Author Archives: David Truss

Next level DJ

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I was at my niece’s wedding last night. The music was great and we had a wonderful time dancing the night away. No complaints, it was wonderful… but it wasn’t John David Akin AMAZING.

Most people know him as a Global News journalist, but I know him as the best DJ I’ve ever heard in a bar. This was back in the late 1980’s, in Guelph Ontario, and JDA was so well liked that his name would come before the event. It wasn’t the Bullring Halloween Dance, it was John David Akin’s Halloween at the Bullring. He was the draw to the event.

He had this skill of blending and teasing in the next song that was so seamless that you missed it. You’d be dancing to one song, hear a teaser of the next song, and a cheer would come from the dancers. Then you’d hear the tease again, and 10 -20 seconds later you’d be dancing to the new song with zero memory of a transition from the last song. If this happened once, it would be a cool trick, but when it happened over and over again, it felt like magic.

The other thing he did was to masterfully choose 5 songs that kept you on the dance floor. You never went on for one song and then didn’t like the next song. No, you’d hear a song you loved, get on the dance floor and then you were there for a guaranteed 4-5 songs. Then there would be a shift in musical style, a scream from people off the dance floor, and 1/3 to 1/2 of the people on the dance floor and in the seating area and isles would trade places.

This was great for business too. Dance yourself thirsty for several songs then a mass switch to get new people dancing and thirsty while drinks are being ordered by those who just got off the dance floor.

There was no denying the artistry of his work. I was reminded of this last night. The DJ tried to tease and blend, but it was clunky. The transitions were a bit rough. And I’m not even throwing shade at the DJ, I had a great time last night… It’s just when you’ve heard the absolute best, good just isn’t great, and I’m going to notice the difference.

Oh and JDA sang a mean version of Grandmaster Flash’s White Lines. The first time I heard it, I didn’t even know it was him singing until I heard the name of the bar we were in sung in the lyrics. He had many skills, but when it came to teasing and blending songs, John David Akin was the GOAT.

Generation bump

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It’s the first one in our family. My niece, my sister-in-law’s daughter, is getting married today. This is the start of a new chapter for our family. I haven’t been to a wedding in many years, but they will become more frequent in the coming years.

It’s a little surreal to realize that we are now the parent generation. We are the sandwich generation often thinking (and sometimes worrying) about both our parents and our kids. We are the adults. That sounds silly to say, but I’m probably not the only one that questions how I got to this phase of life, how I’m not the kid still trying to figure things out?

New life adventures lay ahead, new firsts in a new chapter of our lives.

Rationalize or Analyze?

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I was at a meeting yesterday morning where some critical feedback was shared by a group of students. I think the feedback was very useful, and there was a lot to gain from the information. I don’t know how it was received by others?

When you get feedback and it isn’t what you are looking for, what’s your first instinct?

Is it to rationalize why the feedback was not ideal? Was it a bad question? A misunderstanding? …An excuse of one kind or another?

Or do you analyze, reflect, and think critically about what the feedback really means?

Rationalization is really easy, but renders the information useless. Analysis can lead to uncomfortable realizations, but may lead to meaningful learning and, more importantly, changes in behaviours or systems.

I think rationalization is an emotional response, it’s a defence mechanism. It’s a way to comfort your ego… but it’s not a way to learn and grow. Honest analysis is not about finger-waving and blame, nor about making excuses. Rather it’s about informing practice and getting better. And in the end, getting better feedback in the future.

Rhyme (and) reason

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Sometimes something happens without rhyme or reason, with no logical reason for it to happen. Other times it is abundantly clear… to some people but not to others. So while an observer can see and make connections between events or experiences, the person in the situation believes there is no rhyme or reason, no connections at all. I witnessed this first hand in a conversation recently.

I was talking to someone who was very upset with the behaviors of another person. Why couldn’t this other person understand how to help themselves? Why did this other person not do what needed to be done? There was much frustration because this other person wouldn’t respond well to feedback. Then the person I was talking to shared a personal struggle, and it was abundantly clear to me that the rhyme and reason for their struggle was identical for them as it was for this other person. The situation was completely different, but the points of struggle were the same.

Isn’t that fascinating how we can see and be frustrated with the challenges we see others struggle with, and yet be blind to how we struggle in similar way? Simultaneously asking ‘Why can’t this other person see what needs to be done’, while being oblivious to the fact that we struggle in the same way in other areas of our own lives. Maybe I’m being unfair in saying they are oblivious? Maybe the frustration they see in themselves is precisely why there is frustration in the other person.

‘I hate seeing this other person struggle, because in this other person I see the thing I least like about myself.’

I saw the rhyme and reason. But that doesn’t mean I handled it well. On the contrary, and upon reflection, I could have navigated the conversation much better. I realize this only after the fact. The person I was talking to knew the other person wouldn’t respond well to feedback because they knew they wouldn’t. When I saw the connection, the parallel relationship, I should have realized the it was the wrong time for me to offer feedback. It wouldn’t be well received… it wasn’t well received. The pattern was there for me to see, but I missed it.

We don’t always see the rhyme and reason for why we do what we do. But maybe it’s easier to see this in other people… maybe we project our own insecurities and frustrations on others because we struggle ourselves. The very reason it bugs us in others is because it bugs us in us. But even knowing this, it hurts to hear it.

Don’t let the rain stop you

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I’m writing this at the edge of Allouette lake in Golden Ears Provincial Park, 8:30 PM Tuesday. I’m here with three teachers and 18 students who will be spending the night in the campground nearby. It’s pouring rain. Actually right now it’s a little on the light side, but it has been continuous and at times quite heavy since we arrived, five hours ago.

It’s starting to get dark and we will be walking back in just a few minutes, but I’ve got a little window of time to dictate this while I stand near the steepest part of the path leading to the lake. Three students didn’t want to come down this section I didn’t want to leave them behind so I’m hovering back as the other students return this way from walking along the shore.

On a miserable day like this it would’ve been easy to cancel the camping trip. The rain has been relentless, but in all honesty it hasn’t dampened spirits. When we get back to the campsite we will roast some marshmallows either on the propane fire or on the open fire pit if we can get one started there.

The message is simple, too often we cancel things because conditions aren’t perfect. We look for excuses when in actual fact it’s just laziness or thinking that because conditions aren’t perfect, the trip might be ruined. In reality, we can make many more opportunities work than we actually take. It just takes a little effort and a small shift in attitude. There were a couple cancellations made by students and/or their parents over the last couple days, and the forecast might have been one of the reasons. Those are the students that lost out. Not a single student here is losing out.

We live on the edge of a rainforest. If we think that rain is a reason to cancel something then we are really missing out on a significant part of the year when we can find joy in the simplest of things.

Camping in the rain might not be as good as camping on a warm, beautiful day, but that doesn’t take away from the opportunity we have regardless of the weather.

Kids are heading back this way now, and so I think I’ll end this right here. I need to be present and enjoy their presence… no matter what the weather looks like.

Time in cars and with friends

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Yesterday I drove 40 minutes each way to spend just over an hour and a half with friends. They were visiting from Ontario and I saw them Saturday, but it was a short visit and so I wanted to connect again.

I ended up chatting with a cousin the whole drive there, and I listened to a book on the way back. Time well spent in the car.

But more importantly, I got to chat with my friends. We had a coffee, went for a walk, bought some pastries… and we talked. We spent time some wonderful, albeit short together. I spent about 15 more minutes with them than I did in the car. It couldn’t be longer because they had to pack up, check out of the Airbnb and catch a plane. But it was long enough. It was a wonderful reconnection.

Later, my wife and I went to wish her sister a happy birthday. That was about 45 minutes in the car for an hour and a half visit. Again, well worth the drive.

Ive got a full tank, when are we meeting next? 😜

The cost of a photograph

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Back in July, 2019, when I started writing daily, I wrote ‘Photographs in my mind’. In it I spoke nostalgically about the era of print film and the unknown of if I got the shot I thought I did, until after photos were developed. I also wrote about the photos I ended up not taking, and how some of those are more memorable than the ones I did take. Here is the end of the post with one particular shot that came to mind today.

There was the shot I lined up at Pike Place in Seattle, of an older man sitting on the hood of a parked car enthralled in a book, while cops on the street behind him tended to a fender-bender. I can still see the image that I did not take, feeling like I was invading his privacy.

We seem so much more free to take photos now, always having a camera in our pocket, and not a concern of the cost of taking one more shot.

But of all the shots I didn’t take, the photographs that still linger in my memory. These come to me from an era when film was the only option and the cost of the next shot lingered in my mind.

Today I thought of a different kind of cost, not financial, but maybe social, cultural, or personal. I thought of the potential photo I didn’t take above, and how I felt that I would have been invading this man’s privacy, stealing a moment from him. This made me think of children having photographs and videos shared on social media by parents. Precious moments, but also embarrassing ones. I then thought of photos shared without permission, voyeuristic images shared in confidence then reshared in anger, more often than not by a vindictive, jilted, or just plain mean ex-boyfriend.

I thought of photographs that perpetuate stereotypes, or promote cultural exploitation. I thought of videos that show people at their worst going viral and how they typecast a person on the bases of a single act, one transgression, an embarrassing moment memorialized as the defining of a one-dimensional character.

We don’t live in the film era anymore. We live in an era that is not just witnessed, but fully documented. And I wonder, what is the price? What costs are we paying for the free availability of endless videos and photographs?

You have my divided attention

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There is no such thing as ‘full attention’. Our minds don’t work that way. The questions to ask yourself are how much attention am I truly giving? And, am I sustaining that attention?

A perfect example is listening to someone telling you a story. You can tune out distractions and be mostly paying attention, but if you are listening carefully you will also be creating visuals to go with the story, thinking of what’s happening, what’s unsaid, asking questions in your head… and making connections to your own experience. None of this is truly full attention. Even if it’s related or connected, the things you think are distractions.

There are moments of clarity, focus and determination, but those are internal moments. The moment someone else enters the equation, attention is divided.

So, you have my divided attention, but I will do my best to give you as much of it as I can. Some days you can get quite a bit, other days the hamster wheel in my mind is spinning too fast, and you won’t get as much of it.

This isn’t an apology, it’s an observation. You never get someone else’s full attention.

____

Inspired by Joe Truss.

Boxes Made to Fit

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William (Bill) Ferriter shared a post on LinkedIn about the struggles his daughter is having at school. While I will share a key quote from his post, I encourage you to read the full post here. Bill said,

Should we be failing students who pass unit tests and quizzes but don’t turn in practice tasks? Were those practice tasks essential as a vehicle for preparing students or assessing learning if a student can demonstrate mastery on the unit test without them? How many assignments do we really need to determine if a student is working at or above grade level? Could we use something other than zeros — think codes like INC or placeholder grades like 50s — to report on missing work? Does every student have to do every assignment?

On a more philosophical level, are we cheapening our professional credibility when we report that a student who passes most/all of our quizzes and tests has failed our class? Are grading policies with rigid consequences for missing work effective for encouraging learning? For changing behavior? Is the purpose of grades to report on student mastery of essential outcomes or to report on the ability (or lack thereof) to keep up with schoolwork?

I left Bill the following comment:

In my first year teaching a colleague (also in his first year) was experimenting with grading and asked a simple question that has stuck with me:
“Are we counting marks or marking what counts.”
(See the first half of this old post – if you go past the first half, sorry that the image links seem to be broken.)

My daughter was training 24-26 hours a week in Synchronized Swimming and missed some gym classes going to Provincials and Nationals. Despite consistently being the second fastest girl doing their weekly runs (behind a Provincial level soccer player), she was told at the end of the year she would only get a ‘B’ unless she made up a run and did a volleyball rules quiz she missed.

I share this because it exemplifies the idea of just counting marks.

To me this undermines the professionalism of teaching. It says, ‘We only care about the numbers’, and that my friend is exactly what AI can do better than us. I hope to see educators around the world thinking more deeply about what really matters to students in school. We need to stop building schools and courses like boxes students need to fit into and more like boxes made to fit students!

All Around Wonderful

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Last night our school put on a spring formal for our senior students. The event was a huge success. I had a chuckle at the end of the night when I got feedback from three students. The first from a gushing student telling me what an amazing night it was. “It was so wonderful, I didn’t know what to expect, but this was such an amazing night, thank you!”

The second was a student who thanked us and said how impressed she was. One of my teachers said, “See, start with low expectations and things always turn out great.” The student replied, “Actually I had pretty high expectations, I knew it was going to be good, and it still exceeded my expectations.”

The third one I’d like to share was actually said to me between these two. This student, who always calls me by my last name with no ‘Mr’ (which I don’t mind) said, “You know, Truss, any time you do something the first time, you can expect things to go wrong, but I have to say that tonight was pretty good. You got so much right, and I can’t think of anything I’d change. Good job.” Now that’s from a kid who understands radical candour and isn’t afraid to give hard feedback, especially to me, because he knows I want to hear it.

But the reality is that the event was the success that it was because of the wonderful team I work with. Every teacher and one of my secretaries was there helping to make the night a huge success. This event was the vision of one of our counsellors, who wanted the kids at our school to have an event like students at bigger schools. And the entire team stepped up to make the event something our students wanted… and enjoyed.

A student prepared a welcoming toast. Another one did a full ten minute speech that had everyone laughing and repeating quotes he said. Not platitudes, but humour that resonated with our entire community of students and staff. And a parent raised so much in gifts and prizes that most kids left with a gift card that was at a minimum 2/3rds the cost of the ticket, and many students left with a lot more.

I feel blessed to work in such an amazing environment with a fantastic team, and wonderful students, who all understand and appreciate that an event like this is a lot of work… and appreciate the effort it takes to do it right.