As usual, I’m a bit behind in my posts. I’ll be writing about what happened shortly but first, I’d like to shared some photos and thought’s from February 7th.

Since my life has been taken over by health problems, I’ve found myself in a rough situation professionally. My career in the sciences was never going anywhere nor was my attempts at OHS. I was in the process of searching for a new opportunity when lupus hit me. Since then, I’ve relied on two things I learned how to do a long time again in school – music and photography.

If you didn’t already know, I started playing the ukulele in grade 4 and the saxophone in grade 6. I was already playing a bit of guitar when I took up the trombone in grade 9. Music stayed a very important part of my life for a very long time. Grade 10 saw me pick up a camera for the first time as part of the Graphic Arts program at my high school. I had always been interested in taking snapshots of friends before so I was excited about a proper education in photography.

Needless to say that I owe a lot to teachers. People often complain about having to learn things that they’ll never use but the truth is that you never know what resonated with you until you’re out of school and into the real world. Music and photography have been lifelines for me and others that I was in school with.

It’s because of this that I generally stand by educators when they say that they need something or that something is wrong. Yes, I know there are some pretty sketchy folks out there who should not be teaching and I have more than a few stories about that. But those issues can be easily solved when schools are given the adequate support that they need as those who consistently fail their students will be more noticeable and can be pulled out for more training. Unfortunately, we live in very weird times right now where education and knowledge are seen as bad things by those who cannot achieve and so, underfunding and dismantling of our school system is become the norm.

The Saskatchewan Teachers Federation has put their collective feet down to say, “Enough is enough!” and have begun taking action to fight for better conditions for themselves and their students. On February 7th, I headed to Centre Mall to take some pictures of their demonstration which I share here. Thank you to those who posed for me, to those who continue to fight, and to those teachers who taught me everything I know today!