Letters: Early intervention can address many complex needs in Sask.

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As we await the outcomes of the latest Saskatchewan Teachers Federation bargaining round, it’s astounding that we’re still only “talking” about addressing students’ complex learning and behavioural needs. The notion that children with special needs will forever remain “complex” is deeply flawed.

Consider pre-kindergarten classrooms, where federal and provincial funds provide three- and four-year-olds with complex needs an adult assistant. Yet, these funds fall short of offering therapeutic interventions to address the root causes of their challenges.

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This approach ensures these children will always require extensive support from teachers and educational assistants. For over 40 years, we’ve had the expertise to address conditions such as autism, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, apraxia, developmental language disabilities, cleft palate, selective mutism, phonological disorders and oppositional defiant disorder.

Professionals like speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, behaviour analysts, psychologists and physiotherapists are trained to work with such children using cutting-edge techniques.

Early, direct and intensive interventions from these experts can profoundly impact children’s development, enabling them to participate in class with minimal support.

These professionals provide individualized assessments and therapeutic plans targeting each child’s specific needs, promoting independence and reducing complexity.

Instead of merely advocating for smaller classes, we must ensure that every child receives the early, direct and intensive interventions necessary to succeed. By doing so, we can transform the trajectory of their educational journey, making “complex” a temporary label, not a lifelong condition.

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Cheryl Turner, Canwood

Sports app ad uses questionable language

If you’re watching the NHL playoffs, you’ve no doubt seen an ad for a certain sports app that’s been airing for months now. I’m not sure exactly what all the app does, but I can say how remarkably tone-deaf the ad is.

Throughout the ad, you have a string of the channel’s hosts commenting on the app’s benefits, with the final line urging you to download it being: “You know you wanna tap that app.”

Now we all know what the slang phrase “to tap” something means, and given what’s gone on in the hockey world of late, not to mention in what seems the world of sport in general, it is head-shakingly bad Sportsnet found it acceptable to use the phrase in their commercial, especially as the tag line that lingers with you.

It’s like they, and by extension the rest of us, still don’t get it — still don’t get the ongoing problem of abuse and exploitation along with the lifelong damage it can do to its victims not just in sport, but in the wider culture for which sport holds itself up as a shining example.

It’s all carelessly, thoughtlessly, embodied in a suggestively spoken one-liner to promote watching more sports, which today is virtually synonymous with more gambling, or betting if you prefer. So let’s scrap “tap that app” and everything it’s indicative of; we’ll be a better society for it.

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Tim Nickel, Saskatoon

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