Author Archives: David Truss

A global community

One love, one heart 
Let’s get together and feel all right. ~ Bob Marley

I used to think that we would reach a time in my lifetime where we could all be seen first and foremost as citizens of the world. That people would eventually be able to get a global passport and travel with a universal identity as global citizens. It was naive, but I thought it would happen.

With the rise of social media, I thought we were getting closer. I saw how social media extended the reach of individuals to find others of similar minds and interests. The internet extended our reach and our ability to understand others, whether they thought like us or not.

But while understanding our differences can help us see that we really are more alike than we think, differences in core values separate us further. Religions divide us more than anything else. That’s ironic and sad. Faith in a higher being sectionalizes humanity into narrow groupings that undermine our ability to focus on the well-being of our global community.

What would it take to go beyond the divisiveness of religious dogmatism?

What would help us see that as a species we have more to gain from being cooperative rather than confrontational?

What could bring us all together as a global community of citizens that care for our species and our world?

I fear that people will try with tyranny before they try with love.

Salvador Dali - clock

Fast and Slow

How is it that time seems to go by really slowly day-by-day, but months and years seem to just race on? I recently celebrated my 53rd birthday. As a kid, 53 was old. Ancient.

My youngest daughter turns 19 in a couple months. How did that happen so quickly? It sounds cliche, but where did the time go?

I heard an interesting perspective on time recently: When you are 12, 4 years of your life is 1/3 (33.3%} of your life, that’s so long! When you are 52, 4 years of your life is 1/13 (7.7%) of your life… much less significant. The older you get, the less significant a set amount of time is relative to how long you’ve lived.

Time doesn’t just march on, it marches on at ever increasing speeds. It’s up to us to slow it down by making our days worth living. What will you do to enjoy life today, rather than just let that time slip by into an ever-decreasing amounts of significance?

Decision-making before retweeting

This is far from a comprehensive survey, but I asked and 83 people responded.

     Survey results are anonymous, so please be honest: I usually retweet/share links:
     If I like the title.                      3.6%
     If I trust the source.             25.3%
     After skimming content.    16.9%
     After reading content.        54.2%
     83 votes Total

 

I think that the people in my network probably slant towards more cautious thought before sharing, compared to a more random selection in a larger survey. That said, I’m often surprised when I see someone retweet something I shared in a shorter timespan than it would take to read the article I linked to. My guess as to why? ‘I like the message of the title and I trust Dave to share something good.’

Think about these results, what if anything do they say about the reliability of information being shared on social media?

the office zoo

It goes without saying, yet here I am saying it… This is a complete work of FICTION. No real people inspired these characters, and no animals were harmed in the making of this story. 

the office zoo

The Rhinoceros: You are grateful he isn’t your boss. He was definitely a gym rat or a football player in his youth but the majority of his bulk is now focused around his 47 inch waist. You aren’t convinced that his steroid use didn’t permanently damage his brain. He angers easily and nothing that goes wrong is ever his fault. You’d hate him more if he was incompetent but despite his bluster and blame, he gets enough done to never let any problems fall on him. But despite his average performance, he still finds ways to brag and be a bully. While he doesn’t bully you, you know it’s only because you stood your ground with him once, very publicly, and that was enough to scare this loud coward from trying again. The Sloth isn’t so lucky, he is teased relentlessly and accepts the taunts passively. You know Rhinoceros would be an ass to work for, and despite him not pointing his anger and mean-heartedness towards you, you are sure that your equal stature in the organization is probably the only reason he is tolerable to be around.

The Sloth: Everything he does is… slow… and… calculated. You sat with him at lunch once. Once. It took him almost 3 minutes to prepare to eat. First he had to remove his sandwiches from wax paper, wrapped with neater corners than a military hospital bed. Who still uses wax paper to wrap sandwiches? He slowly placed the four triangular, half sandwich pieces, crust neatly cut off, symmetrically on his plate. Then, from his 1960’s styled lunch box, he pulled out and opened his vegetable container filled lengthwise with exact-sized celery and carrots sticks, with a width-long row of skin-removed cucumbers on one end. He took a moment to move a carrot stick that had shifted over the stack of celery. Then he opened his flask and carefully poured out some hot coffee-stain-coloured milk. Next he lay out cutlery and a napkin. He used a knife and fork to eat his quartered sandwich pieces. You were done your meal before he was a third done his, despite your trying to slow down. As an employee, he works equally as slow. In the two years since he was hired, you have yet to arrive at or leave the office before him. That he has never been late to complete a job has simply been a matter of the extra time Sloth is willing to put into his work. You find yourself trying to remember what he is wearing at the end of the day, wondering if he even went home, or if he just spent the entire night working.

The Giraffe: The long neck is metaphorical. She seems to be able to extend herself into every conversation, and she grazes on gossip, constantly chewing on any new shrubs of information she can get a hold of. Wherever she goes, she takes the water cooler conversation with her. You know she talks about you, but you brought that on yourself. Fed up with her coming to you with gossip,  you intentionally fed her three tidbits of fabricated, juicy and cleverly vague scandals. After denying or clarifying ‘that’s not quite what I said’ for the third time, you proved to be completely unreliable and a waste of her time. You are thankful she no longer brings the water cooler to you, although you are certain that those conversations include some very exaggerated lies about everything from your sex life to your financial status. It always amazes you that anyone would ever share anything confidential with the Giraffe, yet somehow she’s always drawing a crowd, like flies to a dead animal.

The Mocking Jay: He’s gay. This matters less to those around him than it matters to him. If he had a name badge he would find a way to add this information to it. It’s his identity before you know his name. He is loud, flamboyant, and very funny as long as you aren’t the brunt of his jokes. He mocks anyone he doesn’t like behind their backs, and although you think he likes you, you aren’t certain he doesn’t mock you behind your back too. If he is anywhere near the Giraffe, you see others congregating, some out of interest in the gossip, others for fear of being the target if they are not present. You are convinced that his scathing sense of humour is a defence mechanism, and you are a bit sad for him because without this mask you think he’d be a genuinely nice Jay. He isn’t. He decides within seconds if someone is worth his time and energy and his version of a cold shoulder is so icy it literally changes the temperature of the air, so much so that it leaves others with goosebumps. You get the chills any time you see him with Peacock.

The Peacock: She is the definition of eye candy. She has a perfectly symmetrical, beautiful face of a movie star, hourglass body that does not look cosmetically enhanced, yet leaves you guessing because it is so flawless. She is so gorgeous she is hard to look at for men and women alike. When she meets someone she immediately puts them into one of three categories. First, a pretty female who can become part of her peafowl pride. Second, a handsome male that she can flirt with. And the third group she seems to put in to a generic ‘other’ category that’s simply not worth her time. You belong in this category and she pays you no mind. Mocking Jay and Peacock will exclude all others from time to time but pretty men and women desperately try to belong with them, to be in the ‘in group’. While part of you can’t stand the cliquey high school cheerleader/jock feel of this animal flock, another part of you secretly wants to be in it.

The Hyena: With an unmistakable laugh this lone Hyena is heard long before seen. He can’t even greet you without the laugh escaping his lips, “So how are you today-hey-he-he-ha?” He’s so damn jolly it hurts. His annoying laugh even came out when Giraffe told us about her father’s death. While it was purely nerves with no malice, Giraffe has scorned Hyena ever since. You know he’s lonely, no one can tolerate being around him for too long. It’s like Winnie the Pooh mated with the laughing Buddha and birthed Andy Bernard with a penchant for laughing rather than singing. He scrounges around the office looking for a conversation to feed on, but shortly after arriving he tries to feed on what was said, and his annoying laugh sends everyone away. Mocking Jay and Peacock have a standing agreement to phone each other as an excuse to leave the conversation any time they see the other talking to Hyena.

The Lioness: Sometimes Queen and sometimes King, the Lioness is a boss with a bipolar personality. She is at her best as Queen, ruling with her heart and exuding the presence of a firm but fair mother taking care of her pride. But then she tries to be King, and out come the teeth, claws, and ferocious roar. She doesn’t need these, and it seems she doesn’t like to show this side of her personality. Yet somehow, deep down, she believes being the boss demands the regular appearance of an angry King. It’s as if stress triggers a response that injects toxic masculinity into her frontal lobe and testosterone replaces serotonin. You’ve given up trying to figure out which ruler she’ll be at any given moment of any day, and so you always prepare for the angry King, while hoping for the benevolent Queen.

The Human: That’s you. A self-righteous, judgemental asshole who thinks they are better than every other animal in the office zoo.

The speed of change

Yesterday I was having a conversation with my colleague, Dave Sands, Principal of Technology Implementation in our district. He shared some good news that our 14th and final middle school in the district is becoming a BYOD – Bring Your Own Device school. This is a great accomplishment for our district. It starts with ensuring the infrastructure is in place. Next, teacher technology, capacity, and readiness are essential, and finally there needs to be support for families that can not afford their own technology. This takes time.

In the conversation I remembered a presentation that I did in 2009 at the Building Learning Communities conference in Boston titled “The POD’s are Coming!”

In the presentation I said, the seed of this presentation started with a conversation and a blog post. Here is what I said in an October 2008 post:

“PODs. We are about 5 years away from most of our students bringing PODs to school, Personally Owned Devices. I’m talking about pervasive access to laptops and iPhone-like devices in our schools. Every kid coming to school with more capability in their pockets and hands than most teachers have on their desk right now.

So in the presentation in July 2009, 9 months later, I said that we were 4 years away from this happening. I was wrong. It took 7 years longer than I thought.

When I look back now, I can see that we weren’t ready for this in 2013. The infrastructure was barely there, there was a lot of fear around the use of technology in the classroom because of the distraction (and disruption) technology causes, and teachers were not ready to lead the charge.

I know many other districts aren’t where we are, and yet we were 7 years slower than what I imagined was possible. Progress and change happen slower than we expect in schools. However, in the world we live in now, 7 years is an eternity to be behind doing what’s possible.

We will need schools to be far more agile in the future.

What students remember

What students forget:

  • The Krebs cycle
  • Historical facts
  • How to solve quadratic equations
  • The homework they did
  • Answers on tests
  • Worksheets
  • Teachers who will forget them

What students remember:

  • Teachers who will remember them
  • Teachers who listened
  • Teachers that made them laugh
  • Teachers who were passionate about teaching
  • Teachers who didn’t give up on them
  • Friends
  • Engaging projects
  • Sports and clubs

These lists are not extensive… but they are the inspiration for a question: What will students remember about school during the 2020-2021 pandemic?

Teachers have it tough right now. Students too. More than ever teachers need to focus on teaching students, not subjects.

Yesterday I saw an article with a title like, ‘Study shows students are months behind in reading skills due to remote learning.’ Squeezing one more book into the year won’t change that. Showing students a passion for reading will.

Focus on students… and they will remember you, and what you taught them, for all the right reasons.

Vaccinated from the truth

It’s great to see that the Russian coronavirus vaccine is showing very positive results. And both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines look equally as promising. Like many other vaccines before these, the side effects seem insignificant, and that holds a lot of promise for 2021 getting off to a great start.

This is refreshing news after I spent a bit of time going down a dark rabbit hole of links about conspiracy theories and end of days religious idiocy last night. I don’t usually follow these paths, but I got a spam message that was so ludicrous in claims that I had to check it out for pure entertainment value.

The claims were everything from technology like this being secretly added to vaccines to monitor you, to God speaking directly to people about the divinity of Donald Trump, to signs of the apocalypse and the end of the world. What blew me away was how these completely different narratives would cross over and interconnect. Every crazy idea added fuel to the next crazy idea. It wasn’t enough to hold one conspiratorial idea, they had to be connected and somehow one ‘proved’ that the other was ‘real’.

I dug around in this rabbit hole and what I saw was videos with thousands of likes, where the lines between a kernel of truth and delusional lies was nonexistent. It was hard to grasp where reality ended and bat-shit-crazy fantasy began. There seemed to be random moments where new ‘theories’ just jumped out and ‘proved’ some other unrelated stupidity. For example, a video talking about how vaccines are being used, (by elites in a conspiratorial cabal led by Bill Gates), to input instruments of the devil in you, then shifted to how your DNA is being altered by Chemtrails that make you think less about God. My imagination is pretty good, but I couldn’t fathom trying to make these connections up.

And through these crazy narratives one thing seems to prevail: that the world is conspiring to take away personal liberties. These people will not get vaccinated, no matter how safe and reliable the vaccine might be. They are already vaccinated from truth.

Family and comfort food

Last night we made me mother’s Spanish rice. It’s a funny recipe to follow. It was given to me over the phone, more than 20 years ago. It is written on the back of a used envelope and it doesn’t have any measurements on it. It’s just a list of ingredients with a curly bracket to indicate which ingredients to cook on the stovetop first, before the rice is baked in a dish.

I’ve never made it exactly the same. This time my wife started it and I finished it, and it was only after I got it all in the baking dish that I realized that I forgot a key ingredient. Back into the stovetop it went to mix this ingredient in… it still tasted wonderful. My daughter loved it, and said it’s one of her favourite home cooked meals. I said the sane to my mom at her age. It’s the quintessential comfort food for our family.

It’s funny how recipes get passed down; how families share food like traditions. My grandmother on my dad’s side is the best cook I’ve ever met, and she never used a measuring cup or spoon. Following her recipes was impossible. My mom would watch her and take notes, but could not master her dishes like granny. And granny’s repertoire was incredible. A Chinese decent Guyanese who married a Jew, she could make dishes from three distinct cultures, or fuse dishes and flavours with the expertise of an alchemist.

Everything she made was a favourite. I remember staying over with her once and she asked me in the morning if I wanted an omelette. I said ‘sure’ and she went to the kitchen to cook. 20 minutes later I heard her say in her thick West Indian accent, “Ehh-Ehh!” I asked what’s wrong and she said, “Ah, don’ have any eggs!” I had the stir-fried ingredients on toast and, despite the lack of eggs, it was one of the best omelettes I ever had!

It’s wonderful how we can be comforted by food, and how certain dishes can take us back to our childhood.

Five to Eight Percent

When I think about the modern company with shareholders, I can’t help but think that this system is designed to undermine ethical and environmental progress. There are companies laying off workers right now while providing shareholders huge dividends and returns. The system is flawed. These returns help drive the company stock price up at the expense of ethically growing the company… instead of helping workers keep their job and keep their wages fair in comparison to what shareholders get

What if companies promised shareholders a maximum of a 5%-8% return? Any company profits beyond that are invested back into the company, towards employees, and/or towards environmental or community initiatives. If this were the case, companies would still have the same commitment to meet shareholders targets, but those targets wouldn’t be based on greed. Instead they would be focussed on doing the most good.

I’m not an economist and don’t know all the ins and outs of how this would work? I don’t know what the magic return percentage should be? But I do know that the current model is based on greed and unsustainable growth. If companies capped shareholder returns at a safe investment amount, and promised to do good with what would have been more returns, I think there would still be a market for the stocks… And these companies could help make the world a better place.

Voice and choice

This was my Facebook memory from 3 years ago:

Spent well over 15hrs at work today and came home totally pumped! Students rocked their presentations at our open house tonight.

The whole event exceeded my expectations, starting with about 240 people coming (more than I had reservations or seats for), and ending with students interviewing each other with questions from the audience.

It is simply amazing what student’s can do when they are given voice & choice, and they are provided with time to explore their passions and publicly share them.

Congratulations to our Inquiry Hub students, you were amazing school ambassadors today!

I’ve been thinking and writing about giving students choice, voice, and an authentic audience for over a decade now. And, I’ll always remember this night as the night I really saw it fully come to life.

Everything about this open house went amazing. The only challenges where parking, and adding more seats to the gym. The students did 90% of the planning and executed a seamless event with perfect sound and incredible presentations that opened people’s eyes to what’s possible when students feel empowered in a school.

The best part of the night was watching students interviewing students about their inquiry projects. Our students got to share what kinds of projects they do, designed by them, to follow their passions and interests as part of their school day. This is the real strength of what we do at Inquiry Hub.

There are students just like ours in every school. The difference is, in many other schools, students spend their days following a pattern of going class to class and doing what the teacher tells them to do. Yes, some of those things teachers ask them to do are amazing. But students seldom get a part of their day to choose what they want to work on. Students seldom get to design their own learning on a topic of their choice.

What we’ve learned as educators at Inquiry Hub is that to do this, students need scaffolding and support, working on progressively bigger projects. Students need assistance with time management and being self directed. And students need to try, fail, learn, and grow.

Whenever I hear a senior student at Inquiry Hub talk about their projects, they talk about being fearless learners who aren’t afraid to fail along the way. They will often do this while telling a story about something others would consider a huge success, but to them there was still more to do, or aspects of the project not yet achieved. This resilience only comes when students feel they have voice and choice in their learning, and this open house three years ago told me that we were finally achieving the kind of student empowerment we were hoping to achieve when we started the school.