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This is Post 400

Posted in Change, Professional Development, tagged , , , , on January 12, 2022| 8 Comments »

I loved this quote above that I saw recently from Adam Grant.  It nicely summarizes what I love about this space.  I look back at posts I have written over the last twelve years and see how my thinking has evolved.  I was recently talking with my friend George Couros and we joked that we are two of the last bloggers out there.  While more people would read my posts a decade ago than do today, I never was really doing this for you – like Grant argues, I don’t blog for an audience, I blog for me.  I notice that the more regularly I write, the better it becomes.

I have written about the act of blogging a number of times over the years.  My list of reasons I had for starting this blog still hold today:

  • try to be transparent with my learning and leadership
  • model the “new way” many claim is the way students will learn — engaging with the world, and using digital tools to connect in ways we couldn’t connect without them
  • offer a different voice on educational issues from those in the mainstream media
  • work out ideas; get feedback, and push my own thinking

I would not be the person I am if I didn’t have this space to work through ideas.  And I have connected to many amazing people through this blog.

I still run across people who say they want to blog but they don’t have time.  They do have the time – it is just not a priority.  I have tried to make the case for more bloggers a number of times before.  I think for superintendents, it can really help to humanize the roll and make the position more accessible.  Here is a column from last year on Superintendents Blogging in the Pandemic and Beyond and one from 2018 Superintendent Blogging Should be a Fixture.  Of course, I think blogs are great for everyone – students, teachers, principals – anyone trying to work through ideas and create digital filing cabinet.

Here is some advice I gave to new and aspiring bloggers on blog post #150 that still holds true at #400:

  • be clear about what you will and won’t write about — it is easier if you know from the onset the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ behind your blog
  • it is a bit cliché, but write for yourself, not for what others may want; let the blog be a personal journal in a public space
  • do not be too ambitious with your writing — make plans to write once a week, or once a month and stick with it
  • use social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) to amplify your message
  • be thoughtful of the relationship between your professional role (teacher, administrator etc.) and your blog
  • think in blog posts — when you are at a conference, reading a book, or attending a meeting, begin to organize your thoughts and take notes like you are writing a story
  • the more voice you can have in your blog the more engaging it is for readers
  • be a storyteller — our schools are full of amazing stories waiting to be told

When I started blogging, I never really thought about how it would end.  And I don’t think I fully knew that it was actually hard to write regularly.  Anyone who tells you blogging is easy – is lying! But most important things are not easy.

And now 400 posts in, as long as there are new things to think about, and ideas to share and debate, I hopefully will be around for another 400 posts.

Thanks to all of you who continue to join me and connect with me in this space.

 

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Superintendent Blogging in a Pandemic and Beyond

Posted in Change, tagged , , , , , on February 1, 2021| 6 Comments »

This post is a duplicate of the article in the  AASA – February 2021 School Administrator Magazine.  

The issue (here) is dedicated to the shift to remote schooling.

It was mid-March, and suddenly everything around us was closing. Our school district had entered spring break with a foreboding sense we might not come back in two weeks, but it was still a little surreal. 

Suddenly everything was moving quickly – national borders were closing, toilet paper was flying off the store shelves and general panic was setting in. People kept asking, what about schools? I knew I needed to say something. I thought writing about curriculum reform or budget planning seemed poorly timed and I didn’t have any certainty to bring to the fate of schools after spring break.

So, instead, I wrote a blog post about my cancelled Hawaiian vacation. I shared a more personal story about how we were trying to take a rare family vacation in our oldest daughter’s 12th-grade year before she left for college. In the end, we tried to salvage some sense of festiveness as we enjoyed pineapple and macadamia nuts on our rainy back patio.  

 

Human Touch

Thousands of people read the post and dozens commented and then shared their stories, empathized with our family’s challenges, and otherwise just connected. It was a reminder that people do not just read our blogs to learn about education. At its core our blogs are about connection. And in times of uncertainty, district superintendents are among those people in our communities look toward for guidance, advice and reassurance.    

 In the hundreds of posts I have written, two of the most common responses I get from colleagues are “how do you find the time?” and “that seems like a lot of work.” And even as you have read dozens of articles over the last decade in School Administrator magazine and elsewhere, the number of superintendent bloggers is relatively low.

As we look to a post-pandemic world that will differ from our world before, it finally might be the right time to start.  

 

Time to Proceed

Let me suggest five reasons why now is the time for a superintendent to be blogging.  

  • People are looking to connect on a human level. Our families are “Zoomed” out. Many of our students and families have spent large parts of their lives over the past 10 months in their homes and with limited contacts. Our blogging as school district leaders can humanize us and our work. We are facing the same challenges as our families and doing our best to make decisions that are unprecedented. 

 

  • Old communication channels have disappeared. Before last March, I could speak to parents at a school or to the Rotary Club or various other venues. Large gatherings do not exist right now, and they may never come back in the same way. We need to have our channels of communication to connect directly with our community.

 

  • Our school system is changing fast. Regardless of your delivery model this fall and winter, we have made changes in weeks or months that would normally take years. Constant communication with our parents is crucial to understand the what, the why and the how of all the different ways learning is continuing.

 

  • We can offer certainty in a world of uncertainty. With so much confusion and change in our world, superintendents are looked to by the community to be honest brokers of information. We can use our social capital to keep our community onside with how school changes fit into larger global changes.

 

  • Our kids need models, so why not us? I am pretty sure all students across North America are writing more online than they were one year ago. This is probably not going to change anytime soon. If we say we want our children to be learning to engage in this world, we can help model the way.

 

Digital Presence

When I started blogging 10 years ago, it was a bit of a novelty. Now as we start 2021, the urgency seems greater. The world is changing, and the tools we use are changing. What a great time for us to lead the way in this digital space.

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Maybe I Was Wrong About Blogging

Posted in Change, Social Media, tagged , , , , , , on April 7, 2016| 24 Comments »

Multi Ethnic People Holding The Word Blogging

If five years ago I looked into my crystal ball, I would have said that in 2016, all staff and students would have blogs.  These would be spaces of reflection and also for portfolios.  I would have said that they would be text based, but increasingly have video content.  I would have said that we would be increasingly wired to comment on each other’s work and have gained skills in giving public, constructive feedback and commentary.

While blogging isn’t dead, its fate in the schools of 2016 is not what I envisioned.  It seems like a lot of people have tried blogging, and while some continue the internet is littered with abandoned education blogs.    I would like to agree with fellow educational blogger Martin Weller that “the future of blogging is blogging.”

I have written several times about my experiences during the 2010 Winter Olympics. During the Games I worked with a group of students who served as student reporters covering the action through their blogs.  It was defining for me in my thinking.  I saw students producing content for the real-world, getting immediate feedback and saw the quality of their writing improve as they felt the pressure of writing for a public audience.

My colleague Gary Kern, who joined me on the Olympic project, was the architect of our work in West Vancouver that saw every student get a blog.  And led by Cari Wilson, we got students, classes and schools blogging across the district.  We had blog challenges, and we had adults highlighting student blogs, and we grew the community.

So here is a (somewhat random) collection of things that has happened in the last five years which has led away from all blogging, both for students and the adults in our district:

  • we have moved to collaborative spaces like Google Docs that allow multiple thinking outside the blog format
  • instead of seeing blogs as “home base” for videos, photos etc. we have seen the growth of Instagram and YouTube and sustained presence of Facebook and Twitter which are often used as blogs – social media engagement is fragmented across various platforms.
  • once everyone started writing, people began to comment less and less on other people’s writing
  • the theory was that adults would model how to comment on blogs and then kids would learn and follow – unfortunately adults have been terrible models . . . one only has to look at the number of news sites that have shut comments off because of the immature and often hateful commentary
  • some of our blogging tools we used were cumbersome and have not adapted as quickly as our other digital tools
  • it is hard to sustain momentum – with ‘Hour of Code’, robotics, FreshGrade, Google Docs, there are a lot of digital tools and initiatives looking for our attention

Dean Shareski tweeted, “Blogs are like rock and roll and jazz. A one time popular genre, now a niche.”  Maybe.  We had the boost from the outside this past week working with George Couros, and at least for now, some of the excitement is back.

I no longer say things like ”Everyone needs to have a blog” but I still would hope that people would see the powerful value of owning a digital space of their own.

I love blogging.  It gives me a voice.  It is a place for me to work through ideas.  It is a portfolio. It is my home base.  The jury is still out if others see it the same.

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A Quick Look Around West Vancouver Schools

Posted in SD45, tagged , , , , , , , on December 11, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Sentinel

It is always nice to connect in with the many other bloggers in West Vancouver Schools. Over the last five years I have continually found the themes that emerge from what others are writing to be very instructive about where we are going as a school district.

Here is a collection of some of what my colleagues have been writing about recently.

Like many in our district, our Bowen Island Community School Vice-Principal Laura Magrath has been thinking and writing about the changes in curriculum.  A recent post of hers focused on the increased emphasis on competencies:

The Core Competencies in the new BC curriculum provide a framework to use – adults and children alike – to build our confidence in key areas that apply to each and every task we face in life: Communication Skills, Thinking Skills, and Personal and Social Skills. If we use this framework, we can make any opportunity – and the choices within this opportunity – more meaningful and relevant. We can focus on “what are the best skills for this task?” rather than an unknown and ever elusive “being our best selves.”

A focus on competencies can ground us and help us determine the importance of and value in our decisions. But we can’t focus on all aspects of the competencies all of the time. Choosing a competency and clearly articulating the area we are focusing on ahead of the task can provide a sense of confidence prior to beginning, and a specific area to reflect upon and to document our progress.

Cypress Park’s Vice-Principal Kim Grimwood recently wrote about the subject area that gets discussed and debated more than any other – math.  Of course it is not a black and white issue as she pointed out in her Balancing Act post:

A recent blog about math educator Dan Meyer states that “so much of teaching math through a computational lens asks students to find the right equation and plug-in numbers. It doesn’t ask them to be big thinkers; but it’s precisely the experience of grappling with a problem that sparks curiosity, motivates students and develops the patient problem-solving that is so lacking in much of the population.”

Along with our students’ ability to think big, we also need to make sure that we are providing them with strong procedural skills. In education, we often see large pendulum swings between what seem like opposing ideas and theories.  However, in the case of mathematics what research is telling us is that we need a balanced approach between conceptual big ideas and procedural knowledge. Students are most successful when procedural and conceptual approaches are combined.

We want our students to be creative, big thinkers, and this means giving them the foundational skills to approach these problems.

All teachers and administrators have growth plans in our school district.  Craig Cantlie, principal at Caulfeild recently shared his question and thinking on his blog:

How can we redesign schools to better meet students where they are as learners across all disciplines? 

I don’t have the answer; but I’m curious to find out. I know that some schools around the world report out curricular outcomes on a formalized K-12 continuum. That’s interesting to me. At our school we have a host of clubs that are driven by student interest – what if these were during class time? We are investigating how to connect literacy and numeracy more with the maker movement. We possess the digital experience to now leverage the use of technology in student learning to a greater degree and our teachers have begun moving away from textbooks and more to Khan Academy and Discovery Education in math and inquiry to allow greater personalization. We are connecting our HOPE (Me to We) Committee members with the local high school students and outside agencies such as Startup Skool and Women Leading Change to provide relevant and meaningful learning opportunities. We are exploring opportunities to change our learning environments to be less designated classrooms, and more flexible and purposeful learning spaces. In this space the teacher role could change from “sage on the stage” or “guide on the side” to be more an “activator” of learning. A role of asking more questions that provoke debate, exploration and further drive curiosity and learning. This is interesting to me.

Ridgeview Principal Valerie Brady recently wrote about the importance of preparing students for all parts of life and giving students more than just academic tools:

Our job as educators is to prepare students for success in school and in the real world beyond school.  Teaching students to read and write is only the beginning.  A focus on success in life means that,  beyond teaching the three Rs we must also teach character, emotional intelligence, responsibility and an appreciation of the complexity of human diversity.  We must also teach the virtues of grit – tenacity, perseverance, and the ability to never give up.

While grit is a hot topic in education as of late, Ridgeview staff look to the research to expand our understanding of how grit is defined in the research and how to nurture grittiness in our young students.

While it is very important that students enjoy learning and want to come to school, the teaching of grit means that students will experience, and perhaps embrace some frustration and discomfort.  To prepare students for the real world, we must teach them how to respond to frustration and failure.  This is often a sticking point in education…while it is necessary for students to experience frustration and even failure as they move through their schooling years…. finding a balance between allowing children to experience frustration and rescuing them from this experience is necessary to developing grit.

Westcot Principal Cathie Ratz shared her thinking on kids playing with Pokemon cards . . . and it probably surprises some that a Principal would encourage and embrace these kind of passions:

Our students don’t just getting excited about anything.   Tapping the interest and passion of our students,   creative teachers leverage the interests.  Over the years I have seen Egyptian God trading cards, Flat Stanley travel around the world and the creation of new worlds to ‘teach’ mapping and government studies. I recently read about a teacher Joel Levin on twitter @MinecraftTeachr  who has embarked on a Minecraft journey  that is truly inspiring.

So, unless Minecraft, Transformers, Battle Bots, Littlest Pet Shop and whatever else begins to trend among our students seriously begins to interfere with  their healthy functioning  I want to take a little time to obsess along with them, just a little, and share in the interest and maybe leverage it all a little.

Happy playing!

West Bay Elementary School has been a leader in our district’s self-regulation work.  A recent post from Principal Judy Duncan reflected on her current thinking in comparison to her own school experience:

Three words come to mind when I think of my own experiences in school — conformity, uniformity and rules.  We sat in rows, were quiet for the most part, worked independently at our desks, memorized material, and weren’t allowed to wear jeans or hats. We were all treated much the same, all followed a long list of well-intentioned rules, and were given little choice as to how to demonstrate our understanding.
Today at West Bay and all the schools in our district, individuality, self-expression and different learning styles are embraced and celebrated. Educators are viewing student behaviour through a self-regulation lens and students are the beneficiaries. They feel empowered to make decisions for themselves as to what tools and strategies they need to ensure they experience success in school and in life. Students have greater choice, feel their needs are understood and respected, and are confident to be themselves — and they are appreciative. We are not finding gum stuck under desks and there is no argument from students when asked to remove hats on certain occasions. As my colleague Kim Grimwood, Vice-Principal of Cypress Park notes, “Students are learning how to be responsible with the choices they are afforded.”
 It is also the secondary school Principals blogging, including Rockridge Principal Jeannette Laursoo who recently used her blog to pass along the advice from a recent PAC Meeting speaker – Brett Stroh – who spoke on gaming:
One of the things that Brett said was just because one’s child is spending a lot of time playing games, doesn’t necessarily mean that one needs to be overly concerned.  “Just because they are playing a game on a Saturday for 5-6 hours doesn’t mean that there is necessarily an issue, and it’s time to hit the panic button.  One needs to also consider how the child is doing with school, family, friends and sports.  In other words, how is the rest of the world going for them (apart from the regular ‘drama’)?  Is gaming having a negative impact on or causing conflict in these areas of the child’s life?  Is the child spending a significant amount of time obtaining or thinking about the game, or recovering from its effects?
There are many ways we are trying to tell our stories in West Vancouver.  One of the ways our school principals and vice-principals often use is through their blogs.  It is an incredibly exciting time in education, and many of the ideas and practices are quite different from even a generation ago in our classrooms.  Whether it is face-to-face or digitally, we will continue to reach out and connect – starting conversations in our schools and communities.
It is great to be a member of the West Vancouver Schools digital community – our collective thinking and sharing makes all of us better.

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Another Reason We Need to Tell Our Stories

Posted in Change, SD45, Social Media, Technology, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 27, 2015| 6 Comments »

Waste Paper Piles On The Street. Sorting Garbage In Everyday Lif

With a single tweet, the 83 year-old newspaper in my community disappeared. Of course this is nothing new, it is happening in communities across North America as the newspaper business continues to search for its place in the digital world.

RichmondReview

Community newspapers don’t get enough credit for the important role they play with our school system.  They are so often our storytellers.  They tell the narratives of our kids, our teams, our musicals, our art shows, our academic success and our commitment to service.  They also keep us honest and tell our stories of controversies like bus service changes or school closures , budget decisions and staff misbehaviours.  Community newspapers connect schools to community.  In the district I work, we lost one of our two local newspapers last year with the closing of the North Shore Outlook and now this past week, the community I live in has suffered the same fate with the closing of the Richmond Review.

I have tagged more posts “Change” than anything else on my blog.   I champion change.  And we are seeing this change play out in almost every industry.  It is why, I believe, sometimes change in education is so hard.  With so much change in our world, people often hold onto the traditions of school hoping that at least they will stay the same – romanticizing the world we used to have.  And I kind of get it – we are all in favour of change, expect for the things we don’t want to change.  Some of the change feels more like loss.

The Richmond Review felt like more than a community newspaper.  I remember the excitement growing up seeing my name in the paper for something to do with school or sports.  It was great moments of pride for kids and families if their name was in the newspaper.    While I will read the Vancouver Province, Vancouver Sun and Globe & Mail on an almost daily basis, I would read the community newspapers where I lived and worked cover to cover – I would love seeing stories of people I knew or better understanding the views of those I lived and worked with.

Over the years I developed wonderful relationships with several people who worked at the Richmond Review.  In particular Sports Editor Don Fennell became a friend.  I first spoke to him as a high school student, and then probably hundreds of times over the twenty-six years he spent at the paper.  Whether we hadn’t spoken since last week or last year, he had that great ability of picking up a conversation and making one feel so comfortable.  I love his quote in the final edition of the paper, “I don’t like good-byes; I love Richmond.”  Don and the others at the paper made the community better.

Of course earlier this year when a deal was announced that saw the other local paper the Richmond News and the Richmond Review come under one owner – it was clear something was going to change.  This story has been repeated across North America.  And while I might be a little jaded thinking how unfair it was to kill-off an 83 year-old community paper with two days notice in the middle of summer, it doesn’t change the fact that despite the greatest efforts newspapers have been unable to transition into a viable economic model in the new digital world.  Surviving, not thriving describes most of the local newspaper that continue.

But this blog is largely about education and what does this change have to do with education?  Actually a lot!

If teachers, coaches, principals, schools and school districts need yet another reason why they need to be storytellers in the digital age this is it.  Local newspapers have long been our storytellers and these stories are important.  We need to tell them.  It is not enough for our websites to be information rich, they need to be rich in stories of the people.  If the North Shore Outlook and Richmond Review are not around to tell stories of our great young soccer players, or the high school performance of Grease, or the students going to Africa to build a school we need to tell these stories.

So, you want another reason to start a blog or change your website?  We can no longer rely on the traditional community media to tell our stories.  And people still want to hear these stories.  We need to tell them.

We need to write, photograph and video what is happening in our schools and then bring it to people’s attention.  Kids still want to see their names in the newspaper – we just need to figure out what that looks like in our world.

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Writing is Writing

Posted in Professional Development, tagged , , , , on March 23, 2015| 8 Comments »

writinghardwork

Every month I read the magazine School Administrator cover to cover.  Produced by the AASA – the American Superintendents’ Association it moves from big picture issues, to practical current topics to interesting slices of life from a variety of others who serve in the same role as me.   It is my go-to professional journal.  Over the last four years I have got to know its editor, Jay Goldman.  Jay has been kind enough to take some of my blog posts and turn them into columns for the magazine, and I am right now working on a piece on school sports for an issue this summer.  It is not just the relevance that draws me to the School Administrator Magazine but also the quality of writing – which goes back to the tone and standards set by the editor.

I had the chance to attend a session at the recent AASA National Conference on Education hosted by Jay Goldman and his colleague Jimmy Minichello on Publishing Professionally: Guidance for School District Leaders.  I went there to look for tips on how better to take what I am writing every week for my blog and make it something that would work in a variety of other forms.  And like many of you out there, I do have dreams of writing a book one day.  It was a great session, but the key message I took away was one not really about writing for a magazine or books or even for blogging – the message I took away was Writing is Writing.  Something that fits with a message I often share, “Good writing still matters.”

There is one particular slide that brought this message home for me:

whywrite

If anything, being a good writer seems to be more important now than ever for teachers and administrators.  And while Jay was speaking about the power of writing in the context of a magazine, this slide is a great slide to answer the question – why blog?  The goal is not bloggers, for our students or the adults in the system – it is writers for the reasons that Jay outlines.  What is true is that blogging allows the writing to be more dynamic and allows us all to be owners of our own publishing company.

In the end though, writing is still writing and all of us should take up the challenge to do more of it in our profession.

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Blogging and Modern Educational Leaders

Posted in Change, Social Media, Technology, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 13, 2014| 14 Comments »

blogging

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern would be impressed — this post is somewhat a blog post about a blog post about blogging.

I had a recent email exchange with Janet Steffenhagen (Janet is the former Education Reporter with the Vancouver Sun and currently blogs for the BC Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils (BCCPAC)) about the state of educational blogging. She had been planning to highlight BC Superintendents blogging and noticed there seemed to be fewer blogging today than three years ago. I offered some of my thoughts in her post, Blogging Challenges for Superintendents, and listed below:

– Blogging is hard. You have to dedicate time on a regular basis to writing and it is not part of a traditional pattern for most people. It is also just hard to “put yourself out there”.
– There is uncertainty about what to write. Some Superintendents use it as a journal (like Monica Pamer in Richmond) to tell stories; others use it more for district news (like John Lewis in North Vancouver). There is no one right answer, but it is hard to determine “what” the Superintendent should write about. I have always tried to be broad – some of what I write is what I see in our district, some is what I think about education trends and some is future-focused in areas that may not be directly linked to education.
– If you don’t have an audience, it can be discouraging. With so many people joining the blogging community, it can be hard to gain an audience. While the role of Superintendent will immediately get some traffic, the numbers may be small to start. One has to see blogging as at least as much about the personal reflection to find it fulfilling.
– If you blog and don’t participate in the digital community, you likely won’t stick around. I would see some people blog but would not follow this up by engaging via Twitter or even responding (or soliciting) comments on the blog. The community is part of the power. Some who blog are really just writing newsletters online.
– The job action. I think it was hard to figure out just what to say during the strike, and very few district leaders blogged. The few who were engaged in social media often got targeted as the face of BCPSEA (B.C. Public School Employers’ Association) and at times the government, so may have thought there was no need to put themselves through that unnecessary backlash. For those new to the community – even in senior district roles – this can be intimidating. Nobody likes to be publicly criticized.

Shortly after this email exchange, I read a new article from Will Richardson, Eight New Attributes of Modern Educational Leaders. Will argues, “A new breed of educational leader is emerging from all parts of the globe. It’s a leader that fully understands the fundamental challenges to traditional teaching and learning that the new interconnected, networked world is creating. It’s a leader that also sees the amazing opportunities that abundant access to information, people, and technologies is bringing to all of our learning lives.”  Will sees the eight attributes of modern educational leaders as being:

1. They are connected to and engaged in online networks.
2. They are makers with (and without) technology.
3. They are innovators and support innovation.
4. They are models for learning both online and off.
5. They see curriculum as strategy.
6. They facilitate an “ever-evolving” vision for teaching and learning in their schools, with (or without) technology.
7. They are literate in modern contexts.
8. They know “learning is the work.”

It was a timely reminder from Will, and as much as I was giving Janet a series of reasons why leaders might not engage in modern learning, Will reminds us that it is our responsibility to be engaged — so I think it is not about any particular role like a superintendent, principal or teacher — we all need to be modern learners. No excuses.

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Teacher

Posted in SD45, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 9, 2014| 37 Comments »

Dad Updated Photo

I have been stuck.  This is my first blog effort in about a month.  It is, by far, my longest time away from public writing and it has been challenging to write.  While I know some might have hoped I would write about the job action that has cast a cloud over the BC public education system, there is little I could add that would not just be more noise. So, with less writing, I have been reading more.  And, something I read finally gave me the momentum to become unstuck.

I stumbled my way to the blog You Suck, Sir from a local Vancouver teacher.  As he describes the blog, “My students are funny.  Sometimes, it’s intentional.”  The blog is a collection of stories from the English teacher’s class over the last two decades — some absolutely great writing.  He recently wrote a post  answering a question about having a teaching philosophy.

He starts:

Great question.  And I was reminded of it tonight when I got in touch with my sponsor teacher from 1995.  He’s well into his retirement now but he was a legendary teacher in his day and head of the English department in our city’s largest high school.  He took me under his wing and I got to observe how a master teacher runs his class.  And I’ll be honest: I didn’t see anything.  I had to report back to my faculty advisor all the things I’d noticed in terms of methodology and classroom management.  But I didn’t “see” anything.  It took me a while to realize why:  he made it look easy.  He had internalized everything a teacher is supposed to do.  I even confronted him about it one day to ask which educational philosophy he abides by, and he answered: “Listen to what they’re saying.”

This IS the challenge of teaching.  Maybe other professions have similar challenges, but it is difficult to define powerful teaching.  It is this blend of art and science the masters weave so effortlessly.  I grew up in a house of teachers. I can remember from a very young age watching my mom and dad prepare lessons. I knew they were good at what they did — I would hear it from my friends on sports teams and others in the community about how much they liked having my parents as teachers, but it was difficult to really understand exactly what they did that made their classrooms work. As I started my teaching career I would try to emulate how I thought they would teach; it was tough because there is just no ‘how-to’ recipe for our profession.

Returning to the blog, the author distills three main ideas:

1)  If you can’t address a student’s immediate needs, he won’t be available to your teachings.

2)  Do not compromise a young person’s dignity.

3)  Do not take anything personally.

Continuing his observations about his sponsor teacher:

The teacher I mentioned at the start of this, my sponsor teacher, said something that I’ve carried with me to this day: “I would do this job for free if I didn’t need money.”  At the time, I found this statement disturbing because there was no way I’d do it for free.  But I see now that he was talking about joy.  There is joy to be had in this career.  There is nothing more exhilarating than seeing a student suddenly “get” a concept she’d been struggling with. There are few things more smile-inducing than watching your grade eights help each other out with assignments while joking around with each other.  And the pure happiness of watching them really, truly enjoy learning—man, that’s the reason I returned to teaching after an eight-year break.

It is interesting the conversations I would have had/still do have with my parents about our profession.  They love the craft.  The would shun any attention for what they were doing — they weren’t doing it to be noticed, they were doing it for the students and their commitment to teaching.  It IS a pretty special profession.

The author finishes with words that are so true, “Teaching is about being a learner yourself.  That’s why, when it comes to being an effective teacher, we have to listen to what they’re saying.”

I have tried (and will continue to try) to use my blog to tell the many stories of students, teachers and others in our system trying new things and making a difference. And, like my parents, most are not looking for any attention, but it is still kind of nice when someone notices.

I guess I saw that firsthand this past week. I have spent a lot of time with my dad recently, he hasn’t been that well and we got to talking about the blog post on teaching philosophy.

It was pretty special because the sponsor teacher that the author, Paul, was writing about was my dad.

Thanks Paul.

Thanks Dad.

Keep Well Teacher Friends.  The joy will be back.

 

 Update – August 11 

My dad died last week, just a few days after his 72nd birthday.  You can read more about him here.   I am so glad that I got to share this post with him and I am so appreciative of all of the comments.  It is nice to know his story connected with so many of you.

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Random Facts and Some Homework for You

Posted in SD45, Social Media, tagged , , , , , on January 2, 2014| 7 Comments »

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If you read other edu-bloggers, you will have likely seen these posts that are spreading. I had shied away from doing one myself, but it was only a couple of posts ago I committed myself to becoming more involved in the education blogging community. How it works is colleagues in your network “tag you” with a homework assignment to share 11 random facts about yourself, and then answer the 11 questions provided, and then invite 11 others to answer 11 questions asked of them.

I am somewhat skeptical — it sounds like a pyramid scheme.  I know when I was seven I was supposed to send five postcards to people I knew and within three weeks I was going to get 400 postcards from people around the world — my mom said I wasn’t allowed to do it.

I have been “tagged” twice, so below my facts are answers to both sets of questions.

11 Facts About Me:

1)  I love routines.  I know that is not considered to be a good thing by many, but even on vacation I love a schedule with a sense of tasks being accomplished.

2)  I have a geographic tongue — this feels like over sharing, but only about 1% of the population have one.

3)  I would prefer to speak in front of 500 people than make small talk in a room of 10.

4)  I was 39 years old before I travelled outside of North America.

5)  My wife and I went to the same high school but didn’t know each other (she was one year older); she may have been a little bit “cooler”. We started dating  when we on the staff together at that same high school and I was assigned to be her “mentor”.  After we were married we taught on the same staff for one year before I took a job in Coquitlam.  I also spent one year – my first year – teaching on the same staff as my mom.

6)  Last spring break our family filmed an episode of the Property Brothers – Buying and Selling.  It starting airing on HGTV in the United States on January 1st and starts airing in Canada on January 7th on the W Network.  We learned a lot about how “real” or “not real” reality TV really is.

7)  I am in my 26th year of being involved with coaching basketball / basketball administration — my first coaching assignment was in 1988, coaching the Grade 7 boys at Woodward Elementary School in Richmond.

8)  I loved playing the saxophone in high school, but now I regret that I never really learned to play the piano.

9)  I feel a connection to West Vancouver because my grandfather taught at West Van Secondary in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s.

10)  My peak weight was 248 pounds but I have spent the last 20 years weighing about 195 pounds.

11)  I know that this trait is really not that popular these days in schools, but I am very competitive and I really like to win.

Questions from Johnny Bevacqua

1.  What keeps you up at night?  My four-year-old daughter — she is still not keen on sleeping through the night in her own bed

2.  What would you consider comfort food?  All-you-can-eat sushi

3.  What is one thing you would change about your job?  My house and my job are too far apart – I would make them closer together

4.  What is one thing you would change about schools today?  Stop valuing some courses (e.g. sciences) more than others (e.g. arts and  trades)

5.  What is one piece of advice you would give to someone?  Go for it — there is always another job

6.  The biggest inspiration in my life is___________________?  My wife — she is awesome!

7.  What was the first music concert you attended?  Probably Fred Penner.  Without my parents, I think it was Harry Connick Jr.  

8.  What is the first movie you attended?  Swiss Family Robinson

9.  Other than work, I have a passion for_____________________? My family

10.  If you wrote a book, what would the title be?  Either “Go Where the Kids Are” or “Just Win Baby!”

11.  When I grow up I ______________________  will just be a big kid.

Questions from Tia Henriksen

1. What are your favourite and least favourite colours?  Favourite — blue; least favourite — brown

2. What was your favourite subject / least favourite subject in school?  I loved History 12 and never liked (or was very good at) Art

3. Where were you born? In a hospital

4. What was your lowest grade in your post-secondary classes? In what class?  C in Urban Geography of Thailand (poor course choice)

5. What is the best characteristic you received from your mom? Appreciation for traditions

6. What is your favourite childhood memory?  Spending time in Naramata, and later in Penticton, with my grandmother every summer

7. How old were you when you learned to swim?  Probably about five – we did lessons every summer at South Arm Pool in Richmond

8. Is Disneyland really the Happiest Place on Earth?  YES — I love theme parks and I like to have the entire day planned out

9. What’s your favourite video you’ve watched recently on social media?  Dean Shareski’s TEDx Talk from last spring

10. If you could plan it, what would your last meal consist of?  Sushi and lemonade

11. What makes you happiest?  Watching my kids play sports

11 Random Questions for You:

1.  If you could only watch one television station what would it be?
2.  Looking back at your schooling, what was the silliest rule your school had?
3.  Who is the greatest ever Canuck?
4.  What is the greatest rock group of the 1980s?
5.  What is something education related you have changed your opinion on over your career?
6.  What is the warmest place you have ever been — and how warm was it?
7.  Poorest fashion trend you have seen in schools in the last 10 years?
8.  What was more frustrating to deal with in your school — Pokemon cards or silly bands?
9.  Describe your favourite high school teacher in four words
10.  What is the best reason to go on Facebook at least once a day?
11.  If blogging was outlawed tomorrow — what would be your reaction?

I Challenge the Following People to do their Homework:

I know it is a bit of a cop-out, but I will challenge all of those bloggers in the West Vancouver School District community to consider giving this activity a try.  I will  not call you out by name, but hopefully some of our Trustees, Principals, Vice-Principals and Teacher bloggers will take this on — and then, maybe challenge some of our student bloggers to do the same.

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Where Have All the Comments Gone?

Posted in SD45, Social Media, Technology, tagged , , on November 7, 2013| 87 Comments »

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Just two years ago, I was able to make a list of all the BC educators who were blogging.  Since then, the numbers have grown exponentially with numbers well into the hundreds of teachers, administrators and others who blog on a semi-regular basis.  It is wonderful to see how many people are sharing their thoughts publicly and modeling for our students the ethical and responsible use of technology, whether it is to build relationships or on how to share their thoughts.

While I have continued to attract more readers to my blog over the year, one trend I have seen is the number of comments on the posts are decreasing.  In past years, posts like this one on school sports and this one on learning in depth generated dozens of comments.  Now, I only receive one or two comments on a post.

This, of course, has made me wonder why?

Here are some of my theories:

My posts aren’t as interesting — Admittedly, I don’t write for the purpose of getting feedback.  I write about topics for a variety of reasons — mostly, I really enjoy the process of trying to work an idea out and put my thinking down and share it.  It is very possible that my posts aren’t as interesting or as engagement-worthy as they once were.  It is easy to default to writing safe posts.  Having had some of my words taken out of context and republished elsewhere, I am more conscious now of what I say and how I say it, and it may be limiting the quality of what I write.

My position limits discussion — It is a real challenge to write about education from inside the system and then invite discussion.  While I know my posts are well-read inside the school district, almost all of the comments come from outside the school district.  I also get it is a no-win situation to comment on a blog written by the Superintendent whether they might be challenging my ideas or supporting them.

The novelty has worn off — Blogging was new and fresh three years ago, but this novelty may have worn off by now.  We are an ever-changing social media society. Perhaps I need to crank up my Instagram presence to increase engagement?

I am not doing my part to participate — My commitment when I started blogging was that for every post I wrote I would comment on three others.  I think it is part of “the deal” about being a member of the community.  Over the last several months I have not lived up to this.  I do feel bad about this.  I read so many interesting posts, so many that help shape my thinking, but I don’t often take the time to write a quick response.

Twitter love is the new blog comment — We seem to be shortening our thinking to 140 characters.  Perhaps a quick comment on a RT (Retweet) is all that can be expected now.

So much to read, so little time to write — With the huge growth in the number of people blogging about education, it is exhausting trying to keep up.

Some People Aren’t Nice — It only takes one time to be personally attacked for a comment on a blog, and that person may never come back.  While education is a pretty safe landscape, there are some who move quickly from challenging ideas to insulting people.  Perhaps this is the reason why I see so many comments on my blogs I share on Facebook — it is a “safer” community with the authentication of IDs.

We Aren’t Good at Commenting — Commenting is difficult to do.  It is something that takes a lot of time when working with students and blogging. When we (students or adults) comment we want to be respectful, make a point that contributes to a conversation and say something to continue the conversation.

I do see the trend across many education blogs of fewer comments.  The danger is that without dialogue our blogs become newsletters.  And, it is the conversations around our blogs which keep them and the ideas alive.  It is great if these conversations happen around the water cooler, or the dinner table, but one of the real attractions to blogging for me is to have thoughtful discussions about interesting topics in the public realm.

I will try to do my part to re-engage with other blogs and be a more regular commenter.  The move to transparency with digital writing is something we should continue to support.

Any other theories why the commenting in the educational blog world seems to be drying up?

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