On Relationship Standards: Is Reliability a Necessity?

I'm on the autism spectrum, and I have kids on the spectrum and with ADHD and former partners with ADHD. I love them all to bits, but it can be tricky to navigate what behaviours should look like without an attainable standard of comparison. 

People who are neurodiverse are a minority in society. We perceive and think differently, so we will behave a little differently as well. It's a bit similar to being left-handed. We used to force people to write with the right hand which caused all sorts of problems. Now we're in a place where we accept this difference and have accommodations in place, like left-handed desks. But ND is different from left-handedness, of course, in that it affects our basic personality -- who we are, and some traits common to ND brains are overwhelmingly seen as undesirable.

Like being unreliable.

About twenty years ago, I had a partner who commonly got distracted from tasks. The only time he wasn't distractible was when he was engrossed (hyperfocusing) on something of specific interest to him. This is a common ADHD issue -- or a common way of being for a specific group of people. One day he offered to make dinner for me as I marked final exams on my front porch: fresh fish on the BBQ. I watched him leave for the market and then return. A few hours passed, and I went to get an ETA for dinner only to find the fish unwrapped and sitting on the counter, covered in flies because the back door had been left open. I found my partner under his car changing the oil. It had occurred to him on the ride home with the fish that he hadn't done an oil change in a while, and something in his brain told him it's vital to do it RIGHT NOW. Not after dinner, but immediately. When I asked him about his choice, he insisted that the problem is that I just don't understand cars. It's kind of hilarious, if we're allowed to laugh at idiosyncrasies, but also kind of annoying. It didn't always happen like this, but it did just often enough to make it hard to trust that he'd follow through. 

CAN'T OR WON'T

How do we best live with people who just can't do what they say they'll do? Part of the problem is what it means to us when people let us down. We associate caring and loving with remembering things: our likes and dislikes and what makes us feel cared for and special dates. I have a mind like a sieve, so every recipe card has a list of who likes and hates it, with many crossed out as their tastes change, and I have an ongoing list of potential gifts for people, which often end up returned anyway, so it's complicated. Our level of memory for detail is sometimes used as proof of our level of care, when it might be more of a fluke. Some people are just better at keeping those facts in mind, so they appear to be more invested in us when they might not care about us at all. It's not always clear evidence of affiliation, yet we can't let go of it as evidence.  

15% just for Showing Up!

Changes are coming for Ontario high school students if the newest legislation is passed. It was just tabled, and is already at 2nd reading, so I imagined it's going to be pushed through for a September implementation. (Here's the media briefing and legislation and from the horse's mouth.)

One of the most contentious changes is that instead of being evaluated on their ability to demonstrate their understanding of content and application of skills, 10-15% of student grades must come from participation and attendance. So, instead of the grade being a measure of how well each student is doing compared to a standard that's set by the province, it will be a manipulative tool to get more kids in the room. The alternative to using grades to get kids to stay in class is being interesting, helpful, and welcoming, but apparently those traits are harder to come by. 

More than being pedagogically unsound, grading attendance will disproportionately harm students who are dealing with a mental illness, fighting chronic illness, disabled, impoverished, and/or struggling in an unstable home. Lots of kids can't make it to class for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with their ability to do the work. Penalizing these kids just adds another burden to them instead of working with them to help them find their own best way to learn. 

Final exams during the exam period will also be mandatory. That's not even the case at universities anymore! I highly doubt this change is for pedagogical reasons, but to ensure those weeks are used. The alternative could be to spread that time throughout the year and acknowledge that teachers have several assessment days during each term. 

I do support final, overall assessments, however. I believe it helps to solidify ideas if students are asked to show, and do the work to think about, how to put it all together. That's an important skill that's missing when finals are just dropped entirely. And setting aside a week where they all have to show up sometimes gets kids to make an effort that otherwise wouldn't be made. But, by then end of my 31-year career, I had landed on having a choice of final assessments, and assigning a weighting to them that best fit each student. So they'd write a paper that helped them work with the concepts, then write an exam, and whichever got the higher mark was worth significantly more. One bad day shouldn't destroy someone's average. 

Other highlights: a "condensed" BEd program of one year, reducing the role of trustees "to remove the distraction caused by trustees", and now the Director of Education will be called the flippin' CEO!! 

Only When It is Darkest Out Can You See the Stars

These are my summary notes from this excellent podcast from Andrea Pitzer on Next Comes What, "How We Survive This Mess." 

Pitzer previous wrote a history of concentration camps, One Long Night, and she relates much of this new US admin regime to historical cases. Some similarities: first, Hitler rose to power through legitimate means, but laws were stretched to allow him to run. Pinochet's coup used similar rhetoric, and we need to be aware of the similar tactics already on display: terror, shock, making a show of force, and trying to seize more power than they have. And Putin, who was brought in as a useful stooge, then stepped out only to return to be more powerful by removing moderates. 

The benefits to the current situation include that we have a date. It's not coming unexpectedly, but in a couple months, which provides a window to play in. The US military is officially non-partisan, so won't necessarily follow Trump's orders. Governors in key states are standing up, and it's important to build that out of the gate. There's still a partially functional court system and civil bureaucracy that can slow down any legislation. And the odds of Congress being up for grabs in 2026 are still good as there will likely be a massive backlash. She also claims that "these people are not that bright" which can help anyone trying to subvert their agenda. They got in only because it's really easy to generate hate; "it's not a sign of genius but of money and the willingness to do tremendous harm," which provides an opening for resistance and a likelihood of infighting that could decimate their control. They ran on ideas, not on governance.

A Tale of Two Studies

I was confronted yesterday with the ubiquitous claim, "Lockdowns destroyed kid's ability to socialize. Now they're committing suicide because of it!!" Let's have a closer look again:

I posted this mini-thread a couple weeks ago that helps to understand the role media plays in propping up this claim:

"A tale of two studies: One study (October 2024 in School Psychology), picked up by the Toronto Star, gauged classroom incivility from anecdotal reports by teachers pre- and post-covid (handy they had data form Fall 2019) to conclude that lockdowns for three months in 2020 destroyed kids' socialization skills in 2022. The other study (October 2024 in an international medical journal), NOT picked up by the Star, assessed kids pre- and post-INFECTION, and against a control to find, 'more severe symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity-impulsivity, opposition, a wide range of emotional and behavioural problems, and poor school function.' Many studies have shown that SARS-CoV-2 affects the prefrontal cortex, which affects behaviour. Until mainstream media starts reporting on better studies, our children will suffer. A timeline of some studies on Covid's effects on the brain are here." 

We Can Prevent Chronic Illness in Children, But It's Kinda Inconvenient

Another NEW study shows, yet again, that SARS-CoV-2 is harmful to kids. Who knew?!?

This was a three-year study that followed 1319 children after a first infection. Almost all of the kids had a mild (89%) or asymptomatic (9%) initial infection. Almost 80% were unvaccinated. At 3 months post acute infection, almost a quarter of the kids had Long Covid. From 1-2 years 7 to 8% continued to have Long Covid. Some of the kids infected at the very beginning of the study, still had Long Covid at the 3 year mark. We're generally being told the chance of Long Covid is somewhere between 7 and 10% (the CDC pegged it at 20% earlier), but that misses the reality that many more kids are sick for months before recovering. 

Important to note: only 67% had a fever as part of their acute infection, yet that is STILL the only symptom we look for to determine if kids should go to school. Having a runny nose was the next most common symptom, but fewer than half had that (46%). Covid shows up in a multitude of symptoms. The current variant goes for the GI system, so diarrhea is an important sign. 

Who gets Long Covid? They found that teenagers (kids over 12) are significantly more in danger. And girls tend to get it slightly more than boys. They indicate that vaccination was protective, but I'm confused by their data, which make it seem like it isn't at all: They compare all patients to unvaccinated, and the unvaccinated numbers with Long Covid are lower across the board, but I must be misunderstanding something there.  

At any rate, Covid really, really damages kids. A quarter will lose out on at least three months of school and life at a very pivotal age, and 7-8% will lose years of their lives, possibly the rest of their lives to a chronic illness. I'm not sure how many more studies we need before schools will overtly and regularly start at least encouraging masks in class and before hospitals will mandate them everywhere. How bad does it have to get?? We know that kids (and adults) with a mild infection can go on to develop organ failure. Our only tool right now is prevention with good quality masks while we wait for the clean air revolution to kick into gear. 

Yesterday I posted this article, explaining that it's up to parents to take the lead, but I didn't summarize the tragic story it contained: A 16-year-old girl, Cara, who always masked at school to protect her mom dealing with chemo, was convinced to finally take it off. She got Covid, and brought it home, and her mother died, and now she has to cope with the guilt of that on top of her grief. The article says she was bullied as the only person masking in the school, but then explains that she stopped when she heard a child psychotherapist on the radio say that girls wear them to hide their acne. That was the last straw for her.

 From the article,

"In 2022, over six times as many children died from Covid than from flu in the US. The UN Convention on the Rights of a Child requires states to 'recognise the right of the child to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health' and to fully implement this right. Children's rights to education include a safe environment not harmful to their health. Cara and her parents fought for these rights. They were denied, with devastating consequences." 

I can do absolutely everything I enjoy publicly with a mask on except to eat in a restaurant. So I order in for special occasions. Once you get used to it, masks don't hamper the pleasure of the event, AND you don't get or inadvertently spread a disabling, fatal virus to anyone!! It's win/win!! I understand that a tiny percentage of people actually can't wear a mask, but I cannot accept the argument that mask are uncomfortable or feel suffocating when the alternative to wearing a mask is children and their parents getting sick like this or dying.  

Grow. The fuck. Up. 

Pitting Health Against Education as We Debilitate a Generation

Covid is definitely causing a variety of longterm illnesses and public health still can't manage an effective PSA that undoes damage caused by their previous misinformation: teaching people how easily we can get infected, how harmful the virus is, and how to prevent it with N95s and cleaner air. And in many places, like my old school, people are still not allowed to bring in CR boxes or open windows if it's cold out or teach about Covid, and in some places masks are flippin' illegal! And children are in the middle of all this mess. 

from here 

It says, "Forcing families to choose between biosecurity and education is one of the great injustices of our time, violating children's fundamental human rights to life, health, safety, and education.

LONGTERM ILLNESS

In this 20 minute INET podcast with Dr. Phillip Alvelda, they explain that we are effectively debilitating a generation: 

"The danger is clear and present: Covid isn't merely a respiratory illness; it's a multi-dimensional threat impacting brain function, attacking almost all of the body's organs, producing elevated risks of all kinds, and weakening our ability to fight off other diseases. Reinfections are thought to produce cumulative risks, and Long Covid is on the rise. Unfortunately, Long Covid is now being considered a long-term chronic illness -- something many people will never fully recover from."

The Heart Research Institute in the UK wrote about the recent paper showing that even a mild or asymptomatic case can increase stroke, heart attack, and heart failure.  

AIRBORNE AIDS

If that's not enough to be concerned, the World Health Network wrote about Covid's overlap with AIDS:

Appropriate Fear and Respect

We teach our children to have a "healthy fear" of the water, to respect that it's possible to drown in the shallows or to hit our head on a rock if we get knocked down by a wave. So we swim with a buddy who's paying attention to us. We should have a healthy fear of viruses too.  

It doesn't mean living in fear, but taking precautions so our littles don't get sick over and over. We need to provide good quality masks in all classrooms, and encourage everyone to wear them and take them home. If funds are an issue, Donate a Mask can help!!

Who Can We Blame for All of This??

I totally understand the feeling of being out for blood right now about the number of children who are likely to get sick in our public schools this fall, some who will never recover. We want to find someone to pay. 

But the nature of our fucked up bureaucratic system is that it's engineered so that nobody takes responsibility for anything. It's rule by nobody. 

If anyone should be in trouble, it's the premiers of each province. They're the ones who are in charge of directing the mess. Now the CMOs aren't their own entity, so they take direction from premiers. And, more to the point, school boards can't do much to override whatever direction they're given or they risk losing their right to govern themselves. That means a supervisor can be appointed by the government to take over a board. At some schools, teachers who have complained about how things are run have been suspended. 

If we want blood for the anti-mask rhetoric, then we need to aim at the top. But will that accomplish anything?? It might feel good, but is it productive? 

Ignorance and Apathy and Unwillingness to Act

Three articles came out in the past few days that should remind us that Covid is really here, and maybe we should act on it. But all the facts in the world can't penetrate the wall of hopeful denial.

Lynn Parramore interviewed Dr. Philliip Alvelda in Institute for New Economic Thinking. I wrote about the first part earlier this month. 

"Contrary to public belief, he warns, Covid is not like the flu. New variants evolve much faster, making annual shots inadequate. He believes that if thinks continue as they are, with new Covid variants emerging and reinfections happening rapidly, the majority of Americans may eventually grapple with some form of Long Covid. . . . Some people can get Long Covid, and maybe it ages them a little bit, but it doesn't change them very much. But for others, their lives are devastated. . . . Only 22% fully recover within a year. Others remain stable or get worse. . . . There are all kind of weird things going on that could be related to Covid's cognitive effects. . . . traffic fatalities increased by 19%. . . . .

On the Importance of Hobbies

I taught grade 10 Careers for a bit. I changed it completely from how it was typically taught, though, which was largely one Myers-Briggs-type test after another. Kids in other classes came out knowing what colour they are and what kind of job that might relate to. The biggest take-away that I heard from kids in other classes is that they can do absolutely anything they set their mind to do. My class went down a different path.

How does this help me find a job??

I did have them think a bit about who they are, their personality, goals, skills, passions, values, and lifestyle to start, but only for a couple days. Then we created the standard résumé and cover letter, but now there are templates that do the formatting, and I have no idea how teachers stretch that into more than a day or two (checklist here). Then we looked at the many, many types of jobs out there and requirements to get them with tons of guest speakers to help. But then we moved on. 

AI Enhanced

 This cartoon really helped me understand something.

My school board announced a new initiative, the mandatory grade 11 English class will now focus on Indigenous voices. I used to teach Indigenous Studies, and couldn't get more than ten kids to take the class as an elective, so it's not a bad idea. But here's how they explained it:

It's about 100 words - barely a full paragraph - but the school board required the assistance of AI to write it???

Nope, it seems that maybe they're bragging that they figured out how to use AI, as if having assistance from a computer program somehow makes it better. It's like someone writing out a bit of math - that a 20%-off sale means you'll get that $29.99 jumper for only $24 - and bragging that they used a calculator to figure that out. Will we get to a time that people are more impressed if you can write a paragraph or do some simple math without using a computer?? 

The ability to communicate - to be able to write a simple explanatory paragraph - is such a vital skill. I can understand acknowledging it's part of our reality as educators and that it's something we have to learn to work with, but I don't understand promoting its use to write a social media post.

We're entering truly bizarre times.

What is University For, Part 2

Does making it all easier make us lazier educators, or is neoliberal politics to blame?? 

The Quality of Teaching has been Strained: 

This is a back-in-MY-day story, but I think it's necessary to look at how far we've strayed. 

When I was in teacher's college, we had to make it through four practice teaching sessions spaced out over the year in which we took over an experienced teacher's classes while they took notes at the back of the room. Typically the first placement is sink or swim, and some bail at that point, but by the fourth one, at the very end of the year, student teachers have honed many necessary skills. It's tricky for people in History Departments because they also cover social science and humanities courses, and being proficient in one doesn't make you proficient in all. My very first placement was teaching social sciences, my teachable, but my associate also gave me an American History course to teach as well. I knew almost nothing about history at the time. He gave me the textbook, but I also spent hours in the public library night after night, scanning other books enough to give me answers to any potential questions. I worked my ass off for the weeks I was there to make sure I did the best job I could and to make sure I didn't look like a total idiot in front of the kids.

Cell Phones and Cigarettes

I have some concerns with the new rules for schools as reported by the CBC. The biggest concern is that the funding cuts came Friday, but yet another cell phone ban is the big news, and no money is left for cleaning the air. 

As a teacher, both cell phones and cigarettes being accepted without question and without boundaries is a problem. Well, students aren't officially allowed to smoke on the property, but we created a nice space for them, kids as young as 13, to smoke just on the other side of the property line out back to keep them from loitering on public property at the front of the school, which wouldn't look good. The same thing happened as a student in the 80s. It's still perfectly legal for children to smoke -- it's just illegal to give them cigarettes. That law comes from legislators unduly affected by tobacco lobbying.

What is University For - Part 1

In case you've missed it, many students on university campuses have been protesting the ongoing genocide in Gaza. 

The police have been heavy-handed -- or outright violent -- with some of the students. Yet one prof wrote about his primary concerns in the NY Times: that the constant noise disrupts his class and the protests are upsetting for Jewish students.

No Ragrets

The frustrating experiences that linger with me the longest are the times I was able to make a difference in my tiny corner of the world or have some kind of effect or even have the potential to have an effect, and then it was derailed, often by a well-meaning person whose perception of their abilities might have been  greater than the reality. 

I have a far easier time coping with my own mistakes and inane decisions than watching someone else decimate my efforts. Maybe it's because I have more faith in myself to correct my own path than I have in others who seem more willing to let things fall to the wayside. 

This is just a personal rant as I try to work on disattachment from it all. I have some regrets; when someone takes over a project, from a small task to a political portfolio, it's somehow still ours to mourn or celebrate despite not having any agency to affect it. 

On Suing Social Media Giants

A collection of school boards are suing a collection of social media sites for allegedly deliberately hurting  students. 

That's from the Toronto Star headline, but deliberate harm?? I'm not sure what the lawsuit actually says, and I'm not a lawyer, but I would think that a charge of deliberate harm means they'd have to prove that the companies want to negatively affect students, instead of their motive being to make as much money as possible with harm to kids just a possible side-effect. 

But let's keep reading. 

The lawsuit from Toronto, Peel, and Ottawa school boards is asking for $4.5 billion because Snapchat, TikTok, and Meta platforms are "designed for compulsive use and have rewired the way children think, behave, and learn." 

Infection Control Measures Work

A Lancet study found that there's little Covid transmission in schools WHEN infection control measures were in place. 

Since we stopped all mitigation efforts, hospitalizations for Covid in Ontario have increased year-round. We don't need lockdowns for Covid, but we do still need N95s until we can clean the air. 

From CP24:

"The review found that masking, vaccinations and test-to-stay policies were the best methods to reduce Covid-19's spread in schools and daycares. The effectiveness of strategies like mandatory quarantining, cohorting, and hybrid learning is uncertain and may have made 'little to no difference in transmission.'"

The Motivating Annoyance of Willful Ignorance

I've been thinking about my old students today as I read the news. 

I taught about the Israeli occupation in Palestine for a good 20 years, under the media bias and propaganda curriculum section of my course. I had been reading about genocidal types of activity since my professor told us about East Timor back in the 80s and introduced us to Chomsky. At the time it woke something in me, an outrage that a whole group of people were attacked and killed without anybody I knew, outside of class, ever having even heard of their country. Dumbfounded at the mechanisms that enables a genocide to happen without it hitting the news, I started reading everything by Chomsky, then Timothy Snyder and Chris Hedges, and Naomi Klein when the US invaded Iraq, and Linda McQuaig on privatization, all informed by prior reading of Hannah Arendt on bureaucracy being led by nobody.  

We Need Policy Based on Evidence, not Vibes

Survival of the fittest doesn't mean the strongest survive, it means whomever can best adapt to the conditions of life will survive. 

Adapting doesn't mean tolerating what's happening and ignoring it; it means changing when the conditions of life change. So, in a pandemic, it means changing the way we live in order to avoid getting this virus as much as possible. A super easy way to adapt is to wear an N95 whenever leaving the house. With climate, we can adapt by slowing the system, like by cycling or taking the bus instead of driving a car. 

Unfortunately policy creators have other plans. According to Dr. Jennifer Grant of the BC CDC,  

The Questionable Wisdom of Institutions of Higher Learning

Trying to convince universities to allow remote learning in maskless in-person classes and maybe to allow mini-HEPAs on the desk during exams appears to be futile despite the current risk level. Higher learning, my eye!

Why Universities Should Lead the Way

Last July, two grad students from the University of Waterloo wrote an article explaining how "Universities can lead the clean indoor air revolution."

Click the image to read the article, but I'll highlight a few pieces: