Advocacy and resistance
Advocacy, organising and resistance names the work families and communities do to challenge school harm and build collective power. It includes parent-led advocacy, public pressure, evidence-gathering, storytelling, campaigns, coalition work, and the refusal to let institutional narratives define children’s suffering as normal, inevitable, or deserved.
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On teachers, trust, and the long unravelling of support
When my children were in kindergarten, they had a teacher who specialised in what I can only describe as an extremely curated performance of niceness—a kind of plasticky, high-fructose charm that made my skin crawl and my muscles tense from the moment I entered the room. Her voice slowed to a sing-song drawl as she…
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Ego has no place in accessibility
This work requires transformation, not performance. Your legacy is not what you protected. Your legacy is what you changed when you were told it was failing. Leave your laurels at the door Accessibility work is not about legacy preservation. It is not about titles or tenure or whether your department once won an innovation award…
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We must start with an acknowledgement of harm
Before we talk about solutions, or even feelings, we must name what has been done. We begin in the wreckage When an institution convenes a committee to explore accessibility, equity, inclusion, or anything vaguely shaped like justice, it often opens with a bright, empty cheerfulness—a blurb about building community, a land acknowledgement read like punctuation,…
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Too competent to help, too angry to believe
The impossible performance of grace in systems that harm our children. Holding two pieces in tension This essay is written alongside a truth that cannot be softened. A truth that spills out, unsanitized, unmanageable, and fully lived. A truth that takes the form of intrusive thoughts, violent imagery, desperate poise, and carefully practiced restraint. That…
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I have thought about writing her a letter
I have thought about writing her a letter—something long and deliberate, something shaped by memory and moral clarity, something that names what occurred and places it in her hands before the door finally closes. The idea moves through me with a kind of gravitational pull, neither urgent nor calm, just pressing and circling. I return…
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The architecture of exclusion: how schools erase, silence, and wear down families
Schools are supposed to be spaces of inclusion and support—but for many families, especially those raising disabled or neurodivergent children, advocacy is met with a wall of politeness, professionalism, and performative listening that hides a deeper violence: rhetorical control. One of the most common tactics is tone policing: the redirection of attention from a parent’s concern…
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Forgiveness, or whatever comes after disbelief
A friend asked me recently why I hadn’t filed more external complaints—human rights complaints, formal grievances, legal action. And it’s true. I should have. There were so many moments where I could have, where I had grounds to. And I believe deeply in the importance of external complaints. I’ve written about them. I’ve supported other…
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How to talk about collective punishment: a conversation guide
This guide is for anyone who wants to help shift thinking around collective punishment in schools. It includes practical, respectful ways to respond when you see or hear something troubling — even if you’re not in a position of authority. Use it to plant seeds, ask good questions, and name harm without assigning personal blame.…
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To the neurodivergent kid who got blamed
Worried your mistake might get your whole class punished? That fear isn’t yours to carry. Here’s why—and what you can do.
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Not a stick in the mud
When I told another mom recently—someone kind, someone well-meaning, someone whose son used to play with mine back when things were easier—that I was feeling fragile about him being home since March, and that it had all gotten heavier than I expected, she responded gently and said, “Would he like to come over for a…
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How we change culture: From ashtrays to accountability in BC schools
Once, we smoked in office buildings. Not just on breaks or in private spaces—at desks, in meeting rooms, on airplanes. The haze of other people’s choices was something you had no right to escape. That was just how things were. Until it wasn’t. Now, the idea of someone lighting a cigarette during a staff meeting…
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Trust as performance: when schools want deference, not dialogue
One of the most infuriating parts of being gaslit by my children’s elementary school was the repeated suggestion that I simply didn’t trust them enough. That the reason my child was struggling wasn’t because support was missing, or harm had occurred—but because I had failed to signal trust. Failed to pretend everything was fine. As…
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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.…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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$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…
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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…
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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.
