Monthly Archives: August 2021

Feed your focus

In my morning meditation’s lesson, as part of the Calm App‘s daily 10 minute meditation, this quote was shared:

“Starve of your distractions, feed your focus.” – Daniel Goleman.

This is a wonderful quote, but it is easier said than done. It’s challenging because our distractions often bring us joy or at the very least, entertainment. But this goes well with the idea that, ‘Your priorities are not your priority‘. What is your focus? If your focus is just getting work done, or completing a series of tasks, that’s not really something to focus on. It’s analogous to having many priorities, which in turn is not a priority.

What’s your focus? What do you want to accomplish? If you find that thing that drives you, that makes you want to wake up earlier in the day to achieve or that you will stay up late trying to finish. If you find that kind of focus, well then it’s easy to feed. It’s then easier to starve your distractions… or at least limit them.

Things that I do:

• A morning healthy living routine to feel a sense of accomplishment before I start my day.

• Time limits on apps that I enjoy, and that entertain me. (This way I can still get some joy out of distractions, but the time spent on them fit within a threshold that doesn’t suck my time away mindlessly.)

• Calendar time to do the thing I really want to get done, and not just the things I have to do.

All that said, I still go through times when I seem to lack focus, or forget what I truly want to focus on. I still have bouts of procrastination and distraction. There are times when I have to intentionally starve my distractions. But in combining teo ideas, if I choose a single priority that I want to accomplish, and I also feed my focus on that priority… I get stuff done, and it feels amazing.

Wifi enabled fridge

We are shopping for new appliances as part of our planned renovation and I have to say that I don’t get it. Why would I need a wifi enabled fridge? At no point in my life have I ever spontaneously wondered what the temperature of my fridge was? Besides when I first got a fridge, or when I found some frozen lettuce at the back of the fridge (once), I don’t recall ever changing the temperature of my fridge.

Maybe in the future a ‘smart’ fridge might be able to tell me if I need to go shopping before I cook a recipe; or tell me my milk is low or expired; or suggest meals based on what might be expiring soon and what I have available. But right now it doesn’t serve a purpose that I can think of. Right now I don’t need to be connected to my fridge… it doesn’t need to be enabled. And I don’t need a Samsung with a screen on my fridge either. I’ll stick to magnets to hold family photos and memos.

Maybe at some point in the future the need will be there, but for now, I’ll pass on wifi enabled appliances… I see this feature as having very little function, and just being one more possible failure point on an appliance that already won’t last as long as it would have if built years ago.

If I’m missing out, please enlighten me. Who has a wifi fridge and how are you using this feature?

Thoughts on homework

Have a listen to this parent, reflecting on homework after helping her son:


(Direct link to the TikTok)

A decade ago I wrote that “I question the value of most homework“, and that still stands true. This parent adds an element that I hadn’t thought of.

Over the years I’ve restated my thoughts a number of times, but I’ll try to be succinct here.

When is homework a valuable use of a child’s time?

1. It usually isn’t. I want to start and end with this point because we have students in school for most of their waking hours. We don’t have a clue what they go home to and how much time and support they have, if any, with parents after parents get home from work. What we do know is that there is a lot of inequity in support and students who are most disenfranchised often have the least amount of resources to get homework done. The school day is long enough, and school is where there is the most equity for supporting student needs.

2. When they are doing extensions on work they want to do, or is hard to do at school.

Examples:

• An assignment that provides choices and those choices include doing extra or extending learning beyond the classroom… but done by choice, not required.

• A passion project where a student might work with a parent using a tool at home that isn’t available at school, like a scroll saw or soldering iron for example.

3. When they are asked to teach something to their parent, or interview them.

Examples:

• Teach you parent 3 different ways to add together two 3-digit numbers

• Find out where your grandparents were born, or interview your parents about your heritage.

*Both of these examples require sensitivity to provide alternatives for some students where these assignments might be challenging for them.

4. When ample time has been given in class, and students didn’t use their time well.

Note: Sometimes kids need more scaffolding at school to help prevent this from happening, but as long as they are capable of doing the work, this is a logical consequence.

5. Occasionally when big projects or presentations are due, homework might be necessary.

Note: This should be something only required occasionally, not weekly. Sometimes work piles up a bit around big deadlines. It’s healthier to teach students that some deadlines like presentations matter and need to get done on time, while other things can include extensions and more time at school for support.

6. Go back and read #1 again. That’s it!

Ask a student

I’ve created a survey for my Grade 11’s and 12’s. They are the only students in our school that know what our community and culture was like pre-lockdowns and pre-restrictions into cohorts to deal with the pandemic. The 11’s only saw this from September to February of their grade 9 year, the 12’s experienced it for a year and a half. I am asking them these questions for a few reasons:

1. I want them to remember what makes our school special.

2. I want them to share their perspective so that we know what students find valuable about the culture we had before restrictions altered our environment.

3. I want to learn what students didn’t like or enjoy, so that we don’t bring those things back.

I created the questionnaire and shared it with teachers for feedback. I also shared it with one of our grade 12’s. The teachers said, ‘good questions’ and gave a suggestion or two. My student said the same, then went on to give me a whole slew of suggestions that will make the survey easier to understand and respond to, and provide better (clearer) feedback to us. This student’s suggestions allowed me to see the survey through a student’s eyes, and gave me perspective that I could not have had otherwise.

Sometimes we do things for students without having empathy for their experience. We design activities and assignments without thinking of the user experience… without including them in the design process. Often we can make these activities and assignments for students so much better… if we just remember to ask a student.

Iterate doesn’t just mean “do it again”

I’ve written a fair bit about Learning and Failure. One of the things that turns a failure into learning is not giving up and iterating. But I’m not sure that’s the correct term? To iterate is ‘to perform or utter repeatedly’, but that’s not really what I mean. The general point of iteration when you meet a roadblock, or fail in an attempt, is not to try to perform the same task or procedure in the same way, but rather to attempt a different version of the same thing.

It’s not just about applying the same process over and over again, but rather it’s about recognizing what caused the failure and attempting to circumvent it, trying to achieve results by trying something untried, unique, or divergent from the failed attempt. This is what can transform a failed attempt into a success. Core to this idea is not seeing a failure as a failure, but rather as an invitation to learn by trying again. It’s not a failure until you give up.

But sometimes you don’t get another attempt. The question is why not? Did you run out of time? Do you lack the resources, support, or effort? Is it a high pressure test that you can only do once?

Ran out of time? Ask: What would your next step be if you had time? What did you learn along the way? Who is an expert you can follow up with to help you understand what went wrong? You can learn by reflection as well as by repeated attempts.

Lack resources or support? Who can help? What do you really need versus what would be nice to have? Who is an expert you can follow up with to help you understand what went wrong?

Lack of effort? Whose fault is that? What help do you need? What are you willing to do to move forward? What’s stopping you?

Is it a high pressure test that you only get one attempt on? This is often a fallacy. This is often more arbitrary than you think. The reality is that most tests that really matter can be done again, just not in the timeline you hoped for. Tests like the LSAT are high stakes, but many people attempt it more than once. To me it’s interesting to see so many teachers not give students second chances on tests? Why? If a student is willing to put more effort in and actually learn the content, why not give them another try? Is the mark on the first attempt the important thing or is the understanding of the content more important?

That said, to iterate doesn’t just mean ‘do it again’. What makes the second (or third or fourth) attempt different? What new information, effort, or resources are available? What other ways can learning be demonstrated? What else can be done to show learning, to achieve learning, to discover learning that wasn’t done before?

Iterate, don’t repeat failure. Don’t do the same thing over again and expect the same result.

Before the sun rises

Today was the first day in a very long time that my alarm went off before sunrise. Part of this is getting back into a routine before work, part of it is that the days are a little shorter as we head into fall. It took me a while to actually get started this morning. I literally could have woken up 45 minutes later, because none of my usual routine got started until then. It’s amazing how slow I can be, how easily distracted, when I’m off of a routine. Put me on a routine and I get stuff done. Remove the routine and I lose focus.

This makes me think about a typical day at work. How much of it is me focusing on the next issue or concern that arises versus getting what I need done? Some days the answer to that is quite surprising. I had a vice principal tell me years ago, “You know, being a VP is really just a 3-4 hour a day job. The problem is that you usually can’t get most of that done between 8am and 4pm. That was a vice principal in a school that also had a principal. When you are the lone principal in a building this can be even more challenging with more duties and less time.

That’s why I get up so early. I write for this blog (usually by 6:00 even though I publish it a bit later). I meditate for 10 minutes. I do 20 minutes of cardio followed by 10-15 minutes of stretching and/or weights. I get stuff done for me, before the distractions of the day start… and as the days get shorter, before the sun rises.

It’s a wonderful feeling of accomplishment to do these things for myself before my work day begins; before the unexpected distractions of my typical day; before I get home exhausted and full of excuses as to why I should skip one of these activities. After a very routine-less holiday, it’s going to take me a while to get used to this. But eventually I’ll fall back into the routine of waking up in the dark and getting my mental and physical well-being taken care of before the sun comes up.

Making history

We are living through one of the biggest social experiments in history. We are getting thousands of data points all over the world that show us what the Delta variant is doing…

In Florida:


And in India:

In comparison to Iceland and the UK:

The difference in deaths is directly related to the number of people in less and more vaccinated areas.

And in Mississippi and Louisiana:


Want to guess what the death rate will look like in these highly unvaccinated areas?

Where does the social experiment come in? India didn’t have ready access to vaccines, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana all did. Meanwhile, the Florida Governor has an order against mask mandates in schools. Over the coming months we get to see large scale data sets on how decisions like this affect the lives and deaths of people in different places. We get to see what happens when people put themselves before their communities, and what fear can do to undermine society.

Decades from now there will be case studies in textbooks that will discuss the differences in preventable deaths. There will be questions about how to prevent this in a future pandemic. There will be models to show how devastating this kind of response would be if the same pandemic response happened with a virus that is 3, 10, or 20 times more contagious and/or deadly.

The Delta variant, which is affecting younger people more indiscriminately than the original variant, is quickly becoming the great un-equalizer. It is quickly revealing how a good response to the pandemic fairs so much better than a bad response. The sad part is that it’s doing this with hospitalization and deaths.

Equally as sad is that many younger kids and immune compromised people that do not have a choice to get a vaccine will suffer because of people who are able to take an available vaccine and choose not to. The unvaccinated, that are so by choice, are creating a giant social experiment where they are playing with people’s lives, and the data that’s coming out is proving this.

The worse part is that they are basing this choice on fear and misinformation. And as a PSA, the vaccine makes us safer, not safe.

Wear a mask. Practice social distancing. Stay safe.

50 is the new 30

When I was a kid, I’d watch TV and the grandmother in her 60’s would be hobbling with a cane, and grandad wore a hat that only old people wear.

When I was 25, I moved to Vancouver. At the time my dad was 46 or 47 and I used to call him ‘my old man’.

Today my brother-in-law turned 50. He and my sister have always been the young, hip family, and now he has joined us ‘old folks’ in their 50’s. But they are still young at heart… and so are we! Although my hairline might disagree, and I’m now needing glasses to look at my phone and read the already-too-large font, I have a hard time seeing myself as old.

50 is the new 30. Does this sound cliche? Yes. Do I care? No.

My in-laws are celebrating their 60th anniversary in a few days. My wife and I celebrated our 23rd yesterday. As we look at old photos and reminisce, I don’t look back and think the best years have happened already. Life may be short, but that doesn’t mean we can’t fill the time we have left with new adventures, joy, and activities that keep us feeling young.

—

Update for those of you that watched Three’s Company growing up: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMR66HGfT/

Safer, not safe

There is no shortage of videos and social media posts sharing data that clearly demonstrates that the vaccine is saving lives. These include posts sharing that hospitals are being inundated with unvaccinated covid patients in areas where double-vaccinated populations are low. Today I saw a post of a teary-eyed man who thanked a doctor for his amazing videos because his mom finally got vaccinated after seeing several of the doctor’s videos that her son shared with her. With FDA approval for the Pfizer vaccine coming this week, I think even more people will chose to get vaccinated. That’s great news. It’s sad that so many people are still willing to remain unvaccinated, and it seems as though no amount of data, or scientific evidence will change their minds.

But there are concerns that I have for those that are already vaccinated. These concerns are social rather than medical. The Delta variant is far more contagious than the original covid strain. There are many more breakthrough cases (double vaccinated people catching and spreading covid) happening with Delta, and while the risk of hospitalization and death are very low compared to unvaccinated people, vaccinated people can still spread Delta.

So, to all the double-vaccinated people out there, please don’t be under the illusion that the vaccines have made you safe. You are safer, not safe. Still wear a mask in public places. Still pay attention to social distancing protocols. Still be part of the solution rather than adding to the problem. This isn’t just so that we protect ourselves, it is so that we protect our loved ones and our community. In heavily vaccinated places like Canada, if the vast majority of vaccinated people complied with mask and social distancing safety protocols, we can hopefully turn the current increase in cases into a small blip as opposed to a full on next wave.

It’s not lost on me that I’m asking the very people who have done the most to do more. But this is the population more likely to comply, and wearing masks and socially distancing is so much better than lockdowns and dangerously full hospitals.