Although my parents did the best that they could, like most families, they were not perfect. There were many years when life at home was not good. So… - Bowinn Ma

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Although my parents did the best that they could, like most families, they were not perfect. There were many years when life at home was not good. So I stayed away from that home for as much as possible. I hung out, out of the house, after dark, maybe far longer than I should have. I snuck out at night. I skipped classes. I was aggressive. I was argumentative. I was combative. My grades dropped significantly. It was a public school teacher that turned it all around for me — a public school teacher that noticed that something wasn’t quite right and that I was squandering my potential. I remember her coming up to me in the halls of my high school one afternoon after school. She grabbed me by the shoulders, turned me around and said: “Bowinn” — pardon me — “what are you doing? You’re ruining your life. You need to snap out of this. You need to do this better.” I turned my life around. Instead of hanging out after dark, I spent a lot of time at my school, in after-school programs. I put a lot more effort into my classes. I eventually graduated and went to UBC. I became an engineer, and now I’m an MLA. But what would have happened to me if my teachers had been too stressed out, too overworked, too under-resourced to be able to notice that I was struggling? What would have happened? What happens to the people who attend schools when schools are no longer able to function as the critical component of the social safety net that they are? What happens when children are not caught before they fall? I wonder, often, what would have happened to me if I had grown up not in the ’90s but under back-to-back B.C. Liberal governments.