Teamwork, dreamwork...

"Teamwork, dreamwork. We are all in this together." These are the words keynote speaker Earl Rickman III said over and over again in his address to the 420 members attending the Alberta School Board Association Fall General Meeting. The past president of the National School Boards Association in the U.S. may have spoke of the American school system, but many of his points ring true here in Canada as well.

Mr. Rickman said, as trustees, we need to ensure that the entire community is working together to nurture the dreams of all of our children. And that too often, children are labelled as "failures", where it is really the adults in their lives who have failed them. Mr. Rickman said trustees are the best line of defence for the children in our communities.

Mr. Rickman did not say anything I didn't already know, but his words resonated with me as I carried on to my first workshop session. I decided to change to a different session after I found out no one from our table was attending. It was entitled, "Making it Better: Sexual and Gender Minority Students Speak Out About Their Experiences."

As I entered the conference room, I saw a table at the front, lined with seven very brave students. They were accompanied by Dr. Kristopher Wells from the Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services at the University of Alberta.

Over the course of two hours, these courageous students from various Edmonton schools, spoke of how teachers told them to act "less gay" and how the homophobic bullying in the schools was ignored. They spoke of how they were told to change for gym class in the washrooms and how they were told they would go to hell. I cried and I soul searched, wondering how LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans-identified, two-spirited, queer) students in our division are treated.

Most of the bullying and negative attitudes towards these LGBTQ students occurred during their junior high years, but there was some hope when they told us of how there were adults they could turn to in their lives, including in their schools. Most of them are now presidents of their high school Gay Straight Alliance clubs and reaching out to other students to offer their help.

The courageousness of these young adults rekindled my spirit to ensure that, as a trustee, I am acting as a line of defence for all students in our school division. We all need to nurture our children's dreams.

This is the poem that Mr. Rickman left us with, and will always remain in my heart:

"We Pray for Children" by Ina Hughes 
We pray for children
Who put chocolate fingers everywhere,
Who like to be tickled,
Who stomp in puddles and ruin their new pants,
Who sneak Popsicles before supper,
Who erase holes in math workbooks,
Who can never find their shoes. 
And we pray for those
Who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire,
Who can't bound down the street in new sneakers,
Who never "counted potatoes,"
Who are born in places we wouldn't be caught dead  in,
Who never go to the circus,
Who live in an X-rated world.

We pray for children
Who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions,
Who sleep with the cat and bury goldfish,
Who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money,
Who squeeze toothpaste all over the sink,
Who slurp their soup.

And we pray for those
Who never get dessert,
Who have no safe blanket to drag behind them,
Who can't find any bread to steal,
Who don't have any rooms to clean up,
Whose pictures aren't on anybody's dresser,
Whose monsters are real.

We pray for children
Who spend all their allowance before Tuesday,
Who throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food,
Who like ghost stories,
Who shove dirty clothes under the bed,
Who get visits from the tooth fairy,
Who don't like to be kissed in front of the car pool,
Who squirm in church and scream on the phone,
Whose tears we sometimes laugh at and whose smiles can make us cry.

And we pray for those
Whose nightmares come in the daytime,
Who will eat anything,
Who have never seen a dentist,
Who are never spoiled by anyone,
Who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,
Who live and move, but have no being.

We pray for children
Who want to be carried
And for those who must,
For those we never give up on
And for those who never get a second chance,
For those we smother.
And for those who will grab the hand of anybody kind
enough to offer it.

We pray for children. Amen. 
(We pray for Children, 1995,  William Morrow publishers)