Author Archives: David Truss

Mind the gap

Is it just me that sees headlines like this and just shake my head?

Air Canada gives execs $10M in bonuses

The article states, “Air Canada granted its executives and managers $10 million in “COVID-19 Pandemic Mitigation Bonuses” and other special stock awards to compensate them for last year’s salary cuts, per its annual note to shareholders. The extra compensation came while the airline was negotiating a $5.9-billion rescue plan with the federal government… Air Canada explained the bonuses, pointing to its “management’s exceptional performance” during the pandemic.”

All this after laying off half of its workforce.

Wow.

I have a friend who thinks Jeff Bazos deserves every penny for getting Amazon where it is. Meanwhile, I think he could personally pay every employee that makes less than 100,000 a year a $10 per hour raise and still be one of the richest men in the world a couple decades from now.

I’m sure Amazon executives earn their fat bonuses too.

These inequalities are getting worse, and our governments subsidizes these big companies, and gives them tax breaks, so that they can provide jobs.

This isn’t sustainable. It’s not just about executive bonuses, it’s about gross inequity. The gap is widening.

Lost items

A few days ago I found a nickel on the ground near the park my wife and I walk. I picked it up and put it in my pocket. I then had to change pockets because it was clinking against my phone, making an annoying sound. I realized then that I don’t tend to walk with change in my pocket very often. At home, I put it in my drawer that I keep my keys in, where I also put loose change. I noticed that I didn’t have any change in there and haven’t for a while. I don’t walk around with coins, I don’t pay for things with cash, and I don’t find lost change nearly as much as I used to in the past.

What I do see that I never used to is lost and dropped masks. They litter the floor like abandoned cigarette butts, easily noticed and equally as unappealing. I don’t want to see them, but I also have no desire to touch them in order to throw them away. Because they are much larger than cigarette butts, they are even more noticeable, and they seem to be everywhere.

Yesterday the grounds crew were cutting the grass and weed whacking around the school and one of them brought in a drone that fell out of a tree. He brought it in and said maybe a student had lost it. But the reality is that it probably belonged to someone in the community and I’ll have no way of knowing who it belongs to or how to get it back to them?

20 years ago lost coins and cigarette butts were items lost and dropped by people. Now it’s drones and masks. What will it be in another 20 years?

Delightful laugh

We have a student at our school with the most delightful laugh. She spends her day in the classroom across from our office and she finds many times during the day to share that laugh. My office staff have told me that the same students have to stay in that room, Room 8, next year, because they want to keep this student close (our other classrooms are quite far from the office). While this won’t work with our planning, I totally agree with them.

Isn’t it amazing how influential and powerful a wonderfully contagious laugh is? It makes us happy just to hear her, we don’t even know why she is laughing most times, and it doesn’t matter.

And for those wondering how there is ‘room’ in the day to hear so much laughter, the students in this class are working independently for about 30% of the day, and for up to 3/4’s of that time there might not be a teacher directly in that class… so is this student off task? About 90-95% of the time, I’d say ‘no’. How do I know this? Because this student and all the peers that sit around her get their work done on time and do a great job. Their report cards are great, and the presentations they do are outstanding. And when I randomly visit the class, I catch them on task rather than off task. They have created a culture where being self-directed learners is fun, and where laughter is part of their learning experience.

We are going to have to really appreciate the laughter this month, as the year comes to a close. We can’t keep this class in this room when they will be collaborating and taking senior courses with the grade above them next year. But I’m willing to bet we will miss and talk about that laugh next year… and when we do hear it, we will reminisce about the year of laughter in Room 8.

————

As a fun aside, this is the same student that called me ‘The Big Shebang‘.

Just imagine it was your kid

We aren’t talking about ancient history. The last Residential School closed in the 1980’s. Imagine it was your kid that was forcefully removed from you to be taken to a school that abused and/or killed him or her.

“The [Kamloops Indian Residential School] was established in 1890 and in operation until 1969, when it was taken over by the federal government from the Catholic Church to be used as a day school residence. It closed in 1978. The school building still stands today, and is located on the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation. In May 2021, the remains of 215 children buried in a mass grave were found at the site.” Wikipedia

There is nothing more to say. Imagine it was your kid that didn’t make it home after being torn away from you. Imagine that it was the government that took your child away from you. Some don’t have to imagine this like you have to. It happened to their kid; to their brothers, sisters, cousins, and friends; to their unknown uncles and aunts.

It happened to families in our community. Their kids are our kids. We mourn their loss. We mourn our loss. If you don’t feel the loss, it’s because you haven’t imagined what it would be like if it was your kid.

Cycles of energy and interest

This was the first weekend all year that I didn’t shoot arrows. I could have made the time but I didn’t. I’ve also been going through the motions for my workouts, getting my cardio in, but not doing a lot more. I think I need to change things up a bit. I am also finding my daily blog a lot harder to get started each morning, the blank page feels daunting.

I tend to be an even-keeled person who doesn’t hit extreme highs and lows, and so it can be hard to know when I’m feeling low. Often it’s only after I recognize my own lethargy towards the things I enjoy doing that I realize that I’m in a bit of a funk. While there are disadvantages to not feeling the high highs, there are advantages to not feeling the low lows… I can identify where I am and make small adjustments to unstick myself.

I’m going to wake up a bit earlier so I feel less rushed. I’m going to shoot arrows after school 3 times this week. I’m going to give myself a physical challenge that reinvigorates my workouts. I’ve hit a low cycle and I’ve realized it. I’m going to act my way into a new way of thinking, because that’s easier than thinking my way into a new way of acting.

I’m lucky that I’m able to do this, I know many who struggle to do the same, some who simply can’t. They get consumed by anxiety or depression and can not (as opposed to will not) move themselves out of it easily. For those that struggle in this way, we are unhelpful when we tell them to snap out of it, or just to think of something else, or to cheer up.

For them we can be helpful by listening, not judging, by acknowledging, not instructing, and by engaging in active conversations, going for walks, being outside, and being social. We can share our energy and time. I think too often we don’t give people we care about our time.

For me, I need to give myself the time to do things I enjoy… and I need to remind myself that I enjoy these things. It’s like I need a reminder that I get joy out of the things I enjoy. I like shooting arrows, even if my score doesn’t constantly get better. I enjoy writing daily, it’s a positive outlet, not a chore. I enjoy getting my heart rate up and feeling the endorphins of a good quick workout. And I’m blessed that I can cognitively make this shift simply by thinking about it.

And so my workout beckons. I’m going to try my new headphones on my treadmill, then do a light all-around workout keeping my heart rate up the whole time, rather than pushing any one muscle group. And I’ll put my current audio books on hold and listen to some music today.

It’s time to shift into a good cycle, and I’m already on my way simply by writing about it today.

The Van Gogh Exhibit

Here are some images and a short video from the Van Gogh Exhibit at the Vancouver Convention Centre:


This was truly a visual experience to be had. It begins with written information shared in socially distanced panels, then opens to the room in the images I shared above (there are 6 to scroll through on the Instagram post). If you get the opportunity to go, you will enjoy it.

Ocean waves

The ocean has always spoken to me. I love the sound of waves gently crashing on the shore. When I do my morning meditation I have the sound of the ocean in the background. Today as the meditation was ending, I thought of a shoreline and how it is a great metaphor for constant change.

A shoreline is an interesting idea. It is something that can not be measured accurately. The more you zoom in, the longer the shoreline is. From a far distance, the shore on a straight stretch of a beach is almost a straight line. Zoom in and you see an uneven wavy line. Move closer still and within that wavy line are small ebbs and flows, and closer still we see yet a rougher edge, with water moving unevenly across the sand. If you try to measure that shoreline, every zoom in gives you more zigs and zags to measure, lengthening the distance.

The shoreline constantly changes, and still remains a shoreline. We constantly change, yet we remain ourselves. We follow patterns we create over years of being who we are, yet we always have the opportunity to express ourselves differently, to zig and zag in ways we have not done so before. What is certain is that we change over time, but we tend to follow patterns in our lives just like shorelines tend to follow patterns. The difference is that we can make choices, but the ocean must follow set laws of energy, gravity, and viscosity to determine where the shoreline is. We on the other hand can determine how we will move next.

Most often we will follow the patterns we have laid out before us, but sometimes… sometimes we can break free and choose to create a whole new shoreline for ourselves. We have the power to do so, but more often than not, we listen to the waves, we don’t make them.

Choice time for teacher Pro-D

Last Friday I had a Pro-D, Professional Development Day, with the Inquiry Hub staff. We started the morning with a book talk, sharing what we have learned from books we are reading.
A few weeks ago, I had my teachers fill out a form sharing the title and link to a book that they wanted to read for their own personal development. I said that it didn’t have to be education-related, just something they wanted to learn from. Even though I said no obligation for follow up, my iHub staff suggested the book talk as part of their Pro-D day.

I loved hearing all the ideas and educational connections they made to the books they were reading.

Next, we moved on to personal learning time. We each shared what we were exploring, planning, or investigating, and then had an hour and a half to work on it. For example, two teachers worked on updating a questionnaire we give students when the apply to the school. Another teacher worked on a unit in one of his courses he thought needed work, and another teacher created a ‘Diversify your feed’ document and shared it with our staff and students:

I decided to create this image using information our team developed at our previous Pro-D. My way of making sense of our vision for the school:


We got together again (digitally, we weren’t meeting face-to-face) after lunch to share what we’d done, then we did some group planning around our timetable next year… a real challenge in a small school with a small staff that offers so many options for students.

Most of our day was about choice. Teachers got to share learning from a book of their choice, then they got to choose what they wanted to work on, before getting together for collaboration time. We spend a lot of our day at Inquiry Hub giving students time to work on things they want and need to work on. Our students have a lot of self-directed time at our school. It only seems fitting that when it’s time for our staff to learn, that we do the same.

Even though teachers got to choose what book they learned from (it didn’t have to be the one I gave them, although that seemed to be the one they mostly shared from), they were able to be really diverse in their sharing. Even though there were no constraints on what their personal learning time was used for, we shared our intentions before splitting up to spend that time on our own, or together by choice. We had accountability built into the day, but it was filled with personal choice.

It’s not just our students who benefit from choice in learning, our teachers benefit greatly too!

The wrong focus in the news

I’m becoming more and more disappointed with news reporting. Journalism has become a way to tell a predetermined story, with the focus being to exaggerate a narrative that is negative. Here are two examples:

1. TV – A report on the AstraZeneca vaccine in Canada. A large amount of the vaccine is is about to expire, but because of the fear of blood clots, which is extremely low, officials are acting slow in deciding what to do with this supply of vaccines. In the report, they mention that the blood clot risk for the second shot is significantly lower than than the low risk with the first shot. Then they interview a woman who had her first AstraZeneca shot and is cautious and doubtful about having the second shot. She becomes the story. Not two people with different views, one saying yes, and one saying no… just the cautious perspective.

2. Newspaper – This is a message from our local paper to our Valedictorian:

The Tri-City News is reaching out to SD43 valedictorians about what it’s like to graduate during Year 2 of the pandemic.

Can you please write two paragraphs — no longer than 150 words in total — about your Grade 12 experience, and describe what it’s like for you and your fellow grads to transition without any official ceremony?

Congratulations valedictorians, please write to us and tell us the reasons why you are disappointed with your last year of school.

What an awful thing to ask!

In both of these news stories the focus of the story is one that stirs emotions, not to benefit anyone, simply to prey on the emotions of the audience. I’m seeing this time and again. The question isn’t ‘what is the story here?’, the story is ‘what will get the most watches, clicks, likes, and shares… at the expense of good reporting.

I find myself wondering, is real journalism dead? I hope not. But I don’t know the way forward? It seems to me that this kind of negative reporting hits a chord that less biased news does not… and in a very competitive market for people’s attention, stirring negative emotions makes for better views. What’s the way forward from here?

5 weeks

It’s hard to believe that we are just 5 weeks away from the end of the school year. I usually get pangs this time of year as I question what was accomplished versus what I’d hoped for. This year, I think more about just getting to the end safely, and ending the year on a positive note. In December of last year I started saying to myself, in connection to the Coronavirus pandemic, ‘Things will start to get better in January 2022′. I wrote off this entire year with respect to normalcy.

Yes, the vaccine rollout is gaining traction, and now 12 year olds and up can get their first shot, but the percentage of Canadians who have had their second shot is shockingly low. Yet, it looks like my projection might have been pessimistic, and perhaps we might start to see normalcy return in the new school year, but we can’t control who chooses not to be vaccinated and what new variants might start to spread in our communities… I’d rather stick with my projection of next January and be pleasantly surprised that things normalize sooner, rather than be sorrily disappointed if they don’t.

The end of the school year will arrive very quickly. Time will fly by with all the crazy ‘to do’s that must get done to finish off the year. Then I’ll have a couple weeks to tidy up everything and build some excitement for September 2021, a school year of unknowns: A year for optimism blended with caution, hope blended with hesitancy. But right now, the only focus is the next 5 weeks.