Advocacy and resistance

Campaigns, policy changes, or initiatives aimed at ending collective punishment in schools or similar settings.

The moral cost of leaving children in fight-or-flight

Robin was eleven the day he fell and came up swinging. It was recess, and something had happened—a misstep, a bump, a collision on uneven ground. His body hit the pavement. And when he rose, disoriented and humiliated, the first thing in his path was his best friend. So he struck him, over and over.…
How schools misuse disability designations to deny support

When I asked why my child couldn’t have full-day support—the kind that made the difference between attending school and refusing to enter the classroom—I was told, “He’s not eligible.” Eligible only for part-time. Eligible only for half-days. Eligible, it turned out, to fall apart quietly in the coatroom, so the system could pretend he was…
Just when it starts working, they take it away

The cruelty of temporary support in BC schools. There is a particular kind of cruelty in getting what your child needs—finally—and knowing it will be taken away. In the fall of 2017, our family reached a breaking point. Our child Robin was refusing school, destroying the classroom, and coming home dysregulated and despondent. The school…
She graduated and this is what she learned

On raising a badass advocate, unintentionally. I didn’t set out to raise an advocate—I set out to raise a child. A child who might feel safe in her body and steady in her breath, who might look out at the world and feel drawn toward it rather than braced against it, who might trust her…
Repairing institutional harm after coercive control

This piece is written in memory of a friend whose life was slowly extinguished by institutional betrayal, coercive control, and the grinding weight of being unheard. When a school inadvertently contributes to coercive control, the harm may be quiet, but it is not small. For the child, it means being unprotected. For the parent, it…
$10K and an NDA

Would 10K and an NDA make the most excellent name for a country song? I didn’t file a Freedom of Information request to stir conflict — I filed it because nothing made sense, and I needed a clue, any thread at all, to understand what had just happened to my family. I call FOIs the…
Gaslighted by proxy: how schools grant coercive power to the quietest parent

When one parent advocates and the other undermines, the school almost always aligns with the one who “gets along.” Not because that parent is more informed, more accurate, or more protective—but because they are easier to accommodate. They agree easily. They stay quiet. They don’t write long emails. They rarely attend meetings. They couldn’t draft…
The path to justice: legal versus public record

The courts may offer compensation, but rarely truth. The legal path demands silence in exchange for settlement. The public path asks you to speak while you’re still bleeding. Neither is easy. But only one builds a record that helps the next family survive.
Apparently, starving yourself isn’t a serious mental health condition in VSB

There is a kind of harm that unfolds slowly — a hunger that accumulates across weeks and months, tucked beneath the surface of routines and well-meaning systems. My daughter is autistic, has ADHD, and a feeding disorder called ARFID. She eats quietly, cautiously, in ways that make sense to her nervous system. Her paediatrician recommended…
Not sick. Not fine. Not supported. Sexism in Vancouver School Board.

They said she was doing well. They said it with the softness of authority — that practiced tone that suggests neutrality while sidestepping consequence — a tone I’ve come to recognise as institutional, not personal, and absolutely not maternal. They said she was fine because she was quiet. Because she didn’t scream. Because she didn’t…
The bait and switch: What inclusion really looks like at the VSB

Every September, I walk into school meetings with the same cautious hope. We’ve done everything right. The diagnoses are up to date. The IEP is in place. The reports are filed — more than thirty of them over the years, from audiologists, psychiatrists, speech-language pathologists, behaviour consultants, and occupational therapists. You’d think that would mean…
I wish I had your problems

I’ve spent most of my life editing myself for other people—shaping my sentences so I won’t be seen as difficult, framing my pain in acceptable ways so no one feels accused.
The end of the school year never feels like a celebration

We are scouring the comments for signs that our kids are OK. Supported. Happy. Trying not to spiral when we read ‘developing’ or ’emerging’ or don’t see the words, ‘It was a pleasure to have your child in my class this year.
What would it really cost to fix the problem?

We talk so much about the cost of inclusion—as if it’s indulgent, optional, something that must be justified—but we rarely talk about the cost of exclusion. And those costs are everywhere: in emergency rooms, in overburdened case files, in classrooms where distress goes unseen. When schools can’t support disabled students, families fall apart trying to…
The poison of silence: on complicity, healing, and speaking the truth

I had so much pain stuck in my chest and throat. Cancelled screams. Unsaid truths. Every meeting where I stayed quiet, every time I swallowed my words to seem reasonable, every time I hoped that portraying myself a certain way might stop my children from being harmed—those moments didn’t disappear. They got stuck. I stopped…
What happened to your child is wrong

I didn’t learn about collective punishment as a teenager—reading about war crimes. I remember the moment vividly: the language was clinical, the violations horrific. Among the acts prohibited under the Geneva Conventions, there it was—collective punishment. The targeting of a group for the actions of one. It was described as a violation so clear, so…
Grace and the weight of a meeting

I felt so hopeless in that meeting. Underneath all the patronising words and well-meaning smiles, I could feel the same machinery at work—the one that asks disabled children to be gracious in the face of dismissal, polite in the face of erasure, composed in the face of harm. “We’d ask if Jeannie could show a…
We shouldn’t be enemies

I took my daughter for a manicure this week. She’s graduating from grade 7. A milestone. A moment that felt almost ordinary—slideshow, applause, plastic chairs, nervous grins—and yet there was nothing ordinary about what it took to get there. Vocabulary for what happened Class change She spent seven months of this school year outside the…
On graduation and the grievability of disabled children

I’ll try to be normal at my daughter’s graduation, even as I grieve a system that quietly erased her twin and expects no one to notice.
Advocacy toolkit: resources for families navigating school harm

Some of us arrived at advocacy slowly—one red flag at a time. Some of us were pushed into it suddenly, when everything fell apart. Some of us have been writing emails in our heads for years. Some of us are just now finding the words. Wherever you are in the process, this toolkit is for…

Advocacy and resistance

End collective punishment in BC schools