Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
I recently revived my podcast. I’ve had conversations with Kelly Christopherson, Jonathan Sclater, Joe Truss, and Dave Sands. Because of COVID-19, I can’t sit next to people to interview them for my podcast. I couldn’t do that for Kelly in Saskatchewan or Joe in California anyway, but for sure that would have been the preferred approach to interview Jonathan and Dave. For all 4 of these interviews I used Zoom, and Dave and I were talking last week about the idea of also putting the podcast out on video. So, here it is, my podcast with Dave Sands in video form.
Description: This is the video version of Podcasting Pair-a-Dimes #28 with David Truss. My guest is Principal Dave Sands. We discuss 7 tips to help parents, who are supporting their kids learning at home (as a result of remote learning due to COVID-19). The 7 tips are:
Manage Expectations
Make a Schedule
Minimize Distractions
Learning occurs everywhere
Set daily and weekly goals
All screen time is not created equal
Model learning.
I think this topic is relevant almost everywhere in the world right now, and I believe that we discussed some great tips for parent, not only when dealing with their kids learning at home, but also in general to support their kids success at school.
I very rarely read or listen to a book, or watch a movie more than once. Atomic Habits is a book that I listened to twice. I also subscribe to James Clear‘s 3-2-1 weekly email, one of only 3 weekly email lists that I subscribe to. I listen to James last night on the Sam Harris podcast and stopped long enough to tweet this quote:
“A habit is not a finish line to be crossed, it’s a lifestyle to be lived.” ~ James Clear
My daily writing and meditation, my workout routine, my getting back into podcasting (trying to produce/create creative work)… these are habits I have developed or am developing. They don’t have an end goal. They don’t have a place where I can land and say, ‘Yes! I have arrived!“:
“A habit is not a finish line to be crossed, it’s a lifestyle to be lived.”
This is a time when more than ever we have an opportunity to do things for ourselves. I haven’t found my work schedule to be any less hectic at the moment. I still bring things home and fill my mind with the things I need to accomplish that don’t get done in a day. But I have more time at home to do things I felt I didn’t have time for previously.
It’s a Saturday, and after writing this, I’ll meditate. I meditate after writing because when I meditate first, I get stuck thinking about my writing and my mind is too distracted to meditate. So, I reward myself after publicly sharing my writing with 10 minutes of ‘me time’… a simple way to connect two habits and make them easier to do. I’ll work out, and at some point today and I’ll play with making my last podcast with Dave Sands into a video podcast. This is something new that I want to play with. The first video will take a while, since I need to create a reusable intro. But, since I need to interview people from a distance, and Zoom creates a video recording, it seems like a natural progression from sound recordings only… and it’s creative… and it’s fun… and it makes me use my brain in a creative way, unlike Netflix or Crave.
People set goals all the time, but as James Clear says, goals aren’t enough. Every competitive athlete at the Olympics has a goal of winning gold, only one of them will achieve this. But the habits we build into our lives, those become the lifestyle we live, they don’t lead to a finish line target, they lead to a life well lived.
My wife, Ann, teaches a grade 4/5 class in our community. Yesterday at 4pm, while she was still working from home, a parade of cars started honking their horns. About 20 cars, driven by the parents of her students, slowly drove by with Ann’s students waving and holding signs.
I was given some advanced notice that this was happening and was home to make sure Ann went outside when the horns started. I shared some video live on Twitter:
But the quality of the video was quite poor. Luckily my kids and I captured more video and shared some on Facebook.
This was a wonderful gesture that brought tears to all of our eyes (my kids too). I actually had to tell Ann to pull herself together after they passed by because I knew they were turning around and driving by again. This allowed Ann to really enjoy the moment and thank the families as they drove by, since she was overwhelmingly surprised during the first drive-by.
Remote learning has been really challenging for students and parents, and it has also been challenging for our teachers. This gesture was heartwarming and so special. This was a moment our whole whole family will remember and cherish.
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Thanks to all the teachers out there who are giving their best, and caring for their students, as they face the challenge of teaching from a distance. I’ve seen some wonderful ways that teachers have gone above and beyond to connect with their students at this time, and they deserve to be recognized for doing such an amazing job during these challenging circumstance. Thank you teachers, principals, and support staff!
I like to think that most people come at life with good intentions. I give people the benefit of the doubt that they are positive, honest, and want an outcome that is favourable for themselves and others.
Upset? Intentions were not met.
Angry? Someone else’s intentions did not match yours.
Hurt? Someone’s intentions were blind to your injury.
When someone does these things intentionally, well then I have to question where this came from? Sometimes selfishness blinds people to the way their intentions can harm others. Sometimes there is actual malice. There are people in the world that enjoy inflicting harm and pain, people who derive joy from being a bully, or who don’t care about others. But this is a minority of people.
Most people want to have positive experiences, and share those positive experiences with others. Sometimes though, they don’t have a road map to get there. This gets tricky sometimes, especially when more than two people are involved.
Trying to meet the needs of three different people can be a bit like playing rock/paper/scissors with three people. Sometimes all three will agree, but often there will be either two feeling like they came out good, and one disappointed, or vice versa, and occasionally all three will feel like they have lost something.
A good example of this can be a parent, teacher, and student meeting where they are dealing with a concern. The positive intentions are for everyone to leave the meeting on the same page, having addressed the concern in a positive way. On some level, everyone at the meeting wants the same thing… for the student to have a better learning experience. But that intention can be lost. Instead, the it becomes a game of rock/paper/scissors with three participants.
That’s when it’s important to go back to good intentions, and to focus on what people want to achieve. If anyone is upset, angry, or feels hurt, then it’s time to realign intentions. This isn’t necessarily easy, but when you start from a place where you believe that everyone has good intentions, it does make things easier… and more likely to end with a positive outcome.
There are many families trying to create prom and grad experiences for their graduating kids. There are photo shoots happening in back yards and parks, minus the limos and groups of friends congregating at fancy halls and decorated school gyms.
I’m the parent of a Grade 12 student. Tonight was supposed to be opening night of her school play. She was to be Morticia in The Addams Family. We’re ordering in and having a family game night.
I don’t remember crossing the stage for my Grade 12 grad. I remember that I had an operation to fix my broken nose around that time, but I don’t remember missing my convocation for this, I don’t remember anything about it at all. Strange. I remember my grad dinner/dance. It was a fun night, but it isn’t something I cherish.
But my last water polo game I’d ever play in high school wasn’t cancelled. I wasn’t in band, choir, or musical theatre, and I didn’t miss my last performance. I got to walk the halls on the last days of school with my yearbook, getting it signed by friends and acquaintances.
It won’t necessarily be an easy end of the year for our high school grads. No matter how graduation is celebrated, it won’t be what was expected, what was being looked forward to. It’s up to the adults to step up and make it special. Plans might be disrupted, but we can still make events positively memorable.
7 years ago we had a community day at Inquiry Hub Secondary when 3 students organized the construction of our school garden. It was a wonderful day filled with food, family, and community support. But mostly it was about students showing pride in their school. Everything was organized by the students and the event was a complete success.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how empty the school feels these days. Students are working from home, and our garden is empty when this is the time it is usually thriving. It made me think about how some students thrive while others don’t.
…between
those that easily thrive
and
those that need to survive.
This has made me think about the inequality of what students deal with, in a metaphorical sense of a garden.
Some students are given every opportunity to grow… they are raised in a home like a garden filled with fertilizer, and they are given all the nutrients to not only sustain themselves, but to thrive.
Some students have a patch of dirt rather than a garden, and the elements support them sometimes, and sometimes the conditions are harsh.
Some students have parents and teachers who are good gardeners that know how to foster health and growth.
Some students have parents and teachers who are frustrated by their lack of growth and unaware as to how to foster healthy development.
Some students grow like weeds, regardless of the conditions and environment.
Many other students depend on those conditions, and can strive or just survive depending on how they are nurtured.
Schools aren’t perfect, but we can do a lot at schools to help give every student an opportunity to grow. We can be the wards of the community garden sustaining every child, and doing what we can to help them thrive.
Students are learning from home, but are schools still nurturing our students in the same way? Are we just giving them sustenance, or are we fostering opportunities to blossom?
Documented worldwide cases of Covid-19 have surpassed 3 million people. The US will surpass 1 million of those later today. Canada will surpass 50,000 this week. And sadly, over 200,000 people have died as a result of contracting this virus.
Canada and California are similar in population size, both are doing a good job keeping the number of people infected down, and both are still dealing with 1,000 to 1,500+ new cases a day.
The good news, hospitals here on the North American west coast are not inundated like they have been in Italy, Spain, and New York. The challenging news, we are not out of the woods yet and diligence must be maintained… especially as we move to reopen parts of the economy.
I’m no longer making predictions about what things will look like in the coming weeks and months… the virus isn’t a weather system coming in from the west and bringing rainfall. It has a life of its own. While we have considerable influence as a community, and as citizens who want to keep the spread of the virus down, we also have to respond to new outbreaks and change our habits as suggested by health authorities.
It will be a dance… Opening things up, tightening things up, closing things down, permitting small gatherings, and then recommendations against them. The numbers will dictate what makes sense. And while that’s easy to say, as we do the dance, it will feel like the songs aren’t staying on long enough for us to get used to the rhythm.
It won’t feel like things are normal for quite some time. And that’s not the new normal, that’s a level of stress and uncertainty that will loom for a while. I was trying to avoid paying attention to the numbers, but I realize now that they are something tangible that I can pay attention to. I can see patterns, and try to understand why we are getting the provincial and federal health and social distancing advice that we are getting.
The numbers aren’t complete, they don’t tell the whole story, but they tell us when things are headed in the right versus the wrong direction. Whether they grow incrementally or exponentially, they tell us a story, and we should be aware of when that story changes… and be prepared for new changes to our rules of social and work engagement when they do.
I remember a trip to the Cayman Islands with my dad. We were on the small island of Cayman Brac and we hired a boat to take us to see a shoreline that my dad wanted to explore. The boat wasn’t very big, under 25 feet long, and not designed for anything more than a day trip. The captain was a short, old man with a weathered, leathery face that made him look over 100 years old. He was letting me troll for marlin while we travelled. The waves were choppy, the boat bounced and swayed, and I had to keep my eyes on the horizon to keep from getting sea sick.
At one point I caught a barracuda and after I reeled it up to the boat, I couldn’t get it over the edge of the boat without standing up from my chair. The movement of the boat set me on my ass before I could take two steps towards the stern. The old sea captain put my dad’s hand on the steering wheel and pointed forward. He then walked to me, as sure-footed as if he were a young athlete on a flat track, picked me off the deck and helped me back into the seat. He then took my rod, walked back to the stern and got the fish into the boat. All the while, the boat bounced in the rough seas and this captain casually made tiny little shuffle-step movements with his feet, keeping himself perfectly balanced. This ancient-looking man had sea legs, he was as comfortable with the motion of the sea under his feet as we are on land.
This is my twenty second year as an educator and for the first time in years I feel like I’ve lost my ‘sea legs’. I’m struggling to find my balance. I’ve struggled with work load, and time management, and work-life balance before – I think all committed educators do – but this is different.
I recently discussed with Dave Sands that, “All screen time is not created equal,” but this is where I’m losing my balance. Beyond a daily walk, I’m spending every moment of my time in my school office or at home. During this time, I’m spending a fair bit more time online. When I’m at work, there is a constant flow of video conferences that interrupt any sense of work flow for my other tasks, and so days are very busy, but don’t always feel productive.
My online time at home flows from distraction, to entertainment, to work, to creating and writing, to news, back to work, and then back to news or distraction, with a daily workout thrown in. Recently, I’ve missed workouts, I’ve missed my daily meditation (3 times this month), I’ve spent more time writing (without writing much more than I usually do), and my focus seems scattered.
I need to rework my daily routine during this pandemic. It feels difficult because there is a constant flow of information that keeps shifting what things look like at work. There is also ever-changing news about how our social distancing expectations will change going forward. Metaphorically, the waves keep churning, and I’m struggling to keep my balance on the boat. I don’t have my sea legs. I’m going to rethink and reintroduce some of my routines that have worked for me before, and see if I can steady myself a bit.
It was 5 years ago yesterday. I remember the exact day because it’s not every day that a DeLorean appears out of nowhere, flying down your street. There was a thunderous ‘crack’ that echoed through the neighbourhood, and I opened the front door in time to hear the soft rumble of the flying car hovering above our street. It landed and turned into my driveway. The x-wing shaped door on the driver side opened up and I was shocked when none other than Emmett Lathrop “Doc” Brown, Ph.D, came springing out of the car, heading directly for me.
Doc: Are you Dave Truss?
Me: Ummm, yeah.
Doc: I’ve got a USB zip drive, can I use your computer.
Not waiting for a response, he rushed through the door, passing me and headed into my living room. He stood there dishevelled, holding a key chain with a zip drive dangling along with a couple keys next to it.
Me: OK, um, this way.
I lead him to my dining room table, placed my computer between us, logged in and pointed the keyboard closer to him. He shoved the zip drive into the USB slot on my computer. He seemed rushed.
Doc: I’m going to show you something. It’s from the future. Five years from now there is going to be a pandemic as bad the 1918 Spanish Flu and President Donald Trump is…
Me: Wait, what? Donald Trump is President… of what?
Doc: The USA! I tell you there’s going to be a global pandemic in 5 years and that’s what you ask me?
Me: Sorry, I thought you were being serious.
Doc: I am! Shut up and let me finish. President Donald Trump, he makes things a lot worse, I mean A LOT WORSE. But you can stop it.
Me: You are pranking me. I’m on Candid Camera, right? Who put you up to this? Where are the cameras? Those aren’t real goggles are they? You’re hiding a camera in them, aren’t you?
I reach for the goggles on his head and he pulls away.
Doc: Listen, the fate of the world is in your hands, did you not see the video I just showed you, it’s from 5 years into the future, your future, and…
Me: …and it’s a skit from Saturday Night Live!
Doc: What?
Me: Or a sitcom? Or from Late Night with Seth Meyers… it’s a comedy skit. It’s funny, made me laugh. Good one.
Doc: No! No-no-no, this is the future. This is going to happen in 5 years. This is your future, and you can change it.
Me: You’re funny.
Doc: …Your’s an idiot, do you not understand the seriousness of what I’m telling you.
Me: Are you really trying to tell me that ridiculous video is from the future? …And you want me to take you seriously?
Doc: YES!
Me: Hey Doc, if that’s “The Future”, come back and find me then, and I’ll give you a million bucks.
Doc: I don’t want your money, I need your help!
Me: Well I don’t think you are getting either. I think it’s time for you to reveal the Candid Camera cameras, and let’s both have a laugh, or it’s time for you to leave.
Doc: Unbelievable.
Me: Exactly.
Setting the stage for Part 2: April 24th, 2020
Yesterday: I arrived home from work, parked my car and started walking up my front steps… Then it happened. It had been 5 years, but the sound was unmistakable. There was a thunderous ‘crack’ that echoed through the neighbourhood, followed by the rumble of the flying DeLorean, hovering above our street. The car lands and turns up my driveway. The driver side x-wing door opens and a not-too-impressed Doc greets me.
Doc: Hello David…
End.
____
“There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong.” ― Neil Gaiman
Nobody told me there’d be days like these Nobody told me there’d be days like these Nobody told me there’d be days like these Strange days indeed — strange days indeed
If you go back to the end of 2019 and made predictions of the future, there’s no way you would imagine the situation we are in. Imagine going back in time 5 years and taking a newspaper with you. Let’s make that 50 years, and describe something as ‘simple’ as a cell phone.
I remember seeing this commercial and marvelling at what people would have thought to hear such a prediction.
I’ve been humbled by world events recently. I tend to be someone who is confident about my opinion but I don’t feel like I can talk with any sort of authority about what the world will look like in six months. I have no idea where we will be in the fight to contain Covid-19? I don’t know what school will look like on a day-to-day basis? I couldn’t intelligently guess who will win the US federal election?
I read news articles and they are filled with bias. I often fact check things before I share them. I actually spend time calling out friends when they share misinformation. I see clever, comedic articles like this:
And I wonder just how many people will share them, thinking they are real?
There are days when news seems more fiction than reality. I foolishly thought that in the Information Age, the information available would be accurate. I think it’s funny that people used to worry about Wikipedia being inaccurate, and now it’s the first place I go to confirm facts. I didn’t think I’d regularly use Snopes to fact check articles before sharing them. I didn’t think people of authority would call news they didn’t like fake, and that I’d consider major news agencies propaganda pushers. I didn’t think science would take a back seat to bizarre, unfounded theories. If you went back in time a decade and played a clip like this one, nobody would believe this is anything more than comedy… Pure satire.
These are very strange days indeed… and I don’t see them getting less strange any time soon.
