How a teacher became an Educational Assistant and began to see a country (and himself) through a nervous system lens.
When I first arrived in Canada, I was astonished by the crosswalks.
People didn’t look right or left; they just stepped out, slow and steady, as if the world would stop for them. And it did. Cars paused, engines waited, and nobody honked or hurried—just a quiet, mutual understanding that everyone would take turns.
Coming from England, it felt miraculous. In Europe, this would have been carnage—horns blaring, tempers flaring, chaos on asphalt. But here, it was choreography. I remember thinking: these people must feel incredibly safe—or mildly comatose. At the time, I couldn’t tell which. Now, with a little nervous system literacy, I think it’s both.
That small, ordinary moment at the crosswalk told me more about Canada than any guidebook could. It revealed something subtle about the emotional tone of this country: a cultural choreography of kindness. People apologize before they speak, soften their voices at the edges, hold back to let others pass. Life here moves more slowly, with a gentleness that feels, on the surface, like safety.
And yet beneath that calm, there’s another current—a quiet tension humming just below the surface. It’s not hostility. It’s vigilance disguised as politeness. The kind of safety that keeps the peace by keeping distance.
Polite Classrooms, Quiet Bodies
When I began working in Canadian schools, I saw the same pattern play out in classrooms.
The spaces were calm, efficient, and curiously lifeless. Teachers delivered lessons like broadcasters reading from a script; students nodded, complied, and repeated. Learning had become transmission—information in, information out—with very little pulse in between.
It was safe, yes. But it was a kind of safety that had gone stale.
At first, I thought I just missed the chaos of British classrooms—the cheek, the friction, the spark. But what I really missed was the aliveness. The sympathetic energy that fuels curiosity, laughter, movement, and risk. Without that spark, learning begins to shut down—not in anger or defiance, but in quiet collapse.
Back then, I didn’t have the language for it. Now I do. What I was witnessing was the nervous system’s version of self-protection: a subtle withdrawal, a collective holding back. Calm mistaken for capacity. Order mistaken for engagement.
Teaching from the Neck Up
It took years, and a lot of my own dysregulation, to realise I wasn’t just observing it—I was living it.
My perfectionism, my habit of over-preparing, my constant drive to “get it right”—all were forms of self-protection. I was teaching from the neck up, managing rather than meeting. The classroom wasn’t the only thing frozen. I was, too.
When I moved into my role as an Educational Assistant, I saw the system from another angle. Sometimes, the “E.A.” might as well stand for Easily Anonymous. I’ve stood in classrooms where my job was to hold out my hand so a teacher could drop a fob into it—a tiny ritual of hierarchy disguised as efficiency.
But from that quieter vantage point, I could see the nervous system of education more clearly: kind on the surface, but weary underneath. A structure built to protect itself more than to nurture aliveness. The teachers I supported were caring, committed—and exhausted. The students were compliant—and disengaged. Everyone was doing their best to stay regulated in a system that had forgotten how.
Colonialism and the Disembodied Classroom
Over time, I began to see that this wasn’t just about schools. It was about the wider nervous system of the country.
Canada has parts—protector parts that seek peace at any cost, manager parts that prioritize order, and exiled parts that still carry the pain of what’s been silenced. The politeness that greets you at every door is also a protector strategy—a way of staying safe by avoiding the discomfort of confrontation.
If bullying is the misuse of power, then the quietest kind—gentle colonialism—may be the hardest to see. It doesn’t shout; it soothes. It survives through the language of care while keeping the deeper truths out of view.
Colonialism, I’ve come to understand, is the original disembodiment.
It tells people what knowledge matters, whose stories count, whose nervous systems deserve safety. It rewards compliance over creativity, seniority over innovation, repetition over reflection.
When you teach only what’s been sanctioned, you teach students to leave their bodies behind. You teach them to ignore the signals that tell them when they are curious, confused, or afraid.
The Hierarchy of Safety
In Canadian schools, I saw this logic play out structurally.
A seniority system that “bumps” out new teachers to make space for those with tenure—as if stability were synonymous with safety. A system that equates control with competence. But any institution that replaces curiosity with control begins to suffocate its own aliveness.
When teachers must protect themselves to survive, they can’t afford to teach from their bodies. They live from the neck up—managing, not meeting; performing, not feeling. A system that cannot regulate itself cannot model regulation for others.
And yet, naming this doesn’t have to be an act of rebellion. It can be an act of care.
When we see our institutions through the lens of the nervous system, we can speak about them with compassion instead of criticism. We can recognize that systems, like people, protect themselves when they feel unsafe. They harden around old wounds. They freeze to avoid collapse.
Becoming the Mirror
I’ve come to see the land where I live as a living nervous system—beautiful, complex, still carrying trauma, still learning regulation. The institutions built upon it are no different.
In that sense, working as an Educational Assistant has been a kind of apprenticeship in nervous system literacy. My job is often invisible, but from that liminal place, I’ve been able to observe what’s really happening beneath the surface: the micro-adjustments of safety, the constant scanning for threat, the quiet miracles of co-regulation when a child finally feels seen.
It’s also taught me that to be bullied is not only to be hurt—it’s to be silenced.
To heal from bullying, personally or collectively, is to find one’s voice again—but to use it with compassion.
That, I think, is the work of nervous system repair—whether in a person, a classroom, or a country. It’s the work of speaking gently, but clearly, about what has been frozen. Of allowing movement to return to places that have forgotten how to breathe.
Why I Stay
People sometimes ask if I miss being a classroom teacher. The truth is, I do—but in a way that’s evolving. I’ve come to see my EA role not as a step down, but as a step in.
A chance to observe, listen, and rebuild from the inside out.
Because the nervous system of education doesn’t change through policy alone—it changes through presence. Through regulated adults modelling possibility. Through small acts of repair that remind us we still belong to one another.
And maybe that’s what I felt that first day at the crosswalk—not passivity, but trust. The kind of embodied trust that slows a body enough to believe the world might stop for it.
In a country still learning to face its own pain, maybe that’s where the healing begins:
in the space between safety and movement,
between apology and aliveness,
between silence and voice.
Because before we can change a system, we have to feel it.
And before we can teach from knowledge, we have to teach from presence.