Author Archives: David Truss

“Start off hard”

Yesterday on Twitter, I read this tweet by a first year teacher, Ms. Beatty:

Recently got the advice of, “Start off hard, you can always get softer,” in terms of student relationships at the beginning of the year. What do you make of that? Is it good advice? Or misguided?

This was my response:

Start with (your personal) high expectations. This can be hard to start, but it’s not starting off intentionally hard… If you don’t share your high expectations early, it gets harder later.
I think these two things get confused and purpose gets lost in the message.

I understand why advice like ‘Start off hard’ would persist in education. A lot of new teachers come in wanting the students to like them, and wanting students to have a wonderful time in their class. So, these new teachers might go overboard being accommodating in ways that potentially, in the long run, hinder their ability to push students to be their best. You might say that they ‘start off being too soft’, and so the ‘go in hard’ advice becomes the counterpoint.

But what’s the purpose or intention of ‘going in hard’? What is it that is being achieved? Is it a need to manage behaviour? Is it control of the class? Is it that you need to assert dominance?

If that’s not it, then what is it you are trying to achieve… And how else can you achieve that? If you are going into a new class to be especially ‘hard’, what does that look like?

Turn that around now and think of ways that students can buy into your (high) expectations, rather than complying to your hard rules and heavy hand. Can they help create class rules and expectations? Can you share your expectations in a positive way?

Once these class rules or expectations are created, then sticking to them isn’t being hard. What’s hard is doing this fairly.

Students will make mistakes… how is this handled? Has this been determined?

Teachers will make mistakes… such as not being fair – giving one student a break, but not another, or breaking the rules ‘because I’m the teacher and I can’.

I think the hard part of the new school year is:

1. Clearly establishing expectations (hopefully with student input).

2. Being consistent with those expectations.

I also think these can be done without being intentionally hard on kids.

Sharing in the open

I responded to a Twitter chat this morning about words in our vocabulary in schools that we don’t need, and I said ‘Homework‘. In the tweet I shared a link to a blog post that I wrote on the topic 8 years ago.

Twitter might have a limited number of characters to share, but when you share a link, that opens up the conversation to so much more. Having said that, you also need to know what you want to share.

For me the decision was easy, I have strong feelings regarding how ineffective most homework is, and I’ve written about it. Google does the rest of the work: I simply google my name and the topic I wrote about: David Truss homework… and there is the link.

I don’t have to rewrite anything, explain things again, spend a lot of time searching, or say less than I want to because of the limits on Twitter.

When I talk to people about blogging, the two responses I get are ‘I don’t have time’ and ‘I don’t have anything worth sharing’. While I understand the response about limits to time, this year I’ve really made time for things that are important to me, and so my response is that if you value something you can find the time to do it.

With respect to the value or worth of the ideas others might want to share, my response is that it really only needs to be valuable to one person. You!

I might get one other person reading this, (thanks mom), 10 people might read it, or 100. It won’t be 1,000, and it doesn’t need to be. My thought for the day is that we live live in an amazing world where we get to share out in the open, and that’s pretty special.

I can share something now and google it 8 years from now to share it again. How cool is that?

Special Moments

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

How many special moments can we count in our lives? What deserves that honour?

Yesterday was my 21st wedding anniversary, surely that counts, as would my wedding day, and the birth of my wonderful children.

But what about that salted caramel ice cream I had last night with my family? What about my conversation with a colleague during a break in our meeting yesterday? What about the wave I got out of the driver’s side window when I let a car in ahead of me?

What about getting off my treadmill after giving myself a physical push with some interval training? Or listening to an insightful passage in an audio book? Or feeling my body relax during meditation?

What about a shared laugh at dinner? What about listening my my daughter recap her day? Or even sending a funny cartoon to a friend via text?

What about watching a sunset? Or petting my cat who pushes his nose against mine? Or a delicious meal?

A hug. A smile. A laugh. A quiet breath? A silent walk. A happy exchange with a store clerk. A supportive conversation with a friend?

We can reserve special moments for only sparse, special, and momentous occasions, or we can choose to celebrate a hundred or even a thousand special moments every day. These moments may not necessarily take our breath away, but they can be celebrated; a reason to smile; an impetus to value life; a moment to appreciate.

In this way, every day can be wonderful. How man special moments will you decide to have today?

Rewards for hard work

I’ve always said that the sport which correlates best with success in school is swimming. I think that when a kid regularly wakes up early and is on a pool deck at 5:30 or 6am, has to look at a board and see a tough workout that will take an hour to do, that builds a mental toughness that most other sports don’t provide.

I’m not saying a football or gymnastics workout can’t be equally as tough, but I am saying that no other sport routinely creates such a tough mental frame for a workout.

You arrive at swim practice and the workout is on the board. You know your warm up, your workout, your cool down. You know it will take an hour. You know it will be hard. You know that you can’t rely on others for anything other than to push you to work even harder. Now get in the pool.

After years of that, pushing yourself through the hoops that schools create are fairly simple. You understand hard work, you understand putting your head down and muscling through what needs to be done.

Forget for a moment that school isn’t just about that, and think about how valuable a skill that is. How useful it will be in the future?

Where in our lives do we train our bodies or our minds to push through and do something hard, for the payoff later? Because ‘work smarter, not harder’ is a wonderful quote, but it doesn’t build grit and perseverance. We don’t become mentally tough through short cuts. Diets don’t work without discipline. Strength doesn’t come without resistance. Effort can’t be sustained without practice. Patience isn’t built without delay of gratification.

Sometime hard work is the reward.

We love the rewards of our hardships but curse the hardships themselves. ~ Seneca

Interrupting a Pattern

Recently, traffic has been getting to me. I know this because I speak out loud to the other drivers, in my car, with my windows rolled up. No chance of them hearing me, thankfully because I’m not being kind.

I didn’t notice my uptake of nasty remarks, my daughter did. “Dad, what’s with you? Chill.”

This reminded me of an event that happened about 25 years ago. I was driving my girlfriend’s car, she was in the passenger seat, and there was construction ahead. I was in the right lane, which was closing, and the cars started to ‘zipper’ into one lane, a car from the other lane followed by a car in my lane, back and forth.

As I approached the end of my lane it became obvious that the driver that should have let me zip in front of him was not going to participate in the established pattern. He kept his front bumper less than an arm’s length from the back bumper of the car in front of him, moving quickly as the car in front moved.

‘What a jerk’, my girlfriend said. She might have used an expletive, and her tone was upset.

I let him ahead of me, not that I really had a choice. And a few feet further we came to a stop due to the construction. At this point, I saw his eyes in the rear view mirror. I waved, gave him a thumbs up with a huge smile, and I dramatically mouthed the words, ‘Thank you’!

He stared at me through the rear view mirror, I repeated: wave, smile, ‘Thank you’. A little further down the road, I saw him look again, I repeated. He rolled down his window and flipped up his middle finger angrily. We laughed, I repeated: wave, smile, ‘Thank you’.

We got through the the construction and as luck would have it, I caught up to him in the reopened right lane. I looked at him through my window, smiling and waving. He clearly said a profanity and gave me a passenger-side middle finger. He was literally steaming red, his face and neck completely flushed. We laughed.

Then he beeped his horn a couple times as he moved ahead and switched into the left turn lane, sticking his left hand out of the car window in a repeated middle finger gesture. I couldn’t hear him, but it looked like he was yelling, and I’m pretty sure what he was saying wasn’t polite.

We laughed, and laughed.

I’ll openly admit that killing him with kindness was not a kind thing to do. We were having a wonderful time, fully at his expense. But it was a valuable lesson for me about how our disposition towards an event can change our experience. My girlfriend and I had a wonderful time laughing at a traffic incident that usually caused us upset.

Now, I don’t want to go around causing others to be upset, but I do need to breath and rethink how I’m coping with traffic. Hopefully my family members won’t be needing to tell me to ‘chill’ again any time soon because I’m throwing nasty commentary towards other drivers.

Building in the habit

I start work again this week after a wonderful summer. This was a summer where I really ‘let go’, I even deleted the mail app from my phone and only checked in weekly. I felt I needed a full break.

Today that changes. I’m ready. I’m looking forward to the new year.

So now I find out if this #dailyink can work? I have a few drafts started for the slow days, I have a few more titles in my notes. But can I maintain this like I have other goals? This has been an amazing year for creating good habits, can I keep that going?

I don’t watch TV, I don’t watch sports, I don’t read newspapers. News highlights on my phone and Twitter keep me connected to the world, but I don’t dwell on all the negative things pushed through my feeds.

Meeting my minimal commitments for fitness, reading (mostly audio books actually, writing, and meditation have taken me between an hour and an hour and a half daily. Most people spend more time than that watching television. But I need to figure out a a schedule that works for me. My guess is that this blog will be an early morning part of my routine, but I haven’t locked in a schedule that I know I can commit to. I have 2 weeks to figure that out before my real schedule starts.

Writing is a pastime that I enjoy. It isn’t work, it is my television… except that I’m the script writer. Reading is a pastime that I love, but my eyes fatigue easily and audio books provide a great opportunity to continue to learn from books. Meditation is new for me this year, and I haven’t missed a day since I started in early January. The journey has been slow, but I’m learning to settle in faster, and I’m sure other benefits are forthcoming.

Just recently I missed my workout target for the first time this year, having only 3 workouts in a week rather than at least 4… but the next week was the start of my new (positive) streak!

It has been a year of building new, healthy habits, and I managed to do this during the busiest school year I’ve ever had. For the coming school year, I hope that I can keep the good habits going!

Poor Visibility

Our destination was 40 feet away, we just couldn’t get there.

I was in Montreal for a water polo tournament, and three of us decided to stay an extra couple nights, so that we could ski at Mont Tremblant. When the ski day arrived, we woke up early and began the drive to the mountain. Unfortunately the snow started around the same time and visibility was horrible.

The Honda Accord I was driving was good in the snow, but my windshield wipers were on their last legs, and I had to constantly use the washer fluid to help with visibility… then we ran out of this fluid and things got bad. Visibility was awful, but the snow wasn’t wet enough, and my wipers smeared the dirty windshield and the wipers started to tear. Visibility was so bad that I had to pull off the highway.

This was not an era of cell phones and GPS, and the map we had was a brochure, with basic highway instructions, which didn’t include the small exit we just took. We had no idea where we were or where we needed to get to in order to remedy our visibility problem.

Then we got lucky. The first road we took ended at a ‘T’ intersection and as we were pondering which way to go, we saw a Honda dealership just to the right of the intersection. What luck! We drove in and picked up new windshield wipers, but they didn’t have windshield wiper fluid. We asked directions to the nearest gas station and used a few plastic cups of water from their water fountain to help us clean the windshield. It also stopped snowing so other than very slippery roads, our situation was much improved. At least we could see!

It only took us about 5 minutes to get to the intersection of the gas station, and that’s when the trouble started. The gas station was at the top of a very small hill, but the grade of the hill was pretty steep and I couldn’t get the Honda up it. My all-season tires were no equal to this snowy incline.

My friends got out and pushed. No progress. I gave one of my friends a chance at the wheel and I pushed. No success. My other friend took a turn. The gas station remained 40 feet away. We weren’t going to get the car there.

We weren’t going to get the car there… That was my defeated sense, before the very simple realization that you, the reader, have probably already come to. But for me it was both a stroke of insight and also a moment to laugh at myself and my dejected friends.

I walked 40 feet up the hill, purchased the windshield wiper fluid, and brought it to the car. Minutes later we were on our way to the mountain with new windshield wipers and a full talk of washer fluid.

Batteries not Included

It used to be that when you purchased an item, a major inconvenience would be that batteries weren’t included. Now there are whole other elements that can be inconvenient in many ways.

It starts before you even leave the store! For the last 3 times that I did a self-checkout, I’ve had inconvenient delays: Additional approval for an item; An in-store discount coupon not working; A machine freezing. – This is not a great ‘last experience’ before leaving a store!

‘Some assembly required’ used to mean clicking 3 pieces together, then came IKEA’s version of ‘assembly required’. If I add a measly $15 an hour for my assembly time, I can understand why the product costs so little. And my experience with IKEA assembly is embarrassingly slow.

Online sign-ups: Why do you need my postal code when you’ll never mail or send me something? How many questions are really necessary for me to get some simple services that you provide for me in a fully digital format? And why is a sign-up to your monthly newsletter a default button that I have to un-click?

And what about online customer support? “The usual wait time for customers calling at this time is 40 minutes.”

Really? So you know volume is high at this time, and informing me, rather than solving that problem with more support, is your answer?

We’ve come a long way in making technological advancements, but I sometimes find myself yearning for the days of ‘inconvenience’, when the one thing you had to do when you made a purchase was pick up your own batteries… which now often come with a product!

Vlad

The gift, a framed metal butterfly. A symbol of transformation. It came to my wife and I at the end of Vlad’s Grade 8 year. My wife, Ann (Kirkhope) Truss, had him in her class for Grades 6 and 7, I had him in my class for Grade 8. As you can see by his letter, Vlad is a very gifted young man. That giftedness comes with challenges in a traditional school model.

It’s not our job to make a kid like this fit the system, it’s our job to make the system work for a kid like this… While still teaching important (life and social) skills that hopefully aid students like Vlad in their future. Because a kid like this isn’t learning content from you, that comes too easy to them. They aren’t going to ask you typical clarifying questions, but they will challenge your knowledge on a topic, they will ask extension questions that go well beyond the learning outcomes, they will get bored waiting for others to learn.

I’ve had a few Thank You’s from students over the years, my wife gets a lot more than I do. For both of us, this Thank You fits into a category all on its own. Enjoy!

Vlad-1.JPG

We get many different versions of Vlad’s in our classrooms. Each one unique, without a recipe for how best to connect and support them. Sometimes, we get it right.

Vlad-2.JPG

* I have a very funny story about Vlad, and another gifted student in the same class, whom I met for coffee with about 3 months after they left grade 8… I’ll save that one for another day. 

It doesn’t hurt

Years ago, my sister took her young son to buy new shoes. When the salesperson measured his feet he told my sister, “his feet are two full sizes bigger than the shoes he has been wearing!”

My sister was shocked and asked her son, “Why didn’t you tell me your shoes were too small?”

He replied, “They don’t hurt if I scrunch my toes up like this.” And pointing to his feet, he ‘scrunched’ and curled his toes in tight.

His mom brought him new shoes, went home, and cried. She felt like a terrible mother.

Kids are resilient. This was devastating for my sister, and not a huge deal for her son. If my sister didn’t share this story, her son wouldn’t even remember it.

~~~

What are the things that we do now, either to ourselves or have inflicted upon us by others, that are equivalent to this? In what ways do we ‘scrunch up’ our lives and accept, or tolerate, something that is uncomfortable, but we accept it? We don’t attempt to change.

Is it the way we treat ourselves or the way we let someone treat us?

Is it the ache we feel but we only take care of the symptoms, not the problem? (Tylenol is easier than physiotherapy.)

Is it the unhealthy diet we choose?

Is it the distractions we choose, that take us away from more important things?

Is it the way we let trivial things consume our thoughts?

Or is it that we let negative emotions, ideas and happenstances anger us and take over what kind of day we can have?

We tolerate a lot of discomfort because discomfort isn’t pain. It doesn’t hurt to eat Cheetos rather than a healthy snack. It doesn’t hurt to watch one more episode on Netflix rather than reading a good book, doing a hobby, or spending time with family. It doesn’t hurt to complain about a colleague rather than finding something nice to say.

It doesn’t hurt… or does it?