Author: Bogusia Gierus

“This is George. He lived with his friend, the man with the yellow hat. He was a good little monkey and always very curious.”

This is how most of my favourite stories start. I loved Curious George when I was a little girl, and even more when I grew up.

Periodically, I look how the different provinces’ rank in terms of paying for their teachers. When I started doing this comparison, I lived in Quebec. Then I updated the table in 2011, and shortly after that I moved to Alberta. (Sick and tired of getting the short end of the stick.) Now I’ve been working here in Alberta for the last 10 years, and finally I feel like I’m compensated properly, for all the work that I do.

Just to be consistent, I’m listing the salary for a teacher with 8 years of experience and a bachelor degree + 2 year teaching degree. Also, I am choosing jurisdictions in Canada that I wouldn’t mind moving to – mostly cities. But if you want to check your salary in the given province, the link should point you in the right direction.

Here are the teacher salaries in 2021.

Recently I had a conversation with a colleague of mine: She was appalled at an ad she saw on TV about a system to teach “babies” to learn to read (something like LeapFrog or Vtech). She said: “Why would anybody want to teach their baby to read?” As this statement was brought up in passing, and I was busy at the time doing something else, I just agreed and moved on with my life. But as the day went on, the statement kept bothering me and stuck with me.

Recently I’ve been trying to teach my two and a half year old child to learn some letters from the alphabet. I want him to learn to write his name, and at least recognize all the letters of the alphabet. I figure this is not too early for him as he is really into drawing and “reading” books and even pretending he is reading the letters. So everyday I sit with him at the table, like a big boy, and we do “school work” for about 1/2 an hour. It’s fun for him, because he thinks he’s like my older two sons, doing his homework. It’s mostly fun stuff we do anyway, and he has no clue that he is “learning” anything. For him it’s just quality fun time with his mom; for me it’s also quality one on one time with him, but also the sooner he learns the alphabet, the sooner he’ll be ready to start reading and therefore the sooner he’ll be an independent learner.

But let’s get back to how I actually teach him letters (and I did do this for my two older boys at around the same age: around 2 to 3 years old). Here are some tips I picked up from various places and just my own experience how best to teach really young kids to write / recognize letters:

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.

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?”