Educational harm
The emotional, cognitive, and academic consequences of exclusion, burnout, unsupported needs, and systemic discrimination in school settings.
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Why sticker charts fail
Sticker charts and other incentive-based systems promise to motivate children through tangible rewards, yet they too often undermine genuine engagement by teaching students to focus on external validation rather than on the inherent value of learning or participation. When a child’s behaviour is redirected toward earning stickers or tokens, the activity becomes a transaction instead…
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Cariboo–Chilcotin School District (SD27): a neurodiversity-informed policy critique
Cariboo-Chilcotin is one of the most geographically dispersed and demographically complex districts in British Columbia. Spanning small rural towns and remote Indigenous communities—including sites of historic and intergenerational trauma—SD27 faces significant challenges in providing consistent, inclusive, and safe environments for all learners. In June 2024, the Board adopted Policy 390: Safe and Caring School Communities, replacing…
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Maybe tomorrow: reflections on goal post shifting and the economics of access
There were accommodations on paper and endless lip-service meetings. But none of it happened in the classroom. And every time we did what was asked—another intake, another form, another plan—the goalpost moved again. We weren’t asking for miracles. We were asking to be seen as disabled. And instead, we were told to be more positive,…
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Revoking recess as a form of collective punishment
Rules intended for safety become instruments of collective punishment when they erase unstructured play from the school day, compounding distress for children who rely on movement, predictability and sensory regulation. this post examines the disproportionate impact on neurodivergent learners and proposes targeted interventions that preserve every child’s right to play and learn.
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“Too much”: on allergy, autism, and the systemic erasure of care
There is a quiet solidarity among parents whose children are considered too much for school. Some of us carry medical kits. Others carry binders of psychological assessments. But all of us carry the same invisible burden: a system that treats our children’s needs as optional—and our vigilance as overreaction. This is the story of two…
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Right to no discrimination
Every child has the right to learn and belong at school without being treated unfairly because of who they are. In British Columbia (B.C.), this Right to No Discrimination means public schools must welcome all students on equal terms, regardless of their race, Indigeneity, colour, ancestry, place of birth, religion, family background, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability,…
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How narcissism and PDA collide in the wreckage of trust
Some children refuse control because control has always felt like violence. Because control has worn the face of love and left behind a residue of shame. Because adults said, “this is for your own good” while ignoring tears, violating autonomy, and insisting that compliance was safety. For these children, especially those with a PDA profile,…
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When energy returns: on finding purpose, refusing silence, and recovering from institutional harm
When I could barely rise from the couch, I believed my exhaustion was depression. Now I see it was the cumulative harm of years spent silencing myself in hostile institutions, suppressing truth to protect my neurodivergent children. The body remembers this violence; it registers as a weight on the chest, a fatigue that resists all…
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Don’t get stuck in ‘working it out’ purgatory
Time is money, as they say—but in the world of school advocacy, it’s mostly mothers paying the bill. They spend their work breaks writing emails. Their nights gathering documents. Their weekends holding their children together after another week of being failed. They do this unpaid, unsupported, and unseen. The cost isn’t just measured in hours—it’s…
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The scarcity script: how manufactured famine shapes public education
British Columbia’s public schools are not suffering from a natural shortage—they are operating under a system of manufactured scarcity. This blog explores how austerity, rationing logic, and institutional self-preservation create harm for disabled students and their families. Drawing on thinkers like David Graeber, Wendy Brown, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Mariana Mazzucato, it reveals how scarcity…
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Arrow Lakes School District (SD10): a neurodiversity-informed policy critique
The Arrow Lakes School District’s Policy 310, “Expectations for Student Conduct,” presents a succinct framework grounded in the language of safety, mutual respect, and orderly environments. It affirms the importance of rights-based protection against discrimination and sets the expectation that all schools will maintain up-to-date, locally developed codes of conduct. It allows for discretion, acknowledges…
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The price of being the one who says the hard thing
There is a moment that plays out in a thousand variations—at school pickup, on the playground, during track and field events—when a parent turns to you, warm and casual, and says, “How are things?”, and for the briefest fraction of a second, you forget the rules and answer honestly. You begin to speak—not with rehearsed…
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I brought my lunches in yoghurt containers
I brought my lunches in yoghurt containers—garlicky stir-fries, bright with tamari and heat—and sat beside children with white bread and bologna, quietly learning that normalcy was measured in silence, sameness, and smelllessness. I wasn’t bullied. I was strange. And strangeness, in childhood, is its own kind of exile.
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The devastating impact of collective punishment
This is what collective punishment looks like. It teaches children that their belonging is conditional. It tells disabled students that when they slip up, they will not only be punished, but publicly shamed. And it tells their classmates that inclusion is dangerous—that proximity to a neurodivergent peer puts them at risk.
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Trust undone: how collective punishment breaks the heart of the school
There is a kind of harm we don’t always name. Not bruises. Not bad grades. Not exclusion on paper. It is the slow unravelling of something more fragile—trust. The felt safety between a student and their teacher. The invisible thread between classmates. The quiet assumption that school is a place where fairness lives. Collective punishment…
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Why school advocacy is a women’s issue
This site exists because public education systems harm children—and then gaslight the people who try to stop it. Those people are not randomly distributed. They are overwhelmingly women. Advocacy is a women’s issue not because women are naturally better at it, or more available, or more nurturing. Advocacy is a women’s issue because institutions depend…
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Inviting collaboration on repairing trust after collective punishment
A practical guide for educators seeking to repair harm after using collective punishment. If you’ve used collective punishment—like taking away recess from an entire class, cancelling an activity because one student was dysregulated, or using peer pressure to enforce compliance—you’re not alone. These practices are still common in Canadian classrooms. But they cause real and…
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The children were made to punish the children
In Canada’s residential schools, older children were instructed to punish the younger ones—to hit them, isolate them, report them for infractions defined by an institution that sought to erase who they were. The adults gave the orders. The children were conscripted to carry them out. This was not incidental. It was structural. It was framed…
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The long shadow: A history of punishment in Canadian schools
Public education in Canada is often conceptualised as a progressive force—an equaliser, a promise of inclusion. But beneath the surface of this narrative lies a long, often unbroken history of exclusion, coercion, and punishment. Canadian schools have long been sites of control, where discipline was not merely corrective, but foundational to how institutions understood their…
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Sir Richard McBride Annex (SD39): a neurodiversity-informed policy critique
Sir Richard McBride Annex’s Code of Conduct, reviewed June 19, 2024, commits to fostering a “safe and inclusive place for all,” aligning with the VSB District Code (AP 350). It affirms the BC Human Rights Code, outlines community-wide expectations, and recognizes that “special considerations may apply to students with special/diverse needs” when they “are unable to comply… due to having…
