Punitive culture
An institutional mindset that treats mistakes, distress, or difference as problems to punish rather than needs to understand and support.
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Neurodiversity-affirming IEP goals that build accountability and reduce burnout
When classrooms become overwhelmed, the strain doesn’t just fall on adults—it radiates through the entire learning environment. Neurodivergent students, in particular, often act as emotional barometers—canaries in the classroom. They feel the tension, chaos, and unpredictability more acutely than their peers. When co-regulation breaks down, or when expectations are unclear, these students are often the…
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Building safer schools through restorative justice and neurodiversity-informed practices
When children are dysregulated the response from educators is too often punitive. For neurodivergent students in particular, the cost of these responses is high: shame, trauma, social exclusion, and a deep erosion of trust. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Restorative justice offers a path forward. Not as a one-time circle or a…
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Barriers in the Vancouver school system: a parent’s perspective
For families raising neurodivergent children, navigating the school system can feel like surviving a labyrinth built to exhaust you. What should be a place of growth becomes a terrain of harm and dismissal. Beneath the polished language of equity and inclusion lies a set of invisible barricades—attitudinal, communicative, spatial, systemic, and technological—that quietly erode trust…
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Dr. A.R. Lord Elementary (VSB SD39): a neurodiversity-informed conduct critique
Dr. A.R. Lord Elementary’s Code of Conduct promises a “safe and supportive environment” on school grounds, on field trips, and during online learning. It embraces the Vancouver School Board’s district-wide conduct framework (AP 350), explicitly affirms the BC Human Rights Code, and applies the values of the school’s P.R.I.D.E. matrix—Purpose, Respect & Responsibility, Integrity, Diversity,…
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When they call distress the baseline
When a principal told me, “his baseline is dysregulated,” I realised how far we had drifted from care. This was not a description. It was a dismissal. Distress had become so familiar in the classroom that it was no longer seen as a signal—but as who he was. But my child is not born of…
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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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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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On moral injury and collective punishment
I did not want to file a complaint. I still don’t—not in the sense that people imagine, with anger or vengeance or a desire for punishment. What I wanted, what I asked for again and again with patience and clarity and increasing despair, was for the district to acknowledge that collective punishment is not just…
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School District 48 (Sea to Sky): a neurodiversity-informed policy critique
SD48 conduct decision flow (simplified) ⚠️ Critical analysis ✅ Strengths ❌ Gaps Neurodiversity lens: how the policy holds up Dimension Assessment Notes Disability justice ✅ Partial Equity and accommodation are mandated, but process and supports unspecified Neurodivergent alignment ⚠️ Weak No mention of executive function needs, sensory regulation, impulsivity, masking, or meltdown management Protection from…
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SJ Burnside Continuing Education (SD61): a neurodiversity‑informed policy critique
SJ Burnside Education Centre is an Alternative Education program serving youth aged 13–18 in a small-group, flexible setting. Its published Code of Conduct emphasises high standards of conduct, honesty, integrity, and cooperation during all school-sponsored activities. It explicitly promotes peaceful problem-solving, community engagement, and maintains a personal device policy (e.g., cell phones may be removed if abused). Student Code of Conduct SJ Burnside conduct decision…
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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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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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How regressive school policies limit inclusion
On the first day of school, it all looked so promising that it seemed almost too good to be true—the hallway bulletin boards overflowed with vibrant slogans about kindness, leadership, and community belonging, while the principal’s welcome message spoke in glowing terms about student voice, shared responsibility, and the promise of a positive school culture…
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How classroom values become ableist barriers
There is no such thing as a neutral rule. Every expectation reflects a theory of the child: what is normal, what is ideal, what is possible. And in most classrooms, these theories are wrong. I was given a list of behavioural values from my child’s class—Division 3. It included items like: stay in the group,…
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Profound loss amplifies calls for better training
I was in the car with my children when I first heard the story of Chase, the 15-year-old boy who was shot and killed by police, in Surrey. It’s deeply distressing to hear this, knowing full well that my kids are recalibrating their worldview. Kids can be shot. My children sometimes process auditory information more…
