Many Boxes for Many Kids

A couple of years after Michael’s grade two box, I had the biggest upset of my life when my dad died at the end of grade four.

Just like with Michael, the grown-ups around me didn’t know what I needed, and I didn’t know either.

I remember performing a lot of emotions and putting a lot of effort into how I was supposed to show up and be a certain way. Reading about grief and seeing the stages, I made sure that I was properly displaying those.

Until I got home alone and everybody left. Then I would melt down.

Mom rarely even saw these, but she did always find some of the remnants, like my bra taken off the moment I got home and smashed underneath a sofa cushion because I couldn’t handle the feel of it on me anymore. 

The emotions and the smiles that I put on throughout the day to get through the day took a lot out of me. People said to try my best, and I knew from experience that I was capable of extremely high scores and perfect behaviours. So, I had to do that because that was my best.

I took things a little bit literally sometimes.

Although I was quite gifted and read beyond my age and learned early and watched, I slipped through the cracks because it was 1985 and nobody knew what to do with a kid like me. Although I think they knew that I was something unique.

I remember being the lead in the school play in grade 3 at Humboldt Public School. I remember visiting my teachers’ homes and a community around me where I was cherished and free to be my weird self.

Dad held together my world. From stories I’ve heard about him, it sounds like he was like that for a lot of people. 

In all my work and relationships, I try to do two things; notice who is left out and find ways to show up for each other without worrying about whether we can check a box to explain our connections. I’ve tried to build community in every role I’ve played, and I did that with intention, in part to honour Dad. 

But when Dad died and we moved to Saskatoon, everything changed.

The new school was much more hostile, where brand names mattered and the mask I wore had to become more extreme. I learned to hide and perform. To stay away from the mean girls who might target me.

Like all kids, they had an intuitive sense of my difference and were afraid, to some extent, that my differences and my tragedies might be contagious.

So even more, I learned to hide.

One of my favourite places that first year was a big cardboard box on the balcony of our second-floor apartment. Facing a parking lot, sheltered from the wind, I decorated that old… was it a refrigerator box?… with blankets and cozy things.

It became my safe sanctuary space until it got too cold and fell apart, and Mom made me throw it away eventually. I think that was the winter she broke her leg as well. Things were not easy, but having a nook to nest really helped. 

All my life I have built forts and nooks and cozy little spaces.

Maybe inspired by that box in grade two, I learned that boxes were kind of a cool place, which helped me understand that just like cats, we also can like boxes. 😻🎁📥📦😻

At the end of February 2020, I saw what was going on in China and I remembered MERS a few years earlier when everything shut down and even the camels disappeared from the zoo.

(The scientist in me never did understand the logic behind that one, where they worried that camels’ relatives would come visit from Saudi Arabia or…Anyway, I never did understand Korean logic, but that’s another side story for today.)

The point is that I saw what was coming, and I had a feeling that Covid would be a challenge for my third grade students.

It was a Friday afternoon, and I remember building a blanket fort and watching Back to the Future. I had them bring home as much as I could figure out, putting things together. Nothing was confirmed from the Ministry of Education, but I had been Korea long enough to predict they’d be cautious early, not wanting to look weak in response and  knowing schools are obvious places for restrictions. I said goodbye to them for the next three months.

Except on a Zoom screen.

A few weeks later they were getting burnt out and demoralized, and I came up with a lesson for the week after spring break, or maybe it was the week before spring break, to take the kids back to 1985.

I shared stories of my own childhood, of Michael’s box and my own on the balcony.

These kids were in tiny apartments with their whole family. Some of the embassy kids were on lockdown and couldn’t leave their house at all. High up in their domino-style apartment buildings, they couldn’t even see green when they looked outside.

How could they focus on learning or any kind of connection with so much threat around them?

Everyone was scared, and the thing they needed most, being able to be at school with their friends, was taken away from them.

So I helped them create a safe space for themselves. I asked each kid to build a fort in the corner of their home somewhere.

For the first few days, I asked them to leave their technology outside and just make it a safe space for them to read books, listen to music, and write. I wanted them to breathe and rest and play. To feel grounded and safe.

Because I understood how important it is for a kid who is struggling to have a place where they feel secure and safe.

One of those safe spaces now is my entire home at WebbSprout Learning Programs.

I’m using my voice to advocate for other safe spaces for kids everywhere. I’m telling my stories so that people can understand what WebbSprout really is and  what it can be. 

There are too many threats today, both in school and from society. Today, we know better than to put kids in boxes, and kids shouldn’t need to hide to feel safe… but so many of the weird kids still feel that they need to.

They are still bullied and targeted. Not just by peers, but by our own government. 

They are often sent home from school because their behaviours are disruptive.

At least in 1982 they let Michael stay at school and gave him a box to decorate and keep him busy.

Many people would look at what happened then and say how cruel it was. Yet I know for a fact that everyone involved in the decision to put Michael in that box loved Michael. 

His own mother was a teacher at that school, and it was a school where weird kids were loved and allowed to be weird. At least that’s how it always felt to me; school was my favourite place besides outdoors exploring on my own. 

So if you read my story of Michael in the box and thought negatively of any of the teachers, once again it shows that you can’t always understand the situation from the outside without knowing more about what’s going on on the inside.

The only way that you can know what goes on on the inside is to share stories and understand that your story matters.

So I’m fighting to save my little box, build better boxes, and collect stories so that people can understand why these boxes matter.