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AI, Cybersecurity and a Room Full of Trustees

August 25, 2026 by cultureofyes

We opened our session at the Canadian School Boards Association conference with a show of hands.

How many of you have personally used an AI tool in the last month? Almost every hand in the room went up.

How many of you have had a substantive conversation about cybersecurity at your board table in the last year? Well over half.

How many of you feel clear on what belongs to the board and what belongs to staff in these areas?

Maybe a quarter.

We had not planned to stop there, but that pattern was too interesting to move past. So we gave the tables a couple of minutes to talk about it. A room full of experienced trustees, nearly all of whom were using AI personally, most of whom were discussing cybersecurity at their board tables, and only a fraction of whom felt clear on where their role starts and stops.

That gap, between engagement with the issues and clarity about the governance role, was really the whole point of our session.

The pattern did not surprise me, exactly. A few months ago, a trustee said something to me that has stuck: “I feel like I need to understand this better before I can do anything useful.” I have heard versions of that sentence a lot. When a topic is moving this fast, the natural instinct is to reach for expertise. To want to know more before you act.

But the show of hands at CSBA suggested something worth considering: this was not mainly a familiarity gap. It was a role-clarity gap.

And those are very different problems, with very different solutions.

I wrote about the trustee role in a broader way back in May, in a post for people considering running for school trustee ahead of the October elections here in BC. One of the things I tried to say there is that the role is not what most people think it is. Trustees do not run schools. They do not manage teachers. They do not direct operations. What trustees do is govern a system. They set direction, ask questions, build relationships, and hold the system accountable.

That distinction between governance and management is the foundation of everything else. And AI and cybersecurity have become two of the best stress tests of that distinction I have encountered.

That is what drew Mark Pearmain and me into a ninety-minute session earlier this summer, with the national gathering hosted here in BC. Mark leads Surrey Schools, the largest district in BC. I lead a much smaller one. We come at these questions from genuinely different places, which is part of what made building the session together worthwhile. A risk that registers one way in West Vancouver looks different at Surrey’s scale. An innovation that feels experimental in one place might already be routine somewhere else.

We were clear in the room that we were not there as technical experts. What we tried to bring was something different: the perspective of system leaders trying to connect emerging technology, risk, learning and governance.

Here is what I took away.

The trustees in the room were clearer on their role than the conversation about trustees sometimes suggests. We spent time on the distinction between operational expertise (which belongs to staff) and governance judgment (which belongs to the board). I half expected this to be the hardest part of the session. It was not. Many of the trustees who spoke understood exactly where that line sits, and their questions came from the governance side of it.

That was encouraging, and it deserves to be said, because trustees do not always get credit for this clarity.

The anxiety around AI is real, and it is fair. You could feel it in the room. And rather than trying to talk anyone out of it, we kept coming back to a frame that I think holds up: good governance holds risk and possibility at the same time. A board that only sees risk may slow its system at exactly the wrong moment. A board that only sees possibility may leave students and staff exposed.

The anxiety is not a problem to be solved. It is a signal that the stakes are understood.

The cost of cybersecurity belongs in budget conversations. Some of the best discussion in the session came around what cybersecurity actually costs, in staffing, in systems, in preparedness. This is not a luxury line item, and it is not purely an operational detail. Boards approve budgets, and boards should be asking what their district’s cyber readiness costs, what it would cost to be better prepared, and what the cost of being unprepared looks like.

A board does not need to manage the cybersecurity plan. But it does need to understand the investment, the risk, and the consequences of underpreparing.

As Mark put it: the middle of a crisis is a terrible time to discover the board does not know its role.

Education really does look different in every province. One of the best conversations I had after the session was with a trustee from Alberta, who described how differently cybersecurity responsibility is structured there, particularly around the roles of insurance companies and provincial government. I knew this in the abstract. Hearing it described concretely was a reminder that a national conversation about these topics is not about finding one answer.

It is about understanding how differently the same challenge lands across the country, and learning from that variety.

Which connects to the argument Mark made throughout the session, and made well: this work needs national-level connection. Education is a provincial responsibility, but AI and cybersecurity challenges do not stop at provincial borders.

Mark also brought the OECD’s Education for Human Flourishing work into the session, which gave the whole conversation a global context. That matters for trustees because the governance question is not only, “How do we manage the risk?” It is also, “What kind of education are we trying to protect and strengthen?”

The questions trustees are asking about AI are not just Canadian questions. They connect to what education systems around the world are trying to figure out about what it means to prepare young people for a world where the technology keeps getting more powerful and the human elements keep getting more important.

We put together a set of materials for the session, and I want to share all of it here. There is the slide deck and three handouts, including a question bank with twenty questions organized into four areas: learning and equity, privacy and data, risk and readiness, and networks and shared learning. None of the questions require technical expertise to ask.

Please use these however they are useful. Take them to a board meeting. Pull out the three questions that fit your context and ignore the rest. Remix them, adapt them, improve them. They were built to be circulated, not protected.

If one of them helps start a better conversation in your district, that is the point.

 

HANDOUT: Table Discussion Questions 

HANDOUT: 20 Questions Worth Asking This Year

HANDOUT: The Governance Compass

If there is one thing I hope carries beyond the session, it is the closing idea Mark and I landed on: better questions create better conditions, and stronger connections create shared wisdom. What one district learns should not stay trapped in one district. What one province figures out should not have to be rediscovered in another. The way forward on all of this is to keep networking, keep sharing, and keep learning together.

None of us fully knows where this is going. That is exactly why the connections matter.

The image at the top of this post was generated through AI. Various AI tools were used as feedback helpers as I edited and refined my thinking.

Posted in Change, Personalized Learning, Technology | Tagged , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Eleven Summers

August 4, 2026 by cultureofyes

Regular readers know this space is usually about schools. This post is a little different.

It is summer, the pace is different, and I want to write about something work-adjacent that has been part of my life for more than a decade. Consider this my version of a summer read.

Yesterday, the girls’ side of BBall Nationals wrapped up in Langley. For nine of the last eleven years, this tournament has been how our VK Basketball season ends. After a spring and summer of travel across North America, there is something right about finishing at home, in front of family, watching how much these young women have grown since April.

This year the ending feels a little different.

Katie, our youngest daughter, has her Grade 12 year ahead of her, so there are still school seasons in front of us. But after four kids and so many years in so many sports, I can feel the beginning of the lasts. And this was the last summer of club basketball.

After eleven seasons connected to VK, I find myself wanting to write down what I have seen and what I think it means.

This is not a goodbye post. I hope to stay involved in some way. But chapters deserve endings, and endings deserve some reflection.

A Family Affair

VK Basketball played its first season in 2016. We have been there since the beginning.

Our older daughter Elizabeth played for four years, and then stayed involved helping with coaching. Katie, our youngest, has played for seven. Our two sons, sandwiched in between the girls, both worked for VK at different times while in university. Somewhere along the way this stopped being an activity our family did and became part of who our family is.

I was drawn in immediately by the mission.

Anyone who has spent time in youth sports knows the landscape. Club programs were becoming increasingly expensive, and too often they felt transactional, selling families promises about scholarships and exposure with invoices to match. VK was a response to that. It was built to give young women the best possible experience: high-quality basketball, top-level coaching, strong community, and the joy of travelling and experiencing places across North America together.

Not as a product to be purchased. As an opportunity to be shared.

The economics are worth pausing on, because they are the heart of what makes VK different. The true cost of this kind of experience, once you add up travel, gym rentals, tournament fees, coaching, and the many other pieces that make a spring and summer season possible, is significant. Families at VK pay a fraction of the true cost. The rest is covered by the generosity and vision of founder Anthony Beyrouti, the sponsors and donors he has brought alongside, and a community of parents and kids who volunteer, give back, and pay it forward so the next group can have the same chance.

Anthony would be uncomfortable with too much attention here, so I will simply say this: it takes a particular kind of vision to look at a broken marketplace and decide the answer is to build something better and give it away.

Kids notice that modelling. So do their parents.

The Miles and the Moments

Ask anyone connected to VK about their favourite memories and they will not start with a final score.

They will tell you about the van rides from San Francisco to Los Angeles, or Louisville to Chicago. About a bus trip that started in Montreal and wound through Ottawa and Niagara Falls before finishing in Chicago. About looking up in a tournament gym and realizing Shaq was there.

For me, the trips were made in the side quests.

A tour of Parliament in Ottawa. A scavenger hunt through Montreal. A day at Disneyland. A quick detour to the White House, which in hindsight was undersold as a quick detour.

And a recurring bit the girls came to dread: me, in front of some landmark, explaining a television show their parents watched growing up. Buckingham Fountain in Chicago, from the opening credits of Married with Children. The Full House house in San Francisco. The blank stares only teenagers can deliver, every single time.

Not every stop landed. The hike to the MASH filming site was, I was informed at some length, not what the group had in mind.

I have spent thirty years in education. I know a teachable moment when I see one, even when my audience does not.

This is the part of youth sports we undersell. The basketball is the reason everyone shows up, but the life memories happen on the way to the gym and after the buzzer. Eleven summers of North America, seen through hotel lobbies, team dinners, airport gates, long drives, and the occasional tourist stop squeezed between games.

Close to two hundred nights in hotels over eleven summers.

Our kids will carry those memories long after they forget the scores.

The Part That Surprised Me

If I am honest, there is a tension I did not fully anticipate when this started.

VK entered a space increasingly dominated by for-profit clubs. A new entrant with a completely different model, one that dramatically reduced cost as a barrier, was not just a novelty. It challenged some assumptions. And not everyone welcomed that.

Over the years I have heard comments about VK that simply were not true. That has been disappointing, but also instructive. New models are rarely welcomed by everyone, even in youth sports. Maybe especially in youth sports.

Some predicted VK would last a year.

Then came 2020, which tested every prediction about everything. That summer, we pivoted the entire program outdoors. I will always be thankful for the courts at Pitt River Middle School in Port Coquitlam, where a season that could have disappeared happened anyway, in the fresh air, with kids who were just happy to be playing.

Here it is, eleven seasons later.

What has kept it strong, I think, is the quality of people recruited into the program. I remember a conversation with coaches in the early years where we agreed on something that has stuck with me ever since: talent mattered, but fit mattered too. We wanted players and families who understood that this was not just about being seen. It was about being part of something.

When you are not driven by profit, you have a luxury most clubs do not. You can look for character with talent, not talent at any cost.

Eleven summers later, some of these coaches are among my closest friends. Anthony is one of them. We have coached together for four summers, and what started around the program became a friendship well beyond it. Danie Gardner and I got involved in the first summer, when our daughters played together. Her daughter Makenna graduated years ago. Danie never left. She has coached alongside me for five of these summers, and she is one of the best coaches, mentors, and friends I have found anywhere. One summer I shared a hotel room with Paul Langford for more than thirty nights. You do not do that with a colleague. You do that with a friend, or you do it once and never again. I did not expect any of this part. You sign up thinking it is about your kid, and somewhere along the way you find you have built something of your own.

That does not mean shying away from excellence. VK fields some of the very top teams in Canada, competes in the Nike EYBL Champions League as the only program in Western Canada to do so, and has helped dozens of young women continue playing at universities and colleges across Canada and the United States.

My daughter Elizabeth’s university basketball experience at StFX likely would not have happened without VK. There are many young women with their own version of that sentence.

The quest now is to be among the elite in North America, and there is still room to grow. Maybe it is doing different things at younger ages. Maybe it is seeing more top athletes choose basketball at a time when other sports are pulling them toward early specialization. Maybe it is continuing to build a wider pathway across the province so more girls see a place for themselves in the game.

It is a curious balance, and I have come to believe it is the right one. Unapologetic about wanting excellence, for the team and for each individual, but never solely driven by it.

The Quiet Months

VK’s season runs from April into early August. The rest of the year, the program is quiet.

That is a smaller thing than the mission or the coaching, but I have come to appreciate it. In a lot of clubs, across a lot of sports, the pull toward year-round commitment arrives early and rarely lets up. VK steps back and lets kids play school sports. Basketball, yes, but also everything else.

Both of my daughters played four or five high school sports while playing for VK. It mattered to our family that they did not have to choose one sport, one path, or one identity too early. It mattered that they could be serious about basketball and still be fully part of their school communities.

Much of the research on early specialization points in the same direction. For most kids, most of the time, more variety is better than less.

I do not think this is the most important thing about VK. But it is a design choice, and design choices tell you what an organization is actually for. When the model is not built around keeping kids enrolled year-round, you can make choices around what is actually good for them.

More Models, Please

There is a much bigger conversation happening right now about youth sports. Costs are out of control. Kids are dropping out. Families are stretched. The pressure to specialize keeps arriving earlier. The gap between who gets access to elite experiences and who does not keeps widening.

I want to make a smaller, closer-to-home argument. We tend to assume youth sports come in two flavours: traditional community programs and for-profit clubs.

VK is proof there is at least a third way.

Let me be clear about the limits. VK is not fully replicable in every sport at every level. It exists because a philanthropist was willing to fund it at a level most communities cannot count on. I understand the critique. But I have come to believe that is a reason to study it, not dismiss it.

One of the quiet lessons of these eleven years is how many successful people I have encountered, in my professional and personal life, who are genuinely willing, and often eager, to give back in support of young people. The generosity is out there. What is often missing is the model, and the people willing to build it.

VK has disrupted the assumptions in one sport, in one region, for one generation of girls. Every kid who got to play at a level that likely would not otherwise have been available to them is evidence that the assumptions were wrong.

And that is what connects this post back to schools.

For eleven years, I have watched a mission-driven organization try to hold two ideas at once: remove barriers and raise expectations. That is the work of every good school system too. We should never accept the false choice between access and excellence. We should be suspicious of any model that says only some kids get the best experiences. And we should keep looking for ways to build systems where young people can be challenged, supported, stretched, and known.

VK did not teach me those values. But it gave me another place to see them lived.

The Next Chapter

So this is where I land, at the end of eleven summers.

Our family’s playing chapter with VK is closing. The last summer club season. The last long travel stretch. The last time this particular rhythm will organize our family calendar.

For years, spring and summer meant flights, gyms, laundry, group chats, hotel breakfasts, rental vans, late dinners, early alarms, and figuring out which kid needed to be where. Then one day, the last game of that chapter ends.

I have coached a lot of these girls, including many of this year’s oldest players for more than two hundred games and Elizabeth’s team, years ago, for the better part of a hundred and fifty. Group after group, from the first practice to the last, one game at a time. Yesterday, one more of those chapters closed in Langley.

I will miss it more than I am letting on here.

But I am not leaving youth sports. I leave this chapter more convinced than ever that the next work in youth sport is to build better models. Models that never ask families to choose between what they can afford and what their kids get to experience. Models that let kids chase being great and still play everything. Models that let them see the continent, grow up alongside teammates, and be part of something that feels bigger than a season.

VK showed me it can be done.

Eleven seasons, and counting.

The girls’ tournament in Langley is over. Somewhere, a ten-year-old is picking up a basketball for the first time.

I hope someone is busy building something worthy of her.

 Note: The image at the top of this post was generated using AI. I also used AI tools for editorial feedback while refining the piece. The experiences, arguments, and conclusions are my own.

Posted in Change, Health | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Still Running – A Long Read

July 9, 2026 by cultureofyes

My friends have a running theory about how this ends.

One is convinced it will be a torn Achilles. Another has placed his bet on a catastrophic flight delay, the kind that traps you in an airport in the middle of the night with no options and no miles left in your legs. Someone else has suggested a natural disaster. And at least one person, only half joking, has noted that the streak will end when I do.

When I wrote about hitting 1000 consecutive days of running back in October of 2023, I was not sure many people had been paying attention.

Turns out some had.

Now, on July 9, with 2000 days crossed, the streak has taken on a small but real presence in certain corners of my life. A loyal and generous group of friends follow along on Strava, leaving kudos (as we all do on Strava) on my daily runs. 

The day my friends keep predicting has not come yet.

I started this streak on January 17, 2021, without any intention of it becoming what it has become. The rules are simple and I am extremely particular about them. It has to be at least 5 kilometres. It has to be outdoors. It has to be some version of running — there is no minimum speed, but a brisk walk does not count. And for a run to count on a given day, it must start after midnight.

That last rule is the one that has occasionally made me a person who laces up at 12:01 in the morning. A few times a year, when the schedule of the next day looks genuinely impossible, I stay up and get the run done before I go to sleep. I had a 5 a.m. flight to Halifax not long ago. Technically, I could have landed and still had hours to find five kilometres before midnight. But that felt like gambling. So I ran after midnight, slept a few hours, and caught my flight.  My Fitbit has no judgment. I appreciate that about it.

My friends predicting the catastrophic delay are not entirely wrong about the vulnerability. I have just decided to eliminate as many variables as I can.

That is, in some ways, what this whole thing is about.

I thought I was building a habit. It turns out I was building a way to pay attention.

I wrote at 1000 days that I felt a bit like Forrest Gump: I just started running and had not decided to stop. That still holds. What has changed is that I can no longer pretend I am doing this without knowing I am doing this. At 2000 days, the streak is not a thing I maintain. It is part of how I understand myself.

That is not a comfortable thing to write, because it raises an obvious question: what exactly am I proving, and to whom?

I genuinely do not know. I have thought about that question across more kilometres than I can meaningfully picture, and I still do not have a clean answer. I am not training for anything. I am not trying to inspire anyone, at least not in any grand or polished way. There is simply something in me that finds deep satisfaction in doing one hard thing every single day. Maybe that is enough.

The second 1000 days felt different from the first. Not easier, not harder, but richer. Because the streak has taken me places.

At 1000 days, I had run in seven provinces, quietly working my way toward something I had not officially declared as a goal. By now I have run in all ten. Somewhere along the way, this became one of those small personal quests that mattered more to me than it probably should have. I will admit that one of the appeals of speaking at a conference in Saskatchewan was that it was the last province on my list. When I pictured completing all ten provinces, I had not imagined the setting would be a parking lot in Saskatoon at dawn.

That is one of the slightly ridiculous things about a streak like this. It begins to shape how you see opportunity. A work trip becomes a chance to run somewhere new. A family vacation becomes a chance to see a city before everyone else wakes up. A conference schedule becomes a puzzle to solve around five outdoor kilometres.

I have run in a handful of American states. I have run along the Seine in Paris, past the Eiffel Tower in the early morning quiet, through a city that was softer and more beautiful than I expected. I did not plan to run past the Eiffel Tower. I just turned a corner and there it was.

That is what the streak has given me that I could not have predicted: a way of seeing cities that I would otherwise have missed entirely. When I am at a conference, on a coaching trip, or on vacation, the run forces me out before the day has its way with me. I have seen waterfronts and neighbourhoods and early morning light in places I would never have found from a cab or a conference hotel breakfast.

The streak did not limit my life. It opened it up.

Of course, it has also made me ridiculous.

The closest the streak has come to ending was not some dramatic event. It was a silly volleyball injury. I rolled an ankle badly enough that it was swollen and bruised, and for a couple of weeks I hobbled through my daily five kilometres. I even started running extra early, in the dark, so nobody would see how ridiculous I looked. The streak had given me many things. Dignity was not always one of them.

Looking back, that probably should have been a clue that the streak had become something more than a habit.

Then there was Antigonish. We were visiting our kids at StFX when a storm shut the town down, and there I was, running in the middle of the street because there were no cars on the road and not many other reasonable options. It was probably the worst weather I have run in during the streak. It did not feel heroic. It felt strangely inevitable. The town was shut down. The streets were empty. And still, the day needed its five kilometres.

A daily commitment may belong to one person, but it is almost always made possible by others. By family members who wait a little longer, adjust a plan, roll their eyes kindly, or understand that before the day can fully begin, I may need to disappear for half an hour. I am grateful for that.

I feel my age now in ways I did not at 1000 days. I am 1000 days older, which sounds obvious but is also just true. Recovery takes longer. Some mornings I notice things I did not used to notice. I ran faster 5K and 10K times in the first 1000 days than I likely will again. This is not a complaint, just an honest accounting. You cannot run every day for nearly six years without the calendar catching up to you in small ways.

But that has become part of the point too.

Movement is its own argument. Every day I go out, I come back different. Not always better in a measurable sense. Sometimes just clearer. Sometimes just quieter. Sometimes just grateful to be someone who goes outside and moves through the world under his own power.

That is not nothing.

At this stage of my life, with the pace of work and the noise of everything, that daily reset is one of the more reliable things I have. It reminds me that I am not just thinking my way through life. I am living it in a body that needs air, motion, weather, effort, and occasionally a little humility.

The streak has also changed how I think about time.

When I started, running five days in a row felt like something. One hundred days felt almost unimaginable. Now, at 2000 days, I look out over the next hundred days the way I once looked at the next week. That is a strange sentence to write, but it is true. The streak has stretched my sense of what is possible, not because any single day is extraordinary, but because ordinary days accumulate.

That may be the lesson I feel most deeply now.

We overestimate what has to happen all at once and underestimate what can happen when we keep returning to something. Five kilometres is not very far. One run does not change much. But 2000 days changes your relationship with effort. It changes your relationship with place. It changes your relationship with time.

It feels right that this crosses 2000 days in the summer. This has been a year I have thought a lot about what it means to be alive, to be present in your own life, and to resist the pull toward simply getting through things.

The run streak is, among other things, a daily vote for that.

It is a small insistence that today will not pass completely unnoticed by my own body.

I ended the 1000-day post saying I assumed one day I would wake up and decide that was enough. I still believe that day is out there somewhere. I just do not know when it is.

Cal Ripken Jr. played 2,632 consecutive Major League Baseball games, a record so staggering it seemed untouchable until he chose to sit out in 1998. I am not comparing a daily shuffle through five kilometres to what Ripken did. That would be absurd. But 2,632 is a number I have quietly noticed, and by my calculation, I would reach it on April 1, 2028. I am not saying that is a goal. I am just saying I have done the math. The fact that it lands on April Fool’s Day is either the universe’s commentary on the whole enterprise, or a sign I should keep going just to prove a point.

I do not know if there will be 3000 days. I do not know if my friends will eventually be right about the Achilles, the airport, the storm, or something none of us has thought to predict.

And maybe that is why the streak still matters to me.

Not because I know where it is going, but because I know what tomorrow asks of me.

There is nothing to do but lace up, step outside, and find out.

My friends will just have to keep waiting.

The image at the top of this post was generated through AI.  Various AI tools were used as feedback helpers as I edited and refined my thinking.

Posted in Change, Health | Tagged , , | 9 Comments »

30 Things I Believe About Education After 30 Years

June 23, 2026 by cultureofyes

For the past few years, I have ended the school year with a list. One reflection for every year I have worked in education. It has become a bit of a ritual for me. A way to mark the end of the year, make sense of what I am seeing, and say thank you to a profession that has shaped so much of my life.

The tradition has taken different shapes. In 2022, it was 26 teachers and the 26 lessons they taught me. In 2023, 27 ways schools are better than when I started. In 2024, 28 reasons to love teaching. Last year, 29 questions I am still asking about education.

This year feels different.

Thirty years is long enough to have seen trends come and go, long enough to know that every “transformational” idea eventually gets a logo, and long enough to tell within two minutes of a professional learning session whether this is going to be useful or whether someone is about to read us a slideshow.

It is also long enough to have become a little less interested in certainty.

I do not feel like I have education figured out. In fact, in some ways, I probably feel less certain than I did fifteen years ago. But thirty years does clarify a few things. It gives you a stronger sense of what matters, what lasts, and what is mostly noise.

So, at the end of year 30, here are 30 things I believe about education.

  1. Relationships are not one more thing. They are the thing. Not in a sentimental poster-on-the-wall way. In a practical, daily, deeply human way. Students learn better when they feel known. Staff thrive more when they feel trusted. Culture moves when relationships are strong.
  2. Great schools are built in small moments, not big announcements. The tone of the front office. The way a principal responds when someone makes a mistake. The way a teacher greets a student who is having a rough day. That is culture.
  3. The best educators I know combine high standards with deep humanity. They do not confuse kindness with low expectations. They push kids, but they do it from a place of belief and hope.
  4. Kids need adults who can see past the current version of them. Some students are easy to believe in. The real work is believing in the ones who are harder to read, harder to reach, or harder to teach in the moment.
  5. Joy matters more than we sometimes admit. Not because school should be entertainment, but because joy is often a signal that people feel safe, connected and engaged. Joy is not fluff. It is fuel.
  6. A school can be academically strong and still miss something essential if students do not feel like they belong. Belonging is not an add-on. It is not a committee. It is not a month on the calendar. It is a condition for learning.
  7. For all the talk about systems, structures, and technology, teachers still make the biggest difference. The person in the room with students every day still matters most.
  8. The profession is harder than many people realize and more beautiful than many people remember. Both things are true.
  9. We should be careful not to confuse activity with improvement. Education is very good at launching things. New plans. New frameworks. New dashboards. New acronyms. Actual improvement is quieter and slower than that.
  10. Trust is the real accelerant in schools. Not pressure. Not compliance. Not another initiative.
  11. Fifty dollars of pizza at a meeting has generated more genuine goodwill than some professional development days I have spent months planning. 
  12. Leadership is less about having the answer and more about creating the conditions where better answers can emerge. The older I get, the less impressed I am by leaders who always have a take and the more impressed I am by those who can build clarity, courage and coherence in others.
  13. The best schools feel alive. There is energy in the hallways. There is laughter somewhere. There is evidence that adults and students are doing more than surviving the day.
  14. Students are paying attention to far more than our lessons. They are watching how adults disagree. How power is used. How people are treated. What gets celebrated. What gets ignored. School teaches through atmosphere as much as instruction.
  15. Public education is still one of the most hopeful things we do together. Imperfect, complicated, sometimes frustrating, absolutely. But hopeful too. A daily act of collective belief in young people and in the future.
  16. We need to get better at protecting the energy of educators. Burned-out adults cannot build thriving schools. We cannot live in a world where everything is urgent all the time.
  17. There are things that matter deeply in schools that will never fit neatly on a spreadsheet. Confidence. Courage. Identity. Friendship. Curiosity. The feeling a student gets when they finally think, maybe I am good at this.
  18. The extracurricular life of a school is not extra. Athletics. Music. Drama. Clubs. Leadership. Service. Trips. Performances. For some students, that is where their school becomes a place they love.
  19. Most school improvement is cultural before it is technical. You can import a new program. You cannot import trust. You cannot mandate generosity. You cannot spreadsheet your way into belonging.
  20. The future is going to demand more of our students than obedience. They will need judgment. Adaptability. Discernment. Creativity. Courage. The ability to work with others. The ability to make sense of complexity.
  21. AI is not reducing the need for human judgment in schools. It is raising the premium on it. After spending this past year immersed in AI integration work alongside teachers, administrators, and students, I am more convinced than ever that the technology does not make human wisdom less important. It makes it more important. The question is not whether to engage. It is how to engage well.
  22. We should be helping students ask better questions, not just produce better answers. In a world where information is abundant and intelligence is increasingly accessible, the quality of our questions matters more than ever.
  23. Children need challenge, but they also need hope. They need to believe that effort leads somewhere, that adults are on their side, and that the future is not already closed off to them.
  24. Schools should help young people become more fully themselves, not just more employable. Career readiness matters. So does character. So does citizenship. So does helping students figure out who they are and how they want to live.
  25. I believe in innovation, but I believe even more in steadiness. In a profession that is constantly being asked to change, there is something powerful about adults who are consistent, thoughtful, calm, and grounded. Steadiness is underrated. It is also, quietly, a strategy.
  26. The adults in a school deserve the same things we say students deserve. Clarity. Belonging. Growth. Encouragement. Grace. A sense that someone notices their effort.
  27. Some of the best work in education never gets tweeted, branded, or turned into a conference session. It happens quietly. A teacher staying after to help. A custodian who knows every kid’s name. A counsellor making space for a student who has nowhere else to go.
  28. Schools are still one of the few places left where different people are asked to live, learn and grow together. This matters. Especially now.
  29. I still believe this work is worth doing with energy, imagination, and yes, hope. Not because it is easy. Not because schools are perfect. But because what happens in them still matters immensely.
  30. One of the clearest signs that this work matters is when a former student comes back years later just to say thank you. After thirty years, I have been to a lot of end-of-year events, sat through a lot of budget meetings, and attended more retirement parties than I can count. And yet nothing has prepared me for how much that moment still lands every single time. It never gets old. If you are looking for evidence that this work matters, that is probably the best place to start.

Thirty years in, I find myself less interested in silver bullets and more interested in substance. Less drawn to certainty and more drawn to people who can hold complexity without losing heart. Less impressed by urgency for urgency’s sake and more appreciative of those who help schools become places where both adults and students can do their best work.

Education has changed a lot since I began. So have I.

But the longer I do this work, the more I believe that the heart of it has not changed nearly as much as people think. Young people still need adults who care. Schools still need cultures built on trust. Learning still depends on relationships. And hope, despite everything, is still a pretty good strategy.

Maybe that is what thirty years gives you. Not all the answers. Just a little more clarity about what is worth holding onto.

Here’s to year 30 and the work still ahead.

The image at the top of this post was generated through AI.  Various AI tools were used as feedback helpers as I edited and refined my thinking.

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Going Home to Riverside

June 15, 2026 by cultureofyes

Some chapters in a career close the way they should, with time to say goodbye properly, to thank the people who made the work meaningful, and to mark the ending before the next beginning.

And some chapters close faster than you would like.

When I was hired as Assistant Superintendent of West Vancouver Schools in 2007, the timing meant a rushed departure from Riverside Secondary in Port Coquitlam, where I had spent five of my six years in the Coquitlam School District, first as VP and then as principal. There was a goodbye, but not the one I would have chosen. Not enough time to properly say what I wanted to say to the staff, students, and families who had given me so much.

This week, nineteen years later, I was inducted into the Riverside Wall of Excellence, a recognition for past staff and students who have made contributions to the school and community. I was asked to speak at the ceremony in the school theatre.

I did not think of it as an award night. I thought of it as a chance to finally close the loop. Nineteen years later, I finally got to.

Here is what I said (at the bottom of the post is the video of the speech):

“I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.”

That quote from The Office has stayed with me for years, because the truth is, most of us only realize how special a time was after it has passed.

And for me, Riverside Secondary became one of those places.

To be standing here tonight is honestly emotional, because Riverside was never just a school to me. It was a community that shaped who I became as a leader, as a person, and as someone who still deeply believes in the power of public education.

When I arrived at Riverside as a 27 year old vice principal, I was young enough that some people probably wondered if I was lost and looking for Mr. Lepore’s Social Studies 11 class. And the funny thing is, Mr. Lepore was teaching here then and is still teaching here now.

In fact, at one of my very first staff meetings, a teacher asked how old I was. When I said “27,” she looked at me and said, “I have underwear older than you.”

And honestly… Riverside always kept it real.

But what mattered most was this: people could have watched me struggle. They could have sat back and thought, “Well, let’s see if this kid can figure it out.”

But that is not what Riverside did.

The staff here did everything they could to help me succeed. They supported me, challenged me, guided me, laughed with me, and occasionally rescued me from situations I probably created myself.

This school was still young and still figuring out who it wanted to be. But there was this incredible energy here. Riverside embraced innovation, technology, school spirit, and excellence before those things became buzzwords. There were championship athletic teams, extraordinary arts performances, and every once in a while I would nervously pick up the latest edition of The Eddy to see what students were saying about us. Sometimes it was insightful. Sometimes it was brutally honest. Usually both.

People cared deeply about building something special together. And they did.

Now… I should also say that not every Riverside memory was inspirational.

Some of you may have heard stories of the Halloween assembly streaker incident. For those who haven’t, buckle up.

One year, during an October 31st school assembly, a streaker appeared and ran through the gym. And without really thinking this through, I chased him all the way out to Gates Park while dressed in a full Riddler costume.

To this day, I honestly do not know which one of us looked more alarming to the public.

But in many ways, that story captures Riverside perfectly. This was a school full of energy, unpredictability, joy, and people willing to jump in and help each other no matter what happened.

What Riverside taught me most was something bigger. It taught me how extraordinary public education really is.

Every single day, 1200 students and 100 staff members, supported by families who trusted this school with the thing they love most in the world, came together to create opportunity, belonging, care, and hope. To the parents in this room: that trust you place in schools like Riverside matters more than you know, and the staff here have always been worthy of it.

That is not ordinary. And sometimes I worry we forget how remarkable that actually is.

Nineteen years later, I still think about Riverside almost daily. The lessons I learned here still guide me as Superintendent in West Vancouver. And if I am being completely honest, even after all these years and all the schools I have worked with, Riverside still feels like home.

I was surrounded by so many wonderful people I learned from during my time here. There are far too many to name, but I want to acknowledge the admin partners who shaped both this school and me like: Bryan Evans, Michael Grice, Mary O’Neil, and Todd Clerkson. Their friendship and leadership meant everything.

So to the students sitting here tonight: I hope you understand something earlier than most of us do.

These might actually be the good old days.

Not because everything is perfect. Not because every moment is easy. But because you are surrounded by people building community together.

One day, years from now, you will remember teachers who believed in you, friends who carried you through hard times, and ordinary moments in hallways that somehow became unforgettable.

Trust me. Even the weird assembly stories stay with you.

Thank you to Riverside for shaping my life in ways I could never have understood at 27 years old. And thank you for this incredible honour.

The longer I work in education, the more convinced I become that schools are remembered less for their buildings and programs than for the people who fill them.

Walking back into Riverside reminded me that most of what matters in a career is not what you did but who you did it alongside. I was lucky to land in that community when I did, and luckier still to finally get the chance to say so properly.

Some chapters close faster than you would like. This one finally closed the way it should have.

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My Words to the Class of 2026

June 8, 2026 by cultureofyes




At the start of this year, I chose a word for 2026: ALIVE

It was a word I picked because it felt like both a reminder and an aspiration.

Stay present. Stay curious. Stay connected to what actually matters.

I did not know then that it would become the word I kept returning to as graduation season arrived.

This spring, I had the chance to speak to graduates at both Rockridge Secondary and West Vancouver Secondary. The speeches were different, because each school and each graduating class is different, but they circled around some of the same ideas: presence, community, possibility, and the importance of staying connected to a real and meaningful life in a world that can pull us toward distraction.

The Rockridge speech (linked here) found its own word: Harmony. A different class, a different idea, but the same underlying hope.

One note on grad speeches. I have a running joke that if anyone remembers what the superintendent said the day after a speech, it probably went horribly wrong. The goal is to be forgotten gracefully.

Still, each year, I try to say something worth saying.


Below are my words to the West Vancouver Secondary Class of 2026.


Staff, proud parents, family members, friends, and most importantly, the West Vancouver Secondary graduating class of 2026.

Before I speak directly to the graduates, I want to offer a brief but heartfelt thank you.

To the parents and families here tonight, thank you for choosing public education, and for trusting this school and this district with your children. And to the staff of West Vancouver Secondary, thank you for supporting, challenging, encouraging, and caring for these students. Graduation is a student achievement, but it is also a community achievement.

Graduates, I want to start with one word.

Alive.

That is the word that keeps coming to mind when I hear Mr. Rauh and others talk about this class.

You are complex, in the best possible way. You bring a wide range of interests, passions, backgrounds, talents, and stories. But you are also something that matters deeply. Again and again, the adults around you describe you as kind, thoughtful, warm, and welcoming. The kind of people who make a school feel better simply by being part of it.

This is a class that showed up.

In athletics, including a senior boys basketball team that won the North Shore. In academics, including a fifth place finish out of 87 schools at the UBC Physics Olympics. In the arts, in music, theatre, Rock Band, and productions like Not Another Murder Podcast.

And sometimes, maybe most impressively, you showed up when you did not have to. You did the work and honoured the responsibility in front of you.

That says something about you.

It says you understand that community is not just built in the big moments. It is built in daily choices. The way you treat new staff. The way you welcome others. The way you keep showing up.

That is a class that is alive.

In a world that is increasingly digital, increasingly mediated, increasingly filtered through a screen, the most radical thing you can do is stay fully, stubbornly alive.

Present. Curious. Connected to real people, real places, and real conversations.

Your education has given you more than content. It has given you the capacity to think, to feel, to question, and to care. It has taught you that learning is not just about preparing for some distant future. It is about becoming more fully yourself, right now.

There will be moments ahead when the path is not clear. Times when it feels easier to stand back, scroll past, or wait until you are completely ready.

But very few meaningful things begin with feeling completely ready.

So say yes.

Say yes to learning something new. Say yes to people who expand your world. Say yes to hard conversations, generous friendships, and work that matters enough to challenge you.

And say yes to being fully alive in the life that is in front of you.

West Vancouver Secondary, Class of 2026, you have been a gift to this school and to this community.

Now go be that gift to the world.

Congratulations.

After the ceremony, a parent sent me a photo from the room. In the foreground were three students, phones out, mid scroll, while I was speaking.

I choose to believe they were posting live updates of their enthusiasm.

And honestly, that feels about right. Graduation is full of big words, proud adults, formal rituals, and young people already beginning to look toward whatever comes next.

That is as it should be.

Congratulations, Class of 2026.

Stay present. Stay curious. Stay connected.

Go be the gift.

 

If you are curious, here is a link to last year’s grad speeches as well.

 

 

The image at the top of this post was generated through AI.  Various AI tools were used to do some light editing before publication.

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Forty Years and Still Connected

June 1, 2026 by cultureofyes

Daniel Woodward Elementary School is just across a field from the house I grew up in. Last Saturday, forty years after leaving Grade 7, I walked back in.

We were there for a reunion of the Grade 7 class of 1986. Walking the halls of your elementary school as an adult is a strange and wonderful thing. So much was unchanged. The same corridors. The same feel. A time machine.

We made our way to the gym, the Taylor Coliseum, and there it was: the plaque, still on the wall, just as it had been. The gym is named after Mr. Taylor, our Grade 7 teacher, and there is no one who deserves it more. And he was there last Saturday, as were two other teaching legends, Mr. Nakanishi and Mr. Whitehead, our Grade 5 and Grade 6 teachers.

I wrote about each of them years ago, about the teachers who shaped me at Woodward and about what Mr. Taylor meant to all of us. Seeing the three of them together, still clearly friends, still clearly delighting in each other’s company, was one of the great gifts of the day. What they had was real. We could tell it then, and we could see it plainly now.

People might raise an eyebrow at the idea of an elementary school reunion. I get it. High school reunions are the norm, the cultural touchstone. But elementary school deserves its moment too.

Woodward was not a large school, and most of us spent eight years there without changing schools or moving houses. We were in each other’s classes, in each other’s backyards, in each other’s lives, year after year. There were 38 kids in our Grade 7 class alone. Maybe the good old days were not always that good for teachers. But the community was real, and it held.

What was striking about a 40-year reunion, as opposed to a 10 or even 20-year one, is what people stop performing. At the early reunions, the unspoken question is often who got ahead, who made it, who is winning. By forty years, that game is over and no one seems to miss it. People have lived real lives. Nothing has been linear. People have loved and lost and built things and rebuilt themselves and found their way through. The conversations last Saturday had the ease that comes only when people have stopped pretending life is a straight line.

We grew up in a particular time and place, and last Saturday we remembered it together. The clichés about childhood in the 1980s are all true. We went to each other’s houses. We played outside until it was dark. We rode bikes, played road hockey, drank water from the hose. We had a student radio show, Bugle Radio on CISL 650. A few years earlier, our Woodward choir had sung for the Queen at the opening of BC Place. Shellmont Plaza near the school had everything we needed: Safeway, the bowling lanes, the video store, Shirley’s Bakery.

We were twelve and thirteen years old in 1986, the year of Expo 86 and Top Gun and the Hand of God. The stories people told were about each other’s parents, especially the moms, who were neighbourhood moms in the truest sense. Moms to all of us, not just their own kids.

That kind of community is not nothing. It leaves a mark.

There is a lot of conversation right now about what children are missing: independence, unstructured time, the freedom to just go. Last Saturday was a small reminder of what that freedom helped shape: people who know how to be with each other, who can walk into a room after forty years and pick up a conversation as though no time has passed at all.

That ease is the thing I keep coming back to. Face to face. No agenda. No performance. Just people who share something that cannot be replicated or transferred or downloaded. A shared past. A shared place. A shared teacher whose name is still on the gym wall.

This was not just a point in time. It was a reconnection.

Many of us will stay in touch. As you get older, you understand more clearly that your life is the people in it. Last Saturday was a good reminder of how many good people were there from the very beginning.

 

 

 

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The Long Game

May 26, 2026 by cultureofyes

My colleague Sandra-Lynn Shortall recently published a post, Ten Years Strong: Building Physical Literacy, One Move at a Time, and it got me thinking less about physical literacy itself and more about what it means to stay committed to something in education long enough for it to become part of who you are as a community.

I have been in the district office for about 19 years. That is long enough to have seen a lot of ideas arrive with genuine excitement and then quietly disappear. It is also long enough to have watched a smaller number of ideas take root, grow, and become something real.

Physical literacy is one of those ideas, and it is worth pausing to understand why.

Back in September 2013, I wrote a post called But Can They Throw a Ball? I was wrestling with a genuine concern. We were doing a lot of work to get kids more active, which was necessary and important, but I worried we were sometimes confusing physical activity with physical literacy.

The ability to move with confidence and competence, to develop a positive relationship with movement that could last a lifetime, felt like something different.

At that time, Diane Nelson had begun laying the groundwork for this work in our district. There was energy behind it, but also a real question about whether it would last. That was not so long ago. It was also a very long time ago.

Reading Sandra-Lynn’s account of the decade since, I am struck most by how difficult it is to change the actual makeup of school. Not just the program. Not just the schedule. Not just the policy. The felt experience of what school is, what it values, what it looks like to walk through its hallways, sit in its classrooms, and experience learning each day.

That kind of change is slow. It is stubborn. And most initiatives, however worthy, do not survive long enough to produce it. The graveyard of promising educational ideas is vast.

Physical literacy has been different.

It has made it through budget pressures, shifting priorities, a global pandemic and the relentless churn of new urgent things demanding attention. It has lasted because of people.

Diane Nelson’s vision gave it a foundation. Amber Pascual and Erin Crawford gave it a heartbeat, showing up in classrooms year after year, building the trust and relationships that no program document can manufacture. Over the course of a decade, they have delivered more than 5,000 workshops.

I think about that number and what it actually represents. Thousands of individual moments of connection with teachers and students. Thousands of times someone walked into a gym, a classroom, or a professional learning session and made the case again that this work matters.

That is what I find myself writing about here, more than physical literacy itself.

It is the thing I return to again and again in this role. Powerful educators change things. Not systems in the abstract. Not policies on their own. Not initiatives because they appear in a plan.

People change things.

People who care enough to keep showing up. People who are stubborn in the best possible way. People who continue to make the case even when the attention of the institution has shifted to something else. They are the reason anything of lasting value happens in schools.

I have written about physical literacy several times over the years, in 2019, in 2024, and earlier this year. Each time, there was more to say because there was more that had actually happened.

That is the thing about a sustained commitment. It keeps generating stories. You cannot tell an ongoing story if there is no ongoing work to tell it from.

In our district, we have been explicit about positioning physical literacy and AI as two key areas of innovation. At first glance, they may seem like very different priorities. I actually think they belong together.

One speaks to preparing students for a world that is increasingly digital. The other speaks to preparing students for a world that is increasingly sedentary.

Together, they reflect something we believe about the whole child. Being ready to learn and ready to live requires both a capable mind and a capable body. Neither is more important than the other. Both require attention. Both require leadership. And both require the patience to become part of the culture rather than just part of the calendar.

That is the thing about the long game. It is harder than it sounds.

It asks something of leaders that is easy to describe and genuinely difficult to practice. It asks us to protect something through the moments when the excitement has faded and the real work of sustaining it has arrived. It asks us to look at something that is working and resist the temptation to move on simply because something newer has appeared. It asks us to trust that depth, over time, produces something that breadth never can.

Time moves quickly. 19 years in the district teaches you that.

What it has also taught me is that the most meaningful things in a school system are almost never the newest things. They are the things someone refused to stop believing in.

To Diane, Amber, Erin, Sandra-Lynn, and everyone who has kept this work alive and growing: thank you for playing the long game.

The students in our schools are better for it.

The image at the top of this post was generated through AI.  Various AI tools were used as feedback helpers (for our students this post would be a Yellow assignment – see link to explanation chart) as I edited and refined my thinking.

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Considering Running for School Trustee? A Few Things to Know First

May 12, 2026 by cultureofyes

Full disclosure upfront: I am writing this post about an election where the trustees who are elected will become my bosses. Make of that what you will. I will try to be objective anyway.

In October 2026, communities across British Columbia will elect school trustees. In West Vancouver, the five seats on the Board of Education will be on the ballot. While trustee elections rarely generate the headlines of municipal or provincial campaigns, I would argue it is important for everyone in your local community to vote. The trustees elected in October will help guide a school system that locally serves thousands of students, employs hundreds of staff and can shape what learning looks like for years to come.

I have had the privilege of working with several boards of education during my time as a superintendent. Watching how those boards approach their work, the questions they ask, the relationships they build and the way they navigate difficult decisions has shaped my thinking about what good governance looks like in public education.

So this seems like a good time to ask: what does a school trustee actually do? And more importantly, what does it take to do it well?

The Role Is Not What Most People Think It Is

Here is where I want to be honest, because I have seen the disappointment up close. People run for school board because they care deeply about education. Maybe they had a frustrating experience as a parent. Maybe they want to champion a cause they believe in. Maybe they want to make sure their community’s values are reflected in the school system. All of those motivations are completely valid.

But the role itself often surprises people.

Trustees do not run schools. They do not manage teachers, intervene in individual classroom decisions, become involved in individual parent concerns or direct the superintendent on operational matters. They do not have a role in day to day operations of a school district. What trustees do is govern a system. As the BC School Trustees Association (BCSTA) describes it, trustees listen to their communities, guide the work of their district, hire and evaluate the superintendent, and set plans, policies and oversee the annual budget.

That is different from managing. And that distinction matters enormously.

Over a decade ago, I wrote about what makes board governance work well and the relationship between a board and its superintendent. Those posts came out of a presentation with our then-Board Chair Cindy Dekker at the BCSTA Fall Academy. One of the things we kept coming back to then is still the thing I come back to now: when governance works, it is because the board and the superintendent have a clear and respectful understanding of who does what.

In West Vancouver there are twenty board policies and more than a hundred administrative procedures. That distinction is not bureaucratic tidiness. It is the foundation of a functioning organization.

There is also a second gap that can catch people off guard. Trustees are elected as individuals, but they govern as a corporate board. Your personal passion, your neighbourhood concern, or your single issue does not become policy simply because you hold a seat at the table. Trustees are also not there to represent a small circle of voices, whether that is friends, networks or a single issue group, but to consider the needs of the entire system.  Governance requires building consensus, thinking system-wide, and sometimes accepting and articulating decisions that reflect the collective judgment of the board rather than an individual preference. That is not always easy, especially when you care deeply about an issue. But it is central to how public governance works.

And then there is a third gap: much of the work is policy and budget, not community events and ribbon cuttings. The work of the board is done in the board room. The unglamorous work of reviewing financial statements, navigating complex funding formulas, understanding collective bargaining context, and studying Ministry directives occupies far more time than most candidates anticipate.

What Makes a Good Trustee

Before answering that question, it is worth saying something clearly: school trustees across British Columbia volunteer extraordinary time and care to their communities. The role is demanding, often misunderstood and rarely glamorous. Yet hundreds of people across the province step forward each election cycle because they believe deeply in public education. Our system depends on that commitment.

The best trustees I have worked with over the years share a few things in common.

They are curious more than certain. They arrive at meetings with questions rather than verdicts. They understand the difference between the governance work they do and the operational work staff does, and they respect that boundary even when the issues are complex or emotionally charged.

They stay connected to their communities without treating the board table as a platform for a single constituency. Strong trustees think about the entire system — every student, every school — even when the conversation begins with a local concern.

And they commit the time the role actually requires. It is not a full-time job, but requires an ongoing regular investment of time. The learning curve is real, and the work demands preparation, reading, and thoughtful engagement.

One of my favourite lines from those 2014 posts still holds: if you show us a district that is going strong, you will almost certainly find a board and superintendent who are in sync and committed to doing what it takes to work together for students. That relationship is not accidental. It is built deliberately through clear process, trust, and mutual respect.

I also think about a post I wrote in 2023 called Different Voices after a BCSTA session where I was struck by the range of perspectives in the room — student leaders, Indigenous education representatives, international families, 2SLLGBTQI+ voices. Boards are strongest when they actively listen to the many voices that make up their communities rather than assuming they already know what those communities need. That kind of listening is a skill, and it matters in public governance.

BCSTA provides extensive professional learning and resources for trustees through the Trustee Academy, the various virtual and in-person workshops, and other supports. None of that replaces the learning that comes from showing up with openness and humility, but it is helpful that new trustees do not have to navigate the role alone.

Why This Work Matters Right Now

School systems are navigating a moment of significant change.

Artificial intelligence is reshaping how we think about learning and knowledge. Student mental health needs have increased in ways few people anticipated a decade ago. Communities are becoming more diverse, and expectations of public institutions continue to evolve. At the same time, school districts operate within complex financial constraints and shifting provincial priorities.

None of those realities are solved by a single board meeting or a single decision. But they do shape the conversations that happen around board tables across the province.

Thoughtful governance matters in moments like this. Communities benefit when people step forward who are willing to listen carefully, ask good questions, and make decisions with the long-term health of the entire system in mind.

If You Are Considering Running

If you are thinking about running for school trustee, there are a few simple things that can help clarify whether the role is the right fit.

Prior to running attend several board meetings. Not one. Several. The texture of the work becomes clearer over time, and a single meeting rarely shows you what the job actually feels like month after month.

Talk with current or former trustees and ask them what surprised them about the role. Ask what they wish they had known when they started. And if you have the opportunity in your district, learning about the school system you would be governing can be valuable context as well.

The school trustee role deserves to be approached on its own terms. It is demanding, consequential work that benefits from people who are genuinely interested in governance and in public education.

As BCSTA has put it for more than a century, a high-quality public education system is the foundation of a strong democracy. The people who help guide that system locally matter. October is closer than it seems. Now is a good time to ask yourself seriously whether you want to do this work. If the honest answer is yes, I hope you run.

That work belongs to all of us.

The BCSTA is hosting an evolving series of resources on board elections available HERE. 
The image at the top of this post was generated through AI.  Various AI tools were used as feedback helpers (for our students this post would be a Yellow assignment – see link to explanation chart) as I edited and refined my thinking.
 

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The Snap Back?

April 21, 2026 by cultureofyes

Balance.

There is a bit of a snap back happening in education right now.

You can feel it in the conversations, see it in policy, and hear it in the tone. A renewed emphasis on basics. A return to exams. Attendance and work habits being folded back into grades. A growing narrative that student achievement is declining and that schools need to get “back on track.”

In Ontario, we are seeing moves toward mandatory exams and the inclusion of attendance in final marks. In Sweden, the shift is toward textbooks and a reassertion of foundational skills as the primary purpose of school. Australia is hearing prominent calls for a back-to-basics approach in reading, writing, and mathematics, framed around declining national assessment results. And in England, a national curriculum review is underway, explicitly building on what it calls a “knowledge-rich” approach while examining whether current assessments are serving all students well.

The same conversation, across very different contexts.

It is not hard to understand why this is happening.

We are in a moment where the world feels less stable than it has in a long time. AI is accelerating change. Students are more distracted. Engagement feels uneven. The aftershocks of the pandemic are still with us. In that kind of environment, there is a natural pull toward clarity. Toward things we can see, count, and understand.

Exams feel clear. Attendance feels concrete. “Back to basics” feels reassuring.

And in uncertain times, reassurance carries weight.

There is also something deeper underneath this. A sense, for some, that perhaps we have drifted too far. That in trying to broaden what we value in schools, we may have lost focus on the fundamentals. That narrative is gaining traction, and it is one we should take seriously.

Because there is truth in parts of it.

Attendance matters. Foundational skills matter. Engagement matters.

But this is where we need to be careful.

The risk is not that we are paying attention to the basics. The risk is that we begin to narrow our definition of success at the exact moment learning is expanding.

In West Vancouver, we are clear about the importance of strong foundations. Literacy and numeracy are not optional. They remain one of the three key tenets of our work in schools. And we have not shied away from the Foundation Skills Assessment. We see it as a useful reference point for families and a source of data for teachers to inform instruction. A snapshot, honestly taken, that helps us understand where students are.

But we also hold tightly to the idea that you can be pro foundational skills and pro innovation at the same time. These are not competing values. We intentionally connect literacy and numeracy to our work in AI, and to physical literacy, recognizing that learning is cognitive, creative, and physical all at once.

And we hold tightly to “all means all.”

Not just in access, but in success.

That belief matters in this moment, because when systems feel pressure, there is often a quiet shift in who we design for. Measures that feel clear and consistent can begin to advantage the students who already know how to do school well, while creating new barriers for those who need something different to thrive.

That is not the intent. But it can be the impact.

Because while schools are feeling pressure to simplify, the world our students are entering is becoming more dynamic, more unpredictable, and harder to navigate.

AI is a big part of that shift.

Students no longer need school primarily for access to information. They carry that in their pockets. Increasingly, they can generate it on demand.

What they need now is something different.

They need to be able to make sense of information, to question it, to apply it in new contexts, to create with it, and to work with others in increasingly complex environments.

Those are harder things to measure.

And so there is a temptation to double down on what is easier.

Exams. Attendance. Compliance.

Exams are not the problem. But they are not the solution either. We should be careful when the things that are easiest to measure become the things we value most.

Because when that happens, we can unintentionally move away from “all means all,” and toward a system that works very well for some students, and less well for others.

This is where the narrative of declining achievement also deserves a closer look.

There is some truth in the data. In many jurisdictions, including high-performing ones, we have seen dips in international assessments. That should get our attention. But it should not become the entire story.

Because at the same time, systems like ours in British Columbia continue to perform at high levels globally. And perhaps more importantly, schools have taken on a far broader and more complex role than they did even a decade ago.

We are asking more of students.

Not just to recall information, but to think critically, to collaborate, to adapt, and to navigate uncertainty. If our measures remain fixed while expectations evolve, it is not surprising that the story can begin to feel like decline.

So when we say achievement is declining, it is worth asking: declining in what, measured how, and against what expectations?

Globally, the picture is more nuanced than the headlines suggest. Some systems are leaning into structure, standardization, and a renewed focus on foundational skills. Others are pushing further into creativity, agency, and broader competencies. The most thoughtful approaches are not choosing one over the other. They are trying, imperfectly, to hold both.

In British Columbia, we have spent the last two decades moving in that direction. We have worked to build a more balanced understanding of student success, one that values both strong foundations and the ability to think, create, and connect.

That work has not been perfect, but it has been meaningful. And in many ways, it has positioned our system as one others look to.

That is why the current moment matters.

Not because we should ignore the signals we are seeing, but because we should resist the urge to respond by retreating.

There are things we should absolutely strengthen. Literacy and numeracy need continued focus. Attendance matters and needs to be addressed. Engagement is something we should always be working on.

But we do not need to abandon a broader vision of learning to address current challenges. In fact, doing so may leave our students less prepared for the world they are entering, and may move us further from the idea that all students can succeed.

In times of uncertainty, there is a strong pull toward simplicity. Toward clearer measures. Toward more familiar approaches.

That pull is understandable. But it is not always wise. Because the future our students are heading into is not becoming more simple. It is becoming more dynamic, more unpredictable, and more complex.

Our challenge is not to make school feel simpler.

It is to ensure that students leave ready for that reality. Grounded in strong foundations, yes. But also able to think, adapt, create, and navigate a world that will continue to change around them.

For all students.

That is the goal.

And it requires us to resist the easy answers, even when they feel right.

Not a swing of the pendulum, but a commitment to nuance.

The image at the top of this post was generated through AI.  Various AI tools were used as feedback helpers (for our students this post would be a Yellow assignment – see link to explanation chart) as I edited and refined my thinking.

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