Pick up the Damn Stick!

A few weeks ago, I was walking along the shore, gathering driftwood for a project. Each piece had its own shape and story, curved, knotted, unique. One by one, I added them to the bundle in my arms until I couldn’t hold another. Then, just as I turned to head back, I saw it, the most unique piece yet.

I bent down to pick it up, trying to fit it into my bundle, but the moment I did, other sticks began to fall. I scrambled to pick them up, rearranged them, and tried again. For a while it worked, until my arms grew tired and more sticks slipped away. Frustrated, I set everything down, gathered them into my shirt like a makeshift basket, and kept walking. Still, they tumbled out, leaving a trail of driftwood behind me.

As frustration built, I eventually had to admit what was true all along: I couldn’t carry them all. I had to choose, leave some behind, make two trips, or abandon the project altogether.

I’ve thought about that day often and what it reveals about education. Teachers enter the profession already carrying full bundles: curriculum, assessment, planning, paperwork, and the ever-expanding list of expectations. We gather more and more until our arms are overflowing. Then comes inclusion, the stick that too many decide they simply can’t carry.

Some don’t stop to pick it up. They don’t see its worth, or they fear what will fall if they try. Others, like me, bend to lift it anyway, fumbling, rearranging, dropping pieces as we go, leaving a trail behind. 

No one tells you this when you enter education: we have a decision to make. We’re taught to believe every stick matters because each represents something we’ve been trained to value, such as academic rigour, order, tradition, and control. These are the values we are told define good teaching, the ones that make us “competent” and “professional.”  But those aren’t neutral values; they’re relics of a system designed to function like a factory, to push out a uniform product efficiently. Students move along the conveyor belt of curriculum, measured, sorted, and standardized, while individuality, creativity, and humanity are often treated as inefficiencies in need of correction.

The truth is, education itself was never built for inclusion. It was built for uniformity. It rewards compliance over curiosity, control over connection, and tradition over transformation. So when the “inclusion stick” appears, it feels impossible to pick up, not because it lacks value, but because it makes the factory less efficient and more expensive to run. Inclusion slows the process. It interrupts the assembly line. It forces the system to see students not as products, but as people. It asks us to slow down, to see each student as worthy, to question the rules we’ve been told not to break.

I’ve sat in countless meetings wanting to shout, “Pick up the damn stick!” But I’ve learned that doing so comes with a cost: disciplinary action, exclusion, and professional isolation. Those sticks are heavy and awkward to carry.

So maybe the question isn’t how to carry all the sticks. Maybe it’s time to ask which ones are worth carrying at all. Which values truly serve our students? Which ones keep us clinging to an outdated system? 

Maybe we need to stop trying to design something that will help us carry the sticks and start envisioning something that no longer requires us to.

Because inclusion was never meant to be just another stick to carry. It is the purpose of the work itself.

Real inclusion isn’t about adding one more task to an already overloaded system. It’s about redesigning the system. It requires courage from teachers, honesty from leaders, and accountability from institutions. Inclusion is not an act of charity or a gesture of goodwill. It is a human right. When we refuse to pick up that stick, we are not just dropping an optional task or meaningless value, we are dropping a child. 

Inclusion isn’t optional.

It’s the one stick we cannot leave behind.