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economist sunsuntribunecommuniiy saturday dec 3012006 ii brendan insley was surprised to hook up with boy scouts during his tour of duty in afghanistan he was a scout in ballanrrae on duty in kabul at christmas former musselmans lake resident brendan insley is on a sixmonth tour in kabul afghanistan with canadian forces a field instructor at the artillery training base in meaford ont he was promoted to captain and served a tour of duty in bosnia in 2006 the for mer ballantrae scouts family now lives in rock- wood ont by brendan insley our mission here although fraught with danger and the occasional setback continues to make progress despite the continued security issues most afghan people agree their lives are better now than under the taliban i am proud to continue serving the canadian people and to share this important mission with fellow coalition sol diers i would like to thank everyone for their e- mails and words of support during the christ mas season its nice to know everyone is think ing of their deployed troops at this time of year i am blessed with regular email access but its still nice to get something the oldfashioned way during the last few days i have spent my one or two free hours each night responding to the any canadian peacekeeper letters that are for warded to us from school kids across canada i got a batch from some students out in british columbia and have posted them around my workspace despite christmas not having much of an effect on the tempo of operations for the afghan national army it has made it more difficult for us to get things done around here a large number of coalition personnel have understandably taken their leave during the holiday season to be home with their families this combined with our inability to get answers from people back in the united states has had a serious impact on how long it takes to get any thing done there was talk of rounding up all the cana dians in the kabul area and bringing them to the british camp for christmas but i volun teered to take guard duty that day i just figured the american soldiers who spend their entire days or nights guarding our camp could use the dayoffmorethanme i knewl would find away to celebrate the event in my own way our team has done a good job of decorating our office which now has no less than three small christmas trees several garlands and stockings hung from just about every nail in the wall the two germans who work in our section distributed advent calendars and i dutifully ate that small piece of chocolate each day my current project involves developing a plan for the training of afghan weapon techni cians so that they are prepared to maintain the us weapons they are scheduled to receive over the next few years our office has no less than three small christmas trees several garlands and stockings hung from just about every nail in the wall the difficulty is their current military culture does not place much importance on proper weapons maintenance something that will become a critical problem as they move from the ak47 to the m16 an additional challenge is the afghan army has no personnel trained in this capacity and considering the literacy level of the average afghan soldier it will be a monu mental task to have this in place before they lose confidence in their new weapons its my hope we can adopt an afghanfirst approach that will allow for the training of a small cadre of soldiers by us personnel who in turn will act as the instructors for future cours es along with giving them the required toolkits this would allow us to not only assist them in building this capability but empower them to sustain it i had an exciting week recently in afghanistan i had the opportunity to go to a city named jalalabad jbad and spend a few days with the american embedded training team living on an afghan army base the purpose of my mission was to adminis ter a test to potential officer candidates for the ana but due to a number of helicopter cancel lations i ended up getting delayed in jalalabad for a few days giving me the opportunity to be exposed to an entirely different perspective of afghan life we tested 800 people at my location alone but it remains to be seen how many of them will pass the literacy and general knowledge requirements to be offered a job prior to the exam we had an exercise in aclministration that would have tested even the best staff officer we had to create 15000 copies of a 15page test in four different versions to prevent cheating we had only five days to get all of the exams finished and flown to six cities throughout afghanistan alone i had to haul 240 pounds of paper in two trunks as well as all of my person al gear i flew into jbad on an american blackhawk helicopter and had to wait around at the airfield for a few hours until a convoy came to pick me up but everything went off without a hitch i was even surprised to find out the scouting movement is alive and well in jalalabad one of the teachers is the local scout leader and he uses the older boys to escort the children back and fdrth to school safely lord baden powell would be proud at the schools board focuses on literacy the york region district school board has highlighted three of 12 lit eracy initiatives with the rest to be discussed at future board meetings the first is shared beliefs and understandings among all staff refer ring to literacy all schools within the board share the following beliefs all students can achieve high standards given the right time and support all teachers can teach to high standards given the right assistance high expectations and early intervention are essential and teachers need to be able to artic ulate what they do and why they teach the way they do the second initiative is each school designates a literacy teacher to work with the rest of the staff this teacher will also act as a model for best practices in teaching literacy the latest vignette highlighted is the daily sustained focused literacy instruction initiative schools must commit to include literacyspecific lessons on a daily basis for more information visit wwwyrdsbeduonca new schools for new year with the population ofyork region steadily increasing comes the need for more schools many york region district school board construction projects have been under way for at least a year in hopes of completing many for the start of the 2007 school year additions to be completed and open for use in the spring include three secondary schools thornhill secondary school library addition dudley avenue king city secondary school sci ence addition king road and bayview secondary school sci ence addition bayview avenue rich mond hill the board reports all three addi tions are slightly behind schedule new schools scheduled to open in september include michaelle jean public school richmond hill behind schedule sir wilfrid laurier public school markham on schedule little rouge public school markham on schedule teston village public school vaughan behind schedule carrville mills public school vaughan on schedule harman public school aurora on schedule bur oak secondary school markham on schedule and stouffville district secondary school stouffville on schedule markhamspring homeshow fat 23 24 25 2007 iviarkham fairgrounds wwwmarkhamhomeshowcom if you would like to be part of this event please call karen 9052942200 x 265 johanne 9052942200 x 255 featured guest speakers friday february 23 at 130pm marjorie mason mason hogue gardens uxbridge saturday february 24 at 1 30 330pm mark cullen canadas gardening expert ikihome i landscape ontario titanium exclusive vwnrfcayto r homomjlkaltraas association pnnturara hcndwcne w hoknamiumlmasassoaarm cookware