Goalpost shifting
A tactic where expectations for support are changed mid-process, invalidating previous work and requiring parents to start over. Used to delay action or justify inaction.
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The ABCs of regressive punishment
Discipline in schools is rarely neutral. For neurodivergent students, it often takes the form of quiet harm—masked as structure, delivered as shame. From exclusion and forced apologies to behaviour charts and the denial of recess, regressive punishment practices remain embedded in our classrooms. They don’t teach accountability. They teach fear, isolation, and the high cost…
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The history of collective punishment
Collective punishment emerged in a time when people were not understood as individuals, but as extensions of the family, the clan, the village. Responsibility was held in common. Honour was shared. So was shame. In such systems, if one person broke a social norm or committed a crime, the entire group was held accountable. Not…
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Collective punishment: a focal point of injustice
Collective punishment, the practice of disciplining a whole group for the misdeeds of one or a few, is widely recognised as unjust and counterproductive. Children know it’s wrong Even children intuitively grasp its unfairness. In one famous case, an 11-year-old student in the UK bluntly told her teacher that “collective punishment… is not fair on the…
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Real leaders lead by example
In May 2025, the Vancouver School Board (VSB) quietly enacted wage cuts that stripped contracted workers—specifically bus drivers and special education attendants—of their living wage top-ups. At the same time, VSB senior leadership quietly accepted significant raises. This decision will result in a 25% wage reduction, with drivers earning $23/hour and attendants only $20/hour [CTV…
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Lawyers over learning: how much is VSB paying Harris & Co
As a parent of two children with learning challenges, I found myself deep in the Vancouver School Board’s appeals process. Early on, I heard officials say our children would be supported with “inclusive” classroom resources. In reality, every step felt like an uphill battle. For example, during our Level 1 appeal meeting the board’s own summary…
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Every year we start over
We arrive at the school gates each September with anxiety rising in my chest, knowing that the forms, reports, and professional recommendations assembled over years have already demonstrated what is required for my child’s success; and yet, year after year, he steps across the threshold into an environment that has failed to prepare for him.…
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Support is a bridge
What happens when schools pretend the bridge is whole. The appearance of help “She gets check-ins from the area counsellor once a week.”“We’ve made sure the classroom teacher is aware of her IEP.”“We’re doing everything we can within the current resources.” These are the phrases they recite—softly, professionally, as though reassurance were a substitute for…
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A perspective taking primer for educators
Perspective taking is the disciplined art of stepping outside one’s own cognitive scaffolding and entering, as fully as possible, into the sensorium of another person. It is not sympathy, which radiates concern from a safe emotional distance, nor is it projection, which mistakes one’s own feelings for universal truth. Instead, it is an intentional, methodical…
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When autistic girls fawn and schools look away
They told her to be polite while she was being harmed. Now they call her difficult for saying no. Jeannie never screamed—never yelled or stormed out or flipped a desk or tore paper into confetti; instead, she froze, and in that freezing, she vanished from their view. No one interrupted the boy when he joked…
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What families learn from the inside of exclusion
We weren’t trained for this. We were not briefed, warned, or prepared. We entered the public school system, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, like most parents do—with trust, with hope, and with a belief, however weathered, in the promise that schools would try to do right by our children. What we didn’t understand was how quickly that…
