LPS Teachers Begin Two-day Walkout with Music

Wilma Kenny | Feb 12, 2020

LPS teacher Al MacDonald and some of his fellow Loughborough Public School teachers pulled together an ‘ad hoc’ musical group to entertain passers-by and SHS-across-the-road on Tuesday. And to keep up their own spirits on a chill, grey day when they would have much preferred to be inside with their classes.

Never mind that the drummer had played drums only twice before and ‘Strike Pay’ as a group has no intent to take their show on the road: their music’s gleefully familiar, and the words are sharp and sassy. For example: “Pants on Fire” (thanks to Johnny Cash), and Sounds of Silence rewritten as “We Won’t Be Silent”: “And people honked and waved/to the neon signs we waved/ and the snow flew hard this morning/my face is frozen, frostbite forming/And the sign said the cuts hurting kids/are gonna hurt for years/ Mr Buck-a-Beer/ And we won’t be silent.”

Strike line teachers were unanimous in their dismay about the Provincial government’s intent to save money at the expense of children who need extra time and attention: “It’s not just the high needs children who will suffer; the whole classroom ends up not getting the best learning situation,” said one.