Skip to content

Food for thought: Kids need our help

One of the most important lessons I learned as a teacher happened at the end of my first month of teaching in Antigonish, N.S.
Demers
Columnist Paul Demers

One of the most important lessons I learned as a teacher happened at the end of my first month of teaching in Antigonish, N.S. A colleague came into my class to ask me to check on one her students, a boy who had run from her classroom and was now in the bathroom.

I went in and heard sobbing from a cubicle into which this boy had locked himself, so I asked if he was OK and what I could do to help. The boy sobbed and said nothing until a school counsellor took over. I left the bathroom and returned to my classroom.

Later that day, the counsellor came to update me. The young boy, it turned out, was starving. There was no food at home and he hadn’t eaten in three days. Sitting in a classroom and learning about metaphors wasn’t, apparently, too satisfying.

The realization that someone could be really starving was something I understood intellectually, but I had never had to deal with it. Having grown up on the west side of Vancouver, my friends and I never lacked for food. If we said, “There’s nothing to eat in the house,” it simply meant that our parents hadn’t bought our favourite snack foods. The truth was that there was always something to eat in the house.

There’s poverty in our community and our schools, but I am continually amazed at the way we address this problem. At Howe Sound Secondary School, there are several places where students can go and get food if they need it. There’s no means test or application; kids can simply get fed. Some of the kids need it – there’s no food at home – and others may just be hungry, want a snack or have forgotten their lunch. It doesn’t matter. If a teacher identifies a kid in need, there’s a process to get him or her a food card for the cafeteria.

I know that elementary schools in the community also provide services. Volunteers collect donations and provide food so that kids have a fighting chance when they get into the classroom.

We can all do more to help, of course, but people are generally open-hearted and do the best they can with the resources they have. The things we don’t do are sins of omission: We forget or we overlook, but we don’t do things to hurt people.

The recent provincial budget has an almost $900 million surplus and a $400 million contingency, about $1.3 billion “in the black.” How is it possible that, for the past decade, we’ve had the highest rates of child poverty rates in Canada? How is it that we allow this to continue?

Policies that the government makes, supported by representatives including our own MLA Jordan Sturdy, have created this injustice and inequality. These are not sins of omission but rather of commission.

Perhaps Mr. Sturdy and the other Liberal MLAs are fortunate enough never to have felt the sting of poverty. I’d hope, though, that they would find enough empathy to look beyond their comforts and find a way to share some of the wealth.

push icon
Be the first to read breaking stories. Enable push notifications on your device. Disable anytime.
No thanks