Educational harm

The emotional, cognitive, and academic consequences of exclusion, burnout, unsupported needs, and systemic discrimination in school settings.

The meeting was on their birthday

It was the twins’ birthday party day and I was meant to be somewhere soft. I was meant to be preparing a cake, or folding small clothes, or breathing in the warm scent of their hair in that quiet way mothers sometimes do when the day still belongs to them. But instead I was seated…
Bound by blood

Maternal embodiment and the unbearable violence of institutional disbelief. We were once one body There is a biological, emotional, and moral reality so fundamental that no policy manual can contain it, and no professional training can domesticate it—my child once lived inside me. His limbs pressed against my ribs before they ever touched the outside…
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…
How do you live with yourself

Part of my neurodivergence is fatalism; part of it is hyperphantasia; part of it is the inability to look out at a beautiful landscape without imagining loss, rupture, and death, because even as a small child on the ferry to Victoria, while other people were looking out over the water and the mountains and the…
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…
Why I’m reviewing school codes of conduct

To the student who found this page because you typed something scared or confused or angry into a search bar—something like “are teachers allowed to take away recess?” or “can I be suspended for a meltdown?” or “why did my teacher say I wasn’t trying hard enough when I couldn’t stop crying”—this is for you.…
Institutional gaslighting of caregivers

You refuse to forget, because forgetting would mean abandoning your child’s reality—and you have already watched too many adults do that with a straight face and a professional tone. You refuse to downplay what has happened, because the harm is not theoretical—it lives in your child’s nervous system, in her school avoidance, in her refusal…
Food, rewards, and collective punishment in the classroom

It might seem harmless. A teacher stands before a class with a box of lollipops or a bag of Freezies, offering them as a reward for good behaviour. But there’s a catch: everyone only gets one if everyone behaves. What appears—on the surface—as a treat, quickly becomes a threat. For neurodivergent children, food-based group rewards…
Wait and see: a mother’s warning

Before kindergarten began, we told them—unequivocally, painstakingly, with as much specificity as we could muster—that our son had been harmed in daycare, that he had a long line of diagnoses and was awaiting an autism assessment, that his nervous system was thrashed, and that he would require sustained, full-day relational support in order to experience…
We stand with BC teachers

The BC Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) has launched a new ad campaign ahead of the provincial election to spotlight BC’s worsening teacher shortage and demand urgent government action. The campaign, titled Hire More Teachers, features TV and digital ads showing the real impact on students and calls for a fully funded workforce strategy similar to health…
What replaced the strap in Canadian schools?

They took the strap away—or at least, they removed the physical instrument, the leather loop of institutional discipline that had once been the sanctioned mechanism of control in classrooms across the country. Even if we never felt it on our own skin, we knew what it meant; we had heard the sound of it slapped…
Summer school blues: on being excluded from the gifted program

In the spring of 2018, I applied to the Vancouver School Board’s summer Gifted/Challenge Program for my twins, Jeannie and Robin, who had just finished kindergarten and were, in different ways, already outpacing the curriculum. Robin was already captivated by the ancient world—particularly Egypt, with its pyramids, its rituals, its mythologies of death and continuity,…
She called the police and the principal told them not to come

They used to be friends—Jeannie and Adam, two children who grew up side by side, navigating the same schoolyards, chaotic birthday parties, playdates, and a sense that their differences were both misunderstood. They went to the reptile show together and settled into the rhythm of primary school routines, and the kind of familiarity shared by…
On free IVF: love and systemic neglect

BC is funding IVF, but not the care children need once they’re born. Love is enough. The system isn’t. This is betrayal dressed as hope.
Punished for bed wetting

I’ve woken up in the middle of the night to help my children when they’ve wet the bed—perhaps after a bad dream or too much water before bedtime. I remember helping them change their clothes, stripping the bed, telling them gently: it’s okay. It happens. It’s a small moment that reminds me what care looks…
Fight flight fawn freeze: surviving school

There are children who throw chairs when cornered, children who slip quietly out the door or hide behind the portable, children who don’t speak for hours, who go limp, who answer every question with “I don’t know,” and children who nod and smile and say “okay” to everything—until they collapse at home, trembling and broken,…
Anxiety is not an overreaction: why neurodivergent distress demands a different response

There is a kind of anxiety that rises up like a wave—not sudden, not irrational, not the result of faulty thinking or poor coping, but steady, cumulative, and earned. A body that has learned the world is not safe, not soft, not designed for it. A body that has been punished for asking for help,…
When they knew it hurt, and did it anyway

I was clear. I was specific. I was unwavering. I told the Vancouver School Board that I believed behaviourist strategies were harmful, violated my child’s dignity, and contradicted our family’s ethics—and that continuing to use them without consent would cause further harm. They used them anyway. Over and over, the school district returned to strategies…
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…
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.…

Educational harm

End collective punishment in BC schools