If it hurts…

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I had sciatic pain from about December to March. It got bad enough that my doctor requested a pain specialist appointment for me, and I had it yesterday. Despite the fact that I’m no longer in pain, I kept the appointment so that I can learn more about my disc issues and maybe figure out some preventative measures to ensure I don’t end up in 4 months of pain again.

Have you ever seen that joke where a patient is talking to a doctor and says, “Doctor, when I poke right here, it hurts.” And the doctor replies, “Well then don’t poke there.” That’s essentially the advice I got.

The specialist said that I’m getting old, (it wasn’t intended as an insult, he told me we are the same age), and that the wear-and-tear that my back shows is typical for active people my age. He then said that of course I should stay active and keep doing what I’m doing. Then came the punchline: “If you do something and it hurts, then stop doing it.”

That’s what I waited months to hear. He told me that he used to do a lot of running until he had a knee replaced and now he walks. I asked him if I should stop using a weighted vest to workout, something I was doing before the pain, but haven’t tried since. His response you can guess, “Try it. If it hurts, stop.”

“But if it hurts, the pain might come back for a while.”

“Oh yeah, it could be two to three months.”

It ended with him joking that he could write me a note to give to my wife to get out of doing dishes for a while. I wasn’t amused.

I don’t know exactly what I was looking for, but it wasn’t this. I suppose I’ll just keep doing my physio exercises, keep going to the gym, and if something hurts, I guess I just stop doing that thing.

Pedagogy and Activity

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“Here’s a great tool to help you…”

What inevitably comes next is a description of an activity devoid of pedagogy and purpose. As technology has crept into education, time and again I’ve seen the focus be on activity and ‘engagement’ but the so-called engagement is more about keeping a student’s attention rather than focusing on the learning intention; on the intended learning outcomes.

When achievement sneaks in, it’s not about student comprehension, but rather on improving test scores, a proxy for measuring success that is far from perfect. Again, this does not help with the practice of good teaching,

17 years ago I wrote that ‘Best Practice is still Practice’, and said, “What we don’t need is a bunch of processes labeled as ‘best practice’ to limit us from seeking something that is yet more effective.  Best practice is still just practice.” We also don’t need a lot of flashy new tools that pretend to be about our practice when really they are just activities that keep student engaged and occupied. Activities that don’t really focus on meaningfully engaging students as learners on a learning journey.

What’s the pedagogy behind the activity?

Closure rather than ending

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Maybe it’s just semantics but I think the word choices we make are important. Our words frame our understanding of the world.

I’ve been having a lot of ‘lasts’ recently as I head into retirement. My last interview for a hire, my last field trip, my last principal’s breakfast meeting, etc. For a while I was seeing these as endings, kind of a shutting of a door never to be opened again, with a sense of finality. But I’ve had a shift recently.

Now I think of these endings more like closure. It’s not about an ending as much as a sense of completion. Like putting the last piece of a puzzle in. When a performance ends, the show is over, it’s time to go home. When a puzzle is completed there isn’t an instant finality to it. Closure in this sense invites time to admire what was accomplished.

It’s a small shift in language, but a large shift in perspective. It’s not an ending, it’s closure.

It’s going to be tough

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A while ago my buddy, also named Dave, and I decided that we were going to Everest the Crunch: Travel 37 times up the Coquitlam Crunch, which is equivalent to the height of Mount Everest, in 48 hours. We’ve been doing the crunch regularly since January 2021, and today was number 239 since then.

Today was also a day when we went up the Crunch 6 times, and then walked down once (we only count it as 1 crunch because we only went down it a single time). We organized rides and drove our own cars up at the start and after 3 trips up, so that we could drive down as well.

Six is the most trips up we’ve done. We did 5 a while back then had a several week slowdown thanks to m sciatic pain that I was dealing with. The pain is gone, but it did set us back a fair bit. Today I realized just how much it set us back. We are just under 10 weeks away from our attempt to do 37 trips up this hill, and as of today the most we’ve done is 6… and the 6 took a lot out of me!

Like I shared in a video, we didn’t hydrate well enough.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DZlCR2ykv9e/?igsh=ZGZvZGZocWRicnc1

Also, I think we ate too much protein and not enough carbs. But even fixing that next time, going 6 times up, just under 1/6th of what we’ll be doing in August, took more out of me than expected.

I think Dave and I will succeed with this challenge, but I’ll openly admit that it’s going to be a lot harder than I originally thought.

Odds and ends

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I spent a good part of the afternoon figuring out how I’m going to set up the new solar heaters I purchased for our above ground pool. I used to have 4 large panels that I laid across our garage roof, but I’m not going up on the roof anymore.

This was a decision I made at the start of last summer, deciding that it would be my last season using the roof panels. The process of pulling large plastic solar panels up on a roof and fastening them both together and to the roof is a bit challenging: Completely doable, but challenging. I could probably do it for another 10 years. But I don’t want to play the odds and so I’m putting an end to going on the roof.

The odds that I don’t want to play with are the fact that for older men over 50% of serious injuries and accidental deaths are from falls. The higher the fall, the great odds of it leading to death. A roof is a very high place to fall from. So at the start of pool season last year I decided that I was no longer going up on the roof. I don’t have a fear of heights, I don’t feel unstable. I just know that it’s easier to overestimate my capabilities as I get older, and I’d rather go up on the roof a few less times than possible rather than 1 more time than I should have.

I made a similar decision last summer. My buddy and I took scooters on a 10 minute ride from his house to a pizza place, where I had a couple beers with my pizza. Before heading home, I apologized to him and said I wanted to Uber home because I’m a lightweight with my alcohol and I didn’t want to ride the scooter home feeling a little inebriated.

Essentially, I’m reducing my injury risk, recognizing that even a small fall would mean significant recovery time at my age. This doesn’t mean that I’m living a life of minimizing the odds of every possible danger, but it does mean that at my age I’m getting smarter about when to end things and reduce the risk of injury.

Extended alone time

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I met some colleagues after work today and two of them had interesting stories about extended alone time. One of them opened up a summer camp in April, and kids didn’t come to the camp until July. He had tasks to do, and animals to care for, but most days he just did a specific task or two he decided needed to be done then he had the rest of the day to himself. No cell phone, no electricity unless he started the generator… just himself.

The other story involved buying a motorcycle in Australia and spending 6+ months in the outback. It wasn’t always alone for him, he did end up meeting and travelling with a guy who became his best man at his wedding… but he did have a lot of extended alone time on that trip.

Also, both colleagues did these extended alone periods in the pre-cellphone era, so they really were alone. I’ve done a couple solo camping trips, also pre-cellphones, but I never really spent more than 24 hours truly alone. Listening to their stories, I actually felt a little jealous. I wish I’d had that kind of experience… and I am thinking I’m going to create one for myself.

I’m in no rush right now, but a seed has been planted. I think I’m going to purposely find a few days to be completely disconnected, unplugged, and alone. It’s a new bucket list idea unlocked. I’ll get through the last bit of work, and spend time with my wife over the summer, but some time late this year or early next year, I’m also going to find some extended alone time.

Career spanning wisdom

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When I shared this story with my Principal and Vice Principal colleagues this morning, I joked that I’d blogged about it previously. However, while I was able to find a couple references to the story, I realized after a search of my blogs that I have not shared the full story before.

This morning was our final face-to-face meeting of the year, and our assistant superintendents shared a few words about retirees before each retiree got a chance to say something. I shared this story.

~

It was early on in my teaching career, long before I knew if I’d ever get into administration, and so I didn’t know the impact this conversation would have on me.

I was teaching a class about 10-15 minutes after lunch when a good student, Garrett, showed up at my door. He didn’t show up after lunch and I just assumed he signed out, this is not a kid who would skip a class. I looked up at him as if to ask ‘Where were you?’ And his face sunk as he said, “I got in trouble.”

We had the attention of the whole class and I didn’t want him to have to share what happened in front of everyone. “Have a seat,” I said, “We’ll talk about it later,” and then I caught him up on what he missed. The day ended and I totally forgot to follow up with him, so around 4pm I headed down to the office to learn about what Garrett had done.

When I got down to the office our Vice Principal, Gary Kern, was just finishing up with a student. I didn’t teach this student, but I knew of him. In fact, just a couple months before this, I saw this student being arrested with a man, who I think was his dad, outside of a neighbourhood grocery store. As this student walked out of the office, Gary trailed behind him, shaking his head with a bit of an exasperated expression on his face.

I asked what Garrett got in trouble for? Gary said it wasn’t a big deal, he and a friend were horsing around at lunch and Garrett pushed his friend, who fell back and hit his head on a tree. It was witnessed by a noon-hour supervisor who brought the kids to the office, and the only follow up was an apology. Then Gary said something and I carried this ‘lesson’ with me for my entire career.

Gary said, “This job has taught me a new respect for the kid I’d never want to be.”

He continued, ‘Your kid, Garrett, I’d trade lives with him… Good family, respectful, plays hockey, good friends.’

‘…This other kid? No way I’d want his life. This job teaches you to provide a kid, who you’d never switch lives with, with forgiveness, understanding, and respect, because if you wouldn’t want to be them, they deserve a break.’

I know my colleagues understood this when I shared it with them. I went on to share how this impacted me. And I thanked all of my colleagues for their understanding of this idea. I thanked them for not treating kids like life is baseball and knowing when a kid deserves more than 3 strikes. I thanked them for being a student’s advocate and for treating a kid with dignity and respect, even when the kid’s parent didn’t treat them the same way. I thanked them for all they do to support the needs of the students in their community, and thus making our entire community better.

~

I can’t tell you how many times I thought of this conversation with Gary in my career, but I will say that this was a frame of reference that I held with me, and reminded myself of time and again. It gave me strength when I felt frustrated. It allowed me deal with angry people, and to not take a kid’s attitude personally.

Now, at the end of my career, I can say that Gary was absolutely correct, “This job has taught me a new respect for the kid I’d never want to be.” Because that’s the kid that needs us to be their advocate.

School and measuring intelligence

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A few months back I saw a video from a very articulate young girl who goes by Gluten Free Runner on TikTok. I liked the video but didn’t follow her. She just came back on my feed again and her recent video definitely earned her a follow.

She asks, “What if the way we measure intelligence is completely missing the point?” And then she reads a journal entry she wrote about school. I don’t want to say much about it other than please listen to it.

The description shared on the video says this:

“There’s a concept recently learned about called Goodhart’s Law: when a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure.

We’ve optimized what can be measured: grades, test scores, credentials, things like that.

Maybe part of the issue is that we started treating those measurements as the thing itself, instead of just rough indicators of something much more complex.

Maybe the goal of education shouldn’t be to decide who is “smartest,” per se, but to help people understand how they can best contribute.”

Here is her video: https://www.tiktok.com/@gluten.free.runne/video/7649444429090000142

My favourite part is her questioning if we are being educated or schooled? “Education is a process. Schooling is an institution.”

No notes… just go watch her video.

Inevitable threat

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I said this in March, 2024:

“We are less than a decade away from one intelligent crackpot, working in his or her (more likely an incel ‘his’) basement lab, creating or recreating a deadly virus and having it spread covid-19 style across the globe…

The greatest threat to mankind isn’t wealthy people, politicians, and powerful countries, it’s one individual with malice in his heart and access to knowledge, and information, and more power than anyone should ever have.

And I just read this:

“In January 2026, Bill Gates wrote in his annual letter. He didn’t describe the next pandemic as a distant possibility or a risk to be modeled. He said a non-government group using open-source AI tools to design a bioterrorism weapon was not just possible – it was, in his word, coming.” ~ Raven Fon

And just a few days ago:

“AI CEOs from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft set aside their rivalry to warn Congress AI is making it too easy to design and create bioweapons” ~ Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez

The greatest threat of AI may not be that AI takes over the world, the greatest threat is that it empowers individuals with bad intentions to have significant negative impact and influence over the rest of the world. What we most need to fear is not some sort of revenge of the robots, but rather the loner who hates the world and is empowered by AI to wreak havoc at a scale that is impossible today, but very possible in the near future.

The challenge in dealing with this really serious threat is that as AI intelligence increases, the prevention and defence of the threat will always be chasing the ease with which the threat can be realized. In other words, the threat will will grow faster than the mechanism we design to safeguard against the threats.

Legislation will help, but will it be enough?

Writing speeches

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Last Friday my buddy Dave and I delivered speeches that we combined together. At our Principal and Vice Principals association retirement dinner, the tradition is that someone speaks for the retiree, then the retiree speaks. Since we were going to speak for each other, we just went up and took turns.

We came up with a theme: Gratitude, Attitude, and Magnitude. And we took turns talking about each other and ourselves, after thanking people we appreciated the support of, (many of whom were in the room). It was a really fun way to mix it up a bit and I hope we made it entertaining, not just self indulgent.

Now I’ve got one more speech to do before I retire, and that’s to the graduating class at our graduation ceremony. I write a unique speech each year, and try to embed relevance to the current class. What I’m really cautious about is to downplay my retirement. This night is not about me, and should not be about me. So, in a way it’s a bit easier to write than the one last week.

Still, every year I spend a lot of time thinking about what I’ll say to the graduates, and this year seems quite challenging. It’s our smallest grad class in years and if I had to describe them as a group, the thing they have in common is that they are all so different. They get along great, but they really don’t have personalities or interests that are alike in any way.

I’m literally thinking as I write this that the differences are what the speech will focus on: Individuality Within Community. That said, I’ll probably change the topic 5 times before I give the speech in two weeks. I enjoy this process because I enjoy writing. A speech is an opportunity to story-tell. It’s a chance to acknowledge and appreciate others. It’s a way to share values within your community.

Writing speeches is also something I’m going to miss in retirement. Not because I like the limelight, but rather because when I write a speech I find that I am able to consolidate my thoughts and ideas into words in a way that I simply wouldn’t if I didn’t have to write the speech. Speeches to me aren’t just about the external sharing of ideas, they are also about the internal synthesis of my thoughts while I write them.