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Archive for January, 2021

The Importance of Telling the Stories of High School Sports

Posted in Change, tagged , , , , , on January 19, 2021| 2 Comments »

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

I had the great honour of being on Howard Tsumura’s podcast last week (link HERE).  We spoke about blogging, basketball and the future of schooling among other topics.  Howard has been a real mentor for me in the world of writing, as he is an amazing storyteller.  I didn’t get to say it on the podcast, but reporters like him, Steve Ewen, Don Fennell, and Mark Booth have all been inspirations for me with the Culture of Yes because they tell wonderful stories. I have often tried to use this blog to tell more stories like those I read them sharing.

Now, I don’t want to just turn this entry into a blog post that laments the loss of so much local news through our traditional sources. I do think it is a big deal, and community based public education is not well served by Facebook Groups replacing community newspapers.  I have written before (HERE) about the loss of community circulations, but rather today I am thinking about the importance these local papers are to our high school athletics. 

When I talk to people from other parts of Canada, one of the great differentiators we have had is that our media has treated high school athletics as important and relevant.  I remember coaching in local high school gyms in the mid-1990’s and seeing Trevor Henderson, Barry MacDonald and Don Taylor walk in to do a story for Sports Page. And this was no surprise – they and others would often be at fields and gyms telling the stories of high school athletes. School sports, like the Canucks, Whitecaps and Lions was part of our British Columbia sports DNA.  I know many people who only had a Vancouver Province subscription to read The School Zone on Thursdays with Howard Tsumura or Steve Ewen. Both Vancouver daily newspapers had full-time high school / university sports reporters at the time. 

Now because of the foresight of the Langley Event Centre and a collection of partners, we still have the treasure that is Howard Tsumura doing stories for Varsity Letters.  And others like BC Sports Hub trying to fill the high school sports storytelling void.  And Steve Ewen still makes sure that school sports gets into the Vancouver Sun and Province, but his beat is now basically everything so it can’t get the same attention.  And it all makes me sad for stories we will never hear. 

We will always get Canucks scores but what about the stories like Andy Prest who writes for the North Shore News and his remembrance of Quinn Keast, or Ben Lypka in Abbotsford who was writing about Chase Claypool when he was winning provincial football titles and playing senior boys basketball – well before being a breakout star with the Pittsburgh Steelers,  or Marty Hastings in Kamloops who covers sports in their local community so well, or Mark Booth who has been writing for decades about school sports in Delta and Richmond or Don Fennell who I first begun talking to about high school sports in Richmond in the 1980’s and now writes as Editor at the Richmond Sentinel (I encourage you to explore any of these links – they are all great stories told by masterful writers). 

Stories like this one from Howard Tsumura on Bradley Braich on sports and mental health are powerful and they make a difference when other young people can read stories like this.  It helps students to know they are not alone.  And so important that stories like Karin Khuong’s get told – the way Steve Ewen did multiple times, including this past October. 

Now, I know we are all still challenged by COVID, but I am absolutely convinced school sports will come roaring back in a post-pandemic world.  As I have written before, athletics may (and I think should), look different, but school sports are tightly linked to our definition of schooling. 

What I have noticed during the pandemic is that as much as I miss school sports, I really miss the stories of school sports.  I realize that reading and watching the stories of athletes, coaches and teams is one of my favourite parts of the game.  The human interest aspects are as or more interesting to me than the scores of the games.

And it is this coverage which has been waning in recent years prior to the pandemic.  Replacing a full-page story in a local community newspaper on a young athlete with a highlight reel on Instagram is not the same thing.  And in recent years this has really been lost.  I worry that with no high school sports this year, another unintended consequence is that when they come back, there will be even fewer storytellers.  I get it, reporters move on, newspapers and other traditional media are struggling.

Talking to Howard Tsumura definitely made me nostalgic.  I love reading about the grade 9 track star from Burnaby, or the high school rugby coach from Victoria who is fighting cancer or the graduating volleyball player who is also an amazing musician.  These kinds of stories define the power, beauty and community of school sports.

Thank you to all of you who have and continue to tell our stories of school sports.

I started with that overused quote about a tree falling in the forest, as I keep thinking about it when I reflect on high school sports.  If there is nobody around to tell the great stories – how will we know about all of our students amazing accomplishments?  And that will be a tremendous loss.

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Last 10, Today and Next 10

Posted in Change, Personalized Learning, Professional Development, tagged , , , , on January 14, 2021| 2 Comments »


I was recently part of an interesting national conversation “Future Proofing Education – The Past is a Prologue” with four other superintendents from across Canada. In 2011, early in my superintendency, I joined the C21 CEO Academy which is a national group of superintendents that meet virtually once a month and find other ways to collaborate on thought papers and make other connections. For those outside of Canada, this is always interesting, as education, unlike in most places in the world, is provincial in jurisdiction and not federal – though there are many linkages we have across the country.

At the bottom I share the video with thoughtful comments from my colleagues, Jordan Tinney, Pauline Clarke, Gregg Ingersoll and Elwin Leroux. Here is some of my thinking on the questions we were wrestling with:

What have been the most significant shifts over the last 10 years?

I think our school system has shifted far more than I would have imagined in 2011. If you walk into a classroom today, it very often looks quite different than a decade ago. I can’t be sure, but I am not sure we would have said that as boldly in the past. Did a classroom in 1995 look that different than a class in 1985? In 2011 we were immersed in the conversation of the WHY of change. We would show videos about the world changing around us and act as though we needed to convince those around us that shifts needed to happen. We felt stuck in a world where our system was regarded as one of the best in the world, but many saw the world changing. Flash ahead to today, and even without COVID, things have really changed. And it has not just been technology.

We all probably knew there would be new technology and students and staff would have access to modern gizmos, but beyond the technology, curriculum, assessment and pedagogies have really shifted. Of course this is never ending – we will never be done as the world is always changing. And I have been really struck that across Canada there is far more alignment among leaders. Yes, there are differences between BC, Manitoba, Quebec and the Maritimes but we have similar visions on the future of teaching and learning.

What do you notice about the pandemic shifts?

The first thing I notice is that the pandemic has been exhausting.

I haven’t necessarily worked more, but every day my work has been different than what worked looked like in the past. This is a great reminder for what our students, teachers, principals and other staff have been experiencing – doing new things is taxing. Of course, it is also incredibly exhilarating. We have also seen during this time that we can shift our school far quicker than we thought. We moved from in-person to remote learning over spring break, and since then have had multiple models. We redesigned secondary school timetables in August and we were ready for September. In the past we acted as though any of these changes would take years, but when there is a will and urgency to change shifts can happen.

We have also fully embraced new ways to connect.  Rather than superintendents being filtered by media and others, we have used videos and our written words to reach out to students, staff and families.  Full credit to my colleague from Surrey Jordan Tinney who has modeled the use of video to make a large school district feel like a tight community.  Everyone is thirsting for information, and school and district leaders are seen as honest brokers of information and many have used new platforms to build connections.  

It is also interesting to see the Federal Government now an active participant in education. With a billion dollars invested this past fall in schools, they too have been promoters of a national conversation. And then in classes we have really had to rethink time. With less in-person face-to-face time, what is really important to be done this way, and what can be done other ways. When in-person time is at a premium how does that change our system.

And a final change which I think has permanent ripples in our school system is we have become great partners with the health system. Because of COVID, I talk with, listen to, and share information with doctors, nurses and others in health every day. And I don’t think this should change post-pandemic. This could have lasting positive effects on topics from the overdose crisis to well being and mental health to physical literacy. Our new partnerships should be here to stay.


And what about the future?

My worry is that if we try to focus on everything coming out of the pandemic, we may focus on nothing and snapback to the system we had before. And as good as it was, nobody I talk with just wants to go back. I am curious about what do we need for a future world that is increasingly digitized and automated? If it is my magic wand, we will focus on 1) equity and our most vulnerable in our system and 2) the structures and delivery of secondary education.

And I often get asked what are the three things I think will stick post-pandemic. At least right now my list is:

• Digitization – we are not going to unplug our virtual classrooms – they are forever part of our experience
• Flexibility for students and staff – our kids and adults have had greater ownership over their learning and we have rethought time, this will continue
• Learning is often an outdoor activity – if it was the healthy thing to do to get outside during a pandemic, it certainly is as well after a pandemic


Interesting to see these three in combination as they may not seem to be aligned, but a future system with students outside more, owning their learning, and more digitally connected to the world is a pretty exciting system!

These are those kind of questions with no “right” answers, but are important to think about. We have one of the top education systems in the world, and we will need to keep pushing to keep it that way!

As I said with my last post – I am full of optimism.

Here is the video featuring my wonderful colleagues from across Canada (click on the photo to open the video):

 

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My One Word (2021)

Posted in Change, tagged , , , on January 1, 2021| 4 Comments »

2021 is going to be better than 2020.  I do read all the “good riddance” to 2020 posts, and it is true there was a lot of crappy things.  The horrible toll of COVID on lives and livelihoods combined with a series of other events that seemed to lead to one downer after another.  There were also glimmers of the future.  Like many, I wrote posts about school, and sports, and life in general could emerge from the pandemic not with a return to the way things used to be, but to something new – where the lessons of the last year were applied permanently changing behaviours that never would have changed if not for the pandemic.  I actually considered a word like “pumped” for 2021, but I scaled it back a bit.  I still feel building energy for the year ahead.  

So, that leads into my word for this year – Optimism

This is the 6th year of my “One Word” Tradition. In 2016 I wrote about Hungry and then in 2017 my first post of the year was dedicated to Hope. I feel both words were ones that were good ones for the times they were written. In 2018 I wrote about what I described as my desperate need in my work for Relevance, and then in 2019 it was Delight – a new twist on the power and importance of joy.  Last year my word was Hustle.  Despite 2020 being very different than what any of us would have predicted, hustle really fit well.  It was a year where I worked more days than any year in my life, doing different work than I ever imagined and spent the year creating on the go.  

Optimism is central to so many educators I know.  It really helps define our work.  When asked about how many chances a child has, the answer is almost always – at least one more.  We believe that our efforts can positively change the trajectory of young lives, and that all our students are capable of changing, improving and growing.   To quote Colleen Wilcox, “Teaching is the greatest act of optimism.”

OK, but why particularly this year?

I will start professionally.  We have learned a lot during the pandemic about different ways to deliver education.  It all hasn’t worked perfectly.  And yet, particularly at secondary, new models have seen a lot of positive feedback, and in many cases, created better connections between teachers and students, and greater ownership of students of their learning.  As we likely have more flexibility next fall in how we deliver our programs, we have the opportunity to take the positive learnings from this past year and apply them and hopefully not need to be as rigid with cohorts and other health and safety rules that continue to be in place now.  This is truly the once-in-a-career moment for us as educators to think differently about schooling and not just revert back to the way it used to be, but to take the experimentation of this year and develop new models for the future.  

And personally, this should be the year I finish my doctorate.  I have moved to the candidate stage and I am writing and hopefully soon fully launch into the research.  I have written before HERE about my project, and I am so interested in better understanding the role of the superintendent, and how it is done similarly and differently across the province.  The work will hopefully be a launching pad for conversations around the superintendency.  And maybe, finally, my kids will be able to explain to people what their dad does for a job.

And of course there is COVID.  We are likely in for some dark days still ahead across the globe.  But here comes the vaccine.  I am hopeful my 80-year-old mom is just a couple months away from vaccination and maybe by summer all of us will have this layer of protection.  Seeing the end, even if it not yet clearly defined, bring hope and optimism.

2021 is going to be a really good year.  I am excited about traveling, coaching basketball, going to conferences, watching school events in-person and helping transition child #2 to university.   I am also ready to change and not just go back to 2019.  I love that I walk more, go to fewer unnecessary meetings, and even get a bit more sleep than I did before the pandemic.  

I chose to be in the optimism business – and I have got a really good feeling about the year ahead.

So, what is your word?

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