This Hamilton high school teacher has only this school year left before retirement and although she loves her job tremendously, she can no longer deal with the woke indoctrination and the preferential treatment given to black students and administrators.
She says she derives great satisfaction from working with “underprivileged” kids at her inner city school and with endeavouring to give them “some hope.”
“I do like the underdogs … that’s where I get a lot of gratification helping these kids succeed,” she says.
The outspoken teacher is yet another who asked to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions from the board’s woke administrators.
At her school, “poverty” is the biggest issue, not colour, she says.
Things started to change for her in 2017 when she was placed on leave after being accused of racism for presenting an alternate view of a provincial policy.
“I was being targeted by the principal,” she says, noting like Toronto principal Richard Bilkszto she “felt awful” and went off on stress leave.
Her former female principal, she says, regularly wore a BLM shirt to school at the same time she herself was being investigated for sharing a “political opinion” about the provincial policy.
Clearly she didn’t express the right political opinion.
The principal — in her view a KOJO prodigy — even told her to “check her privilege” and constantly made her do reports on colonisation.
That principal has since been transferred to another board.
The Hamilton school board doesn’t hire on merit, she says, but on affirmative action. The result has been the worse administration team possible, some of them downright toxic.
“I am so distraught with the education system,” she says. “I love my job but the political climate is awful.”
The school has a grad coach, specifically for black students, which she finds highly selective.
That coach, she feels, is not qualified to help students at all except to offer an office for them to hang out.
No one stands for the national anthem anymore, she adds.
“The inmates are already running the asylum…they need structure…they need something,” she says.
The teacher says many students still don’t know how to read or write properly even though they’re in high school and they don’t do anything about that.
They also don’t push for students to attend class. But kids are pushed through nonetheless because failing kids is “a lot more work.”
I asked whether things got worse with the hiring of Sheryl Robinson-Petrazzini as director last September.
Robinson-Petrazzini, who came from the Toronto District School Board, is the same official who tweeted a thank you in 2021 to DIE trainer Kike Ojo-Thompson of the KOJO Institute for making former principal Richard Bilkszto feel the “discomfort” needed to “disrupt” anti-black racism.
Robinson-Petrazzini’s toxic tweet remained public for months until Bilkszto’s lawyers threatened to sue her.
As reported previously in this space, Bilkszto ended his life in mid-July, the result his family and his lawyer say of the bullying the occasional principal experienced at two KOJO sessions in the spring of 2021. He was subsequently cancelled by the acolytes of black activist education director Colleen Russell-Rawlins.
The teacher says she’s been told the Hamilton board senior executive does not appear to be gelling because Robinson-Petrazzini still lives in Scarborough and is not familiar with the Hamilton culture.
But a couple of principals have still been sent home for eight months over alleged racist issues, she’s been told.
Violence is also prevalent in their schools along with lots of dope smoking, which is uncontrollable. Kids are always running rampant in the hall, she adds.
“Nobody does anything about it because there are no suspensions,” she says.
She says, sadly, the boards don’t “take care” of students anymore.
There’s no accountability and no structure.
“It’s not about doing what’s best for kids anymore,” the retiring teacher says. “It’s all about getting your grad rates up and your suspension rates down.”
