Atlantic Teachers – What Are You Actually Doing? The Formal Silence Is Loud.
Teacher-librarian in New Brunswick. No provincial guidance. No board guidance. We’re three years into the generative AI era.
What I do know from informal networks: there are grassroots teacher networks in the Maritimes doing exactly what teachers everywhere do when policy fails – figuring it out together. New Brunswick has an informal AI literacy teacher group that meets quarterly, shares resources, compares approaches. Nova Scotia has something similar. Not official, not funded, but real.
What these networks tell me: Maritime teachers are not ignoring the issue. we’re solving it without institutional support, which is both impressive and infuriating.
Anyone else in NB, NS, PEI, Newfoundland – what’s your situation? and has anyone successfully pushed their board for formal guidance? I’ve sent two requests and gotten two non-responses.
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NB. same. the informal networks are real and useful. the grassroots thing is how actual practice develops even when institutions fail. not how it should work but how it does.
Troy's description of the informal network is exactly how NL is working too. we have a Facebook group of about 200 NL teachers sharing what's working. more practical guidance has come from that group than from any official channel in the past two years. the policy gap is being filled by teacher networks, not by boards.
PEI has the smallest system but also the most consistent approach because there are fewer boards to coordinate. the small-system advantage is real - decisions move faster. the Atlantic comparison actually highlights that system size matters as much as political will.
BC teacher lurking on this thread. we have similar regional inconsistency issues despite a larger system. the urban-rural divide here is sharp - urban districts have more capacity to develop internal guidance, rural schools are entirely on their own.
NB teacher. two years of nothing from the board. I stopped sending requests. informally: know of three other teachers in my school doing exactly what I'm doing - developing classroom policies ourselves and hoping they're consistent enough.