Author Archives: David Truss

School 2020

I used to think I had a good handle on where things were going. What does the end of the school year look like? What will September start-up look like? All this is out the window.

An online grad/annual celebration in June? Never would have guessed that was coming, I had a theatre booked for the occasion.

Students sitting socially distant from each other? I don’t have more than 4 single desks in the whole school.

There is a lot to think about with respect to the coming school year. How will the year start? How often in a week will students attend? How much will be taught from a distance? Who will struggle and who will thrive in this new environment?

We will adapt. We will make it work. But making it work isn’t enough over a sustained period. It’s one thing to ‘make it work’ for the last 3 months of a school year, and yet another for that to be your plan for a full year.

As busy as June is, it’s also a time to be creative. September 2020 will be here sooner than we think, and school will not be what it has been in the past. We need to create opportunities for students not just to survive the year, but for them to thrive.

One December 31st, 2019 I picked my #OneWord2020 to be Resilience… I don’t think I could have picked a better word!

Some are more equal

It has been years since I read Animal Farm, but this quote comes to mind now:

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” ~ George Orwell

And this idea reminds me of an image that differentiates equality from equity:

On the left side of the image, some people are ‘more equal’. On the right is the equity that all people deserve. When people counter #BlackLivesMatter with #AllLivesMatter, they completely miss the point that if you believe that ‘All Lives Matter’, then fundamentally you care about equity and not equality. At the core of all lives mattering is living in a just world where everyone can thrive. That’s not the world we live in. ‘Black Lives Matter’ does not negate all lives mattering, it changes the conversation from equality to equity.

In Animal Farm the rebellion starts out with the idea that ‘All animals are equal’, but the idea of equality is corrupted by power and privilege, and this phrase is switched to ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’

‘More equal’ today comes out of privilege for some, it comes out of systemic prejudice, it comes out of unequal opportunity. Equity is about making things more fair and equitable, not taking away anyone else’s equality.

Do all lives matter? The answer is: They all should matter, yes, but right now they do not matter with any equity. If you believe that all lives matter, then ultimately you should support #BlackLivesMatter… If you truly care about living in an equitable and just world.

Weird dreams

I have this weird thing about my dreams that I don’t think I’ve known to be true for anyone else. I almost never dream of people that I see on a regular basis in my waking hours. It is very rare for my wife, or kids, or my current coworkers to be in any of my dreams that I remember having.

That’s kind of weird. I often dream of friends and family members I have not seen in years. But if I have a rare dream of someone close to me, it’s usually a shallow, not quite awake dream about something I’m thinking/worried about. Beyond these rare occasions, the people that are usually in my dreams are almost always from my past, or strangers.

The other thing about my dreams is that when I wake up in the middle of the night, I tend to go back to my dream even if I don’t like the situation I’m in. I might feel relief that it was only a dream, and think that I’m glad I’m up and can forget the dream, but then I go back to it anyway. Last night was one of those nights.

I was dreaming that this man and woman were spying on me. I knew they were spies, and that they had guns, and I spent most of the dream trying to lose them. At least three times last night I woke up from within this dream and the stress of being (slowly) chased by armed spies was something that made me feel relieved that I could stop. But each time I went back to sleep I was thrust into this same dream again. The spies followed me, they pretended they were not, I tried to lose them. At one point I double backed and spied on them. At another point I booby trapped their weapons stash to blow up if they tried to get to their weapons, but they never triggered my trap. Even after waking up with resolve to end the dream, I’d go back into it again,

Those are my silly stress dreams. Dumb plots, unrelated to any real stresses, with people I don’t know, or people who visit me from my distant past.

I know dreams are supposed to be weird. But does anyone else dream void of people regularly in their lives? Does anyone else keep going back to dreams even after they wake up relieved that they were only dreaming? Or maybe it’s just me and my dreams that are this weird?

Every voice matters

“Every voice raised against racism chips away at its power. We can’t afford to stay silent.”
― Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race
I read Reni Eddo-Lodge’s book a couple months ago, and I was struck by something that was also brought up in Bell Hooks, Teaching to Transgress: The fight for women’s suffrage was the fight for white women’s rights. The fight for black freedom was primarily a fight for the rights of black men. Of course it’s far more complex than that, but for hundreds of years it has been in the interest of those that have power and privilege to divide underprivileged groups that could come together, uniting their causes. Divide the voices, they are easier to beat that way.
Will Smith quote - Racism is not getting worse it is getting filmed
I saw this Will Smith quote recently, “Racism isn’t getting worse, it’s getting filmed.”
It’s getting harder and harder for injustices to be kept apart. These things are not suddenly happening, they are finally being shared such that the patterns of injustice are obvious rather than subversively separated.
Yesterday I wrote about ‘The chasm between tolerance and acceptance‘. I struggled to write this. I wanted it to be honest, and I think it was. But when I looked back at it today, I noticed moments of futility mixed in with a call to action. That wasn’t my intent. I had other ideas I intended on writing about yesterday and today but I had to get those words out of me. I needed to share my small voice. I couldn’t stay silent. Three words inspired me, haunt me, and sadden me. “I can’t breathe.”
I did not mention George Floyd, or Ahmaud Arbery, yesterday. And so I wanted to share their names today. They should have a voice. They don’t anymore. This is a tragedy. We are 20 years into a century when human beings should not be defined by differences in our race that are merely skin deep.
I want to say more, but I also want to pause and listen. I want to hear the many voices… voices of those that can teach me, not anger me. Voices that can change me, not harden me. Voices that can be heard, that only a few days ago would not be listened to.
Malcolm x Quote

The chasm between tolerance and acceptance

I am struggling to express my thoughts about how we have to move from a world of tolerance, to one of acceptance.

When I listen to this reflection by Trevor Noah:

I understand the challenge of living on different sides of a social contract that does not measure the treatment of people equally, while still expecting the social contract to continue.

When I read these words by Barack Obama:

“It’s natural to wish for life “to just get back to normal” as a pandemic and economic crisis upend everything around us. But we have to remember that for millions of Americans, being treated differently on account of race is tragically, painfully, maddeningly “normal” – whether it’s while dealing with the health care system, or interacting with the criminal justice system, or jogging down the street, or just watching birds in a park.
This shouldn’t be “normal” in 2020 America. It can’t be “normal.” If we want our children to grow up in a nation that lives up to its highest ideals, we can and must be better.”

I think about my bias regarding what “normal” looks like. I also think of how easy it is to put everyone’s experiences into dichotomous polarities, and miss the nuances of a spectrum of perspectives, and a spectrum of human experiences.

I learned a long time ago how I can be biased to my own privilege, but that didn’t make my privilege disappear. Actually, it heightened my understanding of just how privileged I am. We tend not to see our privilege, and we tend to misunderstand how privilege breeds tolerance rather than acceptance. Privilege blinds us to how someone else’s experience could be so much different than our own.

In January, I shared a Martin Luther King quote from his “Letter From a Birmingham Jail“. I said,

The last two sentences chill me,

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

I think about how few extremists there are in the world, despite how much media coverage they get. Beyond the news, most people are not exposed to extremists. We are all exposed to moderates. So, in the day to day living of most people, hate is not something we see, however shallow understanding is.

In many places there is tolerance masquerading as acceptance. This to me is what slows down progress. It’s not the wing-nuts on the extremes spewing dogmatism… Although their stance plays a role in allowing others to justify their tolerance as acceptance, since that tolerance can be justified as moderate. But it’s the complacent, shallow, (lukewarm) moderates that hinder genuine acceptance… because this population is huge. This population is blind or ignorant to their own prejudice; this population performs daily interactions that infringe on the true acceptance of ‘others’, without knowing it.

As long as the conversation is about tolerance, it will not ever get to acceptance. The chasm between the two isn’t just large, it is impossible to traverse.

First we must accept that the human condition for some is unimaginably different than ours.

Next we must accept that privilege is also a human condition. It is not earned, it is bestowed whether we want it or not.

Then things get nuanced. Privilege is not something to be blamed for having, but it is something that warrants us to recognize, accept, and be humbled by. It carries authority, power, and status, which need to be consciously and intentionally recognized. From here we can accept that others are less privileged than us. I do not worry about where my next meal will come from. I do not worry that I might not be able to afford a hospital visit. I do not worry about someone misunderstanding or judging me because of my accent. I do not think about the colour of my skin when I must face someone with authority over me in a stressful situation.

If I have less privilege, I am sometimes/often forced to be concerned about tolerance. I hope for acceptance, but I come across those that are privileged that expect me to see the world through their eyes, their ‘struggles’, and their willingness to tolerate our differences, while calling it acceptance. What I see is that others have ‘supremacy’. That word carries a powerful charge with it. That word can change the conversation. But that word is no different than what I’ve already said. Just a paragraph ago I said of privilege, “It carries authority, power, and status, which need to be consciously and intentionally recognized.” The very definition of supremacy is ‘the state or condition of being superior to all others in authority, power, or status’.

Again the chasm runs deep and wide.

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” ~Martin Luther King

Who are the people of good will? What can they do to go beyond shallow acceptance?

The challenge is that uprisings and protest, while sadly necessary, confuse or even anger many with privilege. The privileged don’t understand the social contract was broken before the unrest (as shared in the Trevor Noah video above). They don’t see that it is only happening because society is not living up to its highest ideals and that ‘we can and must do better’ (as shared by Barack Obama above). They/we do not see that our acceptance is just lukewarm, tolerance masquerading as acceptance. Instead privilege permits us to cringe at terms like ‘white supremacy culture’ and point the finger outwards to more extreme views and say, “That term belongs over there, not with me!” Instead there are conversations of being ‘colorblind’, of ‘not seeing race’, and of denying privilege because ‘I have struggles too’.

Shallow understanding. Shallow acceptance. Shallowness is the enemy of progress. Shallowness prevents us from identifying systemic wrongdoing, identifying underlying injustices, and being positively responsive to cultural differences. Shallowness creates a difference in perception as it relates to authority, power, and status in the eyes of those with and without privilege, such that each are blind to the other.

“I don’t know what your problem is?”

“I don’t know how you can’t see that you are part of the problem?”

Tolerance helps us get along until the contracts are visibly broken (again, again, and again). Acceptance is not about accepting others, it’s about accepting our own privilege. Accepting that we must see justice from the eyes of those that live in an unjust world. We must accept that if we do not venture into the deep, and speak out on injustice, then we shall remain in the shallows of an intolerant world pretending to be tolerant.

Acceptance isn’t someone else’s work, it is ours… all of ours, but especially the work of anyone who was born with, or gifted with, any form of privilege.

A~B~C-R-A-P

It was my 4th or 5th year teaching and I had given out an assignment in Science that I had samples of from the previous year. I showed an example of what an assignment that got an ‘A’ looked like. Then I mentioned that if it was missing a specific component it would have been a ‘B’. A student blurred out a silly example, “What if I did _____, would it be a ‘C’?”

I responded, “No, that would be a C-R-A-P.” As the laughter came from the class I looked over to movement in my door and there was a parent of one of my students. To this day I don’t know if that parent got the joke or was mortified by my response? Still, I think it was funny and the Grade 8 class appreciated the humour.

It’s interesting to think about the way we describe criteria in schools and show good work as examples. This can be helpful, but also detrimental. Sometimes it gives a high bar for what is possible, and can stretch students’ desire to do something special. Sometimes it creates a cookie cutter scenario where every student does the same thing, limiting creativity and expression.

I remember visiting an elementary school and seeing the art displayed outside a couple Grade 2 classes. One had collages with a Santa part way into a chimney. Every house on every piece of work had the same colour and shape, every chimney had a larger top slab to fit Santa in. Every Santa was exactly half-belly into the chimney. Scales were slightly different, and cutting skills were obviously different too, but every piece looked good, and similar to the ones next to it.

Next door, the teacher had all the students make a collage of snowmen and the quality and look of every piece was different. Some had carrot noses, some didn’t have noses, one hade a red Rudolph nose. Some had top hats, some had cone hats, some had no hats. One had a mommy, daddy, and baby snowman, and one had a snowman with four snowball parts instead of three. One really stuck out because it had a black sky behind it.

So if you were a parent, which assignment would you rather your child did?

Sometimes we can set criteria and provide examples that push students to do a good job, to reach for challenging outcomes, and even to be more creative. But sometimes our criteria limits creativity and boxes in our students’ ability to go beyond what the teacher’s shared examples show.

Sometimes we have students that need to see an example and some who are better off without one… in the same class, doing the same assignment.

Specific and detailed criteria with examples can raise the bar and reduce the likelihood of students handing in C-R-A-P, but they can also limit the format, creativity and extension of learning that could be possible if we left things more open, and provided more choice.

Feeding the rage machine

It’s really hard to avoid rage as a driving force in the news today. Article after article, video clip after video clip, there is anger, upset, and rage. There is a link between what we think and how we feel, and that used to be determined by us. Now it is determined by the headlines we read and the videos we watch.

Cognition used to drive emotion, now emotion draws us towards information and that information caries a bias that fuels anger in one of two opposing ways:

1. Disgust: How can this happen in our society today? What kind of world are we living in? This is so wrong!

2. Rebuke: This is not a crisis. This is overblown! Everything is sensationalized.

These two reactions towards the same topic fuel even greater rage. If you think something is completely unacceptable and I ask you, ‘what’s the big deal?’, how does that make you feel?

Anger does not invite clear thought. It does not invite discourse that we can learn from. It does not foster a healthy environment.

It upsets me that headlines are so geared towards rage and anger. It saddens me that I still follow the headlines, clicking links and watching videos. I’m not impervious to the emotional draw. It’s similar to slowing down on the highway to see why emergency vehicles are pulled over in the oncoming lanes… we are pulled in by the macabre.

It can not be healthy to draw our attention to the world through rage. It clouds the truth, hides it in bias based on anger. This is not how we should be learning about the going’s on in our world. This is not news.

Shifting winds

Most school years are like prevailing winds. You know which way you are sailing and you adjust your course a little and keep going.

This year, and especially these past 4 months, have created shifting winds that keep altering the direction we are going, outside of our control.

If you’ve ever watched a sailing race, the most important aspects of a boat being successful are leadership and teamwork. That doesn’t just mean working together when everyone agrees with the captain. In fact, the test of a true team is how well they work together when there is disagreement.

In the coming months there will be some metaphorical rough seas, and blustery winds. To sail through safely we will need good leadership and great teamwork.

In our Province, we have leadership worth following and listening to. It is sad to see a team crumble under good leadership.

In other jurisdictions people are not as lucky. It is equally sad to see a team crumble because of poor leadership.

What we have to remember is that we are all in the same boat. How well will we sail through this rough patch? Calmer winds and seas will come eventually, until then the shifting winds are testing our resolve to work together.

Wanting to connect

This is one of the headlines that came across my news feed several times yesterday, “Ontario to maintain group size restrictions amid rising COVID-19 cases, crowded parks”

It seems that many people wanted to take advantage of the great weather and social distancing took a back seat to social gathering, despite an uptick of COVID-19 cases in southern Ontario.

This isn’t unusual behaviour, with similar things happening in parks and on beaches across North America. It isn’t something that bodes well when considering that economies are opening up and people are beginning to be exposed to more interactions with others. Social distancing needs to be something that we continue while things open up. So, why are people behaving like this?

We have a natural affinity to want to spend time with people and to be social… well, most people do, definitely not everyone. This is the typical overreaction we see with teenagers, when they get new freedoms and want to push the line. How many times have you heard a phrase like, “Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.” Well, seems like this is as true for adults as it is for kids.

People want to connect. They want to congregate, they want to celebrate.

I know many people that have had to cancel travel plans. My own summer plans with my wife and two other couples is no longer going to happen. I know of two cancelled weddings, one was a local celebration and one was a destination wedding. These are big events to change! These are celebrated gatherings that will not happen for a while yet. This is tough to miss out on.

But it’s not as tough as not being able to visit another country to say goodbye to a loved one who is dying, it’s not as tough as knowing you are the one that spread a virus to someone that didn’t recover like you did. It’s not as tough as shutting down the economy a second time, when the curve isn’t flattened enough and there is a fear of hospitals being overwhelmed.

The economy has to be opened up. We need to be returning to some sense of normalcy, we need to create opportunities to connect with others in our communities, to work along side each other, and to do things that are more social than they have been. But we need to do so in recommended and respectful ways.

We need to accept some risk, but not be risky. We need to connect, and not crowd each other. We can’t wait for a vaccine, and we can’t stay shuttered in place indefinitely. We need to connect responsibly, and in ways recommend by experts. We can’t ignore the need to engage in our society, but we also can’t be reckless.

Journaling Out Loud

There is something cathartic about writing a public daily journal, but there is also a sense of vulnerability.

On the one hand, I get to freely publish my thoughts and ideas, on the other hand I wonder if anything I share is worth reading.

On the one hand I get feedback on my writing, on the other hand people read these thoughts and I have know idea if they found any value in them?

On the one hand I get to share my ideas and thoughts, on the other hand I worry that I might be over sharing.

Imagine how impossible it would have been 50 years ago to have a daily diary being shared beyond a household. Or to have your own video channel, or to send public messages on social media websites.

I’m sure there are some people that wonder, ‘why would anyone want to do this anyway?’ That’s actually not a bad question. For me, I love to write and I wasn’t doing enough of it. The self-created obligation to do so inspires me to make the commitment.

Sometimes I write something that I love, and it barely gets read. Sometimes I write something I find ‘fluffy’ and it gets a lot of attention. And sometimes the worlds of personal and external appreciation connect and I see something that I created and feel good about get recognition. I can say the attention doesn’t matter at that point, but I’d be lying. Why does anyone take the time to write? Why are so many books published every year? What is it that compels people to share their words with others?

Maybe it’s just attention seeking, but I don’t think so. I think that we are thinking beings that have many ways to express those thoughts and while some people really like to chat, others prefer the pen… In was going to say ‘even if it’s a digital pen’, but should say ‘especially if it’s a digital pen’.

Digital ink has some unique qualities. So does public journaling. You can link to others’ ideas:

“For years, I’ve been explaining to people that daily blogging is an extraordinarily useful habit. Even if no one reads your blog, the act of writing it is clarifying, motivating and (eventually) fun.“ ~Seth Godin

You can hash out your own ideas. It’s an opportunity to think and share in the open. It gives voice to written words. And so if you’ve read to this point, thank you.

If you’ve seen a post that resonates with you, let me know. If you disagree with me, leave a comment, or send me a private one. Or, just keep reading… and I will keep writing.