The Good Natured-Wolves

um... so, if you were standing in a public square and suddenly a police chase brought you within 10 feet of an armed stand-off and exchange of bullets, would you try to hide?

Not these people...
.

I realise it's complete cheese, but there are some things that just don't seem plausible, even as flash mobs. That or most people are just too dumb to react when their lives are "in danger".

Includes three current party leaders (and one potential new premier. Crazy:

I know I'm a bit late to the conversation, but some of what teachers purchase for the classroom is often what they consider necessary classroom equiptment. For example, one of the Physics teachers at my highschool purchased each piece of lab equiptment himself (gravitron, tesla-coil, etc.) because the school's budget for equiptment was very limited. Most teachers I know, across all the teaching disciplines, have done something similar to one extent or another.

Oh, and I completely agree Par - the platform documents are almost surprisingly unhelpful.

Hmm, fair enough. I guess after trying to read through all the party platforms, that point hit really high on the "Promote Good Things Everyone Thinks are Good" and "Give More Money to More People" meters. There's a lot for both those things, but few platform points that hit both of them.

I don't know if anyone else has gone through them, but they are profoundly unhelpful documents. There are a few big ideas in the NDP and Liberal plans (zero tuition?). The PCs want to keep things roughly the same with some tweaks. And the Wildrose is kind of libertarian (there's a lot of "get government out of the way" rhetoric mixed in with some painting over of social conservatism.) Oh, and the Alberta party thinks everyone has good ideas and we should stop fighting so much and implement good ideas.

Does anyone have a positive motivation in voting this year, or is it just a "stop the Wildrose" year?

It's personal in that teachers do things specifically for the kids in their classroom. ... buying stickers to give out as rewards, using breakfast cereal to help kids learn to count, having display posters and other decorations that are both fun and educational, stuff like that.

Hell, one of my teachers went so far as to buy each and every kid in my class a book. There were 14 of us, but even then, that's a lot of money and time spent on things that the kids will benefit from, and for which the teacher doesn't otherwise get reimbursed. It encouraged reading, and got us all more actively invested in learning to read.

You make a cake with the student's name on it. And also Shakespeare's.

Ah, okay. But how do you show that you built a more personal learning environment?

It looks like it's up to $500. So if a teacher buys a $10 lunch for a student, they can submit the receipt and get a $10 tax credit. Repeat up to a maximum of $500.

This policy is actually good, because I know how much Keri was forced to spend on teaching stuff out of pocket and was unable to write off.

Someone explain this to me, from the PC platform:

A new PC government will also introduce a new Teacher Tax Credit of up to $500 a year. Everyteacher goes above and beyond for students in their classrooms, and this tax credit will recognize the exceptional contributions of Alberta teachers, who exceed the requirements of the job, both in terms of contributing time and financial resources – like stepping in to buy lunch for a student who has forgotten theirs at home, or building a learning environment in the classroom that is more personal, and that helps children learn and experience a happy environment.