An Alternative Education

A few days ago, the Toronto District School Board unexpectedly announced staffing cuts to its alternative high schools. These schools come in a wide variety, from French Imersion to Afro-Centric; Oasis, on whose community council I serve, focuses on Arts and Social Justice, Triangle serves the queer community, and the Skateboard Factory employs a business model in which students design, build, then sell, yes, skateboards, along with offering an academic program. Some schools serve high performing students, while others offer re-engagement opportunities to those who have done poorly in, or dropped out of the mainstream schools.

The staffs of these alternative schools are generally quite small, with as few as five or six teachers, who perform administrative functions as well as teach. Cuts of a single position to such schools theaten to gut curriculums, exacerbate safety concerns and, in some instances, threaten the very viability of programs.

So a call went out this week, for supporters of these schools to attend a meeting of the Board's Alternative Schools Advisory Committee. And the response was tremendous! Teachers, parents and supporters all came out and spoke eloquently, advocating a reversal of the cuts, and citing the many reasons why these schools are essential.

But most impressive were the voices of the students themselves, who presented themselves singly and in groups to defend their programs. Several of them spoke about taking their education seriously or finding it meaningful for the first time in their lives. They spoke of the special relationships they'd formed with teachers; how they'd been instilled with confidence, ambition, an eagerness to learn. They spoke of feeling safe, able for the first time to express and to explore their differentness, free from pressures and threats to conform. They spoke of their schools as families, and as loving communities, where they felt loved, valued and validated. They were bold, spirited, eloquent, and they moved the audience powerfully.

At the end of the evening, the Board President, Chris Bolton, led in the scripting of a motion to express the sense of the meeting, which he committed to introducing in the meeting of the full Board on the following night. The deal is not yet done - another board member present rebutted that, due in part to falling enrollments, the entire school system faced a serious budgetting challenge, and that alternative schools ought not automatically be exempted from cuts any more than mainstream schools, which he felt had come under attack during the meeting. It remained clear however, that the meeting was an effective exercise in citizen activism. One student present, who attends Oasis school, was open-mouthed with astonishment as she listened to Bolton taking up the cause. "I didn't think we could actually change anything," she exclaimed. And that lesson, in and of itself, made the entire chain of events worthwhile.

Below is the letter I submitted in opposition to the staffing cuts:

                                                                                                                                    12 April 2011
Dr. Chris Spence
Toronto District School Board
 
Dear Dr. Spence,
 
I am writing you as a concerned member of the Oasis Alternative School Community Council, in response to the surprising announcement of staffing cuts to this school and to other alternative schools in the District.
 
I must say that I am shocked at this action, which threatens to undermine the viability of Oasis, and, I imagine, of the other schools that will be similarly affected. From a board that has so often, in so many ways, celebrated and championed efforts to create accessible learning alternatives to all children and youth throughout this most diverse of cities, this move comes as a disappointment and surprise.
 
Please allow me to share my particular perspective on why schools such as Oasis are so desperately needed, and why their staffing and resources need to be increased rather than cut. My background is in the social services. For approximately thirty years I have worked in detention centres, group homes, in schools and community agencies, with children and youth who for various reasons have found themselves out of the mainstream.
 
My presence on the Oasis Community Council came about as a direct result of my work for two years as a colleague of Dr. Vanessa Russell at the York University Teacher Education site in Regent Park. During and prior to my work there, I worked in Regent Park as a Youth Program Coordinator for Dixon Hall, and as the Coordinator of Community Engagement for Regent Park Neighborhood Initiative. In those roles, I worked closely with the staffs of the Nelson Mandela Park School and the Lord Dufferin School, and with the Pathways to Education Program.
 
All of my work, at these programs and in previous social service roles has underscored for me the vital importance of alternative routes to education. That such routes exist, and in as plentiful forms and configurations as possible, is so vitally important that I sometimes mistakenly assume that it can go without question. But sadly, as this instance indicates, that is not the case.
 
I know that others of my colleagues on the Oasis Council will be weighing in with you on the importance of the work that Oasis does. So I will seek to add a perspective which they perhaps will not. This is the perspective from my current work as a Street Outreach Coordinator for the City’s Streets to Homes program, where I work with the Youth team, serving individuals twenty-five years of age and under. My clients come from among the youth who live in the streets, parks, ravines and under the bridges of this city. They are heavily street-involved, meaning that they are heavily impacted by the drug culture and the criminal cultures. They are subjected to incredibly high rates of violence, both by others frequenting the streets and by police. The incidence of addiction and mental illness is very high among them. I could go on.
 
There is no question but that, along with housing, one of the most successful and certain means by which the lives of these youth can be turned around, is to get them enrolled in an educational program. And when these youth seek educational opportunities, the alternative schools of the District are absolutely their main resource. And while there are a number of successes that stem from enrolment in your various educational options, it is also clear that there would be more of such if there were even more, rather than fewer options for these youth.
 
A final point, which I think ties all of this together, has to do with the allocation of resources. So often, when critics look at programs like Streets to Homes, as when they examine alternative schools like Oasis, there is the complaint about the inordinate expense of these programs. The per capita staffing needs are higher. The costs brought about by the failure of clients to follow through and stay on track (absenteeism and dropping out) are enormous. Wouldn’t these resources be better spent on those clients (students) from a more reliable and dependable and success-oriented demographic? But what’s forgotten, or intentionally overlooked in these calculations are the extreme costs of not serving these ‘hardest-to-serve’. If schools like Oasis are brought to the point where they can no longer deliver quality programming through the cutting or staff and other resources, ultimately, the youth who are not served will suffer, and the costs to our society will show up in the building and staffing of more prisons, psychiatric facilities, and in funding lifetimes spent on social services, disability, and in treatment facilities.
 
In closing, I add my voice to what I hope will be a chorus of protest about this most ill-advised decision, to cut staffing where more staffing is urgently needed. Thank you for your attention.
 
Respectfully,
 
Craig Kirby
Oasis Alternative School Community Council

Call for a Voter Revolution

A new Federal election was called barely a week ago, and I'm fed up already! The posturing, self-righteous arrogance of the major party leaders is galling. Each one of them gets on the stump and declares that ONLY THEY have the interests of Canadians at heart. The others are only interested in power, or in serving their tiny constituencies, or are simply inept or without conscience. Each gets up and declares his respect for the ordinary Canadian, and tells us that the others think we're stupid.

I'm fed up, but I realize the responsibility isn't with the politicians. It's with the VOTERS. It's with US, because we buy this trash, we condone it, we put up with it, and we vote for them despite it. We have incredibly short memories from election to election. We don't hold politicians accountable on the substance of their records, and we allow ourselves to be manipulated when they turn on each other with dishonest distortions of one another's records, They continue to play the political games that we allow them to play.

Rex Murphy of the CBC, in commenting on the start of this new season of the Canadian political circus, said someting that caught my attention, "People will start to be engaged when the politicians stop being false....Why is it so hard for leaders to say what they think in words they would normally use. Three sentences of what they actually, really mean , in their own voices and words, would change the style of politics forever." In response, a viewer noted that he was dreaming, because so long as the current style of politicking worked, it would prevail. Both of them are right. It's going to be up to US, the VOTERS to bring about the condition that the current style no longer works.

And so, I'm wondering how we in the West can emulate the brave citizens of Libya and Saudi Arabia and Tunisian and Egypt, and foment a citizens' revolution to seize power from the autocrats of this debilitating game that substitutes power politics for reasoned debate and progress on policy. I think it may come down to a similar wholesale rejection of the political status quo - a kind of "throw all the bastards out" mentality that rewrites constitutions and establishes a new legitimacy from the bottom up. It's going to require a democratization similar to what's being sought after in those other lands.

Unfortunately, I don't have a plan on how to bring it about. But I have a couple of borrowed ideas about tools and tactics that already exist in some form that may be pieces of an answer.

My first thought stems from my experience as a voter in Washington State. There, and in several other states - most notably and famously, California - the initiative and referendum tools of democracy are used frequently and to pretty good effect. On almost every ballot, you will find measures - on the city, county and state levels - that have been placed on the ballot by citizen groups (initiatives), or that have been referred back to the voters by the legislature (referenda). This type of direct democratic participation, where citizens get to actually vote on policies, rather than on politicians, ought to take its place as a central and main thoroughfare of legislation. These tools put policy beyond the immediate reach of deal-makers, and they encourage citizens to become more responsible students of the pros and cons of measures, including financing. Very often initiatives and referenda detail exactly what taxes will me created or modified, and for exactly what period of time, in order to finance a desired project.

My second borrowed idea forms a more nebulous proposal. This calls for voters to promote and commit to standards that politicians would have to adhere to in order to receive their votes. These standards would have to be non-partisan to have a lasting effect on the overall fundamentals of how government is conducted. Otherwise, this would amount to no more than a splinter, political movement. An example of the type of standard that might be generated is that politicians refrain from attacking the character of their opponents, or from distorting facts, or their opponents records. Perhaps candidates would be subjected to university-style exams, in which they'd have to demonstrate an awareness of the positive aspects of policies they oppose, as well as the negative aspects of those they support. Non-partisan panels (or, more accurately, multi-partisan panels, made up of supporters of all candidates) would have to judge ads and speeches on their adherance to or violation of these standards.

The hardest part is this strategy is thatvoters would have to follow through and be willing to spoil their ballots, vote for alternate candidates, or abstain from participation altogether when the candidate of their choice violated the guidelines.

I welcome any response to these thoughts. Are any of the rest of you out there as frustrated by the state of affairs as I am? Any other ideas on how else to force politicians to present and debate their views with more integrity, and on how to democratize government, to make it more effective and less the political power game it is now?

Seeing What's Possible

Ponczka has been dragging me off to yoga class most Saturday mornings lately. I resisted at first, in part from feeling that the practice was somehow in competition with the Tai Chi I've worked at for almost ten years, but that I've neglected lately.

It's a wonderful class though, and I find myself looking forward to it. It's different than Tai Chi, but the practices share elements too. Both are meditative, as much about conditioning the mind and awareness as the body. And both build strength and balance in both overt and subtle ways. And, like Tai Chi, yoga is more challenging, and presents much more of a workout than I ever imagined as a casual observer.

When Sheila, our instructor, has guided us into a particularly challenging pose – torso twisted, muscles straining – she often intones the words, "see what's possible". It's her invitation to us, not to assume we know our limits, not to stop ourselves at the border of the territory we know. She regularly reminds us not to overdo anything, to rest when we need to, not to allow ourselves to suffer in pain. At the same time, she coaxes and encourages us not to give up before the strain is upon us, not to anticipate and avoid that point beyond which we fear to go. She offers up the hint that our bodies will stretch more than we imagine, that our stamina will carry us further than we dare hope, that we are more than our image of ourselves.

And of course, she's right. How very much is possible.

A recent and unexpected call reminded me of this lesson in another way. On my way home from work the other night I answered my phone and heard a familiar but unrecognized voice speaking to me. There was the slightly buzzy, fuzzy sound of the void forming a background and suggesting either long distance or a poor connection or both.

"You'll never guess where I'm calling from," said Ed, after introducing himself. It had been a long time and I was glad to hear from him. I'd met Ed when I worked in Regent Park, trying to develop skills-building and mentoring programs for youth, in a climate where there was much cynicism and skepticism about such programs, for many reasons, some of which were legitimate and some not. Ed showed up at a community meeting to sell his Life Skills/Hip Hop dance program to an ad hoc community council of youth workers, and around the table he was met by a lot of impassive faces, a few rolling eyes and little else. Maybe the most legitimate reason for the response is that Regent Park, like many other impoverished and distressed communities, was often visited by transient do-gooders who don't understand what the community offers, in either resources or challenges. Once they do understand, they often disappear, leaving little behind, but far too willing to cash in on their brief experience.

But Ed was not one of these. Rather, he was an innovative and creative pioneer of sorts. He absolutely didn't look the part of a Hip Hop impresario. What he was, in fact, was a White, Irish, Catholic School teacher from one of the Eastern provinces who specialized in teaching the hearing challenged. But in his school, he'd observed, investigated and explored the dynamics of a diverse school body. And after noticing the way a couple of his hard-of-hearing students interacted with some of the schoolyard break dancers, he'd carefully and skillfully put together a program pulling together peer mentoring, goal-setting and performance. Ill Skillz became a phenomenon, to which Ed attracted a whole array of contributers and supporters from the performance, media and business communities. The students took their act to a wide array of venues, with great success, and set many of its members of their pathways to successful careers.

Ill Skillz had accomplished about all it could in his one school, and was on its way to garnering the support of the Catholic School board to expand the program. But what Ed wanted was to give the program to a community that needed it more and could potentially do more with it.

Long story short – it never got off the ground in Regent Park. I've never been the organizer, nor promoter that I've aimed to be. Ed and I tried some things, got a couple of kids interested for awhile, but never managed to generate enough energy or momentum to get it going. He and I hung out a couple of times, appreciating one anothers' efforts and visions. His Ill Skills continued to grow into a powerful learning, teaching, mentoring vehicle. I eventually left Regent Park too, and we lost touch. Until the other night.

It turns out that Ed was phoning me from Paulatuk, a tiny Inuit community in the extreme Northwest Territories, overlooking the frozen Beaufort Sea. It's name means "Place of Soot" because of the coal deposits in neighboring hills that smolder and give off smoke. It's a community of 274, and as a teacher, he's one of a dozen or so outsiders in the helping professions. He said he thought of me because a discussion in a meeting among these professionals brought to mind something I once said about how change happens incrementally. And he gave me a call and invited me for a cup of coffee when he comes to Toronto in a few months.

So Ed has been on my mind. When we have coffee, I intend to ask him how he came to carry himself all that way, to a place where he experiences -50C temperatures and wolverine invasions causing school shutdowns, storms with howling hundred kilometer-per-hour winds, grizzlies in the neighborhood, and alcoholic binges that keep kids out of school for days at a time. I'm pretty sure that part of his answer will be that he wanted to see what was possible.

Losing Libya

What will it mean to the world, to allow the Libyan revolution to fail, when just two weeks ago it seemed the tide of liberation through North Africa was unstoppable? What will it mean to know that we in the West might have prevented that devastating outcome if we'd acted?

I don't know what it will mean?
I know that the certain dread I now feel, that Gadhafi will prevail, is as removed from fact, from any deep knowledge of the situation and the players as was my recent euphoria that Gadhafi was going down. I know that I don't know, and that there is a vast body of factors - historical, psychological, economic, spiritual, meteorological even..., and human...that I don't even suspect that I don't know.

Are there really so many pro-Gadhafi forces? Or is it that mercenaries have been bought with all those resources the people have been denied? Or is this a victory of fear against hope...fear that kept enough people off the streets and away from the protests, so that the necessary critical mass wasn't reached? Or, is it that the arms imbalance is simply too great?

Is it possible that the world's attention was diverted to Japan and away from Libya just enough that some psychic advantage in the collective unconscious was lost? Or is Gadhafi - ruthlessly moving himself up the list of all-time despotic greats - just that good at being so bad??

But, given that we don't know, that we can't truly know for certain, what has kept the west from acting? There are the geo-political factors, of course: sovereignty, the dangers of picking sides in civil wars, and the problem of the exit plan, and others. But, from a more natural perspective, is this hesitation the same as that which keeps us as individuals from intervening when rowdies are harassing a bus driver? Or when a frazzled mother is screaming at her kid in the check-out line? Is it a problem of empathizing or of failing to empathize? And with whom? Is it fear of picking the wrong side and going down? Or simply fear of taking responsibility? Or something else?

Standards depend so much on perspective. In Toronto, there is continuing fallout over police brutality against peaceful protesters during last summer's G-20 summit. And one of the sub-texts is: why didn't the good cops intervene and stop their overzealous colleagues? And, failing that, why don't some of them step forward now and finger the abusers of power? Mind you, this is the same police force that consistently blames residents of high-crime, low-income communities for not identifying and testifying against the thugs who live among them. Everyone champions loyalty, but loyalties compete on every level and between levels.

What troubles me, in myself as well as in the world at large, be that in community groups, in families, clubs and nations, and tribes of all kinds, is that loyalties and the ideas that fuel and prop them up, can be taken on so lightly, with so little probing or research, with so much taken for granted about who the good guys are, and why. Which brings me to an entirely different point than I expected when I started this essay.

What action would I stand up for regarding Libya? I support a fight for those who want some form of democratic participation for themselves. I'd support a campaign that would suppress Gadhafi's military. But I wouldn't want to "take sides" in the shaping of a government. So I'm already at odds with myself, because how to do one without the other? I can't divorce my decision-making from my values. What happens when the oppressed underdog whose cause you support becomes an even worse master? And how many times has that happened? So I find myself agreeing with a retired general whom I heard being interviewed on the CBC the other day, who said that, when it comes to an internal struggle between two near-equal factions, it's best not to step in before one side or another has demonstrated a clear advantage. What went unsaid, but implied, is that you then choose what relationship you want to have with the victor, you don't try and change the result.

Which makes all the sense in the world. But what I'm feeling is a positive rush that the UN has finally taken moves to establish a no-fly zone, and I hope that there will be even more direct military support for the rebels, and that somehow, it won't all amount to too little, too late.

I don't imagine I'd feel the same, if I was just off a tour in Iraq or Afghanistan, or even if I'd ever been a fighting man. But, can action ever wait until all doubt is gone, until every possibility has been considered and all options weighed? Or in the end, do we act as life moves us?

In STONE

I read a tombstone in Mt. Pleasant Cemetery this evening.

Today was one of our first Spring days. It warmed to above plus ten, and in the late afternoon the clouds came apart into pieces that soon dissipated, leaving the day suddenly and unexpectedly bright.

Equinox is less than a week away. The patios are about to explode into life.
My bike will be out tomorrow for the first time this year.

And Mt. Pleasant is the first cemetery I ever came to love. I lived three blocks away for nine years and it became a favorite place to walk, and later on, when I began to take back my body, it was the first place I jogged in almost a decade.

It feels wide and open for the city - spacious and well tended, curved and rolling, inviting in the sky. And it’s also the place at-long-last teaching me the names of trees, because each of its dozens of varieties are tagged with its name, both latinate and anglicized.

It’s a peaceful place. Not morbid or depressing at all. Restful, reassuring. I never connected a sense of peace or of wellbeing with burials until I came to know this place. This place has taught me the reasonableness of a common ground for the dead and the living to meet, in memory, thanks, longing and grief, for yesterdays to be measured against now, for the reshaping of histories and relationships outside of the tyranny of time.

I happened to be passing, just when my long, complex and emotional day had worked itself through, and I steered the car in along a path, then slowed and parked. Eventually, I went to where I knew I’d find my name engraved in stone, in deep and clean block letters.

KIRBY

Not relatives of mine, that I know of. Just the sharing of a name. No, not morbid at all... Anchoring. Seeing it raises a smile to my lips. I imagine myself on both sides of the impassable border, and the gift glows warm inside me, balanced with that other gift I can only imagine.

And then, the rest of the inscription, in squat, even letters.

What it says is:

In loving memory of

CHRISTOPHER KIRBY

1833 – 1915

MARY ELLIS HIS WIFE

1842 – 1914

EDWARD CHRISTOPHER THEIR SON

1868 - 1932

DAISY ELIZABETH THEIR DAUGHTER

1877 – 1935

LILLIAN MARY THEIR DAUGHTER

1874 - 1946

So much story in so few lines.

Reaching After Art

I’ve been reading a volume of Paris Review interviews with writers. As I read, I’m aware of the voices I manufacture to represent these writers. It reminds me of the way Hollywood presents period pieces. Whether the cultural era represented is Roman, Greek or Egyptian, Chinese or Mayan, the rulers, the elites, the higher ups are so often given formal British accents. I do something like that in my head. I hyper-intellectualize these writers in my mind. As Hollywood does with its elitist accents, I place my writers in a world apart, distance them from my every day. Whether it’s from awe, respect or fear, I place them in a realm I can skirt around, catch a glimpse of, but can’t quite enter.

And sometimes, when someone asks me about my writing, or about my practice of social work, or about fusion jazz (or anything else about which I think I ought to have some expertise) I find myself going into a subtley altered voice. Trying to sound as though I have something all figured out. Slipping in the odd fifty-cent word that I hope they don’t quite understand. It’s not intentional. Not consciously intentional. It is a little defensive though, in the same way some of the responses of these authors gets a bit defensive when asked a highly analytical or intellectualized question about something that didn’t spring from the intellect.

I have a great friend in the artist Liz Quisgard, a hard working, prolific sculptor of colourful, highly patterned columns and knitted tapestries who, when asked what her works means, replies, “Nothing at all.” She presents no theories about how her work comments on the social or cultural milieu, or responds to certain psychic of spiritual forces, or represents the evolution or devolution of what has come before. “It is what it is,” she says, matter-of-factly. She knows her work well enough, and likes it well enough, that she doesn’t need to say anything else about it. She knows that she’s an artist with such assurance that she doesn’t need to define what an artist is. She just makes art and doesn’t bother with the rest of it.

Me...I’m not even close to that. I’ve been writing – not prolifically, but steadily – for decades. I’ve amassed thousands of pages of scenes, dialogues, reflections, scenarios, ideas and outlines. I’ve had a handful of short pieces published, but most of my output is in a state that can only be called “unfinished”. But I realize that this is – more than anything – a symptom of my unresolved self-image. Because, I’m still hugely uncomfortable claiming for myself the designation “artist”, or “writer”.

I make music too, but I have no worries or concerns about whether I’m a musician or not. Because it isn’t important to me that anyone consider me a musician, I’m free to happily make music without much concern about what others think – except for the neighbours that is, when it’s late and their kids are in bed. But writing? That’s a different matter. Because I’ve wanted to be a writer all my life. And in my heart, I know I am one. A contradiction, yes, but that’s just how it is. I know and I don’t know. I am already, yet am always striving to be. I reach for what I already hold in the deepest part of my being.

The Weighted City

The city streets are heavy
and hold me down these old ways
Gravity thick as basements, the roads lined with streetcar veins
cracking with traffic in the three am narcotic glow

I follow the link of street lights
safe in their unendingness
silencing the fear of what lies around corners
Someone’s phantom dream, maybe my own.

At the end of all the boulevards, where the donut shops are closed
only silence and distant headlights waiting
The stillness is long-legged and brash
filtering through the thin and distant radio
leaking rooms of memory...and touches...
and fantasies that will stalk me back

I am seeking the fragments
of my ongoing, half true story
among those knit to me by this gravity

Story and rumour, what a city is built of
Not just this one, but every brother sister place
holding me home to weighted down memories
close and rutted like old scars
able to fade but not disappear
mimicking potholes of time and inertia