. “Students don’t get the one-on-one time they need to thrive in crowded classrooms. Teachers do not have adequate time, resources or capacity to meet the needs of every student.”

The Werklund School of Education’s professor Aukerman highlighted the dissonances arising from the book controversy that took shape alongside the ATA’s vote to strike.

“[It’s] as if removing four books from a few school libraries in the province were a higher priority than getting school libraries and classrooms properly resourced,” she said.

“Even aside from the disturbing implications of becoming a book-banning province, we need to ask ourselves: ‘What will make the greater difference in the lives of Alberta children, removing a few books or addressing the real travesty of failed educational policy and funding that is affecting every child in a public school in our province?’”

Crowded schools, inadequate supports

Alberta public schools are often oversubscribed, and there are no longer enough classrooms available for all teachers and students, with some resorting to converting learning commons into classroom space, said Aukerman. In some overpopulated schools, library space or staff rooms are now functioning as overflow space for students.

It’s the kids who are “bearing the brunt of large class sizes and inadequate supports,” she continued, adding that she’s heard from some students that they don’t want to go to school at all because they’re so overwhelmed in the classroom.

This was a problem former high school English teacher Davies saw in her classroom, which hosted rotating class sizes of 40. “With classes that big, there’s always somebody who needs help, so you’re pretty run off your feet,” she said.

“Even a superhuman teacher will have a hard time adequately adapting instruction,” especially for students who need additional and specialized one-on-one support from a teacher or education assistant, noted Aukerman.

Many teachers have also lost precious preparation blocks and now have full class schedules because of high student enrolment and needing to fill in for fellow teachers taking sick days or appointments, said Davies. This means lesson preparation or marking has to be done before or after school or on weekends — in other words, in their personal time.

Davies said she did all she could to adapt. “You’re sort of told over and over again that your experience in the classroom isn’t real, it’s not what’s happening,” she said of the government’s response to teachers’ pleas over the years.

“You should have more engaging lessons, then you won’t have classroom management problems; if you were more efficient with your marking you wouldn’t be overloaded as much as you are.

“From my experience, in terms of adapting year to year in an effort to really, truly be the best I could possibly be at this job while not overrunning myself and burning myself out, I did everything possible. I got to a point where I realized that was much more of a systemic issue than something that I could fix.”

A growing student population

Nicolaides agrees Alberta’s education system is stressed from a booming student population, which has seen considerable growth over the years. While the province’s population has increased in general, the minister points to a rise in immigration as the reason for student population growth.

“The amount of immigration our province has seen is unprecedented, the numbers are staggering and are out of the norm when it comes to regular immigration rates,” he told The Tyee. “We have recognized the problem and we are making historic investments today so we do not have to have these problems tomorrow.”

Statistics from Alberta Education showed approximately 200 schools were overpopulated in the 2023-24 school year, with another 27 schools at 100 per cent capacity, according to the Calgary Herald.

A 2025 ATA report shows that, based on 2,348 teacher responses, 30 per cent of classes have 25 to 30 students. However, over 41 per cent of responding teachers said they are teaching a class with over 30 students, including classes with more than 40 students.

Alberta Education’s own data demonstrated that enrolment would increase. But for years, Alberta’s provincial government failed to deliver adequate funding to schools and students.

Despite a $426-million provincial budget increase for 2025-26, which produced the highest education budget the province has ever seen, at $9.88 billion, and an additional $8.6 billion over seven years to renovate existing schools and build new ones, the province continues to hold the rank for the province with the lowest education funding in Canada, according to Statistics Canada.

‘I don’t know of a single teacher who isn’t doing their level best’

Aukerman acknowledged that while many teachers, like Davies, are leaving the profession, it’s important to recognize the teachers who do stay despite being drained by the circumstances of their workplace.

“I don’t know of a single teacher who isn’t doing their level best to teach the children in their care even under the current circumstances, but students ultimately bear the brunt of exhausted, overworked teachers,” she said.

“Class size and EA [education assistant] support are huge factors in teachers’ quality of life,” Aukerman continued. “It is hugely demoralizing to not be able to meet the needs of students due to lack of time and resources, and enormously difficult to maintain any kind of work-life balance.”

The inability to reach or maintain work-life balance and the chronic stress caused by compounding years of unrest are ultimately what led Davies to leave the school system.

For the first month of every summer break, Davies would be sick. She said it was her body’s response to her nervous system’s attempt to regulate outside of the classroom. It wouldn’t be long after recovering that she would have to start planning for the next school year.

Aukerman said the government needs to start listening to teachers’ requests for support as well as their suggestions on improving the current education system.

“As with every educational policy I can think of introduced by the current government, there has been no interest in hearing [teachers’] concerns,” she said. “Until that changes, both teachers and students will continue to suffer.”

The province says it’s open to hearing from teachers on what can be improved in schools and classrooms. “We understand that teachers have more concerns, and I have an open-door policy to hear these concerns and find a path forward,” Education Minister Nicolaides told The Tyee.

Last month, the ATA rejected a proposed collective agreement from the provincial government offered by a mediator. The teachers’ union and the province had been in mediation since January. The proposed multi-faceted agreement, set to start in the 2025-26 school year and roll out over four years, included a general wage increase of 12 per cent and $405 million in classroom improvements, open to teacher input.

When the teachers’ union voted against the proposal, ATA president Schilling said change was needed for public education in Alberta. Today, Nicolaides said, they are “waiting to hear what the ATA and teachers are looking for and why about 60 per cent of those voting did not endorse the deal.

“The Teachers’ Employer Bargaining Association (TEBA) is ready to return to the bargaining table at any time with the ATA and get to work on a central agreement that is fair to teachers and taxpayers,” he said.

After the ATA’s recent vote to strike, that meeting might happen sooner rather than later.

With the vote results in, the ATA will enter a 120-day negotiation window. They are scheduled to meet with TEBA on June 19 and 20.