Monthly Archives: June 2023

100 physical and mental crunches

126 weeks ago, the first Friday back to work in January 2021, I met a friend to do a walk called the ‘Coquitlam Crunch‘. It was during covid restrictions and socially I was doing absolutely nothing outside my family bubble. But this was an outdoor walk and it seemed like an excellent, and Covid restrictions appropriate, way to meet a friend and do something both physical and social. We both loved the opportunity to connect and so we made plans to do the same walk the following Friday. Eventually we moved to Saturday mornings, and will go Fridays or Sundays if any Saturday doesn’t work. Two and a half years later Dave and I just completed our 100th crunch!

That’s 500 kilometres of walking together. When you consider holidays like my trip to Spain, holidays during the summer, my trips back home to Toronto, and my 6 weeks of injury time this year, we barely missed a single week when it was possible for us to walk. We reminisced today, while having our after Crunch coffee, that there was just one day we arrived at the Crunch and mutually agreed to skip it. Beyond that, we’ve gone out of our way to make it happen.

We’ve gone in snow, rain, and sweltering heat. We’ve started as early as 7am and we’ve walked in evening darkness in the winter. We’ve seen deer, rabbits, and even a black bear, who paid a little too much attention to us for our liking, but went back to eating berries as we increased our distance from him.

100 Crunches wasn’t a goal until we did about 80, and now we’d like to hit 200 (1,000 kilometres) in another 2.5 years… but that’s a long-term goal that isn’t the real focus of our crunches. What really matters to us is the quality time spent together. We get both physical and mental wellness benefits from our weekly visits.

One routine that we unintentionally started was to ‘talk shop’ right away. We’d get our work chat out of the way early. This can be challenging because the hardest part of the Crunch is 437 stairs that come near the start. The best part of this is that by the time we are done the stairs there’s no more talk about work. That’s when we get to drop our guard. We get to share about ourselves, our family, our aspirations, and our insecurities. We get to open up.

And as much as a 5k walk with a 258 metre elevation is a healthy habit, even more healthy is a regular conversation with a true friend. It hasn’t just been good for my personal mental health, it has been good for my soul.

We might be able to achieve the next 100 Crunches in the same amount of time, we might not. The goal is nice, but not necessary. What’s necessary is making time to connect, and to share not just time, but open conversation; To hug and say congratulations on a milestone; To put phones away, distractions away, and be in the presence of a cherished friend… regularly. That’s a goal I’m going to keep.

Grad Month

Today I went to my youngest daughter’s university graduation. Earlier this week I went to our Indigenous Grade 12 Honouring Ceremony, and in two weeks I have two more school grads to go to.

I am not big on pomp and ceremony, but I do like graduation celebrations. It’s a rite of passage, an honouring of the work a student has done, a recognition of accomplishment. It doesn’t matter if a student eked out a pass or graduated with honours and distinction, they did what they needed to do to cross the stage. They get to say, ‘This part of my journey is complete.” And family are there to join in the celebration. Their peers are there crossing the stage with them.

Speeches are often filled with cliches, even the good ones, but that ok. The event is not about the people who get to speak, it’s about honouring the people who completed a task they set out to do, and who are moving on to new adventures. But first they get to cross the stage, they get to shake some hands and be told ‘Congratulations’, and they get to be the center of positive attention.

If I could share one thing with grads, it’s to enjoy the moment. It’s just a single moment to celebrate a long journey, so enjoy it, and feel… actually feel the sense of accomplishment. You did it, and now you get to cross the stage. It doesn’t matter what’s next in that moment, it only matters that you set out to do something and you did it. You graduated!

To know, to think, to dream

“Savoir, penser, rêver.

Tout est là.” ~Victor Hugo

I saw this quote on a building in the city of Biarritz, in southern France. In English this translates to:

“To know, to think, to dream. That is all.“

This is such a beautiful phrase. I like that ‘know’ comes before ‘think’ and ‘dream’, this sets the imagination free from knowledge. It allows us to start with what we know then expand our thinking, our creativity… and that is all. That is what it means to be human. We are not just the sum of what we know, we are creative beings, designers, artists, admirers of creativity and beauty.

We have our own style, we develop our cultures, and then challenge the norms we create for ourselves, and adapt. We seek out entertainment, create and listen to music. We question our origins and seek new places to explore, and new discoveries that help us to know more… more about the the earth we live on, and the universe we live in.

“To know, to think, to dream. That is all.“

Chess strategy

I am in awe of great chess players.

Recently I’ve been playing a bit of chess online on chess.com. I do the daily puzzles, and occasionally I play a game or two against the AI at a level I can sometimes beat. I also play a long slow game against my daughter’s boyfriend. We make a few moves a day, and right now he’s kicking my butt in a game.

I’m not very good, but I am getting a bit better. However, I get fixated on making aggressive moves and end up leaving myself vulnerable to attacks. I can’t see too many moves ahead, and when I try my opponent seems to find moves that I just didn’t see.

On the other end of the spectrum is Hikaru Nakamura. He moves so fast and sees the game so far ahead that I can’t even follow his play. For example, when I watch clips like this I have no idea how he can see so far ahead?

I’d love to be able to see the game like this, to understand so clearly not just what I plan to do but what my opponent will do as well. But I’m not a grandmaster and never will be one. I just hope that I can improve my play a bit and enjoy some competition that’s just slightly better than me. My limitations and lack of years of practice won’t stop me from marvelling at the strategy of incredible players, or at how people can play speed chess and see so many implications of so many moving pieces simultaneously. It’s simply amazing to watch!

It’s going to be messy

“Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn’t have to experience it” ~ Max Frisch

One of my favourite presentations I’ve ever created was back in 2008 for Alan November’s BLC – ‘Building Leadership Capacity’ conference. It was called: The Rant, I Can’t, The Elephant and the Ant, and it was about embracing new technology, specifically smartphones in schools.

The rant was about how every new technology is going to undermine education in a negative way, starting with the ball point pen.

I can’t was about the frustrations educators have with learning to use new tools.

The elephant was the smartphone, it was this incredibly powerful new tool that was in the room. You can’t ignore an elephant in the room.

The Ant was a metaphor for networking and learning from others… using a learning community to help you with the transformation of your classroom.

I ended this with a music slideshow that I later converted to video called, Brave New World Wide Web. This went a bit viral on BlipTV, a now defunct rival of YouTube.

The next year I presented at the conference again and my favourite of my two presentations was, The POD’s are Coming, about Personally Owned Devices… essentially laptops and tablets being brought into schools by students. These may be ubiquitous now, but it was still pretty novel in 2009.

These two presentations and video give a pretty strong message around embracing new technology in schools. So my next message about embracing AI tools like Chat GPT in schools is going to come across fairly negatively:

It’s going to be a bumpy and messy ride.

There is not going to be any easy transition. It’s not just about embracing a new technology, it’s about managing the disruption… And it’s not going to be managed well. I already had an issue in my school where a teacher used Chat GPT to verify if AI wrote an assignment for students. However Chat GPT is not a good AI checker and it turned out to be wrong for a few students who insisted they wrote the work themselves, and several AI detectors agreed. But this was only checked after the students were accused of cheating. Messy.

Some teachers are now expecting students to write in-class essays with paper and pen to avoid students using AI tools. These are kids that have been using a laptop since elementary school. Messy.

Students are using prompts in Chat GPT that instruct the AI to write with language complexity based on their age. Or, they are putting AI written work into free paraphrasing tools that fool the AI detectors. Messy.

Teacher’s favourite assignments that usually get students to really stretch their skills are now done much faster and almost as good with AI tools. And even very bright students are using these tools frequently. While prompt generation is a good skill to have, AI takes the effort and the depth of understanding away from the learners. Messy.

That final point is the messiest. For many thoughtful and thought provoking assignments, AI can now decrease the effort to asking AI the right prompt. And while the answer may be far from perfect, AI will provide an answer that simplifies the response for the the learner. It will dumb down the question, or produce a response that makes the question easier.

Ai is not necessarily a problem solver, it’s a problem simplifier. But that reduces the critical thinking needed. It waters down the complexity of work required. It transforms the learning process into something easier, and less directly thoughtful. Everything is messier except the problem the teacher has created, which is just much simpler to complete.

Learning should be messy, but instead what’s getting messy is the ability to pose problems that inspire learning. Students need to experience the struggle of messy questions instead of seeking an intelligent agent to mess up the learning opportunities.

Just like any other tool, there are places to use AI in education and places to avoid using the tool. The challenge ahead is creating learning opportunities where it is obvious when the tool is and isn’t used. It’s having the tool in your tool box, but not using it for every job… and getting students to do the same.

And so no matter how I look at this, the path ahead is very messy.

Everything in moderation

I enjoy being in the sun. I feel energized by it. But my days of spending hours in the sun are over. This is magnified by the fact that I really hate wearing sunscreen. Maybe it’s because I grew up on a tropical island and used very little of it. Maybe it’s just the oily feel of it, but I just don’t like putting it on and having it on my skin all day.

So, I sit in the sun for 15-20 minutes with no protection, then I move to the shade. I get a nice dose of Vitamin D but I don’t overdo it, and I don’t need to layer on the sunscreen. Sun exposure has become one of many places where I practice the idea of ‘everything in moderation’.

Everything in moderation works so well on many fronts. Food and alcohol are other great examples. I eat very little treats and don’t eat a lot of sugary items in general. I don’t stuff myself even with my favourite foods. I usually only have one cup of coffee in a day, but if I’m at a breakfast meeting I might splurge and have 3. I rarely have 3 alcoholic drinks in a night and very seldom have a drink two nights in a row. In fact I can go a week or two without alcohol without realizing it or missing it.

Still, an occasional drink is nice to have, and so is a piece of chocolate cake, or some well seasoned potato chips. Moderation takes a lot less discipline than hard restrictions and I think generally leads to a more balanced and happier life. I think that’s why many diets don’t work, because they are about forced abstinence from foods you love and this is hard to continue over any extended time.

The way I cut down my sugar intake years ago was to try time restricted eating. I realized that I never ate anything healthy after dinner do I simply stopped having anything to eat after dinner, and would break-(my)-fast with something healthy in the morning… usually a protein shake with berries (natural sugars) in it. Delicious and enjoyable as well as healthy.

All this to say that it’s easy to find balance when balance is important to you. It feels healthy and enjoyable to moderate when moderation doesn’t feel like a hard restriction. I could spend longer in the sun but I then need to put sunscreen on or feel the pain of a sunburn. I could have a third drink in a night, but then I feel the pain of a hangover (because that’s all it takes to make me feel like crap).

Even exercising is something I do in moderation. Sure, I try to be active every day, but a full cardio work out for me is 20 minutes, and only ever an hour when I go for walks with my wife or a friend… not runs, walks. And recovering from a herniated disc, which I think might have been initiated from shovelling snow, not from working out, has led me to moderate my strength workouts even more. I have no desire to put myself back into pain under the guise of getting stronger.

Everything in moderation seems like such a good way to balance living a healthy life, and still enjoying life.

Now, not waiting…

I was reflecting on retirement yesterday, and then today I listened to a podcast that mentioned we only live for about 4,000 weeks. We are lucky when it’s more, and when I consider that I’ve passed 2,800 weeks, it makes me appreciate all of the time I have left. This isn’t sad, it’s factual. And the fact is that every week, every day matters.

We’ve all had those weeks that fly by feeling like we’ve done no more than what needed to be done: Eat, sleep, work, repeat… with a few distractions along the way. And we’ve all had weeks that have felt special, even when the regular routine was all that was really done. What’s the difference?

Good conversations, acts of kindness, a delicious meal, a hug, a good laugh, or even a quiet moment of contemplation can help make an ordinary week a little more special. It would have been easy to use the word extraordinary rather than special, but that would be dishonest.

The reality is that it’s hard to live a life where every week is extraordinary. That said, it can be too easy to live a life where weeks just disappear, one less week to live, then another, then another. Every week doesn’t have to be exceptional, just well lived… well lived, not poorly wasted.

It’s fun to plan ahead for the future, but the time to enjoy life is now! Because we really don’t know how many weeks we have left, and so each week we do have is precious.

Retirement horizon

Last night I went to our district principal’s retirement celebration. This was the first time I went to this yearly event while actually thinking about my own retirement on the horizon. I still have at least a few more years to go, but I have to say that seeing this event from the lens of my own retirement was a unique experience.

I don’t know what I’ll do with my time when I retire, but talking to the retired folk at last night’s celebration, not too many of them seem to feel they have more time on their hands than they know what to do with. I know I won’t fully retire, I will find some way to continue working, even if it’s just dedicating more time to writing.

What I do know is that I still see things I can do to make a difference in my current job, and looming retirement or not, I have a job to do and it takes effort to do it well. Still, it’s fun to dream about what the next adventure could hold, and I’m looking forward to that horizon a little more than I have in the past.

Watching Ted Lasso

My wife and I were late to get started. All of our friends were watching and telling us how great the series was but the idea of an American Football coach going to England to coach soccer real football seemed pretty silly. But finally our friends talked us into it. Since it was already late into season 2, we were able to binge watch a lot of episodes in a row. And that’s exactly what we did.

My wife and I don’t watch a lot of shows together, mostly because she gets tired of waiting for me to join her in front of the television. I will go through long stints where I really don’t watch much at all. But Ted Lasso hooked me right in. The humour is so well written. The characters are absolutely wonderful, and the show has a way of being endearingly wonderful, and ‘feel good’ without being cliché.

It went from a show I hesitated to begin watching to one that is an all time favourite. You don’t have to be a sports fan, you will find yourself rooting for the characters more than the team. That’s what makes this show so great… it’s filled with characters you want to see succeed, and even when they don’t the show is heartwarming and funny.

This was easily one of my favourite television escapes in a very long time.

Live music

Last night I went to listen to Michaela Slinger sing live. Putting aside that I’m too old to go out on a school night, it was a fabulous show! Some musicians sound great on their album but not as well on stage, and some like Michaela can do both exceptionally well.

My favourite song is Petty Things, which is actually a sad song about a couple drifting slowly out of love, rather than the relationship ending “with a crash and a bang”. Listening to it live, it’s just Michaela and her guitar and some wonderful audience participation. I think this song would work well in a venue with 20 people or a venue with over 20,000. It’s a song made to be listened to live.

I’m someone who has very eclectic taste in music. My first concert was the heavy rock band Deep Purple in a large auditorium. My next concert was the bluesy Buddy Guy in a tiny downtown Toronto venue. This coming September I’m going to hear the electronic new-age band Tangerine Dream, who originally started in the late 60’s. The only thing these performers have in common is that they play music. And although I am not an avid concert goer, I have to say that I really love listening to good live music… I just think I’ll have to stick to weekends, and leave the midweek nights out to folks a little younger than me.