{"id":23324,"date":"2019-03-21T18:29:19","date_gmt":"2019-03-21T22:29:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23324"},"modified":"2019-03-21T18:29:27","modified_gmt":"2019-03-21T22:29:27","slug":"what-will-education-cuts-mean-for-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/what-will-education-cuts-mean-for-kids\/","title":{"rendered":"What will education cuts mean for kids?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(An open letter to MPP Christine Elliott)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like many concerned citizens\nacross this province, I spent much of the past week listening to announcements\nabout changes to our public education system. With each announcement, my sense\nof unease deepened. What will these cuts mean for our children? What will they\nmean for a future generation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wonder if you and your\ncolleagues have walked into a classroom in recent years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My daughter is a teacher who\nworks in a small alternative public secondary school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of her students come to her\nschool because the mainstream school system couldn\u2019t meet their needs. I have\nmet several of these students. They are bright, creative, sensitive\nindividuals, brimming with potential, but for many of them, their education has\nbeen interrupted by severe mental health concerns, by trauma, by economic\nuncertainty, by illness or injury, by bullying. They come to her school seeking\na different environment and personal relationships with caring adults who have\nthe patience to guide them through the last hurdles of their high school years,\nas they begin to enter the next phase of their lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her teaching environment isn\u2019t\nwhat comes to mind when you envision a high school classroom. Her classroom can\nsometimes look like chaos. There are no neatly arranged rows of desks and\nchairs, with students obediently taking notes; instead, students enter and exit\nthe classroom freely. Some may be shooting videos in front of a green screen;\nothers, composing photographs in the stairwell, or editing graphics in Photoshop,\nwhile others write essays or collaborate on screenplays. There are students\nwearing hoodies tightly pulled over their heads, too anxious to make eye\ncontact. There are students listening to headphones. For students diagnosed\nwith ADHD; listening to music, according to their IEPs, helps them focus. My\ndaughter and her colleagues interact with mutual respect; students know that\nthe teachers are there to help them achieve their goals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My daughter teaches elective\ncourses. To ensure as broad a selection of course offerings as possible and\nthat every student who wants to attend their school is able to have a full\ntimetable, most of her classes are split to incorporate as many grade levels\nand pathways as possible. She teaches through her lunch hour and often stays\nwell into the evening, helping students who need extra attention, do not have\ninternet or computer access at home, are so passionately involved in a project\nthat they don\u2019t want to stop working on it, or for whom home is not a safe or\nwelcoming place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want to tell you about some of\nmy daughter\u2019s success stories as I have had the honour to meet some of these\nstudents at school events. One young man who was failing in his mainstream\nschool graduated school valedictorian with an acceptance to the top animation\nprogram in the province.  One young woman\nwho struggled academically collected 500 hours of community service and is now\nstudying criminology. Another young man with a history of absences discovered his\ngift for filmmaking and secured a four-credit co-op with a media streaming\nservice provider. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wish that you could see the\nwork that my daughter and other classroom teachers\u2014the very frontline workers\nwhose jobs you promised to protect in your election campaign\u2014do every day.\nPerhaps you might feel empathy and compassion for students who don\u2019t fit the\nmold, for whom back-to-basics just isn\u2019t enough. Every student is an individual\nto be nurtured and educated, not an efficiency to be cut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your party speaks the need to\nmodernize Ontario\u2019s education system, but a modern education system\nacknowledges that the needs of students are more complex today than they have\never been, especially as high-needs students with autism integrate in\nmainstream classes. Students need smaller class sizes, not larger, and a\nbroader range of course options to prepare them for a changing workforce, not\nfewer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I urge you to reconsider these\nfunding cuts, class cap raises, and move to mandatory e-Learning courses.\nEducation is expensive, but the cost of ignorance and loss of a young person\u2019s\npotential is exponentially higher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reccia Mandelcorn<\/strong>
Newmarket<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(An open letter to MPP Christine Elliott) Like many concerned citizens across this province, I spent much of the past week listening to announcements about changes to our public education system. With each announcement, my sense of unease deepened. What will these cuts mean for our children? What will they mean for a future generation? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-64c","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 10:11:08","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23324\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}