August 18, 2025
What the education system doesn’t want you to know about how they poison the well.
Mom Is Very Involved: The Poisoning of Our Educational Environment.
From this point forward, I will adopt a broader perspective by highlighting instances of code violations, legislation, and policy. While I cannot address every microaggression that has occurred in the past four years, I hope to continue providing you with an understanding of the poisoned environments in which our ADHD students learn.
As you read, keep in mind that Ontario human rights laws are based on a balance of probabilities, with the claimant having to show “it is more reasonable and probable than not that discrimination took place.”
Adults have choices that youth do not.
When September 2021 began, I was still holding hope, trust, and confidence in the school’s ability to support us.
I was not disillusioned. I always knew this was going to be hard. The complexities that often come with ADHD are no joke.
But hard is what we signed up for, right? As parents? Teachers? Professionals who have chosen to work with and for others? People who are invested in the health and wellness of the generations to come.
Regret.
That September, the school appointed a new VP, while the principal and SERT remained the same.
Repairing the relationship with the SERT was very challenging for me. If I had treated my clients as she had treated my daughter and me, I would be fired. Not only was she not disciplined, but we were obligated to work with her.
Despite this, I chose to trust and encouraged my daughter to do the same. For most of the grade 10 school year, the principal, SERT, and I met bi-weekly for 60-90 minutes. This required me to take time off work, adjust my schedule, or work extra hours on the weekend. I shared every aspect of our lives, including detailed information about assessments, appointments, medications, and strategies. I cried. I laughed. I believed them (until I didn’t).
The educators chose to poison the well.
The first day of grade 10 was September 7, 2021.
Two days into the school year, on September 9, 2021, one of her teachers wrote the following email to the principal and VP.
“I typically do not seek admin’s guidance on these issues, but have been advised to do so. This student frequently and regardless of requests consciously lowers her mask throughout the period (morning). I would appreciate your support with this matter. Similarly, she is the only student who consistently ignores requests to put away her phone. Students who demonstrate the inability or unwillingness to abide by the classroom expectation regarding healthy use of phones have been told that phones will be expected to stay in a secure location behind my desk. I intend to implement this classroom expectation universally, so again, your reinforcement of this expectation is important for consistency and everyone’s learning.”
Every time I read this email, her statements —“have been advised to do so,” “only student,” and “inability or unwillingness” — catch me. They imply that, once again, instead of a fresh start, they opted to discriminate, stigmatize, harass, bully, and practice differential treatment.
Let’s briefly jump ahead to grade 11. This same teacher wrote an almost identical email on September 6, 2022, the first day of grade 11.
To the principal, VP, and SERT, she wrote, “Good afternoon, In the middle of second period today, she left the class abruptly, rudely, etc. She arrived about 20 minutes late, but I had overheard her in the hall talking with a teacher about going to guidance, so I did not mark it as a late. Repeatedly, she was the only student who needed multiple reminders about her phone, respectful behaviour, etc. She has also repeatedly made the statement to her friends, she’s asking for it (in regards to myself), as I explained classroom expectations and the new and invigorated approach to the latest, cell phone use, bathroom etiquette, and overall tone.
Despite reminders about respectful manner, tone, language, and behaviour, she escalated to the point of walking out and loudly closing the door. After her departure, I was able to continue teaching with success and without interruption. I have no idea where she chose to go. Given the fact that I was mid-teaching, I did not have the time or appropriate comportment to draft an email.
Given the situation last year when she tried to push by me to have access into the classroom after having been told to leave and swearing at me, continued to frequent my classroom despite having been assigned to an alternative location for the rest of the semester, and the fact that neither of these situations was ever formally resolved, I am requesting that administration intervene and discuss the next steps with her and her parents. Please advise. Thank you.”
This teacher failed to mention that she said something similar to, “Groundhog Day, eh, I guess we are going to do this again,” as my daughter walked into the grade 11 classroom. In her email, she omitted crucial details about the grade 10 incident she mentioned.
The grade 10 incident.
On September 14, 2021, my daughter came home and informed me of an incident that happened in this teacher’s classroom. I immediately wrote an email to the principal, who promptly responded, letting me know that she and the VP would investigate the matter further and follow up.
The teacher accused my daughter of being a safety threat after she pushed past her in the classroom doorway.
Investigating the incident.
The next day, the VP and principal initiated their investigation.
The following is a summary of the VP’s investigative notes:
My daughter reported that she had a bagel that morning, requested water, and was kicked out of the classroom without her belongings. She waited for 20 minutes in the hallway while repeatedly knocking on the classroom door. The teacher ignored her, and she felt increasingly angry. My daughter demanded her belongings, and when the teacher finally opened the door, my daughter responded with angry, inappropriate language. The teacher berated her, both in private and in front of her classmates.
Our daughter was sent down to the office, and disclosed that the teacher had made statements of concern for “kids like me,” also saying, “I hate kids like you,”. Our daughter reported that this teacher targets her and doesn’t react the same way when other students misbehave. Our daughter shared that she was trying to manage her anger, but the teacher kept yelling at her. She did slam the door as she left the classroom. Her mask only fell once; she did not push the door (into the teacher), and did not hit the teacher.
I arrived at the school, having been summoned by my daughter in a near-hysterical phone call. The VP wrote that I “expressed frustration that there were systemic issues at play from last year. The principal attended a meeting (last year). (Wanted) Problem-solving to get her daughter into a safe and positive environment”. I also asked him to read what had happened in grade 9 by accessing our Freedom of Information request.
The following is a summary of the principal’s investigative notes:
The teacher identified challenges with our daughter’s use of the phone and non-adherence to the COVID masking procedure. She stated that our daughter became agitated and refused to go to the office. She paged the office, and our daughter then left the classroom, slamming the door. The teacher stated she had felt unsafe when our daughter pushed past her to leave the classroom. The teacher then apologized to the class for having to witness the event.
Neither my daughter nor the teacher suffered any disciplinary action from this incident.
For our daughter’s safety, we immediately removed her from this teacher’s classroom. She was then required to complete the course online in the library, with some support from an educational assistant.
A lesson on how to poison an environment.
On September 17, 2021, a seemingly unrelated meeting took place between a few other teachers, who were not involved in the above incident. The minutes of their meeting notes included a statement about our daughter. They wrote that she “ was not accepting responsibility for preventing harm by swearing at a teacher and physically pushing a teacher aside”.
The gross misrepresentation of this grade 10 incident in the meeting minutes of uninvolved teachers, demonstrating affinity bias, constitutes a violation of confidentiality and discrimination, and robbed our daughter of her right to learn in a safe, inclusive learning environment.
Additionally, these teachers later used these falsehoods to support their rationale in removing our daughter from a school program.
Let me explain the human rights violation. The Code states, “Stigma, negative attitudes, and stereotypes can lead to inaccurate assessments of students’ personal characteristics. They may lead educational institutions to develop policies, procedures, and decision-making practices that exclude or marginalize students with disabilities. They can also create barriers for students with disabilities, with some students not feeling welcome or included in class activities, or social situations at school.”
The Code also states, “Educators must consider a range of strategies to address disruptive behaviour. Such strategies will include reassessing and, where necessary, modifying the student’s accommodation plan, providing additional supports, implementing alternative learning techniques, and other forms of positive behavioural intervention.”
The targeting of our daughter, which occurred before she arrived in grade 9, on day two of grade 10, and on day one of grade 11, demonstrates stigmatization, negative attitudes, bias, and no one considered various strategies to address the disruptive behavior that they were supposedly concerned about.
Furthermore, the Code states, “To avoid labelling or stereotyping, it is essential that education-providers take precautions to safeguard the disability-related information of students” and “Maintaining confidentiality for students with disabilities is an important procedural component of the duty to accommodate”.
The minutes of the meeting indicate that no one protected her personal information.
Reasonable and probable.
After the incident and our removal of our daughter from the teacher’s classroom, the involved teacher completed a Serious Student Incident Report on September 24, 2021.
The teacher wrote, “Emotionally shaken. Once the room was secured and she was gone. I sat down to compose myself and sent an email to the admin at the school. I waited in my room to avoid her gaining re-entry, as she repeatedly returned to the room and refused to go to the office. I made sure the door was locked and the window covered and continued with my lesson. On my prep period, I went to my office. I informed the coverage teacher to not re-admit her to the class.”
Rich.
For the record, our daughter has no history of aggression towards any teacher.
You can be confident that if they had found any evidence supporting this incident, they would have suspended her. Remember last year, when they excluded her for two incidents? One had a single witness, and the other had video evidence that clearly showed she did not initiate the physical altercation.
This teacher knew exactly what would happen when she singled our daughter out, withheld her belongings, locked her out of the classroom, closed the window covering, and ignored her requests, after whispering how she “hated kids like her”.
She knew how to manipulate our daughters’ emotions to trigger a dysregulated state. The email from grade 11 further supports this likelihood.
I suspect this teacher, and many others, know a lot about ADHD and the resulting emotional vulnerability.
Perhaps the statistics showing high suspension, expulsion, exclusions, and poor graduation rates for ADHD students reflect how our educational systems and associated professionals are, at times, poisoning the environment for these vulnerable youth?
Could teachers be contributing to the rise of violence in classrooms?
Is their reporting sometimes distorted and not representative of the truth?
Your ADHD Advocate,