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There is a cost to composure that institutions never count. When schools reward mothers for staying calm in the face of harm, they turn grace into a gatekeeping tool and…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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In 1993, educator Martha Johnson conducted a simple but telling experiment. During a professional development session for principals and vice-principals in southern Alberta, she handed out a fictional case study:…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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“If no one listens, go to the bathroom and call me. I will always come.” This isn’t just parenting. It’s crisis management. When schools become unsafe—when accommodations are denied, when…
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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…
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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.
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Too many school-based approaches still centre on control: eye contact, quiet hands, forced compliance, and the suppression of stimming, protest, or joy. But Autistic advocates have been clear: these methods…
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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…
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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…
News
Updates on policy shifts, school board decisions, and systemic advocacy related to collective punishment and inclusion in BC schools. Follow key developments affecting neurodivergent students, disability rights, and education reform across districts and provinces.
Featured News
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The reason column in my son’s permanent record is mostly blank. When a reason survives, it’s ParentGuardianExcuse.
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Families and teachers are describing the same failure from two positions inside it. The system survives by keeping them from recognising each other.
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The Canary Collective went upstream this week, and the gloves came off. In “Delay, Distract, and Deny”, Wren takes the old public-health parable about pulling bodies from a river and turns…