Elias Minatsis Memorial Bursary

How could I be any prouder than of my daughter, Chelsea.

It was a difficult task, but she did it.

Tonight the Chatelech Secondary School students celebrated their graduation ceremony. An exciting time for grade 12's, some of whom were there to receive awards beyond their school leaving certificates. Students received scholarships and bursarys. One of the bursarys, donated by a local business, the BlackFish Pub, was to recognize a student taking the ACE-IT Culinary Arts program, an apprenticeship program offered district wide for students enrolled who will come to Elphinstone Secondary to take the classes.

My son-in-law, Elias, was the teacher of that program. Up until September of 2008, that is. That is when he had to stop teaching to focus in on trying to beat the cancerous tumour in his brain. He fought hard, but passed away on April 22, two months ago. It has been very hard for many of us family members, but nothing compared to the grief being experienced by Chelsea. She has hardly been out in public since.

The Blackfish wanted to recognize Elias for his work by arranging for the bursary and Chelsea was asked if she was willing to make the presentation ... come on stage, shake a student's hand, walk off stage.

As we found out, though, she had to say at least the name of the student, so she decided to speak a bit, albeit somewhat broken up and with tears in her eyes. She thanked the donor, announced the student (one who Elias had a good feeling about) and hugged him rather than simply shake his hand. They both cried a bit.

At the end of the evening, Matthew (the student) and his mom sought us out and hugged us both, telling a bit of a story about how Elias had strongly encouraged Matthew to go on past graduation... go to post secondary, write a book, and become a teacher.

How proud can a dad be?

Social Networking

Last week I was invited to talk with a group of 3rd and 4th graders, ages 9 and 10, about internet safety. I've been doing talks to various classes and groups of students for almost four years now and my approach has changed over this time. I don't focus so much on the scary stuff, like a bad person meeting you offline and abusing you. I deal more with social responsibility issues, and the importance of maintaining control over your accounts and passwords.

This particular class had 18 students in it. They live in a middle class community, so it was not strange to find that 17 of the 18 reported having the internet at home. Of this 17 students, 14 reported that they are allowed to use the internet unsupervised by an older brother or sister or by an adult. I was very surprised to discover that 7 of them have a computer in their bedroom, with unsupervised access and that many of them use webcams to talk with friends as well as relatives. Five of the students said they have Facebook accounts ... and, of course, none of them are 13 or older.

We did talk for sometime about the importance of passwords and keeping them secure. Some had stories of MSN accounts being misused (not by them, but by people they knew) to send bad messages. Some of the activities I did with them pointed out things they still do not know or understand (such as identifying a good person to be a friend on the net based on an audio or textural clue). Recognizing that there are a lot of situations that can be presented to them that don't allow them to clearly understand who they are chatting or messaging with, they just didn't get.

I was very pleased that the teacher in the class took notes during the session and has followed up with parents on some of my thoughts about how to not only be safe online, but also the importance of being socially responsible, keeping themselves from internet bullying activities, and reporting things that just don't seem to be right online.