Monthly Archives: October 2022

Halloween fun

For the past few years our high school Principals and Vice Principals have run a fun Halloween costume contest. It often includes elaborate photos and even skits. The theme this year was TV shows/sitcoms from the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s. I have two other principals in my building and one of them suggested we get together to compete. The Carol Burnette Show was selected and we dressed up for a Momma’s Family skit about playing the board game ‘Sorry’.

We decided to lip sync a part of the skit. I set up two cameras, and with the help of a teacher at lunch on Friday, we ran through the skit twice (a bit more than that with a false start the second time. It took less than 30 minutes from set up to finish.

Saturday morning I spent just over 2 hours editing and here is the result:

It’s fun putting together something like this. I watched it later and had a few more ideas to add, but rather than spending way too much time making minuscule adjustments, I ended up deciding that it’s good enough. It was fun and it’s done.

Happy Halloween everyone. Enjoy the spirit of dressing up and having fun with it.

The News in Question

I’m already not a fan of the news. My wife will often watch the 6pm news and I usually put headphones on and listen to something else. A few days ago I was cutting some vegetables and the news was on in the background, and after 5 depressing reports one after another I had to stop listening.

Yesterday and today I had a number of news items cross my social media feed. One was a tragic incident in Korea where people were crushed and trampled. This is actual news, and, like above, very depressing. But a few other items were about news being faked or misinformation sharing.

Here is an example: A viral video of a politician being stopped by chanting audience members who were doing a derogatory chant… except in the actual footage the crowd is happily chanting the politician’s name. The fake version is the one going viral, and even making it onto supposed ‘news’ websites.

It’s bad enough that news is so negative to begin with, but it’s hard to weed out what’s real and what’s fake. It’s getting much harder to recognize the difference. And it’s getting even more important to be able to discern the difference. Do most people even try? Or do they just choose their news sources and narratives they want to follow and follow them blindly?

When I read any sensational headlines these days my first instinct isn’t to be shocked or enraged, my instinct is to question: Is this real? What’s the bias? Where should I look to fact check or validate this?

The news used to answer the questions who, what, where, when, how, and why… now it’s me that questions the news.

80 Crunches

In January of 2021 my buddy Dave Sands and I decided to do the Coquitlam Crunch, an uphill trek along the power lines on the north side of our city. It includes a segment with 450+ steps, and at the top we take a small circular detour that makes the walk feel more like a round trip than just up then down again. We started doing this at the height of the pandemic when we really weren’t socializing at all, and this was a great place to meet that was outdoors, or we would not have gotten together.

We enjoyed it so much that we made it a weekly event. Early on it was every Friday, rain, shine, and even snow. Later, we switched to Saturday mornings, and we treat ourselves to breakfast at Starbucks afterwards. Today we did our 80th walk together since we started.

That’s 400 kilometres we’ve travelled. But it’s not about the distance, it’s the time together that really matters. We naturally and unintentionally created a routine of ‘talking shop’ (talking about work) at the start of the walk, and usually ending that part of the conversation by the time we reach the top of the stairs, barely half way up. Then the rest of the walk is filled with conversations about life, the universe, everything, and anything.

When we started, this was like therapy. We had been bottled up with pandemic restrictions and just having someone outside our tiny family bubble to talk to was such a boost to our mental health. While it still serves that purpose, it’s also so much more. I’m looking forward to keeping this tradition going, and hitting milestones like 100 Crunches and 1,000 kilometres… and beyond.

What’s a tradition that you have with family or friends that you plan to keep for a very long time?

All atwitter

I’m fascinated by Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. This is going to get interesting because while social media companies pretend to have community guidelines that are designed for the public good, they are private companies that can make arbitrary decisions… and they often do. There are always stories in the news about how certain perspectives are silenced, or questions about why some extreme groups are banned while others are not.

But in the end, they are private companies and they can make arbitrary decisions. Elon wasted no time making some of his own:

“Elon Musk fired key Twitter executives Thursday, one of his first moves as the official owner of the social media platform. According to reports from the New York Times, CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and other outlets, Musk fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, general counsel Sean Edgett, and head of legal policy, trust and safety Vijaya Gadde.” ~ TechCrunch

I suspect that he is going to make some very subjective decisions in the coming weeks, and while the narrative used to be, “we are looking out for you as best as we can,” Elon’s message will be more like, “I’m running a private company and I make the decisions.” He will say he is trying to ‘clean up’ Twitter, but his decision-making will be very personal and I’m not sure his perspective on public good will be transparent or based on public feedback.

I’m uncertain where he’s going to take Twitter, but I don’t think the social media landscape will look the same 6 months from now.

‘A’ Game

I had a conversation with a colleague in another district yesterday. I was thanking him for suggesting a great book I’m listening to. We talked about the unique nature of our jobs and he said something that hit a chord with me. He said that while he likes his job as an online school principal, and how unique the challenges are, he’s tired of feeling like there are too many things that come at him at once to give his ‘A’ game all the time. He mentioned that it feels like the best he can do is a ‘C’ or a ‘C+’.

He said, “But that’s not how I like to operate. When I was a teacher I had a lot of control about what my day looked like. Sure, I couldn’t bring my ‘A’ game to every single thing I did, but most of my day was determined by me, and I could regularly bring my ‘A’ game. I can’t do that in this job even though I want to.”

I totally get it. It’s like this job is a juggling act and every time you think you can put on a good show, someone adds one more ball to the balls you are juggling. You looked and felt confident juggling 4 balls, and suddenly you are fumbling with a 5th. Just as you feel good about the 5th ball, a 6th is thrown in. You spend more time picking up the balls than you do juggling. A juggler isn’t showing you their ‘A’ game when they are picking balls up off the floor.

My colleague and I both agreed that we like our jobs, and we want to stay where we are, but lamented about our ability to have control over our days… to decide at the start of the day how many balls we were going to juggle that day. I think that’s something every principal feels and understands. We like our jobs, we just wish we could bring our ‘A’ game to it a little more often.

Invisible hold

The things that hold us back the most are usually invisible to other people. It’s a lack of confidence, a crippling amount of self doubt, a hesitation for fear of not being right, or valued, or heard. I see it a lot in students. These internal stressors are portrayed as avoidance, distraction, shyness, hesitation, and even self deprecating humour.

Don’t understand something? “I’m stupid.” Or just pretend to understand to avoid looking stupid.

Treated poorly by a fried? “I deserved it.”

Don’t know where to get started? Just do something else off topic rather than ask for help.

Sometimes it’s not a lack of work, but putting too much in that’s the problem… “It’s not good enough”, “It’s not my best work”, or “It’s not ready”… and all the while it’s better than what most students will submit. Perfectionism is crippling and sometimes “I didn’t try” is easier to face than trying hard and it not being up to par, or knowing just how hard it is to always do great work all the time.

We see a lot of undesirable behaviours, but we don’t see the hidden challenges, the internal struggles, the invisible hold of insecurities that are the root of the behaviours. We see the byproduct of the struggles but not the struggles themselves. Addressing the behaviours does not always address the problem.

This is why it’s important to teach students and not just subjects. Why relationships matter as much as content. Why it takes a village to raise a child. Helping students reduce the hold of their challenges and doubts is as important as any subject we might teach. The best thing we can teach is the wisdom to know themselves, and the confidence to know that they can be and are valued members of our community.

Student led tours

After a long period without visitors to our school, we are slowly starting to get people visiting to learn more about Inquiry Hub again. When guests do the tour, I don’t go with them. I greet them, introduce them to a student, send them on their way, and encourage them to ask their tour guide and other students what it’s really like at the school. I’ll sometimes joke, like I did yesterday when I said, “Claire will show you around and after I leave you she can give you real dirt on the school.” Claire, in grade 11 and wanting to give tours since her no-visitor-mask–and-stay-separate-pandemic-grade-9-year, played right along, joking about how horrible it is to go to the school. Good for a laugh to break the ice and start the tour off relaxed.

Now, I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t give Claire pointers to talk about, but there is no script. I want to make sure she talks about the inquiry courses, the supports provided, and the schedule, but I honestly don’t know exactly what Claire shared with the visitor. She gave her version of the school not mine.

And inevitably, whether it was Claire, or any of my previous guides, when the visitor comes back to the office, I hear what an amazing ambassador my tour guide was. I also encourage visitors to talk to other students about the school and their projects, and I know when they took my advice because they tell me they did ask, and how great our students are.

I had a similar experience as a visitor at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, and High Tech High in California. Both with engaged students, passionate about their schools, giving me the tours, and me talking to random students that would answer my questions.

The reality is that the tour would not be as good if I tried to provide the narrative. It wouldn’t be as authentic. Do the students miss sharing anything important? Probably. But visitors will ask questions, and learn what they need to, or they can ask me after the tour. But the magic happens when students are trusted to be the ambassadors and not just presenters… and when they are trusted to lead, without an adult present. After all, isn’t it their school?

Big rocks

I remember a story about a professor who teaches students about dealing with all the problems and pressures in their lives. He brings a glass jar to class with some sand, pebbles, and slightly larger rocks. He describes these items as all a person’s problems and challenges, and the jar as the person. He tries to put all these items into the jar, starting with the sand, and they don’t fit. Then he starts with the pebbles, and again they don’t fit. Then he starts with the slightly larger pebbles, puts the smaller pebbles in afterwards and shakes the jar so that the smaller pebbles fall between the larger ones, then pours the sand in, which fills the empty spaces. Everything now fits. The lesson is to pay attention and take care of the biggest problems first and you make room to handle all your problems.

I think it’s a neat story, but I never really agreed fully with the message. I don’t think it’s healthy to always be trying to deal with the big problems you face first. Sometimes if you ignore the little problems for too long, they become bigger problems too. “Kill a snake when it’s small,” my grandfather used to say. And sometimes it’s in dealing with smaller issues that the insight comes as to how a larger issue can be solved.

But sometimes it’s easy to avoid the ‘big rocks’ by staying busy tending to smaller issues, and actually avoiding the bigger ones. That’s when the professor’s advice becomes wise. Kill a big snake before its too big to ever deal with… before it’s too big for your jar.

So when do you deal with the big rocks first? I think it’s an upside down bell curve that should drive your attention.

Imagine an attention graph on a scale from not thinking about something at all to always thinking/worry about something. When you are stuck worrying about a problem too much and, on the other extreme, when you are altogether ignoring that problem, that’s when it should be dealt with swiftly, putting aside other smaller issues. But you can’t spend your life only taking care of your big problems and feel like these big rocks are all that matter. No, they should only be a priority when they are bothering you too much, or when you are trying to escape them. At these points it’s time to face the big problems head on.

That doesn’t mean that you ignore them at all other times, it simply helps you determine when they should be the snake you kill… no matter how big it may be.

Cold, dark universe

Take a half hour and watch TIMELAPSE OF THE FUTURE: A Journey to the End of Time

The current theories about the future of the universe is that it will expand into vast, empty, cold darkness. Even before all this happens the universe will be a very lonely place with stars moving away so fast that our telescopes would not be able to see them. Of course the timeline for this happening is so unfathomably long it simply isn’t conceivable. How inconceivable?

Life will only be possible for this percentage of time of the universe’s existence:

This would be utterly depressing if the scale of time wasn’t so enormous. But on this scale, if I looked forward 1,000 generations, that too would be a blip in time, with almost no change in the universe described in this film happening yet. We have a lot more immediate concerns about humanity’s survival than the expansion and aging of the universe.

I wonder if our universe isn’t like a lonely atom in empty space… a simple speck in a multiverse of distant universes that are oblivious to the existence of other atom-like universes also floating in empty space. Maybe some universes are aware of each other, quantum entangled with each other, playing out inverse existences. And maybe they are all entangled, universe-particles in a cosmic wave, vibrating in every possible direction. Grab your surfboards, it’s time to surf the cosmos.

Strong Opinions, Weakly Held

Stanford University professor Paul Saffo is a futurist and future forecaster who coined the phrase, “Strong opinions, weakly held.”

I love this idea. One of the biggest problems today is that too many people have strong opinions that are strongly held. Well, maybe the biggest problem is that too many people have incorrect, unsubstantiated, or uninformed strong opinions that are strongly held. And these poorly formulated strong opinions are exactly the kind of thing that gets magnified on social media… they incite interaction that is more likely to become viral by attracting both opposing views, and the attention of equally like minded, strongly held opinions. Strong opinions, weakly held don’t pull as much social media attention, mainly because these aren’t opinions that people need to shout about online.

The power of strong opinions, weakly held is that ‘strong opinions’ allow you to ‘see’ and be passionate about your perspective, while being ‘loosely held’ allows you to take newly found information and adjust or change your strong opinions.

Case in point: Flat Earthers are the perfect example of strong opinions strongly held. Any evidence given to them doesn’t matter, it’s immediately cast as false or contrived by people conspiring against them. And so no matter the proof given to them, their strong opinion of a flat earth stay unchanged.

Imagine if doctors and scientists held such strong opinions? We’d probably still be blood letting with leaches to treat a fever, and not washing our hands before dealing with open wounds, surgery, and childbirth. Progress comes from being able to let go of conventions and norms that keep us stuck in our current frame of thinking.

Nothing wrong with strong opinions, they are just better off loosely held.