Institutional Harm
When harm is built into policy and procedure—not an accident, but an outcome.
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Protecting children’s dignity and safety in a broken system
We should be able to expect a system where no child sits in wet clothes all day, and no child is changed alone by a single staff member behind closed doors. These are basic, non-negotiable standards for dignity and safety, not optional aspirations. While we can all acknowledge that the system is under immense strain,…
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Coerced sibling care in public school inclusion
The school saw twins and imagined comfort. What they created instead was coerced care—using my daughter’s body to regulate her brother without consent, without safety, and without repair.
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When fairness fractures: A response to “Collective Punishment in Schools” by Serene Leeyc
A recent article by Serene Leeyc, titled Collective Punishment in Schools: Fairness or Fostering Division?, offers a welcome and accessible overview of collective punishment in school settings—a practice that, while common, remains shockingly under-examined in public discourse. The piece attempts to understand the teacher’s dilemma, surveys common classroom scenarios, and suggests positive alternatives like restorative justice…
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Not nothing: on being a parent with feelings in a system that asks for self-erasure
I have spent years trying not to take up space. Years trying not to be “one of those parents”—too loud, too emotional, too self-involved. I have been careful with my tone, careful with my words, careful not to name the hurt when my child was excluded, neglected, or harmed. I told myself: focus on the…
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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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The slow boil: delayed support and collective punishment
I think a lot about lobsters, wrestled from the sea and placed in cold water that slowly heats—do they wonder if it’s getting hot in there? How do they decide where the line is and begin to panic? Is it a thought or pure instinct? In kindergarten, my son arrived with a history of trauma…
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On Stuart Shanker’s Self-Reg
I remember the feeling—desperate, hollowed out, shaking in that way that only comes when the world around you is collapsing and everyone keeps handing you checklists.
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Few of us remain our best selves in a room starved of air
If you are a parent of a neurodivergent child, you can recite the script before the phone even buzzes. “[Child] had a very good day and really showed leadership with the younger kids” Pause. “But in the afternoon [Child] had some unexpected behaviour. [Child] is waiting at the office.” Praise is meant to help us feel that…
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The days my children cried, and I told them it would be okay
When your trust has already been broken—by people who were supposed to care for you, protect you, believe you—every new betrayal lands like confirmation. I didn’t come to school meetings as a blank slate. I came with a trauma history. So when they dismissed my child’s needs, ignored the signs, or punished their distress, it…
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No school at all is better than what he endured
No school at all is better than what he endured. That’s the truth I need to say out loud.The harm was not abstract. It was daily, specific, institutional. The classroom was a place where his distress was normalised.Where his needs were pathologised, and his presence was treated as a problem to be managed.He was punished…
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The problem with the appeals process
When something goes wrong at school—when a child is excluded, harmed, or unsupported—families are told to “work it out with the school first.” That sounds reasonable on paper. But in practice, it’s vague, unstructured, and often retraumatising. I’ve gone through the Vancouver School Board (VSB) appeals process more times that I’d wish upon anyone. Here’s…
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A glossary of conditional care
This is a field guide—a survival text for parents who’ve sat through too many meetings where care was promised, repackaged, and quietly withdrawn. These aren’t just phrases. They’re policies. They’re structural violence written in the language of care. They mark the edges of institutional comfort—the places where support ends, and spin begins. They’re the terms…
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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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How PE class taught us to disappear, comply, and endure
There are classrooms where harm appears visible—where a raised voice or a revoked privilege tells a clear story, where a child’s tears correspond to a policy, a decision, a teacher’s name—yet physical education was a different kind of room. PE held harm in soft cotton and shouted praise. It offered pain disguised as character. It…
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Rot at the root: Why POPARD must be dismantled from the top down
When I first objected to the strategies POPARD proposed, I tried—truly—to assume good intent: that if I just gave them the right information, the clearest language, the most generous interpretation of their mandate, they would course-correct and stop pushing reward charts onto an already-traumatised child. I wrote careful emails, cited the psychologist’s diagnosis, offered specific…
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He doesn’t go from zero to sixty
“He’s not a car,” I said, exasperated, after someone described Robin as going from zero to sixty. The withering look I received in return was pure disgust—as though I had interrupted a sacred adult ritual, as though I may as well have had a huge boil in the middle of my forehead, oozing pus. But…
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Reconciliation demands that we put collective punishment aside
Collective punishment in residential schools did more than punish children—it shattered the bonds between parents and children. For many parents who survived, the fear, shame, and trauma they endured complicated their ability to nurture trust in their own parenting. Emotional disconnection and disrupted parenting Adults who attended residential schools often struggle to form secure attachments…
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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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The space between my brain and the page
My parents never sent me to kindergarten, so when I started first grade, it was a bit mysterious to me. I had been living on the side of a mountain, chasing garter snakes, and picking wild strawberries. While the class attempted to learn the alphabet, my parents had already been reading chapter books to me…
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The stories we carry: how schoolyard legends and classroom fear shape us
When I was in grade three, I attended an alternative school that felt like a sun-dappled meadow. We painted. We played outside. We had a math teacher who made learning feel like a game, not a test. There was room to breathe. I remember it as freedom. Then, in grade four, everything changed. My new…
