UNITY COMES IN ALL COLOURS

Ken (Air India) Herar, back row right, and yours truly, back row left, spoke at Dasmesh Punjabi School on Tuesday about issues the students and staff seem well versed on. It was a great morning of memories and meeting awesome people.


“We may have come over on different ships, but we’re all in the same boat now.”
– Whitney Young, Jr.


It is a lively Tuesday morning in Matsqui Village as parents manoeuvre minivans through a bustling parking lot at Dasmesh Punjabi School.
Principal Sulochana Chand stands outside the Riverside Street school offering big smiles and greetings to everyone who makes eye contact with her.
Adrenalized students, in matching sweaters and slacks, buzz by their principal as another day of learning begins for the 580 enrolled in the kindergarten-to-Grade 10 private school.
The scheduled morning lesson is all about tolerance and diversity, and the guest speakers are Times’ columnist Ken Herar and yours truly. But the first challenge is figuring how to make a quasi-turban out of a blue kerchief, and the second to hide the small “air conditioning” holes in your socks when asked to remove footwear.
The 40-year-old Herar, a local diversity award winner and the best-ever tennis player to call Mission home, is passionate about eliminating racism, promoting diversity and making people understand that “brown and white” can thrive together.
I, on the other hand, am trying to not look like a stagecoach robber as the kerchief keeps slipping over my eyes.
School administrator Sandeep Lidder, easily mistaken for one of those Bollywood goddesses, says “everyone” has that problem at first. Methinks this is how Captain America, The Green Hornet, Robin, X-Men and Flash Gordon got started, but I digress.
There is a large sign inside the school’s Worship Room. It says “Recognize the whole human race as one.” Nobody in this gathering has a problem with me being white. And I wonder, who really needs the lesson of tolerance?
In my Caucasian, born-in-Canada world, I have watched as we “white guys” screamed about allowing turbans in the RCMP, sending gangsters “back to where they came from,” ceremonial daggers, bicycle helmets, affirmative action hiring, negative stereotypes, you name it. We have had prouder moments in this country.
Herar, embraced by many in the South Asian community for his media involvement, and nicknamed “Air India” by his basketball buddies, shares an e-mail from a family that claims to be moving away from Abbotsford because “there are too many East Indians.”
The usually cool columnist admits this makes his blood boil, especially when nobody says they’re leaving the area because of the white Bacon brothers or the white gangsters or the white drug dealers or the white pimps or the white thieves.
Dr. Dalip Singh Gill, a brilliant and kind man who founded this school in 1985 citing a need to recognize all human beings as equal, says he has seen some progress here, but notes there are many challenges ahead.
The school, which has been in Matsqui Village since expanding in 2005, now has a staff of 40 that includes a teacher from Hong Kong, several Caucasians and one Métis educator. It promotes a lifestyle free from smoking, drinking, drugs and gangs.
Their objective is to integrate Sikh studies with the B.C. education curriculum. And their successful sports teams, nicknamed the Falcons, have been praised for sportsmanship and class.
Gill proudly points to a wall of pictures filled with former students who have gone on to become lawyers, accountants or medical professionals. He says the idea behind Dasmesh is to make students better people, better adults and parents, who spread the message of equality and doing good deeds.
As you discover quickly in this facility, accomplishments have no colour. There is a lesson there, if we chose to embrace it.
Perhaps it’s time we all tried just a little bit harder.

Taken from http://myextratwobits.blogspot.com/

Star Motorcycle School

JASON PRIDMORE’S STAR MOTORCYCLE SCHOOL

CLASS ACTS IN TRYING TIMES!

Abbotsford Mayor George Peary was a bright light as an educator and remains a class act today, even if his decisions at City Hall aren't always appreciated by local taxpayers.

My late grandfather, a weekend farmer and weekday school principal, used to enjoy fishing and sharing teaching tales that, suspiciously, often sounded similar to his “ones that got away” drivel.
He used to haul me out on his shiny aluminum boat at Madge Lake, where we would solve the world’s problems, swill a few beverages and drown Saskatchewan’s finest worms for hours.
Truth be known, I disliked fishing, but loved spending time with my Grandpa who, besides being a brilliant mentor, was an amusing character with an infectious smile.
“Hear about the teacher who got fired for having bad eyes?,” he once asked me as I shook my head. “He kept losing control of his pupils! Get it?”
Grandpa had a million of ’em, but I never forgot that one – for some strange reason. He taught his children and his students plenty over the years. And they loved him for it, even if the odd joke – and many of them were odd – didn’t garner laughs.
Grandma used to whine about going out for groceries, because what should have been a 30-minute exercise often lasted for hours once Grandpa ran into former students or colleagues.
Early next month, World Teachers’ Day will be celebrated in our neck of the woods, with each school district honouring those who spend time and shape the minds of your kids.
I’m sure Grandpa would be less of a comedian if he had to endure what teachers do in today’s classroom.
Grandpa didn’t really have to worry much about obese or latchkey kids, single-parent issues, gangs, drugs, racism, cellphones, Internet chatrooms, health pandemics, school funding and teacher cuts, job action, poverty or political interference.
Today’s classroom is much more complex and teachers, once respected by everyone, have too often been thrown under the bus and treated like Mexican piñatas by budget-slashing politicos as they impose their save-thy-hide agendas on educators, while bleating on about children being our future.
And it honestly irritates me when I hear people mutter “those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.”
While there may be some poor teachers, that staffing flaw isn’t exclusive to the school system. I’m sure your office has a person or two who appears allergic to work or lacks the passion and skills he or she requires to excel.
When your scribe first moved to Abbotsford in 1982, I was homesick for the first few months until The Three Amigos – teachers Barry Stewart, Bill MacGregor and George Peary – rolled out the welcome mat and introduced me to everyone I needed to know.
Peary and MacGregor now serve as mayor and councillor and take all kinds of flak from taxpayers and certain columnists (wink, wink) over their civic priorities and decisions. Rarely are they praised for the good they do at City Hall.
Regardless of what you think about the jobs they do as front-line politicos, they are quality human beings with teaching resumes and accolades second to none.
And Stewart, who I once dubbed “Dr. Sport in red shorts” at a roast held in his honour – was the undisputed Minister of Information for scoop-starved scribes in the Fraser Valley for several decades.
Now happily retired, Stewart still drops in with sporty “gems,” words of praise for the reporters and some cheap shots for the editor (likely on behalf of Peary and MacGregor!).
World Teachers’ Day will come and go Oct. 5 without much fanfare. But given the impact of teachers on my life, the day won’t pass without thinking about their unselfish contributions – or my awesome Grandpa, who always had more success teaching from the heart than a book. That in itself is a lesson.

Taken from http://myextratwobits.blogspot.com/