Updated: “In defence of our kids” by Brian Henry

From the Globe & Mail: Alexandria Pavelich, a sociology student at York University

Before the Ontario legislature dissolved to make way for our provincial election, the government’s last act was to try to end the strike at York University by imposing binding arbitration. Because the Liberals waited till the last minute before the election campaign started, they needed all the parties to agree. The NDP refused. 

This means that 50,000 York students have not only lost much of their spring term but likely there will be no summer school at all. On the plus side, it's a timely reminder of where the NDP's loyalties lie.

If ever there was a strike that needs binding arbitration this is it. The victims are the York students (including my daughter) while between the striking faculty and the administration, there's nothing but irreconcilable differences – so a government-mandated investigation concluded May 4 (here).

The Liberals and the Conservatives voted in favour of ending the strike and in favour of the students, who are losing their education. The NDP voted in favour of the union, which wants the strike to go on.

Update: As of May 30, the York strike became the longest 

running strike ever at a Canadian college or university. 

 If elected, the NDP has pledged they will not end this strike. 

They've promised they'll never force an end to any strike. 

So if city workers go on strike and there's no garbage 

collection for months? The NDP's fine with that. 

Teachers go on strike across the province? The NPD promises 

it won't do a thing. Horwath claims she can avoid public 

service strikes by giving workers what they want – as 

if that's possible without the province going broke.

The Liberals are also at fault here. To anyone familiar with the players and the issues, it’s been obvious since the strike began, that there’s little room for compromise. 

If the Liberals had acted earlier, they could have legislated an end to the strike without the support of the other parties – they had a majority after all – but the Liberals aren’t likely to lose any seats over this strike, so they didn’t care.

On a closely related note, Ontario’s biggest teacher’s union, representing elementary teachers, has endorsed the NDP. Why? Well, first they’re teed off at the Liberals for occasionally using their power to end or forestall strikes by the teachers.

The NDP have promised to be more deferential to the teachers’ unions and will care less about the students – who are always the main victims of any teacher strike or work-to-rule campaign.

Second, the NDP has endorsed the union’s call to scrap standardized testing of students. A majority of parents and the general public support standardized testing {administered in grades 3, 6 and 9 by the EQAO}, while the teachers’ unions have opposed it from the start.

They argue that teachers are best placed to assess how a student is doing. Which is generally true and beside the point. No one’s suggesting teachers should stop assessing students, only that it’s good to have an additional way of measuring their progress.

Parents like standardized testing because it gives us at least one objective measure, not only of how well our own kids our doing, but how well their school is doing and how well the education system as a whole is doing – measurements which are obviously beyond the capacity of individual teachers.

The teachers’ unions dislike standardized testing (at least in part) for the same reason parents like it: the unions don’t like the results of the teachers’ efforts being measured. I understand, of course, but don’t much sympathize.

NDP leader Andrea Horvath clasps hands with Elementary Teachers
Federation president Sam Hammond from the National Post here

A case in point: In 2017, half of Grade 6 students failed to meet provincial standards in math on the standardized test – and this for the second year in a row. Indeed, the number of grade 6 students measuring up has been dropping since 2013, and back in 2013, the results weren’t great, with only 57% of students meeting the provincial standard.

To correct lousy math scores, the province has spent $60-million to add math-specialist teachers to schools and to provide additional training for staff. The ministry also increased class time for math to an hour a day. All to no good effect. 

Because we have standardized testing, we knew there was a problem. Because we have standardized testing, we know the solution we tried hasn’t worked. Everywhere else in Canada, students have been getting better at math. Not in Ontario. Our kids have been getting worse. The problem seems to be with the “Discovery” model currently being used to teach math, so the next step should be to change that.

But the teachers union proposed a different solution. In response to the dismaying 2017 math scores, the Secondary School Teachers Union ran an editorial in its newsletter saying it was time to scrap the testing. This wouldn’t solve the problem but it would make it invisible. To the delight of all the teachers unions, the NDP is endorsing this “solution.”

Ironically, standardized testing was developed by Bob Rae’s NDP government. It was the Conservatives under Mike Harris that implemented it and the Liberals under Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne who have maintained it. All three parties, plus parents and the wider public across Ontario have understood the value of the system.

Now the NDP wants to scrap it to show the unions whose side they’re on.

Come voting day, June 7, we should remember this.

Postscript, June 7, 2018: Seems most people in Ontario have decided the NDP isn't a good choice. Good.

Brian Henry is a parent and creative writing teacher and the publisher of the Quick Brown Fox blog. He used to be a member of the NDP party. 

Congratulations to Emily and Cate for getting published and to Mark and Michelle for winning contests, plus beta readers wanted

Yay, Emily!

Hi, Brian.

Understorey Magazine bought a piece from me called "Mom-Friend" and it's in their current issue. I've also sent out a ton of writing to other magazines so I'm hoping to get a second piece (and third, and fourth) published soon. 

Regards,

Emily Zarevich

Read Emily’s story here, For information on submitting to Understorey, see here.

And you can join me and Emily and lots of other great writers for lunch on Sunday, June 10, in Toronto. See here (and join me again for lunch and to hear some great writing on June 24 in Burlington – see here). 

Hi, Brian.

Just thought I’d drop you a note to let you know that my short story "The Cattle," has been selected as the runner-up in the 2018 J.F. Powers Prize for Short Fiction from Dappled Things.
Mark Baker

See details of Dappled Things' two annual free contests, one for short fiction, the other for nonfiction, here.

Hi, Brian.

I read your blog every day, and daydream about attending your classes. Unfortunately my living in Nova Scotia makes that quite difficult. Your blog and writer testimonials inspired me to submit my short story "Scar Tissue" to Feminine Collective and it has now been published. Thank you for your informative site!

Best,

Cate Carlyle

Read Cate’s story here. For information about submitting to Feminine Collective, see here.

Yay, Michelle!

Hi, Brian.

I wanted to share my excitement with you!

I won – for both pieces I submitted to the Ontario Writers Conference contest!

Michelle Dinnick

Here’s the email from the contest organizers:

Congratulations!

Chosen from a very high calibre of written pieces (180 in total submitted), The Ontario Writers Conference has 4 winners to announce for our 2018 Story Starters Contest, all chosen by our guests at Friday night’s Festival of Authors in Pickering, Ontario. Many thanks to Story Starters Judge, Canadian author, teacher, poet James Dewar for narrowing a long-list of 32 pieces down to 3 per month or 15 finalists. Congratulations and much success to our winners:

Michelle Dinnick for October and  February

Jan Wood & Wendy Barrick Rhead (tied) for November

Kevin Craig for December

Ruth E. Walker for January

We know that you join us (virtually) to congratulate these fine writers for their talents, bravery and stamina.

Writer to Writer

Hi, 

I’m looking for beta readers for my novel The System. If you like people-focused stories about the human spirit then this will be an interesting read for you. It is a memoir about my time working in the Ontario shelter system with marginalized women. My manuscript is only 153 pages, but I am hoping to find readers who are willing to give it a thorough look. But, if you’re interested in participating, but only have time to give general feedback then any help you can offer is appreciated!

If you are interested you can contact me at shailakumbhare2@gmail.com

See Brian Henry’s schedule here, including writing workshops, weekly writing classes, and weekend retreats in Algonquin Park, Bolton, Barrie, Brampton, Burlington, Caledon, Collingwood, Cambridge, Georgetown, Guelph, Hamilton, Kingston, Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Midland, Mississauga, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Saint John, NB, Sudbury, Toronto, Windsor, Woodstock, Halton, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York Region, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.

Red Sofa Literary has three agents actively looking for authors

One Match Fire by Lissa Linden,
represented by Red Sofa

Red Sofa Literary

https://redsofaliterary.com/

Red Sofa Literary is a boutique literary agency originally established in the St. Paul/Minneapolis, but now represents authors all over the world. “Our mission is to celebrate a life of reading and geek culture, where brains always win over the brawn."

They have six agents altogether, three of them looking for authors:

Kelly Van Sant just joined Red Sofa Literary as of May 1, 2018, but has nearly a decade of experience in the publishing industry. She cut her teeth in New York working at esteemed literary agencies such as Writers House and Harold Ober Associates, where she developed an eye for compelling, emotionally resonant stories, honed her editorial skills, and soon grew adept at contract vetting. After relocating to Minnesota, Kelly joined Llewellyn Worldwide as their Contracts Manager across all three imprints and then moved to Quarto Publishing Group USA where she led the contract department.

After years on the publisher’s side of the fence she returned to her roots in agenting. She has worked as a freelance editor with various publishers and is a teaching artist at the Loft Literary Center. She also blogs about writing and the publishing industry at Pub(lishing) Crawl and co-hosts their weekly podcast.

Visit Kelly at her website, penandparsley.com or on twitter here.

What she’s looking for:

I am seeking Middle Grade, Young Adult, and very limited women's fiction across all genres, including fantasy, science fiction, adventure, historical, and contemporary. I love character-driven stories with intricate plots, and am always drawn to explorations of friendship and found family. I am especially interested in #ownvoices and inclusive narratives. I've expanded on my interests within each category below.

Middle Grade 
I am seeking Upper MG only. Chapter books or early readers are not for me. My ideal middle grade needs to be whimsical, funny, and full of adventure. My tastes lean away from contemporary in this genre, and more toward fantasy, speculative, science-fiction, or magical realism. I like intricate world-building and MCs with gumption. Give me a quest, give me steadfast friendships, give me insightful, magical parallels with the real world, and make me laugh. No books with an educational thrust; I want to have fun!

Young Adult 
I dearly love fantasy, science-fiction, speculative, and other magical elements in YA stories. Even better if mixed and matched with other genres. Alternate universes, fictional worlds, your very own hometown with a secret or sinister twist. If the world-building is original and intricate, if you're either dismantling existing tropes or executing them exceptionally well, if your characters are complex and come alive on the page then what are you waiting for? Send me your query. 

Let's talk about romance in YA. I prefer romance in my YA to be an undercurrent (even an urgent one) but not the main point. Something needs to be going on in universe and in your characters' lives beyond their love story. Instant love is not for me; I appreciate when characters grow together over the course of a book. Attraction can happen instantly, but intimacy takes time. 

I am selective about YA contemporary. A strong voice is vital, and again, I love to see a complex web of relationships beyond just romantic (though romance can be included): especially friendships and family relationships. These books above all else must absolutely be character-driven. I appreciate books that explore questions of identity, and books with a darker edge, but books firmly centered on and driven by a single issue--abuse, suicide, drug use, mental illness, rape--are not for me. I welcome books whose characters are grappling with those same issues, if those things are woven into the character and are undercurrents of a different, main plot. But I am not the right agent to represent so-called Issue Books. I would love to see some lighter YA contemporaries. Something that balances between poignant and funny, with a compelling, flawed protagonist and an authentic, accessible voice. 

Women's Fiction
I'm seeking women's fiction on a very limited basis. I want books written for and by women, about women's lives and experiences and issues (women's lives are complicated and varied and extend well beyond bad marriages/relationships! Please send me something fresh). Prose matters to me here, but as always, the characters are paramount. I'm interested in genre-blends, but straight-up contemporaries should be new and nuanced to catch me eye. No books about dead or dying children, please. If you have something like Lorrie Moore's WHO WILL RUN THE FROG HOSPITAL? I want to see it. 

Query Kelly at: kelly@redsofaliterary.com

Include the word QUERY and your title included in the subject. Paste the first chapter of your novel into the body of the email. No attachments.  Please include links to your website, blog, or social media accounts, if any.

Laura Zats, Literary Agent

Laura Zats graduated from Grinnell College with degrees in English and anthropology. She began working in the publishing industry in 2011, joining Red Sofa Literary in 2013. As an agent, she specializes in children’s fiction, science fiction and fantasy, and romance. She is also one-half of the weekly publishing podcast, Print Run. In her free time, Laura serves on the board of the Minnesota Book Publishers’ Roundtable, teaches classes on writing and publishing, and drinks a lot of tea. Connect with her on Twitter here.

• Young Adult — Fiction, I’m looking for all genres here, and am especially interested in settings or characters I haven’t seen before and queer romantic relationships if there’s a romance. Some examples of recent YA (that I didn’t sell) that I loved include When Dimple Met Rishi, Bone Gap, The Hate U Give, And I Darken, Walk on Earth a Stranger, The Rest of Us Just Live Here, Forest of a Thousand Lantern, and An Ember in the Ashes.
I will always love anything that reminds me of Tamora Pierce, Robin McKinley, or Diana Wynne Jones.
• Science Fiction/Fantasy — In these genres, I love everything from big, commercial voices to literary crossover novels. As I have an anthropology degree, I’m interested in well-drawn cultures and subverting traditional Chosen One, quest, and colonial narratives. I will fall on the floor and salivate if your writing reminds me of N.K. Jemisin or Nnedi Okorafor. No white dudes on quests, dreams, or Western ideas of Hell, please.
• Romance/Erotica — I am looking for all settings and subgenres here. Must have verbal consent throughout and a twist to traditional romance tropes. If you send me the next The Hating Game, I will be the happiest agent in all the land. Please no rape, querying anything shorter than 60K, or shifters.

Note: I am interested in working with marginalized authors across all genres. Does not have to be #ownvoices. I love third-wave feminism and geekery in my books.

Email: laura@redsofaliterary.com

Query only, no sample chapters.

Erik Hane, Associate Literary Agent

Along with working as an agent at Red Sofa, Erik Hane is a freelance editor and writer based in Minneapolis. Since graduating from Knox College and the Denver Publishing Institute in 2012, he has worked as an assistant editor at Oxford University Press and then as an acquiring editor at The Overlook Press, both in New York. This experience at both academic and commercial publishing houses means he’s performed editorial work on everything from serious scientific nonfiction to literary novels.

At Red Sofa, Erik is hoping to see a wide range of upmarket fiction and nonfiction. In nonfiction, he loves seeing complex subjects written about in an engaging way for the non-expert, or energetic, incisive looks at topics not usually treated that way (looking at you, sports writing). He wants to see literary novels that place story first; no use writing beautifully if nothing’s going on.

Fiction
I typically like things that are “realism” or at least close to it, though I do love light speculative elements or just a touch of science fiction, closer to just “surreal” than overtly SF/F. I like novels that probably get called “literary” even as they’re doing other things or fitting into other categories. I love family stories, memorable settings that matter to the book, characters with a harebrained scheme, legends, folklore, mythology, and games. I want “ambitious” novels that reach for something memorable. Books and/or authors I’ve really enjoyed over the last few years:

• Karen Russell (especially Swamplandia!)
• Marilynne Robinson
• Michael Chabon
• Jonathan Lethem
• Paul Beatty
• Brit Bennett (The Mothers)
• Garth Risk Hallberg (City on Fire)
• Marlon James (A Brief History of Seven Killings)
• David Mitchell
• Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Sympathizer)
• Louise Erdrich

Nonfiction (Narrative very much preferred across all these!)
• History, especially American political or social. Cultural movements, political movements, the forgotten but significant moments in between the famous points in history we’ve already read so much about
• Science, specifically evolution, biology, animals, or neuroscience; think Elizabeth Kolbert, Ed Yong, E. O. Wilson, Yuval Hurari
• Cultural criticism, essays, commentary, current events: this could be on anything but off the top of my head I really like great writing on politics, race, social trends, leftism, videogames, Weird Twitter, and anything else you can convince me the world should care about.
• Sports with a larger (and necessary) cultural angle; think Grantland. Specifically I really like tennis, football, and basketball.
• International stories, especially in places undercovered by Western media, and ESPECIALLY places and people affected by U.S. foreign policy

Email: erik@redsofaliterary.com

Query only, no sample chapters.

Full submission guidelines for Red Sofa Literary here.

Tanaz Bhethena with A Girl Like That

If you’re interested in getting published, soon or somewhere down the road, don’t miss the How to Get Published workshop with literary agent Paige Sisley, Saturday, August, 18, in Collingwood (see here). 

For updated listing of How to Get Published workshops, see here (and scroll down).

And if you’re interested in Writing for Children & for Young Adults, Brian Henry will lead a mini-conference with Yasemin Uçar, senior editor at Kids Can Press, children’s author Kira Vermond, and YA author Tanaz Bhathena, Saturday, Sept 22, in Oakville (see here), in Writing Kid Lit weekly course on Friday afternoons, Oct 5 – Nov 30 in Toronto, and a Writing for Children & for Young Adults workshop Saturday, October 12, in Sudbury (see here).

For updated listings of Writing for Children & for Young adult workshops and for weekly Kid lit classes, see here (and scroll down).

And don't miss: How to Make Yourself Write, Saturday, June 9, in London (see here), and Writing Your Life on Saturday, June 23, in Mississauga (see here), and the Windsor International Writers Conference, Friday, July 6 – Sunday, July 8, where Brian will be giving talks on Writing Point of View and Writing Query Letters that Get a Yes (see here).

This summer, Brian will lead both Introductory and Intensive weekly classes:

Exploring Creative Writing, Wednesday, afternoons, July 4 – Aug 22, in Burlington. See here.

Intensive Creative Writing, Tuesday afternoons, July 3 – Aug 21, first readings emailed June 26, in Burlington. See here.

Intensive Creative Writing, Wednesday evenings, July 4 – Aug 22, first readings emailed June 27, in Burlington. See here.

See details of all three courses here.

Come September, there will be a full roster of courses, Introductory to Intense. To date, though this is what's been posted:

Welcome to Creative Writing, Thursday, afternoons, Sept 27 - Nov 9, in Oakville. See here.

Writing Kid Lit, Friday afternoons, Oct 5 – Nov 30, in Toronto. See here.

To reserve a spot in any workshop, retreat, or weekly course, email brianhenry@sympatico.ca

Read reviews of Brian’s courses and workshops here.

See Brian’s complete current schedule here, including writing workshops, weekly writing classes, and weekend retreats in Algonquin Park, Bolton, Barrie, Brampton, Burlington, Caledon, Collingwood, Cambridge, Georgetown, Guelph, Hamilton, Kingston, Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Midland, Mississauga, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Saint John, NB, Sudbury, Toronto, Windsor, Woodstock, Halton, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York Region, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.

Navigation tips: Always check out the labels underneath a post; they’ll lead you to various distinct collections of postings. Also, if you're searching for a literary agent who represents a particular type of book, check out this post.