Why Are the Designations Disappearing?

I haven't been able to write for awhile, because I've been buried with back-to-school after-the-strike rebuild and recovery efforts. That is, I've been trying to teach. It hasn't been very pleasant. Well, the teaching part has, because I love the kids, I love teaching, and our new bunch of students is just delightful. I'm really thrilled with this year's batch of Resource Grade Tens. That aside, the rest of it...the part where I'm not teaching... has been pretty demoralizing. In fact, going back to school in general, has been pretty demoralizing. Morale is extremely low. We went on strike for the kids, we held the line to make things better for the kids, we gave up a fair whack of money for the kids, and yet, things are worse. Not just the same. Worse.

One of my jobs is to handle the paperwork for all of the Category D designations. Category D, is "Chronic Health". The whole point of the designations, is to identify students who require extra assistance in order to be successful in school. They might need some specialized equipment. They might need EA time. Maybe they need a scribe, or a specialised type of teaching, or maybe they just need to have some learning support class time. Depending upon why they have specialised needs, they are assigned a different category. Category A, for example, is called, "Dependent Handicapped." Category Q is for kids who are "Learning Disabled". Category H is for students with "Severe Behaviour Disorders/Severe Mental Illness".

These categories are attached to money. In addition to the paltry sum provided by the education ministry in this province to educate children, kids with a category may or may not bring in extra money to the school, to finance providing for their needs. The amount for the most severely affected children, those who are either Dependent Handicapped or both Deaf and Blind, roughly equals what it costs to pay for a single EA. Sounds reasonable, right?

Except that since we've been back, it looks to me like more and more kids are having their designations either downgraded, or removed. And that means, there is no funding for their special needs anymore.
I can't prove this; it may just be where I work, though other teachers I talk with say they notice the same thing. And it's pretty disturbing.

For example, I know of one situation in the province, I won't say where, in which a student with chronic pain and a history of seizures has lost their Chronic Health designation. This student continues to be affected by the damage caused by the seizures, and by the pain that won't allow sitting down for more than a few minutes, yet that student is no longer identified as one with these special needs. This kind of thing isn't new; it's been creeping up for awhile. There are students losing their 'Dependent Handicapped' designation on the basis that they can feed themselves, because they were seen eating a candy bar. The fact that such a student continues to require daily toileting, is unable to stand, walk, dress himself, lift a spoon to his mouth, open a book or write independently, is not enough. Being able to get a candy bar into one's mouth is apparently a criterion which establishes that you are not Dependent Handicapped.

These are a couple of examples of what is happening in schools right now. Funding has become so tight that children with obvious needs are having their support funds either reduced or removed altogether. There are countless examples of children with learning disabilities recognized by qualified psychologists, who are not considered to have learning disabilities by the BC Ministry of Education. This no longer matters, of course, because the Ministry removed all funding for students with LD anyway, but back when specialists were still funded for these kids, the qualifying features became narrower and narrower.

Another thing I'm noticing is enlarged classes. There is a class I know of, right now, with twenty five teenagers across three grades enrolled, and all of them are either identified as having special needs, or they should be. Not one is a typical learner. How can I be sure? Because the class is a learning support class. You can only enroll if the School Based Team identifies you as having some sort of high need. And yet, somewhere, somebody thinks it is reasonable to have twenty five high needs, generally emotionally fragile, challenged and often acting out teens in a single class, where they are supposed to receive extra help.

Why? Why does there seem to be a trend towards decategorization? Why would anyone form a class like the one described above? Aside from the obvious predilection of our current provincial government for under resourcing public schooling in their push to privatize all the things, why are we seeing this happen?

Given that the Ministry of Ed is very interested in removal of categories altogether, it seems likely that we will be seeing fewer and fewer children identified as having special needs, and therefore as requiring additional funding. While the Ministry would have you believe that this is to facilitate individualised learning for every child, I do not think there is any evidence to suggest that BC's Ministry of Education has either the will or the capacity to undertake such a move. Instead, I think the reasoning is simple: Undesignated children cannot be counted. Nobody can say, with ease, that there are "ten special needs children" in a given class. Once they are not identified, these children will be statistically invisible. And we all know what happens to people who don't statistically exist.

It certainly won't be an increase in services.

Citizens, We Need You

Well, here we are, with a deal to vote on. We're climbing up out of the trenches, dusting ourselves off, holding our noses against the stench of manipulation, and voting. We'll vote yes, but it won't be an overwhelming yes.

Throughout all of this, I've been tremendously optimistic. I'm an idealist - always have been - and I believe in the moral fight. The courageous stand. The battle for what is right and good. And this: this has been that fight. The question, of course, is, "Did we win?"

We didn't lose. We didn't see our union destroyed or our voices silenced. We didn't see our membership split and angry. We didn't get yet another series of zeroes in wage increases. We didn't have to picket into October. We didn't lose our homes or starve. And I guess that's good. None of those are things I wanted to see happen, and they didn't, so I guess that's good.

Why, then, I'm asking myself, do I feel so demoralized? I'm asking myself this, because when many were feeling discouraged, I was not, and now, here I am. Why do I feel like a beloved pet just died? And I think, slowly, I'm beginning to understand the answer.

The answer is, I was fighting for something that was bigger than this battle. I was fighting for children, democracy, and fairness. I was fighting against vilification, lies and poverty. I might as well have been fighting for world peace, and frankly, I'd've liked to have seen that, too. But this was a little fight, in a little province in a big country, in a big world, and I was never going to win world peace. I was never going to get what I was fighting for - not today, not tomorrow, and probably not in my lifetime. I wanted solutions. I wanted all of the pieces to be fitted together and neatly edged. I wanted to know I had achieved what I set out to achieve, and it turns out, that was never possible.

On Monday, or whenever I'm told to do so, I will go back to school and resume my role as a good little soldier in the war against ignorance. I'll bring 'my' kids into class, and I'll welcome them, and I'll hear their stories of summer and travel, and I'll care about them, and together we'll learn and work and do and at the end of the year we'll have an exciting three day field trip, just the way we always do. At the end of the year, they won't have had more space, smaller classes, or better equipment. They won't have had greater access to counselling or better support systems. They won't, in fact, notice any difference between the school they left, and the one to which they return. Down here on the ground, nothing much will change. And I was fighting for change, because change is desperately needed. So it should be no surprise, that I'm feeling sad.

But one thing is new. The difference, now, is that we are talking about it. Parents know about it. Grandparents know about it. People in the streets and offices and shops know about it. They know, now, that we have been propping up a faltering system for years. They know that we have collectively purchased millions of dollars of the equipment and materials that they see on the school shelves. They know that children can't get timely assessments, and can't get counselling, and aren't being provided EA time or technology that they urgently need. People know about it, and the conspiracy of silence is over. For that, I truly am, deeply grateful.

So here's the thing: don't stop listening. Please, please, please, don't forget. The outpouring of support from so very many people has been unprecedented, and amazing. And I am begging you, keep hearing, keep pushing, and keep helping, because what has happened here, has not solved the problem. It won't even change the face of the problem, unless the mothers, fathers, grandparents, business people and citizens continue to stand with us and help us to effect change.

We could, and we did, hold the line. But we cannot hold up the system. Not any more, not without help. We need the village to step in, and together, we will hold each other. Citizens, you are needed. Each and every one of you is needed, to give the children a change they will notice. Please stand with us, and keep hearing us, and together we will raise our standards and our children.

Together we will raise the bar.

Today and Tomorrow: Healing and Teaching

I had a lot of fun today. After some social activism, and attending a meeting of my local's Executive Committee, I got wind of a Liberal fundraiser over at a winery in Abbotsford. It turned out that members of some percentage a good deal smaller than my own (the 1%? 5%?) were paying $300 a plate to spend some dinner time with our Minister of Finance, Mike de Jong. A bunch of my colleagues and I from lower mainland and Fraser valley locals decided to go visit all of these wealthy BC Liberals and give them the opportunity to see what kind of people teachers are, up close and personal.

When we arrived, we found four security guards carefully watching and ensuring that the BMWs and Mercedes and sports cars were guided to their appropriate place on the spacious winery grounds. We assembled ourselves on the shoulder of the road outside, and began waving at the cars going by. Careful to avoid the winery property, and quick to move away from the bike path when needed, we set about donning picket signs, chatting, and greeting everyone we saw. I was in a particularly cheerful mood, and soon all of us were laughing and enjoying ourselves. Make no mistake, we were and are, deadly serious about our desire for a just, compassionate settlement to this strike; one that includes fair treatment for teachers and a strong, working, public school system for children. But sometimes, when in increasingly dire straits, people will show that delightful tendency to stare down their fears and wither them with laughter. Tonight was such a night.

As cars drove past, and we waved, and received more and more honks, thumbs up, and returned waves, our ebullience grew. Our smiles became wider and our enthusiasm, greater. Motorists responded. In conservative Abbotsford, many of the waves were tentative, but we soon noticed that people were smiling and enjoying our mood along with us. Sure, we had the occasional person stare straight ahead, but increasingly our fun became contagious.

We had a lot of fun!

Naturally, some repartee developed. We began to talk about how much we miss teaching, and to wonder how 'our' kids were doing. Before long, we were joking about being, 'teaching addicts', and we started begging some of the cars driving by to stop so that we could get a 'fix' of teaching! The drivers, of course, couldn't hear us, but they smiled and waved and honked, just the same. Pretty soon we were begging each other to let us teach everyone we saw. We took real joy in thinking about the fun, the good times, and the fulfillment we so often experience when in a room full of other people's children.

At one point, the lady from the driveway across the road came out to put out her trash. She indicated that she had questions, so I went over to chat with her. Her first remark was, "I thought teachers were just 9-3?" She wasn't accusing, just bemused. I explained that we wanted to help the current government understand the importance of the issues of under funding in the public education system, and that, as with our jobs, we were more than happy to take on tasks outside of school hours. She was supportive and receptive, so we chatted a bit longer, and then I rejoined my colleagues.

After awhile, the participants in the fancy dinner began to leave. Happily, even joyously, we waved, wished them a lovely evening, and exhorted them to drive safely. With only two exceptions, they waved and grinned as they drove away. One nattily dressed gentleman responded, when I remarked that I hoped he'd had a nice dinner, "I didn't eat anything at all!" "Oh!" I said, "They're starving you, too?" That brought quite a lot of hilarity from my companions. And all the while, there were cheerful background pleas to, "Please, let us teach! We just want to teach!"

Here I am, begging to teach!

As the day faded and twilight closed in, we began to discuss our departure, although Mr. de Jong had yet to make an appearance. We thought that he might be using a different exit, to avoid our rabble rousing. A couple of the security guards began to chat with us, and their smiles let us know that they were grateful for our peaceful, good natured approach. One even expressed his worry that as it got dark, we might be at risk of being hit by the quite speedy traffic. Before we left, though, Mr. de Jong and his blue Miata convertible made their appearance. The car top was up, but we were hard to miss, and even he smiled and waved at us. Only when he drove by, did we become political, calling out politely but pointedly, "Children need food!" "Fund the schools!" and "Arbitration!" The moment was fleeting, as he never slowed his car, and once he was gone, we said our goodbyes. There were hugs, and emails exchanged, and talk of a pub night some time when we can afford it, and we went our various ways.

It wasn't a huge demonstration; there were no speeches, no performers, clever posters or passionate marches. It was, however, a really lovely experience, and it taught everyone something. The people we waved and smiled at, began to see us as the ordinary citizens we are, instead of the selfish, greedy, demons this government would have them believe. The wealthy BCLiberal supporters, disarmed by our smiles, began to make eye contact, and to wave. No longer was it possible, for most of them, to maintain the fiction of, 'us' and 'them'. For those of us out there, from four thirty to eight, waving and laughing on a brisk September evening, it was a chance to live the profound truth of the words of the amazing Jack Layton:

"My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world."

We didn't change the world tonight. We were just a small band of lively, passionate teachers who want, more than anything, to return to teaching in schools with the staff and resources to allow us to do our jobs well. We didn't change the world, but we did make a difference. For a few hours, we met disdain with joy, and we lived the determination that we have learned every day in our classrooms. That is the patient persistence that makes us teachers, and that is the passion for life that makes us love children.

That is why we cannot be crushed. We are teachers, and there is no profession more loving, hopeful and optimistic. Today, we hold the line to heal public education. And tomorrow, or next week, or next month; then, we will teach.

Talk at Tricities Youth Rally

Here is what I had to say on September 7th at the Tricities Youth Rally in Coquitlam. I was asked to provide information and perspective on some of the impacts of cuts to education in British Columbia. I'm not very slick with Blogger yet, so please excuse the poor formatting until I work out how to get it right.

The beginning of the talk was cut off, so I'll just let you know that I began by saying that my purple hair is in honour of my status as an endangered species: a British Columbia Special Education Teacher.

The Terrible Trajectory of the Undesignated BC Child

There was an article published in the Vancouver Sun, detailing the odyssey of BC mother and teacher Lori Drysdale's search for services for her son with Non Verbal Learning Disabilities. The article was largely accurate, but there is a serious discussion underlying Lori's story, which needs to be addressed.

Minister Fassbender has decided that because about 10% of all BC students were identified as having special needs last year, there are 10% of students in BC schools who have special needs. This is like saying, "because I see only white cars parked on my street, all cars are white." In fact, the number of special needs students in our schools is a great deal higher than 10%, and I will tell you why.

First, waiting lists to get formally identified are very long. In one inner city school I worked at, we accessed about three to five assessments per year. By the end of September, the children on the, 'urgent' list, numbered about twenty five. As a result, at best, in any given year, one fifth of students who urgently needed assessment would receive it. Many a student languished on these lists throughout their elementary school career, and some never received assessment. Assessment is necessary for a child to be, 'identified' or 'designated', and thereby, funded. So children who had urgent need for funding, did not even get diagnosed, never mind provided the services they deserved.

Second, because teachers know about this, they realize that only children with the most dire needs will be assessed. There is no point at all, in putting a child on the assessment list if his need is 'only' severe. He won't receive assessment. The teacher, therefore, will not receive the information about how his brain works, that would facilitate her tailoring her instruction to his needs. The parent will not be told what, exactly, is making things hard for his child. And the child himself, will often believe that his problem is simply that he is, 'stupid', a notion regularly reinforced by his peers.

The teachers, of course, will move heaven and earth to help the child anyway. But without funding, without Educational Assistants and with massive classes, the unidentified child will often fall into the abyss of not really understanding, trying to cope, and becoming increasingly frustrated and angry. Imagine, if you were forced to sit in a PhD level biophysics class, or a PhD level neuropsychology seminar. You would be told to listen, contribute, read the relevant material and speak and write intelligently about what you read and heard. How would you respond? The lesson lasts for five hours, with a break for lunch. Would you be able to pay close attention, and meet the standards of the class? Most people wouldn't. And most people would quit, act out, or do something else to keep themselves busy. Which is exactly what happens to the unfunded LD child....day, after day, after day, after day......

Eventually, of course, this makes him angry. Me, I'd've been angry within about half an hour, but many LD children in this situation will go on for years without throwing bricks through the plate glass. People with Learning Disabilities are some of the bravest and strongest people I know. However, eventually, they will flip their gourds, and rightly so. When this happens, they finally get their diagnosis. But their diagnosis is not for LD, it's for.....Behaviour/Mental illness.

Behaviour and Mental Illness are inextricably linked as single categories, according to the BC Ministry of Education. There is Category R, Mild to Moderate Behaviour/Mental Illness. That's how you are assigned if you are acting out but you don't have two agencies beyond the school, involved in your care. Only if you can get into enough trouble to have two (also profoundly underfunded and overworked) agencies involved, do you rate Category H, Severe Behaviour/Mental Illness. Category R isn't funded. Category H, gets you the lowest available funding.

Of course, if you are no longer attending school, which by now is often the case, you won't get any help at all, because your underlying problem, a Learning Disability, has never been acknowledged. All you know at this point, is that you are widely viewed as stupid and lazy. You are well aware that you can't keep up in school, so you don't go. It really, really hurts to be seen as stupid, so you need to find a way to get rid of the constant, gnawing, emotional pain. You also need somebody, anybody, to accept and value you. So you fall in with other disenfranchised kids, who offer you ways to numb your pain: drugs, alcohol, cutting, eating disorders...anything to give you a sense that you are in control of your life. If you have the misfortune to become addicted, you sometimes end up finding a way to finance your addiction that is not entirely legal. When you get caught at these activities, you end up in my husband's prison school class. He tells me that essentially all of his students are struggling with one learning impairment or another, most have addictions, and many have English as a Second Language.

So Lori Drysdale, who as a teacher, likely knew about this trajectory our Government has chosen for our children with Learning Disabilities, decided to go the private school route. So did I, with my daughter who has the same diagnosis. But Lori gave up her house to make that happen. I gave up an extremely good job to move, to make that happen. For Lori, it has helped her son, but for my child, it did not. I will talk about why in another blog. Suffice it to say, Private school may help some, but it most definitely is not the answer for all, or even most children with learning disabilities.

Mr. Fassbender, who is lamentably unfamiliar with the issues in his Education Portfolio, and woefully uneducated in how to assess the literature on the topic, needs to understand that 10% doesn't begin to touch the students who need special educational intervention. What is sad, is that there are reasonable ways to address these needs, and we've known about many of them for my entire thirty five year career as a special educator, but until people like Mr. Fassbender decide to ask people who know what they're doing, without a funding agenda, the conversation about genuinely positive educational reform will never happen. So meanwhile, we fight our contract battles to try to assuage the terrible, terrible needs that, daily, we see unmet.

The true miracle of learning disabilities, is the astonishing number of children who do make it through to become functional citizens. They cope, and some thrive, but the wounds create scars that never disappear. And if you really need a financial reason to care about this, consider that for every dollar spent on providing a good education, seven to eight are saved in corrections costs.

Suicide, Kids and Depression: What is happening in BC schools?

So I haven't posted about depression, or suicide, or the death of Robin Williams, because everyone else is, and I really, really hate being where everyone else is. When I was in kindergarten and the teacher was handing around Hallowe'en construction paper, we could choose black or orange. Everyone was choosing orange, and although I preferred orange, I chose black, because, hell if I was going to be the same as everyone else.

That said, in my life, I have lost two family members to suicide, and it's profoundly painful. At least, it was for me. My little sister, seven years younger, whom I, to a significant degree, parented, drove into the Seymour Test Forest on August 15th, 1998, and gassed herself to death. She had bipolar disorder and it wasn't responding to meds and she'd had enough. Then, just three months ago, the father of my children, with whom I was half of a couple for seventeen years, shot himself to death - presumably because of the challenges he faced as a person with a severe disability and intractable pain.

So Robin Williams' death hit me rather hard, and I keep thinking of how it must have been to be him, in those last moments, as he followed through and kicked the chair, with the noose around his neck.

And of course, because I'm a teacher, and a special ed teacher at that, and because I see teens with serious depressive disorders every single day at work, my mind spins and cycles back to their plight, and the plight of people all over the province with mental illnesses, and the results of the failure to support these people, and the destruction left in the path of the government that has declared them expendable nonentities.

Oh, people....oh parents...employers...politicians...when will we ever achieve the collective consciousness required to understand that our children need us?! There are so, so many children out there, and they are hurting so badly, some of them. So very many.

There are supposed to be mental health services. There are supposed to be social work services. There should be services in the Children's Hospital. There should be support for struggling parents. Victims of violent crime should receive both emotional and financial support. That's the British Columbia I once knew. But it's not the BC we live in today.

I have a child who sustained the unthinkable: an abduction by a stranger, complete with handcuffs, knife, blindfold, and sexual assault. She was thirteen, and hadn't hit puberty. Her assault happened in BC, but I lived in the Yukon at the time, and when the entire mental health department of the Yukon quit, I left town and a damned good job to come to BC, where I had family for support, and where I had experienced a compassionate public health system.

Ironically, even though Victim Services in the Yukon had called their counterparts here to arrange paperwork and so forth, I arrived in the office in Surrey the day after Gordon Campbell's government axed the financial support for victims of violent crimes for 'pain and suffering'. My desperately distressed child could only claim time lost for work, which, as a 13 year old, she didn't have. She could also claim losses out of pocket, which amounted to about $50 for clothes that she threw in the dumpster after she got home. I, who was out a good seventy five grand or so, could claim nothing to help my child, and was on my own to find her the help she needed.There was nothing for my child for counselling, for schooling, or for anything resembling rehabilitative support. So I lived in my dearest friend's driveway, in my parents' motorhome, and I microparented for the next six months. My friends will never know how much I love them for that.

When school resumed in the fall, she was able to attend grade ten. But when I went to what I thought was a meeting to arrange her Individual Education Plan (IEP), I was told that despite PTSD, an identified learning disability, current grief (her dad was now in hospital following a life threatening car accident) and other fallout, she did not qualify as special needs.

Think about that. This is a child with fallout from extreme trauma due to abduction. A child with a pre-existing learning disability. A child expressing serious emotional and behavioural pain. A child from a single parent home, with a potentially terminally ill father and a struggling, then unemployed mother. And she did not qualify for assistance.

That was at the very beginning of the cuts.

Depression among teens, even without their having been abducted and raped at knifepoint, is a very, very severe and life threatening illness. In my small town, a teen died of depression just last year. Anyone reading this will have heard of Amanda Todd. Children die all the time because they think there is no hope for their future. And there are people who know how to help, and who want to help, right there, in their schools. Trained people, who care, and who have the skills to keep them alive. But they cannot help, because in my school, which is typical, there are 500 kids for every counsellor. Five hundred. Kids. Per counsellor.

My child was sort of lucky. She had a parent with the training, experience, passion, and emotional strength (just barely) to get her out of town, into counselling, and advocate like a lunatic until her needs were met. Not every child is lucky enough to have a parent with a masters in special ed, a whole lot of contacts, and a personality of relentless focus. Some children are immigrants whose parents have no English. Some are in poverty. Some have parents with addiction and mental health issues of their own.

How many of the children who aren't supported because we are running a school and societal system driven by the bottom line, could have been Robin Williams? Ernest Hemmingway? Nelson Mandela? To how many children of great promise, and great pathos, must we bid adieu, because we couldn't afford them?

That's what I want to know. That's what I want my elected officials to address. That's the pain that needs to be heard.

How many more children's lives do we name, 'disposable,' because we can't afford to help?

About Lunch and Knitting

A little while back, I taught in an inner city elementary school in the Lower Mainland. Kids from that school came from all over the world, and there were 54 first languages represented by the 350 or so students in the building. Think about that for a sec - fifty four different languages! And these children were from five to twelve years old.

Many of the children came from cultures dramatically different from this one. Many spoke little or no English. Almost all were living at, or below, the poverty line. The vast majority were from visible minorities, and because I'm a special ed teacher, the ones I taught had disabilities.

In addition to being a teacher, I'm a die-hard craftsperson. I relax at my spinning wheel, weaving loom or sewing machine. When I watch a video, I can't be without something in my hands, so I knit. I knit a LOT! Sometimes I knit while my husband drives the car. So it was only natural that I would start a knitting club at school.

At first, only the girls came. We didn't have any money at this school, because there were a great many urgent needs for any that came our way, so I put out the word on the internet that we needed yarn and needle donations. Pretty soon we had boxes of yarn, and all in bright colours. The kids were thrilled!

I'm a big believer that everyone grows and gains confidence by doing something for others, so I decided that the children would learn to make scarves for people without homes. I explained to them that the homeless people would surely need help to stay warm in the cold, wet, lower mainland winter. I would give them the yarn and teach them to knit, and their first project would be a scarf to help someone who was cold. After that, they could have all the yarn they wanted for their personal use, to knit anything they were able to produce. At the end of the school year, we would go to a nearby park for World Wide Knit In Public Day. And so the children began to knit.

Well, those kids knit, and knit, and knit. It started with a few little girls, knitting industriously away, their scarves becoming more skillful with each row. The number grew, and pretty soon even the littlest children were asking to knit. Some were too young or ill coordinated to really master the skill, so I got a set of knitting looms, and more scarves were started. We weren't excessively particular about the odd added or dropped stitch, so some of those early scarves were quite....artistic! It began to get a bit tricky for me to walk down the hall, because even though knitting club day was announced on the loudspeaker, the children would ask and sometimes beg to have my room opened so they could knit. Because I'm a special ed teacher, I and my fellow specialist were often called to deal with emergencies at lunch: somebody had clobbered the autistic child on the playground, or the child with Oppositional Defiant Disorder had thrown a punch at the child with anxiety disorder. Maybe someone had had a seizure, or needed asthma medication, or had to be restrained because they were in a destructive, dangerous rage. When these things happened on knitting day, the disappointment was so palpable that I soon lined up colleagues to supervise, even if they couldn't knit. Before long, I was teaching some of the adults to knit as well.

Then one day, a boy of about nine strolled in, and stood watching, shyly, until one of the girls spotted him. Both of the children spoke Cantonese, and the words that flew back and forth were incomprehensible to me, but clearly a blistering exchange was underway. In broken English, the boy explained that the girl had said that boys may not knit; only girls could knit.

Very gently, I said, "Oh, no, that's not true! Many men knit. In fact, men actually invented knitting, far away in a country in the middle East." Well! That had everyone's attention. Soon we were talking about the origins of knitting, probably in in the Arab world, and the little boy picked up some needles and yarn. By the time the school year ended, the club was about half and half, girls and boys. And we did, indeed, go for our year end public knit picnic.

The wonderful thing about those lunch hours, was that we bonded. Children of many different backgrounds, colours, languages, shapes, sizes and ages, all sat down to learn, to do something for someone else, and to chat. We talked about so many things in that group, and they practised their English, and they described their homelands, and they learned and they grew. At the end of the year, we had two big boxes of scarves to give to the homeless. When a colleague took them to the charity that would be distributing them, the recipients were thrilled! They knew that a child had knit each scarf, and that the children cared about them. It might have been my imagination, but it seemed to me that those kids stood a little taller, and sat a little straighter, knowing they'd made a contribution to someone; knowing that they were not only the recipients of generosity, but benefactors, as well.

On my lunch hours in that school, we all taught each other things that weren't on any curriculum. I loved every minute of it. 

But when I left that school, the cuts had finally become  so severe that those lunchtime crises took over. These days I work through all of my lunch hours, either on the paperwork required by the Ministry of Education to 'designate' special needs students, in the hopes of getting some funding for them, or on meetings with colleagues and parents to try to find services for those already designated. I would love to start up another knitting club, but there really is no more time.

Kids really do matter, and this teacher really does care.