Students First

Alyson Reid-Larade — A passion for education

Alyson Reid-Larade never thought she would become a teacher. In fact, if someone would have told her when she was a teenager that she would end up dedicating her life to teaching, she wouldn’t have believed them. “If anybody told me back then that I would become [a teacher] I just would have laughed,” she says, even though teaching has now been her passion for 21 years. Reid-Larade began her professional career as a kinesiologist in Toronto. She was always fascinated by the brain and body and therefore kinesiology seemed like the perfect fit. However, teaching slowly began to trickle into her life without her even realizing it. As part of her job she used to educate adults with sports or motor vehicle accident injuries about the healing process and how the pain cycle worked. “They were always telling me about how I was really good at explaining how their body functioned and healed,” she says. After a couple of years working as a kinesiologist, Reid-Larade reached a crossroads. She was either going to continue in the healthcare field and become a chiropractor or a physiotherapist or try her hand at teaching. On a whim she decided to apply to all three programs. “I made a little deal with fate that I needed to go where I was meant to be,” she says “I said I will accept the first one and if I don’t get into any of them I am creating a backpacking trip to Europe.” Within a few weeks she received her acceptance into teacher’s college in Ottawa. She accepted on the spot and never looked back. lyson Reid-Larade did her practicums in Ottawa and loved the city so much that she never left. Over her career she has taught science, biology and physical education at St Peter and St Francis Xavier High Schools and currently teaches outdoor education and health for life. For the past three years she has also been working in special education. “I wanted to be able to work more closely with the students who struggle with school and struggle with the learning process,” she says. “[I want to] help them to find their strengths.” Reid-Larade is very passionate about promoting both mental and physical health for her students. She loves nature and has taken many students on overnight camping trips. She has even taken school groups to Costa Rica three times. “I think negative stress is an indoor illness and when kids are given the opportunity to challenge themselves outside, they grow in all sorts of wonderful ways,” she says. Reid-Larade has continued her early passion for physiology and the human brain. She worked with a neurosurgeon from CHEO to help coaches and PE teachers make sense of new research into concussions when ‘Return-to-Play’ protocols were being introduced. She has also been studying the neuroscience and psychology of the developing brain with the Neufeld Institute for many years. She is passionate about getting students, parents and other teachers to (Alyson Reid-Larade) wants to help educators and parents see a different side of teenage behaviour so they can respond effectively and aid with the learning process. ABOVE: Alyson Reid-Larade is passionate about promoting both the physical and mental health of students.

understand the teenage brain and what might stop them from fully engaging at school. She wants to help educators and parents see a different side of teenage behaviour so they can respond effectively and aid with the learning process. She also wants teenagers to understand how their brain is developing and how their emotions fit in. “When I talk about this kind of stuff it’s amazing,” she says. “I could have a crowd of 200 students in front of me and you could hear a pin drop.”

Mental health is something ReidLarade talks about regularly with her students and she has even written a book on self-esteem called How To Be Your Own Hero: A Teenager’s Toolkit for Building Self-Esteem. The book focuses on the way self-esteem affects decision making regarding drugs and alcohol, relationships and sexuality, nutrition and personal safety. “It’s a lot of what is going on inside that is driving what we are seeing on the outside,” she says. Reid-Larade also has a website and blog (www.byoh.ca) where she writes about education, self-esteem and teenage mental health.

Reid-Larade says that throughout her teaching career she has learned the value of the student-teacher connection and how it is even more important than simply focusing on the curriculum. “The curriculum is important, but it doesn’t need to be a constant struggle to deliver it. If you’ve connected with [the students] and you’re passionate about your subject they can’t help but be passionate, about learning it too,” she says.

In 2015, Reid-Larade was a recipient of the National Capital Educator award, though she is adamant she is just one of many amazing teachers that are making a difference in students’ lives every day. She also believes that teenagers are wonderful and often don’t get the credit they deserve. “Teenagers are an amazing group of citizens,” she says. “They’re looking for guidance, looking for assistance and looking for role models.” Reid-Larade says she sees teachers stepping up to the task daily, making a significant impact in the lives of their students. “I am inspired by the people I work with every day and I hope to do the same for them n

An unwavering commitment to, and culture of, candor, brutal honesty and factual transparency must permeate this exercise. Yes, incomplete and conflicting data, policy missteps, program mistakes and audit/control problems will be unearthed. Such is the reality for any entity – public or private – facing a mammoth crisis. However, recriminations and blame must be eschewed as best as possible. This is about forward-looking policy choices, not rearview mirror partisan political payback.

Moreover, we will also learn how federal departments quickly assessed hundreds of regulations and relaxed those that could have suspended the flow of essential medicines and other medical goods. How provincial governments worked with the legal and accounting professions to ensure contracts could be virtually executed to support physical distancing. How cities relaxed noise and traffic by-laws to enable 7/24 grocery store deliveries or allow full-day on-street parking as we worked at home.

Countless commendable examples of regulatory speed and innovation will come to light. We should make as many of these changes permanent where practical.

This Royal Commission must be a series of recommendations for immediate action and ongoing implementation across all Canadian sectors – government, business, labour, NGOs etc. – to fully respond to the “How do we prepare for next time” question.

Canadian businesses have responded in many ways from retooling factories to personal financing extensions. But they too must also be honest about where their business continuity plans lacked foresight and completeness to respond to this pandemic. As a consequence, they need to commit to onshoring supply chains for vital materials and components where possible – or be regulated to do so – and build in product and raw material redundancies. In turn, industry must be clear where these new costs can be absorbed and when they will be passed through to us in terms of higher prices.

Bottom line: This Royal Commission must be a series of recommendations for immediate action and ongoing implementation across all Canadian sectors – government, business, labour, NGOs etc. – to fully respond to the “How do we prepare for next time” question.

Since World War II, we’ve scattered scare public dollars across too many programs, failed industrial subsidies, political pet projects and spurious tax credit schemes. The cumulative effect of this 75-year escapade in being all things to all people left the cupboard bare in terms national disease surveillance, adequate PPE and supplies for health professionals, leaving at least 1.5 million seniors in poverty or with an appalling lack dignity in their daily care, an economy hostage to global supply chains, and the laundry list goes on.

Let’s show courage and have this discussion, set out broad and inclusive parameters with a deliberate yet ambitious timeline, and resolve to see it through. In the end, we must embrace its recommendations with humility, and act upon them decisively so we can say to ourselves and future generations, never again. #InThisTogether n