by George Le Masurier | Sep 12, 2019
New approach to mental health, substance issues to benefit SD71 students
Comox Valley students with mental health or substance use issues will have a new and more easily accessible pathway for help starting sometime in December.
The province has chosen School District 71 as the second of five districts to pilot a project linking health care and school resources to create a “one-care-plan” approach that will provide help when and where students need it.
BC Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Judy Darcy made the announcement at GP Vanier High School today. The province has allocated $22.1 million over three years to implement the project in five districts. Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows was the first.
Tom Demeo, Superintendent of Schools, Comox Valley School District praised the new concept.
“We are extremely fortunate to be part of this great initiative,” he said. “Student mental health is one of our district’s strategic focuses and through this partnership, we will be able to work collaboratively with our community partners to provide our students with resources that will strengthen and improve their mental health.”
In making the announcement, Darcy said estimated 84,000 BC children aged four to 17 years experience mental health disorders at any given time. From 2009 to 2017, there was an 86 percent increase in hospitalizations in B.C. for mental health issues among youth under 25 years of age.
She said promoting wellness, preventing mental health and addictions challenges, and intervening early in life can reduce problems as people grow and develop. She estimated that 70 percent of mental health and substance use problems have their onset during childhood or adolescence.
Ronna-Rae Leonard, Courtenay-Comox MLA, welcomed the news.
“We’ve seen a tremendous increase in enrolment over the past few years so added supports – especially in the areas of mental health and overall wellness for students – could not have come at a better time,” she said.
According to a ministry press release “integrated teams will work closely with school and team-based primary care and specialized services providers to offer wraparound care to children, youth and their families.
This means individuals experiencing mental health and substance use challenges and their families will no longer need to retell their stories to different care providers or search on their own for the supports they need.”
“For far too long, families have had to knock on door after door to get the help they need for their children,” Darcy said. “These integrated child and youth teams will make it so much easier to connect young people to the help they need, where and when they need it.”
Darcy and Leonard were in the Comox Valley today for the announcement.
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by Brent Reid | Jun 8, 2017
By Brent Reid
While teaching journalism and information technology for several years in a networked computer environment with Internet and email access at every workstation, I learned a lot about how to use powerful, but potentially distracting, electronic devices to increase students’ learning and productivity. Please note, though, that I last taught a high school class in 2000 and since then digital technology, and the opportunities and dangers it presents, have evolved greatly.
Many educators now believe that thousands of hours of screen time have altered the cognitive functioning and attention spans of today’s students significantly, necessitating new approaches if we are to educate humanity’s first connected generation successfully.
A contemporary smartphone provides its owner with more computing power and data storage than all those banks of computers and their lab-coated operators we saw on TV when NASA first put astronauts on the moon. Combined with continually improving connectivity, that handful of technology enables a skilled user to connect with spectacular amounts of knowledge, and offers audio recording, photographic, and video capabilities that enable users to broadcast what they learn widely, quickly, and creatively.
Surely it’s time to explore and define the role that such a powerful tool could play in secondary education.
With power comes risk, though, and a smartphone can place a young person in the crosshairs of bullies, identity thieves, petty fraudsters and, in some communities, recruiters for evil causes. Will we leave it to chance for students to gain the ability to use their phones ethically and safely, or will we help them learn to act responsibly and avoid threats? For openers it seems essential to me that students and staff work together in the establishment of policies for the proper use of personally-owned smartphones—and notebooks, iPads, and laptops—in the classroom and around the school.
Others on this forum can address the advisability of cellphone use in middle school and elementary grades. I’ll refer only to the level at which I taught, Grades 10 through 12, where I think smartphones — if integrated purposefully with clear policies for their use — could broaden and accelerate learning, and better prepare students for post-secondary studies and careers in which the smartphone is an essential tool.
I’m mindful, though, of how budgets and staffing levels in BC’s schools have been cut since 2000, and how an ever-increasing number of tasks—some of them trivial— now make demands on teachers’ time and energy.
The majority of the computers in many high schools are concentrated in a few rooms, sometimes reserved for specific courses or purposes. Students bringing digital devices from home to tap into the school’s wi-fi or wired network would enable any classroom to become a temporary computer lab.
This doesn’t mean that schools should cut their technology budgets; on the contrary, they should increase their investment in the hardware, software, and networking systems that are standard in technology companies, mainstream businesses, government, and higher education so that students will arrive at their post-secondary institution or their first job with relevant, marketable knowledge and skills.
Help in planning is available from the growing community of educators online who have embarked on BYOD projects. (The acronym is the same as the one on party invitations except that “D” stands for “device”). Here’s a typical article that summarizes the pros and cons of BYOD and contains links to articles covering other aspects of getting started.
A quick online search can provide a wealth of information to help a teacher determine where and how to begin. It could well be sensible to start BYOD education on a small scale, perhaps with one short-term project with one class, and evaluate the results carefully before expanding the initiative.
If I was still teaching and had a timetable and student load that permitted enough space and time to restructure courses to create optimal challenges and opportunities, I would base the integration of smartphones into my secondary classes on the answers to these questions:
- What are the desired outcomes of each course in terms of student awareness, knowledge, personal competencies, and marketable skills?
- What role could smartphones play in enabling students to achieve those outcomes more thoroughly, quickly, and enjoyably than they could without smartphones?
- Looking ahead–preferably in consultation with local employers, the corporate sector, the trades, higher education, and government–in what ways does each course need to be structured and updated to become optimally relevant to students’ success in transitioning to university, college, apprenticeships, entry-level employment, or entrepreneurship?
- What behaviours and responsibilities regarding cellphone use do employers and post-secondary educators expect on the job, in class, and on campuses?
- Would a smartphone be a tool that was utilized every day in a particular course, like a graphing calculator in a senior math class, or would students blend technology with different approaches—including intensive reading, print-based research, personal interviews, oral presentations, and other screen-free methodologies–for certain projects?
- How could smartphone use enable students to gain sophisticated research skills for distinguishing between factual data, bias, and falsehoods in online content?
- How best could students learn how cellular and wi-fi networks operate, and the ways each user bears part of the collective responsibility to protect their devices and the network from privacy invasions, viruses, malware, phishing, scams, and hacking?
- What about students whose families cannot afford to equip them with a smartphone? Could community support, help from industry, or a school-funded initiative be set up and operate discretely to enable all students to participate? (Also, students could bring an iPad, tablet, or laptop instead for projects that are not smartphone-specific).
The networked computers in my classroom back in the 1990’s were tremendously empowering for students, as many of them indicated at the time or have told me over the years since they graduated. I’m delighted that they become more skilled, knowledgeable, productive, and clear about their career goals sooner through the opportunity to use industry-grade software, hardware, and connectivity to take on meaningful, real-world challenges under time pressure and for a large audience.
Similarly, allowing focused, inventive, and ethical use of smartphones in appropriate classes for upper-grade students today could accelerate their technical savvy, ability to learn, career goal setting, and eventual success in the job market.
Brent Reid is a former teacher in School District 71 whose students published the award-winning Breezeway newspaper for 22 years. He lives in the Comox Valley.
by George Le Masurier | Apr 9, 2017
Those of us who study elections seriously have stumbled upon an alarming discovery about British Columbia politics: spending too much time in Victoria reduces your intelligence to the rough equivalent of a kumquat.
You’ve probably noticed this, too.
A candidate carrying a clipboard rings your doorbell and engages you in thoughtful conversation about the issues that affect you the most. Based on their doorstep brilliance, you elect them and off they go to Victoria where, after about two weeks, their ability to maintain rational thought basically resembles an obscure and bad-tasting fruit.
The problem is that all of our province’s major issues, like fully funding basic education, preventing further environmental disasters and when will we have enough medical marijuana stores, are kept in a big storage locker hidden somewhere in the Capital Region.
That means our politicians have to go there to work on them. But due to the rare Geographic Onset Of Brain Erasure and Restore Syndrome (GOOBERS), the problems just get worse.
That’s why those of us who take elections seriously have concluded after much deep thinking that we need to elect someone who refuses to go to Victoria, and why, at the last minute, I have decided to offer myself as a write-in candidate.
I don’t seek any applause, heartfelt personal thank-you notes or unsolicited friendly letters-to-the-editor. Although large envelopes filled with cash would be nice.
I’m just in it for the issues. And speaking of that, here’s where I stand as of 11:45 a.m. this morning, April 10, 2017:
Taxes and Budget deficits – Against ‘em.
The environment – For it.
Education —Hire more teachers for public schools because it will take a really smart new generation to fix all the messes we made.
Plush jobs for all my friends – No problemo.
War – Normally opposed, but I could justify a small offensive on the price of beer.
People have asked me whether I intend to run as a Green, NDP or Liberal because, you know, after the old conservative SoCreds glossed themselves as “Liberals,” nobody’s really quite sure what party designation means any more.
So I’ve worked up some of my own campaign slogans:
Politicians are like diapers, they both should be changed often, and usually for the same reason.
I’ll be tough on crime, so don’t steal. That’s the government’s job.
WARNING: I advise you to support me now because there are only so many really good pork-barrel jobs to go around (actually, both parties have proven this isn’t true, but it’s a good pressure tactic).
Remember, if I get only one vote, I’ll know it wasn’t you.
by George Le Masurier | Feb 16, 2017
Recess has returned to the playgrounds of School District 71’s elementary schools as of February. That’s good news for children and teachers.
But why the school district eliminated recess at the start of this school year and the reasons for reinstating it now aren’t such good news: it’s political and, most egregiously, has nothing to do with children and the benefits they reap from the power of play.
The blame starts with B.C. Liberal Party leader Christy Clark who has seriously underfunded British Columbia public schools for more than a decade and robbed our children of world-class educational opportunities.
But the blame doesn’t end there.
To close a $3 million funding gap for the 2016-17 school year, local Comox Valley school trustees rejected a proposal by some parents to close underused and low-enrollment schools.
They chose instead to institute a 4.6-day school week, which ends at 12:01 p.m. every Friday for all Comox Valley schools. That saved the district about $1.8 million, and resulted in the firing of more than 15 teaching support staff because teacher preparation time was rolled into Friday afternoons. Spring break was cut in half.
But the shortened school week created a number of new problems.
Some students stopped going to school on Friday mornings because in many cases no substantial instruction occurs during the shortened versions of a full day’s classes. This squeeze on time led one district secondary teacher to apologize to his students before they took a province-wide exam for being unable to teach the full curriculum.
The district also eliminated recess, which they called a “gift” for elementary students and teachers to which they weren’t legally entitled. They reclassified recess as instructional time.
The loss of recess may seem inconsequential, but its importance for energetic young children goes beyond the need to stretch and move after hours of sitting still. Kids learn many of life’s important lessons on the playground.
There is a sophistication to the world of play that may be lost on many of us. Play gives educators, and parents, a chance to peek into the sometimes hidden world of children. When you want to see what children are really interested in, watch what they do when they have nothing to do.
For children, play is always purposeful. It is up to us as adults to unearth the special significance of the playful act. It may be a role that the child is trying on for the future.
There’s a possibility that taking away the joy that children get from recess will demotivate them and cause them to do less well in other areas. The amount of material children have to accomplish these days is overwhelming, so teachers have to move fast. With that kind of intensity in the classroom, kids and teachers need a break.
Recess should be considered an important part of the elementary curriculum, just as math and science. When children play, they’re thinking, solving problems, investigating and learning language skills. It’s the only part of the day when they can do whatever they want, so they learn how to cooperate, socialize and work out conflicts.
Fortunately, the Comox District Teachers’ Association had a tool to push back and they used it. The elimination of recess violated the contract language for elementary school teachers. In order to live up to its collective agreement with teachers, the school district reinstated recess, but continues to classify it as instructional time.
This sets the stage for a possible new contract issue, because the B.C. School Act clearly specifies that recess (and the time for lunch and between classes) cannot be considered instructional time.
School trustees and teachers both want to do the right thing. But this is the type of confusion and tension caused by the chronic underfunding of public schools.
So recess was reinstated. But not because it’s good for children or indirectly improves learning back in the classroom. Young Comox Valley school children can only rediscover the power of play thanks to a contractual technicality.
We should worry about the future of a society where kids are not encouraged to run and play. Where the power of play is devalued. Where there is no unstructured time to fuel imagination, encourage creativity and strength social development.
When you take away recess, you take away a complex learning environment that contributes to healthy childhood development.
