Monthly Archives: June 2023

End of the (school) year

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Although I’ll be working next week, today is the last day of school with staff. It’s always a day that feels melancholy for me. I’m grateful for the approaching summer, but it’s a final farewell to a year that feels more significant than a December 31st year-end celebration.

It was a challenging year for me on many fronts, but mostly health-wise. I shared this recently in my email newsletter to students and their parents:

After a couple months of working in pain every day, I took most of May off with a herniated disc in my neck, which was pinching a nerve going down my left arm. The good news is that I’m almost completely pain free now and my discomfort level is quite low. The challenging thing is that combined with a few other absences this year, I missed more work this year than I probably have in all the other 24 years that I’ve been an educator. Many of you have heard me speak of how challenging absences are at Inquiry Hub, and how good attendance has a direct correlation to overall success… and unfortunately I got to live the consequences of missing a lot of school first hand. I am so thankful for the team that I work with, and I appreciate how much added work they covered in order to keep the experience so positive for our students.

Add covid which, while not herniated disc painful, left me with a week-long low grade headache in November, and a nasty flu in January that knocked me on my butt worse than covid did, and it seemed to me the year was all about being sick or recovery and catch up. I didn’t mention the loss of my father in the message above, but that also happened while dealing with the physical pain.

I’ll be glad to wrap things up next week. All that said, there is a lot of positives to appreciate. Our grads got into the programs they wanted. Planning for next year has me excited about the year ahead. And while I am having some residual issues with the nerves in my arm from the herniated disc, I’ve been pain free for 3+ weeks.

My left arm is weak, and sometimes uncomfortable, but discomfort is so much better than constant pain. My heart goes out to people with chronic pain. I had just over 3 months of it, and working every day for over 2 months in agony before taking time off was brutal… I can’t imagine what life is like for those that live with daily pain and don’t get to feel the relief I now feel.

This gives me perspective, and makes me feel lucky, despite the challenging year I had. I get to look forward to a summer of recovery and revitalization, not of choosing between being in pain or being so medically intoxicated that I don’t want to do, can’t do, anything productive. I get to look forward and see positive things in my future.

But today is melancholy. Today is about saying goodbye. Goodbye to colleagues, and goodbye to the school year. It’s the final countdown to a year I don’t ever want to repeat. I need to focus on expressing my appreciation to my staff for being more supportive of me than I feel I was to them this year… and I hope to make up for that next year!

Grades and university admissions

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Today is report card day. I’ve looked them all over and I don’t think there are going to be any surprises for parents. A few positive bumps, a few dips, but overall pretty good results for students at our school. Further to this, I’ve only heard positive news from our grads about getting into the programs they want to get into. This last point, post high school admissions, is the only reason grades are really important… but I can spend hours telling you why marks shouldn’t be the only thing that matter.

I haven’t looked at the stats recently, but pre-covid stats about drop out rates during or after the 1st year at the top two universities in our province were 14% and 12%. I know some of these are students changing their minds, or other legitimate reasons, but I also know a large percentage of those dropouts are students who just couldn’t handle the change from high school. Most were probably straight ‘A’ students. They did well on all of their report cards. They were good at high school. They were good at giving the teacher what they wanted. They were good at test taking.

Then they head off to university. With no parents or teachers policing them, and no regular routines to follow, without after school activities that they used to fill their high school evenings with, there is suddenly a lot more responsibility to manage time. With professors not outlining assignments as clearly, or not providing samples of expectations, the work seems harder to manage and still get top grades. And for some, the freedom away from strict schedules is a chance to rebel a bit, and late nights don’t go very well with school work production and studying. There are as many variances to the reasons as there are students, but 12 and 14 percent drop out rates are a significant number when you consider the thousands of students who apply and don’t get into these top universities. Those are high percentages of top students not handling the transition.

Grades don’t tell the whole story.

What did students create? How did they build community? How did they manage their time? What does their portfolio look like? Portfolios aren’t just about art, they can be projects. It’s not surprising that a kid like this gets into a top music program in the country and wins awards, or when this kid gets into art school, or one of these kids gets into a small 40-student two year business program, and the other one gets into Mechatronics. It’s disappointing when a kid like this doesn’t get into the Ivy League school school he wanted to, but he still got into Computer Science at UBC, and  he didn’t drop out after his first year. None of these kids have or will drop out after a year, unless they decide they want to do something different.

All of these kids were ‘good at school’, but that wasn’t all that they were. They were students who had opportunities to work on their passions while in high school. They were students who had time in their schedule to decide what they were going to do, and they learned to manage that time… like they would have to at university. Not all of them were straight ‘A’ students, but all of them were successful students that got to demonstrate more than just good marks on tests.

To get into university my average was 73%. By the 4th year at my university, back in 1990, the average to get into the same general arts program was 81%. Had I been born just 4 years later my meager average would not have gotten me into my university of choice. Today, most popular programs at top universities demand an average well above 90%. But I have to wonder, how many of these high achieving students are going to drop out after a year? How many of them will have high school experiences that truly prepare them for the transition into these high stakes programs?

What other evidence should universities put weight on besides marks? I’d take a ‘B’ student with curiosity, drive, and a wide variety of interests over a straight ‘A’ student who fights for every 1/2 percent they can on a test. I’d take them in my university. I’d hire them at my company. I’d even be more likely to want them as a colleague or a friend. Grades should matter, they just shouldn’t be the only thing that matters, and the stakes on them shouldn’t be so high. Being a good student should also mean being a well rounded students, and that would improve the success rate of students finishing more than just one year at a university. When grades are used as the only measure to weed out students, many of the students being weeded out are exactly the students universities are wanting.

My miscommunication

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I really try to live by the mantra, ‘The meaning of your communication is the response you get’. It puts the burden of my clear communication solely on me. When someone misunderstands or misinterprets my communication, it’s not their fault, it’s mine… I could have been more clear, more concise, more thoughtful.

I had a written conversation with a colleague recently that didn’t go as I had planned. When I saw the misunderstanding, I tried to explain. But I came from a defensive stance about what I really meant. I didn’t think about what their response really meant. I worried too much about clarifying and not enough about understanding.

“This is what I meant to say,” does not repair what was said and interpreted incorrectly. Not usually. In a way it’s doubling down, it’s saying, “You were wrong in your interpretation.” It’s not saying, “I messed up in my communication.”

It’s a minor shift, simple to see after the fact, but delicately difficult to communicate in a response to what was clearly my poor communication. I didn’t get the response I wanted, thus I didn’t communicate well. If that’s my premise, then what I need to do is listen to their response, and communicate about that, not what I meant to say.

It’s a subtle shift. Not an easy one, but an important one.

Pace and productivity

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The end of the year can feel like a constant pace of go-go-go! From wake up to head on pillow that night there is too much to do and too little time. Then things (finally) wind down and you see all that you’d like to do but you’ve been too busy doing what you needed to do. Time suddenly slows, and tasks are more easily accomplishable.

This becomes a time when I need others to collaborate with. Time to have learning conversations and time to co-plan. I notice that working with others motivates me and keeps my productivity pace up.

It’s easy to take a deep sigh of relief as things slow down, and to slow down myself. But the year hasn’t ended and there is still a lot to get done, a lot to accomplish, and an opportunity to better prepare for the new year. Just because the pace has slowed doesn’t mean productivity should too.

Staying motivated as the pace slows isn’t easy. It’s easier to coast through to the ending. My motivation is to do whatever I can to make next year better. Because as crazy as the year-ending June pace can be, the year-starting September pace can be equally frenetic. And so the work I do now will help my productivity in the new school year.

It has been a long ride this year, but I’ve got to stay in the saddle and keep riding at a good pace. I’ve got the whole summer to trot and canter, right now I need too keep the gallop going. Giddy up!

Monkey brains

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I remember seeing a video clip where Neil deGrasse Tyson was talking about the possibility of alien life. He said that when you consider the intelligence difference between humans and chimpanzee DNA is just 1% (actually closer to 3%, but the point is still valid)… how much smarter could aliens be if they had an even bigger DNA difference to us? It could be possible that alien life forms could be so intelligent that we seem like chimpanzees or even chickens in comparison. ‘Oh look, those human teens are learning simple algebra, how adorable.‘

So aliens might see us as quite simple life forms in comparison to themselves. This could also happen with Artificial Intelligence here on earth. Maybe one day we create an intelligent identity that thinks of us as simple-minded. I shared this idea before that man will never invent artificial intelligence that is ‘as smart as’ humans. The moment an AI is as smart as us, it will instantaneously be smarter than us. When we get to that threshold, the AI will instantly be a lot smarter. It will be as smart as us but also faster at mathematical calculations, faster at solving puzzles, and could also be stronger than us, see better than us, and would definitely have a better vocabulary than us.

We are amazing creatures. We are at the pinnacle of intelligence on planet earth. We are also still quite barbaric. We fight over land, we don’t feed everyone despite having enough food. We take unnecessary risks with our lives, and we even kill one another. We live tribal lives, and while we use tools and technology in ways that far exceeds what any other living thing can do on this planet, our achievements could be minor on a cosmic scale.

We have no way of visiting a distant planet in a single lifespan. We act like parasites on earth, spreading wildly, and killing the planet as we overpopulate large parts of both hospitable and even inhospitable land… meanwhile displacing key animals on the food chain. We are slightly intelligent life forms, with monkey brains.

If we ever come across aliens, they will probably be a lot smarter than us. If we ever create as-smart-as-human intelligent life it will instantaneously be smarter-than-human. In both cases we will move from being the smartest of animals to being less intelligent, and maybe less significant, than another intelligent form.

Still, so far we are the smartest monkeys. It’s just too bad that we do so many dumb things.

Inconceivably vast

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Webb’s First Deep Field is the first operational image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. The deep-field photograph, which covers a tiny area of sky visible from the Southern Hemisphere, is centered on SMACS 0723, a galaxy cluster in the constellation of Volans. Thousands of galaxies are visible in the image, some as old as 13 billion years.The image is the highest-resolution image of the early universe ever taken. Captured by the telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the image was revealed to the public by NASA on 11 July 2022. (Wikipedia)

It’s too hard to fathom just how big the universe is. The image below only shows a few stars, they are the bright spots with 6 flares coming off of them… a by-product of the James Webb telescope’s design. The rest of the bright spots are galaxies. Galaxies that each hold billions or trillions of stars.

And if you held your pinky up to the night sky you would completely cover the area of the sky that this photo covers with a sliver of a finger nail.

We are so insignificantly tiny, and our Milky Way galaxy is so insignificantly placed in the universe. We just can’t conceive of just how inconceivably vast our universe is, and how insignificantly tiny our solar system is.

It’s too much to comprehend. And yet, here we are. So significant to each other, so connected to our planet. We get to live lives rich in mystery and wonder.

What other life is out there, or was out there, some time in the 13 billion years of our universe’s existence? Could alien life comprehend our existence? We’ll probably never know.

If there was life in one of these distant galaxies right now, we wouldn’t it know for millions or billions of years. The light we see in that photo above are from the past. To put it into perspective, if they were looking at light from our planet, they would be seeing light emitted from before dinosaurs roamed the earth… in other words they would be looking at prehistoric life on a planet with single cell organisms or perhaps no life at all… yet.

It’s too hard to grasp. It’s inconceivable.

Grad Commencement Speech 2023

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This was my speech at our Inquiry Hub Secondary Grad. As I mentioned a couple days ago, there were unexpected technical issue, and so I can’t share the video, and I’m just sharing text with slides below. The 4th and 5ht slides were gifs, but I’ve just included still photos. I enjoy writing a new speech each year, and this is my 8th one. While I didn’t share a title for it, it did have a title in my notes. Here is “Technology and Community”, shared Wednesday June 21, 2023 at Inlet Theatre in Port Moody, with the grads and families of Inquiry Hub Secondary School:

It was the summer of 1985.

I was 17, and I got to see a movie called Back to the Future when it was in the theatre, not streaming on Netflix. It’s a story about a boy named Marty who was the same age as me… and about the same age as our grads now. Marty went 30 years into the past and had all kinds of adventures and misadventures.

Then a few years later Back to the Future 2 came out, and this time Marty went 30 years into the future… all the way to October of 2015. That future he supposedly went to was almost 8 years ago now.

In Marty’s version of 2015 Nike had shoes with power laces that tightened themselves. There were 3D hologram advertisements, hoverboards, and of course, flying cars. While Nike has made a version of the power laces, we still have a way to go before any of these technologies are as accessible and pervasive as in Back to the Future 2’s version of 2015, and I’m not sure we’ll even get there by 2045?

It’s hard to imagine these things when personally, I’m still waiting for a phone battery that will last me a whole day.

I remember reading that we tend to overestimate the changes that will happen in the short term and underestimate the changes that will occur in the long term. That may be so, but what we define as short and long term now tends to be shrinking. I’m not sure we are going to see hovercrafts and flying cars circulating in our communities any time soon, but…

I do marvel at how fast technology is moving, and the world of Artificial Intelligence is quickly advancing from being good at playing board games and doing math, to doing some really interesting things.

We have AI tools that create amazing art,

write computer code,

and even write grad speeches… and while I wrote these words myself, ((really)), many of the visuals I’m sharing are the product of AI. My point though is that if I told you just 4 years ago, when our grads were in Grade 9, that we would have this technology before they graduated, you probably wouldn’t have believed me.

Our grads are headed into a world where, just in the last few months, job descriptions that have been the same for years are now being redefined. A world where they will probably get into automated cars that drive themselves. And a world where living to be 100 could be as common as living to 65 years old today.

I’ve worked for the same company for 25 years now… I am not sure many, if any, of our grads are headed on that same path. Times change. Technologies change. Jobs change. How we interact with the world changes.

But I hope one thing stays the same. I hope that our grads remain as kind, accepting, and caring as they are today. I hope that they find a community of people to grow old with that is as wonderful as they are… and remember, you are going to grow really, really old! One of the pleasures of working at a small school is getting to know students well, and getting to really see how students interact with each other in a quaint, caring environment. Our grads are fun, quirky, and unique. They want to do well in school and they are willing to work hard. For some of them this came easy. For others, they were initially dragged along by their peers and teachers, but they are ‘there’ now.

That’s the amazing thing about the journey through high school, it’s a hero’s journey. It’s not an easy path, it’s not supposed to be.

On an Inquiry Hub student’s journey through school, we ask them to do really challenging things… from Mr. Soiseth’s Philosophy classes, to cross-grade Shakespearian acting and filmmaking, to designing their own year-long courses. It’s not unusual for a student to spend significantly more time on an inquiry than they are expected to. And our students leave school doing more presentations in a year than most students do in their entire high school career. Even here we see the respect and kindness of our students, who make an excellent audience and provide considerate and thoughtful feedback to each other.

Technology can change us. It can change our careers. It can change our lifespan. It doesn’t have to change what kind of people we are, and how we treat one another. I’m proud of who our grads are today, and you should be too.

It doesn’t matter what job they end up with, if they will be driving flying cars, or buying their kids hoverboards in the future. What matters is that they will be a positive influence on their community. They will be thoughtful, kind, and considerate of others. They will be the kind of people you want to be around. And that, that is the highest compliment I can give them.

Honoured guests, parents, teachers, and students, I present to you Inquiry Hub’s esteemed and wonderful graduating class of 2023!

Subtle regret

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It’s a price I pay as an educator. It doesn’t matter how many positive things happen in a school year, I always feel a little regret at the end of the year. I wanted the year to be more. I wanted it to be better. I wanted to make a greater contribution. I wanted to have more impact.

Twenty five years into my career, and I’ve felt this every year. This year it stings a bit more because my health issues made me miss a lot of school. But I also know this is just me being hard on myself. I know that if things were 100 percent better and I hit every goal I had, I would still feel subtle regret that I didn’t set my targets high enough.

Yesterday a grad came by with flowers, and a card, and a card from their parent. Both cards shared thanks for four amazing years in a school that gave them an opportunity that they felt they couldn’t get anywhere else. That’s heartwarming. And yet this morning I’m lamenting about what else could have been done.

This isn’t me feeling depressed. This isn’t me fishing for compliments. It’s me wondering who else feels this at the end of the school year?

In reality, I don’t want this ‘subtle’ feeling to go away, (that said I also don’t want it to be more pronounced). I actually want this small feeling at this time of year. It doesn’t sadden me as much as it drives me. It makes me think a bit about the potential of next year. It fuels me and inspires me to think bigger, to be excited about what’s possible. It’s kind of like the feeling of coming in second in a competition, you aren’t thrilled, but you had a god season, and now you are excited about next season.

Maybe it’s possible to garner that excitement without the subtle regret? Maybe it could happen where you feel like you won the season and you want to create back-to-back winning seasons? Perhaps that’s possible. But unlike a sports season, a school year doesn’t have a trophy, and there are always things about the year that could have been better.

So, I’ll take the subtle regret. It won’t make me sad, but it will make me want to make next year better… and I really believe it will be.

Little and big bumps

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Yesterday’s grad went well. There were a few bumps along the way, including our livestream going down, which is not anything you would want to happen. Even after a reboot, it never worked as planned. So, to remote grandparents and others waiting to watch from home, it was a disappointment.

At the event there were a few other bumps. One funny one was that our awards have nominees, and then a winner is announced. But the teacher who had the announcing envelopes tucked them inside a shelf in the lectern then forgot where he put them… and another teacher doing the first award presentation didn’t know who the winner was? That caused a bit of a scramble. But it also caused some laughs. It wasn’t a big deal, and got sorted out quickly.

Big bumps like the livestream going down are regrettable. We don’t know what caused the issue, and if we could have foreseen the issue in any way, it would be upsetting to know that we could have prevented it. But this wasn’t the first livestream we’ve done, and we didn’t do anything differently. The technology failed us, and we still don’t know the cause.

Little bumps like the lost winner envelopes are more preventable than our big bump was, but less important. No one missed out on anything, and the delay was minor… even entertaining.

Planning a big event is challenging to do without a few bumps. Stress levels can be high, and there are a lot of moving parts. Seldom does everything go perfectly. The trick is to not sweat over the little bumps, and to do everything in your power to avoid the big bumps.

Small bumps don’t ruin the event, big bumps can. I feel sorry for those that were trying to watch our event from home. We learned a lesson to always ensure we are saving a local recording and not just recording to the cloud. That way if a livestream connection ever goes down again, we will still have a local copy of the event to share later. That is to say, if our livestream ever dies again, the at home audience can watch it later… and the big bump becomes a small bump.

Behind the curtain

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I remember running an assembly as the leadership teacher back when I was in middle school. It was for a Terry Fox run, and we had a former teacher and coach of Terry as a guest speaker. I’d heard him before, he’s both articulate and engaging, and I knew it would be a good presentation. But what I remember most about that assembly was that our guest speaker was the only adult who spoke.

My grade 8 leadership kids completely ran the show. They helped classes get seated. They greeted him. They quieted the audience. They introduced him. They thanked him. They gave out the instructions for the run. These aren’t huge tasks, but they take planning and rehearsing to do well. And to me it looks so much better when students run the show.

Tonight we have our grad and I have an amazing teacher who is behind the scenes helping make sure everything goes smoothly. But it’s a student who set up the YouTube live stream, it’s students performing musical acts, it’s students doing most of the work. And it’s student MC’s that will host the show.

It wouldn’t happen all that smoothly without this teacher behind the curtain, but no one in the audience is going to know what he did, how hard he worked, and how other teachers also helped from behind the curtain. What everyone will see is a student run show.

Our school prides itself in being student driven and led… and it really is. But it isn’t like this just because of the students, it’s because of teachers providing the opportunity. Teachers making sure students have the skills, and have put in the practice. It doesn’t just take student leaders, it takes teachers that make room for students to lead and to shine.

My teacher won’t take a bow today. He won’t get any of the limelight. He’ll stay behind the curtain and he’ll get satisfaction from the students doing a great job. That’s what great teachers do.