Tag: #Teacher

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Teacher Training – Is it enough?

One of my children had a particularly stressful year in school. It flipped both our lives upside down. I left my work because of it. The teacher was ill-equipped to teach a child with learning disabilities. Added to the mix, there were issues of severe bullying within the class. Without going into specifics, it was an “active” classroom on top of everything else. I was so frustrated about the whole situation and felt the adults in the room really didn’t know what they were doing. Some of the information I was providing to them about disability felt very basic to me. Their old school traditional ways of teaching were not working. And just increasing the intensity of traditional pedagogy was making things worse.

Years later I found out from another parent who volunteered in the school that the classroom teacher was frequently, almost on a daily basis, leaving the class in tears. She also had two very young children at home, and I can imagine now just how overwhelmed she must have felt.

Jumping ahead a few years, it was revealed during the hearing at the BC Human Rights Tribunal, for my other child, just how ill-equipped and lacking in knowledge related to disability and mental health the teachers and school counsellors really were.

It seems people’s individual knowledge and skill level had more to do with their own interest, motivation, work experience and self-learning. This produces such a wide spectrum of knowledge among educators. Some people have been amazing and very helpful. People I relied and on and was so thankful for their knowledge. Other people, I wonder how on earth they got here.

One teacher at our hearing, under oath, testified that after graduating from a well respected university program that the word “accommodation” wasn’t something that they had heard of. Ummm….teaching universities…..you might want to review your education program. Shall I name you and read out the transcript? Or was the teacher lying? Or were they confused? A classic defense. Apparently everyone becomes confused when allegations appear. And yet tribunals write in decisions that educators are the experts and they get to decide what professional recommendations to implement or discard.

Teachers are graduating with so little knowledge in their duty to accommodate, human rights, disability and mental health. Basic mental health, like anxiety. Professional development workshops on inclusion are optional. WTF! It sends the wrong message. Apparently skills in inclusive education are nice to have but not essential. Our kids are optional folks!

At another hearing from the BC Human Rights Tribunal, an educator admitted “We aren’t trained for this”. What are you trained for? Teaching the neurotypical kids who are natural sponges and have no barriers for learning? Is that it?

I know there are recent efforts to improve training and skills in educators, and some people currently completing education ready to bust out, but it is still optional for educators and we need a lot MORE! We need to take these researchers and teachers of teachers and clone them. Spread them everywhere.

So many students are not even identified because teachers can’t even tell when a child has a learning disability. I assumed all teachers would be able to identify this. Nope. The skills and knowledge that staff have are very inconsistent. The best teachers are the ones when their own children have disabilities or themselves and they can take their own lived experience and knowledge and combine it with their foundational training. I don’t know what we would do if we didn’t have them.

I knew one teacher who had ADHD didn’t want to disclose it to their colleagues for fear they would think less of them. What does that tell you??

Even with literacy screening recently in kindergarten, do teachers know what to do next? There is no shame is admitting, that you don’t. It’s not your shame to carry, it’s the post-secondary institutions that you paid good money to. There are surveys and research being done and with reports of “severe instruction deficiencies” for teachers who know how to teach kids with dyslexia. Go ahead and take a deep dive on the internet. If you are lost and confused, you are not alone. An education law book was very explicit over how much administrators lack knowledge in education law and human rights.

I don’t want to start giving personal examples about just how shocking the myths, stereotypes and lack of knowledge around disability is amongst classroom teachers and administrators. I was stunned. My trust was completely shook during the hearing. I thought to myself, wow, I really gave them a lot more credit and depended on them than I ever should have. From this point forward I need to assume no one knows anything. You want evidence of just how serious of an issue this is, you can come to my home and read through all of the evidence I have organized in binders.

The number of teachers and educational assistants willing to work in the education system are becoming so low, districts are hiring “responsible adults”. Oh my goodness. Please send help.

I would really love a HUGE spotlight to be tilted towards post-secondary education programs for teachers, and professional development workshops on inclusion and disability. The fact that parents are still dealing with teachers who are punishing neurodivergent/disabled kids because they don’t have “listening bodies” is incredibly frustrating and discriminatory.

WHY are disability and inclusion professional development workshops optional? That is quite the message. Received loud and clear. As a system, do you not find this embarrassing? The teachers who are not signing themselves up for this kind of training, I would argue, are probably the ones who need it the most. The undercurrent of this blog is ableism. Who are we prioritizing? Who are we ignoring? Who are we making optional? Let us think and reflect on this.

Teachers, this can’t be fun for you either. Can you imagine how stressful it would be to have so much responsibility, be held to standards, to potentially be defending your decisions in a hearing, and not even be properly provided with information and skill to do your job in the first place?

This is a topic where I feel we can all come together and be on the same page. It benefits everyone to have teachers feel confident and be skilled.

Improved mandatory teacher training in disability,
mental health and inclusive pedagogy please!!

Please don’t send teachers the message that teaching kids with disabilities are optional.

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Disability – Related Adverse Impact (Dismissal Application)

School Employee Files Human Rights Complaint

This is an employment case, and the employee is in the school setting. I have only ever written on two other staff employee cases. I don’t focus on this at all, but every once in a while, a case will come along that is very helpful for others to know about. The legal test for employment and human rights can be very specific.

Here are the two other cases:

School Employee
Education Assistant – Employment Human Rights Complaint
A HR Decision for School Employees

This case will now be added in that section as the third one.

Dismissal Application – School Employee

This is a short dismissal application decision. It’s a pretty simple one, and for that reason, this is a great one to highlight some key points.

Misiak v. Board of Education of School District No. 36 (Surrey), 2026 BCHRT 98

[17]           At a hearing, Mr. Misiak would have to establish that he has a disability, that the District treated him adversely, and that the adverse treatment was connected to his physical disability: Moore v. BC (Education),  2012 SCC 61at para. 33. Mr. Misiak is not required to prove the complaint at this time but need only point to some evidence capable of taking the complaint “out of the realm of conjecture”: Berezoutskaiaat para. 24. The threshold to move the complaint forward to a hearing is low.

[18]           The District says there is no evidence that Mr. Misiak has suffered a disability related adverse impact and his compliant has not been taken out of the realm of conjecture. I agree.

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He had an injury to his elbow from 2018 that limited what he could do with his left arm.

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[20]           The materials show WorkSafeBC advised that Mr. Misiak was limited in performing repetitive motion with his left arm, and forceful or sustained gripping with his left hand. The undisputed evidence of the District is that Mr. Misiak was placed in a job that does not require repetitive motions with his left arm or any forceful or sustained gripping. Mr. Misiak has not identified any accommodation that was recommended by WorkSafeBC, or that he requested, that was not implemented.

[19]           ……..The District provided detailed evidence of the recommendations made by WorkSafeBC and how they implemented each recommendation. While Mr. Misiak says in his response that his WorkSafeBC claim was denied and he was not accommodated, the evidence before me shows the District implemented all of the recommendations made by WorkSafeBC.

[22]           Mr. Misiak’s submissions are general complaints about the conduct of members of the health and safety committee at meetings, and the quality of air filters in schools. It is unclear on the materials what equipment Mr. Misiak is saying he had to supply for himself. He says the District took a long time to purchase and install new drill presses for the school’s woodworking program but has not pointed to how this is related to any physical disability he has. Similarly, Mr. Misiak alleges someone stood in front of him during a health and safety meeting and he was unable to respond to questions. Mr. Misiak has not provided any information that links his experience at a meeting to any disability. The District points out that there is no evidence to support Mr. Misiak’s allegation that he was not paid for his work.

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Four points to highlight

* The test to move a complaint past the dismissal stage is LOW….but you still have requirements you must meet.

** You will need to be able to identify your disability-related adverse impact. Not just any adverse impact. It has to pass the discrimination test.

*** You need to point to some kind of evidence that supports what you are claiming.

**** You can have unfair, horrible stuff happen to you, but it doesn’t mean that it is discrimination. There is not going to be legal remedies for all of the negative experiences you have in your life, or for all of the horrible things that people are going to do to you.

You will save yourself a lot of unnecessary pain and deprive the lawyers of their billable hours by understanding what complaint systems can create change and what those systems need from you in order to be successful. There are limitations in all of them, and they are all connected to different legislation. There are also complaint avenues or resolution avenues as an employee that I do not mention in this blog or on my website, as I primarily focus on parents advocating on behalf of their children. Information on complaint system options.

Parents & caregivers, we too have to focus on our kids’ disability-related needs, and how the harm they experience is connected to those needs, to be able to pass the discrimination test. We too, have an education case from the tribunal that has been very clear that not all negative experiences are discrimination.

Discrimination Test

3 questions.

  1. Does your child have a disability?
  2. Did they experience harm?
  3. Was the harm connected to their disability?
    .

X by Y v. Board of Education of School District No. Z, 2024 BCHRT 72

[110] ….I accept that these incidents which X relayed to Y were upsetting to X. I appreciate that the interactions may have fed into X’s general feelings of unease at school, but the fact alone that these events may have happened is not enough, in itself, to establish that X’s disability factored into them. Not all negative experiences are discrimination. Even accepting that these incidents occurred, I did not hear evidence that could establish, on a balance of probabilities, that X’s disability was a factor in the conduct of the adults involved in these interactions.