Welcome to Paul's Blog

This is where I put down my thoughts occasionally.

School walkout

I normally don't get political here, but because this is an important issue, I can not not create a post on this.

Also, I will update the post soon to add the picket sign that I made for the walkout.

Yesterday, I participated in Ontario's province-wide protest to the cuts to the education funding. The new cuts and changes to the schools would include


  • 20% of the funds cut

  • Increase of class sizes of 27%

  • Cut of 18000 teachers

  • Less funding for specialized programs

  • Less funding for Ontario Autism Program

  • Mandate 440 hours of e-learning

  • Province wide cell phone ban

  • The list never ends...



Anyways, so the students, including me got angry and decided to walk out of the school and protest. This protest became a movement and became a province-wide event. The walkout was agreed to be on April 4th of 2019, which was yesterday. I decided to join the protesting movement here in Cummer Valley Middle School. We had 200 students walk out to protest, out of 600 students in our school. The protest was from 1:15 PM to 1:45 PM, a span of about 30 minutes. During lunchtime yesterday, I decided to stay in and create a picket signs, I wrote "#CUTSHURTSKIDS" (Yes I know the 'S' after the 'HURT' doesn't need to be there, but I decided it wasn't worth fixing it during lunchtime), two of my friends, M. Chen, and V. Liu, my classmates and friends has helped me create the sign. (They helped color the letters) We then put rulers on the back to keep it rigid. Then I put it in my locker to get it later. After lunch, we had a science test, which I brought the sign to, and after the test, it was time for the walkout. With the announcement, I headed to my locket, put my stuff in and went outside. Outside, everyone was just hanging around, not doing much. I held up the sign and started saying, "Cuts hurt kids." Some people joined, some people criticized us, saying cuts, meaning actually physical cuts, do hurt kids, also that we shouldn't have put an extra 'S' in. My friends then joined me, and we walked around people who were doing nothing. Soon the crowd formed around the road, on the school property, with people yelling 'Doug Ford Sucks,' and people screaming whenever cars when by. I and my friends stoop a bit separated from the crowd and yelled a bunch of phrases, that I made such as 'Stop the cuts', 'Cuts hurt kids',' We say no', and 'Doug Ford Sucks, Yes He Is', and my friends made the phrase, 'We say no, to the cuts', and so on. Half of the cars that went by stopped to look at as and acknowledge us, the other half just went by. Although around 1/3 of the people who walked out, did so to skip school, the rest was out for the real deal. A few people, including us, had picket signs. Overall, it was a fun experience for me, and it was my first experience fighting for my rights. This helped me better understand my rights to protesting and how it works.