Quote from: Driswood on Apr 27, 2017, 06:04AMYou better believe it! I'd say move here, but you don't want your child in Florida schools.
Well (...opening a can of worms here)... we honestly might rather have our child back in a US school for several reasons, and we'll probably be moving back down to the Maryland area.
The schools here in Ontario are failing our daughter, and my wife and I.
I told my wife that the schools are great in Canada, not to worry, etc. Well, just as in the US, it depends where you live.
In the Durham region, a suburb area on the east of Toronto, teachers are now issued Kevlar flak jackets if they want them. They're rightly afraid of all the violence.
https://www.durhamregion.com/news-story/7250240-evacuations-and-kevlar-parents-raise-the-alarm-about-violence-in-durham-schools/
We live up in Orangeville, which is north of Toronto, and is a bedroom commuter town much like Frederick, MD is to Washington. (Except, there is absolutely zero cultural/musical/artistically interesting activity in the Orangeville area... unless you're one of two cover band duos that play regularly. No multi-use theatre, no college with any kind of arts faculty, no ballet school (just the competitive stuff), etc. You really have to be in Toronto, or go to Toronto, to experience anything that even a smaller town like Frederick has happening for it's citizens)
Anyways...
Our daughters school board system doesn't hire any music teachers now... at all...none. There are two high schools where we are; one has a bit of a band program (like 10 kids), and the other is struggling to keep anything musical alive. They never hired another music teacher when the previous one retired (because it's not what the school board does anymore) and the French teacher took over the music program, which consists of teaching class guitar to a couple of students. The music teacher before him (who ran the jazz band because the retired music teacher didn't like jazz) was the volleyball coach... a nice guy who's a very amateur sax player who doesn't even know what a Blues progression is.
Our daughter's only exposure to music in her elementary school is through the love of music that her teacher posseses. That's this year. Next year, probably nothing, with no prospects of any exposure to the arts at all if we stay here.
The only option for the kids here is hocky, lacrosse, or soccer. That's fine for some people. But the school board is a disaster. (...I could really start dishing some dirt on the teachers union here and the atmosphere of extreme over-political-correctedness which ensures that all students are treated entirely as 'equals', but I'll save that for a beer and a visit.)
Because Ontario schools now don't believe there is such a thing as 'special needs' students (my wife was directly told this by our daughters' principle) that the stories like that in the Durham region are only the tip of the iceberg.
In my daughters' class, there are 3 boys (little over-priveleged hockey thugs on the town's travel team) who regularly call the history/social studies teacher a ***** and give her the finger telling her to **** off in class. This is in grade 3. And they're allowed to throw their desks around in class without the teacher being allowed to 'single them' out or even tell the parents that their children are being disruptive (we've been told this when we went for a meeting and wanted to know why are daughter is all of a sudden not liking school). She can't learn anything, because there isn't any way to get the 'special needs' kids in a class where they really need the hellp. (...the school board doesn't hire special needs teachers in our area). This is true....there is an autistic child in the class, who really needs some extra help and attention. He spends all day wandering the classroom and drawing on the board during class. But, there isn't where for him to go.
This in current Canada, in Ontario.... the backbone of the country. It's different in other provinces, but....
I substitute taught school in Yonkers, the Bronx, Manhattan, so I know how bad things can get. (...and Jerry, I know that you put in a lifetime of teaching.)
But, this is not the life we envisioned for us or our daughter. And, now, in Ontario, you can't move anywhere because the price of rents or real estate is out-of-this-world crazy... and people are lucky to be working any kind of job just where they are.
I'm lucky...getting paid to write music, do some production work, play my trombone and do some gigs. My wife has a crappy arts admin job working with some people who are entirely dependent on government funding for their existence.
Why did I write all this? I believe people have to know truths... not fake news.
So Jerry, we'll stay in touch and I'll let you know what we'll be doing! .... we just want our daughter to grow up with exposure to something besides hockey, and we just want to grow a little garden somewhere like we used to!