Discipline
“Discipline” in schools is often framed as a way to teach responsibility—but in practice, it frequently functions as a system of control. From detentions and suspensions to exclusion from class activities and informal isolation, discipline disproportionately targets disabled, racialized, and neurodivergent students. It punishes distress, rewards compliance, and pushes children out of learning when they most need support.
This tag collects posts that examine how discipline is used in BC schools—formally and informally—as a response to behaviour that stems from unmet needs. It includes analysis of school and district conduct policies, Ministry guidance, suspension data, and human rights obligations. It also explores how classroom-level discipline (like loss of recess or group punishments) contributes to institutional harm.
We believe discipline, as it’s currently practiced, often prioritizes order over justice, and control over care. Real accountability doesn’t come from shame or exclusion—it comes from understanding what children are trying to communicate, and building systems that meet those needs without causing further harm.
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Flourishing as an ethical imperative
Like many of you, I caught CBC’s Ideas episode the other day, where philosopher Angie Hobbs spoke about the ancient Greek concept of eudaimonia—a term sometimes translated as happiness or welfare, but more richly understood as human flourishing. In a world flooded by crisis, it may seem indulgent or impractical to contemplate the good life,…
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Joy is rationed for disabled kids in school
When disabled children are excluded from field trips, they are being punished for their needs. These joyful, formative experiences become conditional—offered only to those who mask well, follow rules, and cause no disruption. In British Columbia, this widespread practice violates both law and conscience. Inclusion that ends when the bus departs is not inclusion at…
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What looks like a reward is often a repair
When a child returns from the office with gummy worms or a cartoon, it may look like a reward—but often, it is a repair. In a system built on scarcity, the smallest gesture of care is mistaken for indulgence. This essay reframes the narrative around “rewarding bad behaviour” to reveal what is actually happening beneath…
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Resist the urge: A student’s call to end collective punishment
Sometimes, the clearest truths are spoken by those closest to the harm, and in this compelling public speaking presentation, one student delivers a simple, resonant message with unmistakable clarity: resist the urge to punish everyone for one person’s mistake. Across just eight minutes, this speaker distils the emotional cost, logical failure, and enduring relational harm caused…
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Tell the Ministry: end collective punishment in BC schools
BCEdAccess recently reminded us that if families don’t speak up, the system assumes everything is fine. Writing letters to the Ministry of Education and Child Care is one way we can make our children’s experiences count—especially when those experiences involve exclusion, loss of support, or group-based discipline that punishes kids for behaviours linked to unmet…
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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.…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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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How it broke me open: the unbearable clarity of seeing things as they are
I know another reason the collective punishment incident was so devastating for me, like truly sent-me-spiralling kind of devastating, wasn’t just because of what was done to the kids (although yes, obviously that too), but because of what it broke in me, in how I’d been holding things together for so long with this scaffolding of…
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The cost of being careful: how punishment rewires the brain for fear, not learning
There are classrooms where children learn to think, and there are classrooms where children learn to be careful. Too often, we pretend they are the same. But when punishment—especially collective or public punishment—dominates the emotional tone of a learning space, what emerges is not intellectual risk-taking or social responsibility. What emerges is fear. Surveillance. 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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Columneetza Junior Secondary (SD27 Cariboo‑Chilcotin): a neurodiversity‑informed conduct critique
Columneetza Junior Secondary School 2024-2025 Code of Conduct affirms a mission of fostering respect, individual growth, and a sense of belonging within both school and community. It names safety, caring, and order as essential conditions for “purposeful learning.” The document outlines rights, responsibilities, and behavioural expectations for students and broader school actors, including parents and…
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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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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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$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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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…
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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…
