Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Opening Day’

People Want Community

Posted in Change, tagged , , , on September 12, 2023| Leave a Comment »

There is a teacher shortage in British Columbia. And it is actually much larger than just here. As schools go back in session there are reports from across the continent of a shortage of qualified staff. 

The reasons are not simple  One often hears a range of reasons including:   compensation levels, high workload and stress, lack of support, aging workforce, changing demographics, and credentialing barriers.  And just as the reasons are not simple to pinpoint, neither are the solutions.  It definitely seems like COVID changed some things for people.  We are seeing more people wanting part-time work, and an interest in more flexible work.  The challenge of teaching (at least as we largely know it) is that it is a face-to-face job with regular hours – it is not one of those jobs that can be that flexible (again, at least as we traditionally know it).

Digging deeper into the reasons for the shortage and possible solutions is for another post at another time. 

We do have some particularly unique challenges in West Vancouver.  In particular, as a result of local housing prices, about 80% of the workforce lives outside of the school boundaries.  As I said to staff as we started the school year, I need them to commute through one or more other school districts where they could likely get a job to work here.   And in a profession that largely pays the same salary across the province we are having to find what makes our district unique so people will commute longer for work.  

At our Opening Day with staff we ran a simple poll with the 400+ teachers in the theatre, asking them, “Why Do You Work in West Vancouver?”  The answers were telling.  What teachers are looking for is community.  Here is the visual that their answers produced:

The words that stand out are striking – community, connections, relationships, colleagues, support.  All things that are often difficult to measure but speak to the culture of the kind of workplace we are typically seeking.  And what is true about all of them is that the ways to improve them are free.  Looking at the other words that came up – from supportive, to connections, to working environment to innovation – there is a lot there we can work with.  Also great to see the names of specific people or schools as reasons why people work in our district – a reminder that we are in the “people” business.  If we want to be a destination district we need to focus on culture.

Of course, this work does little to improve the teacher shortages – we are really just stealing from our neighbours to meet our teaching needs.  This list does give us a starting place on where we should focus as we change perceptions of teaching and attract the next generations of teachers.  

Read Full Post »

Possibilities

Posted in Change, SD45, tagged , , on August 29, 2022| 4 Comments »

I think I have always had this nervous excitement of back to school at the end of August. From entering kindergarten in 1978, and every year since to today, there is an energy as I wind down summer and turn my attention to school. It is a time of possibilities. I have written before about the notion of the day after Labour Day being the real New Year’s Day for most of us.  

People can’t get me down at this time of year.  

I find more than ever, the noise around us can be built on gloom and cynicism.  And so many people seem to revel in this negativity.  Far too many people looking to point out the worst in people and far too few people amplifying the best in people.  And if we are not careful those of education can get caught in this.

We are the possibility profession.

I remind myself that parents are sending us their very best children.  And these parents are full of hope and possibility for their kids.  For some it might be a fresh start, for others it will be about taking on new things and for others it will be launching them on a journey to new adventures beyond our schools.  

The start of the school year is the best!  There is comfort in the ritual that has largely remained unchanged for generations, but also feels fresh and new, unlike any experience before.  Hundreds of students descend on each of our schools and build communities together.

We have an ambitious agenda for the year ahead – one with big ideas around early learning and childcare, walking side by side with our Indigenous partners, a commitment to a broad view of equity and excellence, a hard look at assessment and reporting, a focus on the well being of our students and staff, and a need to ensure the innovation that has defined our district continues.  But first, before any of this, is the connections we make with each other.  The connections we make with the young people who arrive at our schools next week.  The thousands of students entrusted to us.   

I keep coming back to the possibilities.  It is what makes it hard for me to sleep at night.  We can help these young people do great things.

Wishing all my colleagues here in West Vancouver and beyond a great school year!

Read Full Post »

What Did I Learn From Anthony McLean?

Posted in Professional Development, SD45, tagged , , , , , on September 16, 2020| 2 Comments »

We have an Opening Day tradition in West Vancouver.  The first day back with staff we come together for a series of annual rituals and a keynote address from a speaker who helps set the tone for the year ahead.  Over my time we have had speakers from Sir Ken Robinson, to Natalie Panek, to Yong Zhao to Jennifer James.  This year we were fortunate to have speaker and actor Anthony McLean join us. And while typically we gather at the Kay Meek Theatre, this year, it was a virtual event – as all staff connected with Anthony and he set the tone for our year ahead.

With the international efforts around Black Lives Matter and calls for increased anti-racism education in schools, Anthony’s message resonated even more strongly than it might have when he was initially booked almost a year ago.  With all of the speakers we have had, it is easy to just be captured by their eloquence and joy, but I try to find a few key messages to take away as well.  Here are three keys that I took away from Anthony’s talk:

  1.  The Authors We Read – Anthony recalled how in school he read zero books from Indigenous, Asian or Black authors.  He made the argument that adding to the diversity of our libraries and learning resources was an easy entry point for us.  Rather than thinking we need to be an expert voice on a topic we might be nervous to lead because we are still learning ourselves we can amplify other voices.  I think back to my own school experience, and even through an English degree in university there was very little diversity in the authors that I read.  It is an easy opportunity to change-up some of the stories we share in classes and books we make available in our libraries.
  2. Separate the person from the behaviour – Anthony told a story about Mr. Rutherford (you can see a short version of the story HERE).  Anthony shared that he was not always the best behaved student.  What stood out for him was how in grade 10 his principal Mr. Rutherford separated his actions from who he was as a person.  This is a great lesson reminder for all of us.  We can be disappointed in behaviours or disagree with someone without them being a bad person.  Like Stuart Shanker told us several years ago in a different Opening Day talk, there is no such thing as bad kids.
  3. Community, Community, Community – When asked what he would focus on this fall with students heading back to school, including some who may not have been to school in up to six months – he said his focus would be on three things – community, community, community.  It is easy to get caught up in the notion that students have missed school and are behind so we need to double-down on the academics.  What our students say is that they have missed  the connections of schools.  And you can’t really get to Math and English if you have not first built trust and community.  Anthony was clear we should lead with curiosity and default to compassion. For us in West Vancouver, all staff have spent time learning about trauma informed practices before students returned to classes.

There was a fourth one that stood out for me, although perhaps not as global and lofty as the others.  Anthony did say, “sometimes pretending you are interested in what your spouse is saying, might save your marriage.” Probably some good advice there!

How we get better at anti-racism education is not simple.  What is useful about Anthony’s message is that he just encourages us all to enter the conversation.   Saying nothing is the wrong thing because when you say nothing you are actually saying something.  Locally I know there are a number of other helpful educators.  I appreciated the blog post by Abbotsford Superintendent Dr. Kevin Godden this past June (HERE) on the topic.  We spent one of our professional days focused on the topic of anti-racism, and we definitely have work to do.  Like with other issues of social justice, including the climate crisis, our students are clear they want us to do more.

Thanks to Anthony for helping us all enter the conversation and provoking us.  Like with many Opening Day speakers of the past I assume his messages will give energy to much of our work this year and beyond.

As a follow-up, over the last couple days Anthony posted an exceptionally powerful video on Instagram (HERE)  where he says, “I was wrong” about  some of his views on race.  The five minute video is powerful in the message around race but also so useful for all of us to be reminded that we can read more, learn more and think differently.  And there is real power when we can say we used to think X, but we were wrong and now we think Y.

Read Full Post »

Celebrating Normal?

Posted in Change, SD45, tagged , , on August 27, 2015| 7 Comments »

normalAs people are returning from summer and attention is beginning to focus on the upcoming school year there seems to be enthusiasm over the normal year that is ahead. I have been hearing it from staff and parents.  People say, “you must be glad to finally have a normal year” or “finally it will be a normal start-up”.

I know what people mean.  Given the labour dispute that carried on into last fall, and the seeming treadmill of the last five years which has seen us in a cycle of potential job action, job action, post job action – repeat – it is nice this is not sucking up all the oxygen in BC education again this year.  But normal is an interesting word.  The more I hear it, the less I like it.

For me normal feels boring.  Normal is about average.  And our schools are about the exceptional.  More than ever we want to support our students and teachers to be anything but normal.  We want to tap into the passions of our artists, athletes, entrepreneurs, scientists and engineers in our classrooms.

I am reminded of this scene from the movie Soul Surfer:

So let’s have a year where we have conversations about curriculum for our modern world and assessment that makes a difference for learning.  Let’s have a year where we focus on excellence and equity. Let’s have a year where we teach and learn about residential schools, gender identity and our natural world.

Let’s embrace all the young people that will enter our classes the Tuesday after Labour Day –  who each have their own story and their own struggles and challenges.  And as they try to fit in, we need to remind them that normal is overrated.

And as the adults that have amazing opportunity to work with students, let’s commit to being better versions of ourselves this year.

But when we look to this year – let’s not let it be normal.

Read Full Post »

We Are Learners First

Posted in SD45, Sustainability, tagged , , , , , , , on August 26, 2013| 5 Comments »

Learners First Like many other school and district leadership teams we marked our “official” beginning last week.  For more than a decade this second last week of summer has been my  start to the new school year.  There are many ways to structure this time.  We have been very clear in West Vancouver that we focus ourselves as learners first.

A recent post from Dennis Sparks resonated with me:

In learning-oriented school cultures, everyone is viewed as both a teacher and a learner. In such cultures, hierarchic distinctions between student, teacher, and administrator are minimized as the school community focuses on the continuous improvement of teaching, learning, and relationships. In that sense, the study of teaching is also the study of learning and of leadership.

It is easy to focus on the business of our work – there is a lot of business that needs to be covered.  Topics like:  staffing, collective bargaining, student enrolment, September paperwork and accounting practices can consume all of our time.  We have made it clear that we will always focus on being learners first. So, just what does that look like?

Our school and district leaders spent last Thursday on Bowen Island (Bowen Island is part of the West Vancouver School District).  Three administrators Scott Slater, Craig Cantlie and Matt Trask took the lead in guiding our learning. The first part of the day allowed us to explore Bowen Island.  We got a taste of what students in Bowen Island’s Outside45 program get to experience – learning beyond the classroom.  A solid reminder of the power of place-based experiences. Bowen1 The second part of the day saw us experiencing Sugata Mitra’s Self-Organized Learning Environment (SOLE) model – looking at power – what it is and who has it.  We worked out way through the SOLE Toolkit in groups. The SOLE model was new to me – and is a really simple model of investigation that works for schools and also could be done by kids and families at home. Bowen2 Bowen3

We left with a great reminder of the power of place based learning and a reminder of the nature that surrounds us in our district and also with a simple student-led inquiry model that we can share with others. And importantly – we connected as learners first.

Read Full Post »

My Aha Moment

Posted in Change, Professional Development, SD45, Social Media, Technology, tagged , , , , , , , on August 20, 2013| 5 Comments »

lightbulb

I have never met Karl Fisch, but we do seem to know some of the same people. I see him connect online with folks like Alec and George Couros and Dean Shareski. Karl, is the Director of Technology at Arapahoe High School in Colorado, and seven years ago he helped give me my “Aha” moment.

Around August, I find myself searching and sometimes stressing for my opening day presentation to staff — looking for the right words, the right video to set a tone for the year and give the right message.  And this habit really all started several years ago when I was entering what would be my final year as a Principal of Riverside Secondary School in Port Coquitlam.  Alan November had been to Coquitlam the year previous and inspired many of us, and Thomas Friedman’s 2005 book The World is Flat was still fresh in my mind.  I wanted to share a message about the changing world and how it was changing teaching and learning and the world for our kids.  I was stumbling around the web through some blogs I was following at the time, and came across a post from Will Richardson on Public Attitudes Towards the Public Schools that pushed me to a post from Karl Fisch (who, I had never heard of) called Did You Know? which was the sharing of his opening day presentation for his school.

Here is his presentation:

Although I had never met Karl I took him at his word in his post,

I haven’t taken the time yet to figure out the different levels of creative commons licensing, but let’s just assign the most permissive one. As far as I’m concerned, as many people as possible should be thinking about and discussing these ideas. You all have permission to use, modify, reuse, etc. anything you’d like. (Although if you find good stuff to add to or replace what’s in there, I’d love it if you’d send it my way so that I can add it to mine.) Since I basically stole (ummm, “remixed”) all of the ideas from other folks I really don’t see what claim I have to all this. As far as giving me “credit,” you’re welcome to – I assume that will help pay for my daughter’s college tuition somehow, right? 🙂

After watching the video that August afternoon, I went home and began to personalize the slides for my school.  Less than a week later I was showing my version of the video to our staff, then to our parents and then to all the students in our school:

I did show different versions of the presentation many times over that year, and I was not alone.  “Remixes” have been created of the Did You Know? video; presentations on YouTube had viewership in the millions.  It was an education video gone viral, and It became the go-to change video at conferences until Sir Ken came along.  Up until then, I thought it was only videos of cats that spread so quickly.

That experience was my “Aha” moment.  I learned about the power of a network and also learned that it is not only the smart people you know, but the smart people they know that can help you.  I also learned about the new power we all have to influence conversation.  Previous to this experience in networking, there would have been no way I would have ever seen a PowerPoint created for an opening day presentation in a high school in Colorado.  Now, just days after it was presented, I was remixing it and sharing it with my staff, and hundreds of others were sharing it around the world.  I was also reminded of the generosity of our profession — we are all sharing and learning together with a common purpose around student learning.

As I start my seventh September in West Vancouver, I am again crafting my message for our opening day — and, it is one of passion.  The passion we want our kids to have for learning; the passion we want to have as teachers and learners ourselves.   And, like my experience in August 2006, I will take the best of what others are thinking, saying and doing in education, remix it with my own ideas to make it make sense for the community we work in.

Thanks Karl.  We’ve never met, but you have changed how I think and work.

Read Full Post »

The Groundhog Day Challenge in Education

Posted in Change, SD45, tagged , , , , , , , on June 25, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Groundhog Day

The 1993 Harold Ramis film Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray, is a guilty pleasure of mine.  I have probably seen it a half-dozen times.  The movie features Murray as a self-centered meteorologist in a perpetual time-loop reliving February 2nd and the coverage of Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.  Murray tries various ways to break the loop, but regardless of whatever he tries, he finds himself waking up on to the radio alarm flashing the date of February 2nd and playing I Got You Babe by Sonny & Cher.

Over the course of the movie, as Murray lives the day over and  learns more about how the day unfolds, he takes better advantage of this knowledge to improve himself and help as many people as possible around the town.  The movie’s ‘feel good’ ending sees the loop broken when he awakes on February 3rd having won the heart of leading lady, Andie MacDowell.

So, just what does this have to do with education?

Sometimes I feel a bit like we are stuck in the Groundhog Day loop. The scene plays out something like this: we wake up the Tuesday morning after Labour Day with I Got You Babe playing in the background, and travel through the excitement of September, the gray and toil of November, the budget angst of March and the celebration and excitement of June only to go to sleep on June 30th, waking up on the Tuesday after Labour Day to do it all over again. And we treat our work a bit like Murray treats the day — we try to do last year over, hopefully a little better, hopefully a little smarter for the experience.  We try to see the problems before they happen and to be better at our craft.

The challenge, unlike in the movie where all the characters are the same and it is only Murray that is different, is that our world and our students’ world are rapidly changing. So, simply repeating last year a little better is not good enough.  And, as easy as it seems to try to do last year over again, and next year just slightly better, this simply does not recognize the dramatic shifts that are occurring in our world.  Not only do we have to do last year over better (a focus on improvement), we also have to try to do it differently to meet the changing needs of our students (a focus on innovation).  I am reminded of something I have heard at several professional learning events — we want to teach for 25 years, not for one year, repeated 25 times.

As we put the final wraps on another school year, I am beginning to think about how next year will be both better and different, and I Got You Babe will not be the first song I hear as I head back to school in September.

Read Full Post »