Author Archives: David Truss

Who I used to be

One of the funniest ‘athletes getting older’ stories I know is one of a former national water polo player who was somewhere around 60 years old and playing in a game against an enthusiastic teenager. The old guy swam into the hole (centre position) and the you scrappy kid was all over him. The ball came into the hole and the overactive kid fouls the old guy… a normal thing in the game of water polo, but the kid was a bit aggressive. After the foul the old guy looks back at the kid and says, “Hey, don’t you know who I used to be?”

It’s fair to say that I used to be an athlete. I played water polo at a high enough level, and trained hard enough to say so. And while I’m pretty fit now, and probably in better shape than 70-80% of people my age, I am not an athlete. I don’t say that disparagingly, but I don’t play any sports, and I’m very much past my prime. Where this comes into play is in my inability to really push myself.

I see it specifically in training certain muscles. I struggle to go past 80% effort. That’s the challenge point for me. If I really like an exercise, I remember how to push hard, but if I don’t like it, I struggle. I’ve lost that ‘athlete’s edge’ where I can push through the discomfort and really give my maximum effort at will.

That’s why I say I used to be an athlete. It’s not about the fitness, it’s not about feeling positive about how well I take care of myself (I do). It’s about the lack of ability to really push myself to a point past the threshold of discomfort that athletes can do every workout.

Maybe I’m just out of practice, and I need to have a sport as a reason to train? Maybe it’s that I’m more externally motivated and I need a team relying on me? Perhaps if I joined a gym and was surrounded by people I’d push myself more than I can training at home alone.

In any case, I know who I am now and who I used to be, and I’m good with that. I might have been an athlete, but now I’m a guy who wants to still be fit and healthy in 25 years. I don’t want to run a marathon, and I’m too crappy a swimmer and not willing to do the work to get back in the pool and play water polo again… but I am going to push where I can, be smart about how much weight I move around so I don’t hurt myself… and every now and then push to my max and remember who I used to be.

Faulty pattern detection

Think about all the superstitions people have. Dating back as far as we have written records we have stories of people sacrificing animals, and even people, for Gods to ensure bountiful crops, or safe journeys, or successes in battle. When these things didn’t work it was for other reasons, and when things went as they should it was evidence that these rituals did indeed work.

But we need not look back thousands of years. We can look at modern day sports rituals, and lucky charms including religious paraphernalia, that people believe bring them luck. Fortunately over millennia things like sacrifices have fallen out of favour, but many rituals of luck and good blessings continue. Often with the person doing the ritual, or having the charm, believing that these things make a difference in their luck or success. Why? Because it ‘worked’ once? Twice?

In the grand scheme of things this doesn’t harm people, and I’m not against the idea that positive thinking can take you further than more negative thoughts. If a lucky charm helps you feel lucky, that is likely a far better state to be in than feeling unlucky.

Where this goes awry is in conspiracy theories. I know this first hand from watching my father go down some dark rabbit holes of doom and gloom. He saw connections that were at best coincidences. He found patterns where there were none. He searched for, and found, meaning in unrelated or tangent events that simply had no connection or no meaningful connections worth being put together.

Russia not supplying oil to Europe was the first step in a complete global collapse. Minor earthquakes off of Haida Gwaii were proof that the west coast around Vancouver was going to have a massive earthquake in a matter of days. Nuclear war, economic collapse, aliens, cabals, polar shifts, you name an end-of-the-world calamity and my dad saw the evidence that it was “coming down the pike”. I just searched that very phrase in my email and found a 2012 message from my dad,

“…What is coming down the pike will be a massive off the scale event and will impact the Pacific tectonic plate – I am referring to the entire Pacific Rim’s 40,000 km circumference. You may consider this to be more of ‘the sky is falling’ alarmist warning, but I have an ominous feeling it is imminent…”

He gave up on sending those emails to me a few years later, not because the ‘evidence’ wasn’t there, but because I wasn’t taking his warnings seriously enough.

In many ways my dad was brilliant, but he had faulty pattern detection that took over where logic usually prevails. But this doesn’t just happen to my dad. Maybe because of him I’m more attuned to this, but there has been a significant growth in delusional pattern detection in the past 5-10 years. It shows up in many places. I’ve written a few times about Flat Earthers as an example. I struggle to comprehend how this is a more popular belief in 2023 that it was in 1998, 25 years ago!

Have people gotten dumber? Maybe. Or maybe it isn’t just an intelligence thing. Maybe it’s faulty pattern detection combined with easy to access misinformation. Maybe there is something inherent in the human brain that seeks out patterns, that doesn’t know how to survive in a world without real threats, so we just pattern detect and find them anyway.

Back in the caveman days we needed to know the difference between the sound of predators versus the sound of prey when we heard the bushes rustling. It was a matter of life and death. Now we don’t need this skill. So maybe this pattern detection error is due to a lack of real threats and the need to seek these threats out to survive. Maybe.

The question is, how do we pivot? How do we move people away from false pattern detection, and still maintain enough scepticism to notice when there really is a harmful pattern to be concerned about? If you see that pattern, please share it, because I just see it getting worse from here.

Evening walk

When I arrived home yesterday I felt pretty wiped out. I could tell that I was not going to do much for the evening. A long day followed by dinner and just about nothing else. Then my wife suggested a walk.

We had a great walk. We bumped into people we knew and had a wonderful conversation, and we came back home feeling refreshed.

I take a lot of walks with my wife and also with a good friend. And yet I am still in awe of how much they can change my disposition; how they can alter my mood.

There is something special about walking with someone you care about. Last week I walked with my daughter and it was the most we talked in months. That’s mostly because I was on holidays away from her the entire summer, but it was still a great conversation we had, and would not have had if she didn’t suggest the walk.

Need some time to connect or reconnect with someone? Skip the coffee shop or pub and go for a walk.

Handyman skills

We have a handyman helping us with a bathroom repair. We had to replace a broken medicine cabinet. When I removed the old one, which had a light fixture embedded in it, I found the electrical wire coming out of the wall, not a junction box. With that, and the desire to move an electrical plug that was way too close to the sink, (and no experience doing drywall), I decided it was going to be a job that would take me much too long… and honestly beyond my skills.

Our handyman has done such an amazing job. The amount of small things he’s done to make our bathroom better are things I would never have done. He noticed our bathroom door didn’t shut well and adjusted it. He fixed the ‘hack job’ drywall around our window and improved the window casing. And he made many minor adjustments that I just didn’t know needed to happen.

Each touch up has made a huge difference to our old bathroom which hasn’t had any kind of upgrade since we moved in 24 years ago. And again, I didn’t have the skills to do what he did, even if I had the time.

I have a friend who does all his own repairs. He sees an issue with his house and big or small he’s on it. I know these skills are learned, and I could do them too, but the learning curve would be huge for me, and I’d rather hire someone with those skills so that I’m not the one doing a hack job.

There is a lot of talk about AI taking away jobs, but people in trades, and with skills hand crafting things, will always have jobs to do. If you want to keep yourself employable in the long run, get yourself some handyman skills. There will always be people like me who would rather pay than learn the skills well enough to do an excellent job.

Web Logging

I went to my LinkedIn profile last night. I hadn’t really looked at it for a while. It could use a bit of an update, but I’m in no rush. Still, while I was there I saw ‘Open Thinker’ under my experience, which is where I describe my blogging. I was surprised to see this:

I’ve been blogging for over 17 and a half years. I also passed 4 years of blogging daily in July. I’m coming up on 1,500 daily posts.

I had no idea 17 years ago that this would be something I would stick with for so long. I could not have fathomed that I’d be writing every single day on a web log, back when I hit the ‘Publish’ button for the first time.

Instead of feeling tired, and wanting to bring this to a close, I find myself wanting to write more. That doesn’t mean it has gotten a lot easier, I still find writing a challenge. I still can’t predict when I will feel the muse and when I will struggle to get past the blank page. I still get pangs before hitting the Publish button, though the feeling is somewhat muted. I still get pissed off when I find a typo or grammatical error after hitting the Publish button.

And I will continue to write. Maybe not for 17 more years, but I don’t see a reason to stop in the foreseeable future. I am keeping a journal. It just so happens that anyone with an internet connection can read what I’ve written…. including you!

The mischaracterization of the Metaverse

“The Metaverse is already here.” That’s the insight that never really occurred to me until I heard Mustafa Suleyman, Google’s Deep Mind Co-founder, on The Diary of a CEO podcast with Steven Bartlett.

“You know, the last three years people have been talking about Metaverse, Metaverse, Metaverse. And the mischaracterization of the Metaverse was that it’s over there. It was this like virtual world that we would all bop around in and talk to each other as these little characters, but that was totally wrong. That was a complete miss-framing. The Metaverse is already here. It’s the digital space that exists in parallel time to our everyday life. It’s the conversation that you will have on Twitter or, you know, the video that you’ll post on YouTube, or this podcast that will go out and connect with other people. It’s that meta-space of interaction, you know, and I use meta to mean ‘beyond this space’, not just that weird other, ‘over there’, space that people seem to point to.”

We are already in the Metaverse, I’m in the same room as my daughter right now. She’s watching a movie, I’m writing on my phone. We are entered into parallel universes, physically together but disconnected. We are both in spaces, on screens, beyond the physical space we are in.

Before hearing this quote, I thought of the Metaverse as something in the future, like the ‘fitless humans‘ from the movie WALL•E.

We are already there. We have iPads babysit (or at least occupy the attention of) our kids. We rage about stupid things on Twitter and YouTube. We share content with people we have never met, and they share content with us. We are influenced by influencers. We buy things from virtual stores. We play games with people in different time zones.

The Metaverse is already here creating parallel experiences to the ones we physically experience… It’s not something we are heading towards. We are already living a good part of our lives, ‘in spaces beyond the physical space we are in‘. Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest through the trees, or in this case the spaces beyond our screens.

Process, product, and purpose

I love this quote from David Jakes:

“Design creates useful things. Much has been written by various educators about valuing process over product, but in the real world, people create things. It’s easy to value process over product when the product is a grade or points on a test. In your classroom, shift from a transactional approach to a design-based transformational one where the product has value and meaning to students and has the potential to impact intellectual growth, spark personal development, or contribute to improving the human condition.”

There is a lot of talk about process over product. However this comparison is built on a false dichotomy. It’s not about one over the other, rather it’s process with the purpose of producing a product.

For example, when looking at design thinking, we start with empathy for the end user. The final product is the goal, it’s the purpose we are designing for, but the process of design thinking is the journey we go on.

So, it’s not process over product, it’s process with purpose. The final product is important, be it a presentation, an app, a business or business plan, a play, or a piece of art. How you get there is important too. Understanding the purpose, having a real reason to produce a final product is the reason to go through the process.

What’s exciting is having students learn, value, and be motivated to go through the process to get to that final product. That’s a shift from a more traditional test, or a cookie-cutter assignment where everyone produces an identical final product. Instead the students are part of the process, and understand the purpose of getting to the final product… which they have constructed or co-constructed.

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Here is a specific example: There are a couple educators from the Northwest Territories coming to visit us at Inquiry Hub. They are heading this way to see Trevor Mackenzie on Vancouver Island, and he recommended they come visit our school. Unfortunately the only day they can come is a professional development day when there are no kids at our school. So, I asked 6 kids if they would be willing to come in and present to these teachers.

Once they agreed, I sent this in an email to the teachers coming to visit:

“As an FYI, I’ll be handing over the presentation fully to the students, they will design what it looks like. With the design thinking model in mind, the big question is “What does the end user want/need”… so, please give me a short write-up of what you are looking for.

They will give you the shape of our day, what the student experience is like, but beyond that what do you want to get out of the visit? Whatever you share is exactly what I’ll be sharing with them to prepare with.”

Our students will design the presentation, they will understand the purpose of their final product, and while the process is important, and while they have had a ton of practice producing great presentations, they know that delivering a good final presentation to an authentic audience is what will matter in the end.

It’s not one over the other, it’s process for the purpose of a good final product.

Dropping balls

One of the most frustrating things is to realize that you dropped a ball. You are juggling so many things and one falls through your fingers. You miss it.

A good juggler can make the mistake a part of the show. A good leader can’t.

In this specific case it’s not that bad because the only person really let down is me. I can still pick the ball up, I can put it back into play, and the only harm is that everyone saw me drop it. A little embarrassing, but I can handle it.

I can make the excuse that I had just returned from medical leave and I had a lot of balls to juggle, but that’s not accepting ownership, it’s just making excuses. It was something that should have been prioritized. Other things were less important.

I just need to accept the mistake. I need to own it. I need to pick up the ball and put it back into play. The challenge is not explaining, justifying, or excusing, but owning my mistake. Then doing what I can to fix it.

This is harder to do when you let people down. It is challenging to face when others are counting on you.

Excuses are not the way. Own it. Do your best to make it right, and be sure to keep similar balls in the air in the future. That’s the best way forward.

Energy flow

Some things take a lot of energy to perform, and some things give you energy.

Here are a couple opposing examples:

Meeting new people can take a lot of energy. There is the nervousness of not being sure what to say, the struggle to find common interests, the uncomfortableness of awkward silence. Meeting new people can be draining.

Working out requires a lot of energy output, but at the same time there is an endorphin surge that provides a positive feeling. The net energy you have after a good workout is fulfilling.

While both of these experiences require energy, one leaves you feeling depleted, sucking your energy batteries dry, while the other replenishes your batters and leaves you feeling charged and ready to go.

In a way, the cumulative sum of draining versus charging activities determines what kind of day you have. At the end of the day you can feel like the day wiped you out or it left you with some reserves.

You can do challenging things emotionally or physically (or both) and end your day feeling very accomplished or just exhausted. The big question is, did the day just happen to you, were you just a victim of the positive and negative energy flows, or did you help to determine them?

In other words, did you seek to perform more positive energy experiences than negative ones? Did you find moments in your day where you filled your batteries? Did you feed your mind and body with joyful moments that charged your energy reserves? Sometimes it doesn’t take much: a delicious meal, a shared joke, a 5 minute walk, a deliberate conversation, a compliment given, even a few deep breaths.

Simple, intentional things that bring you energy rather than drain energy can be the difference between coming home feeling accomplished and coming home with an empty tank. Be intentional in seeking out things that give you a positive flow of energy during the day.

Here we go

The school year begins. 180 school days.

I am nervous about the balance of things: work/home life/exercise; leadership/management; priorities/budgets; teaching & learning; support & independence; planning & follow through; time & efficiency.

I may be nervous but I can feel the potential… the promise of a great year ahead. Physiologically there is almost no difference between anxious nervousness and excitement. So I’ll reframe my thinking, I am excited.

I hope all educators are equally excited. We are in an incredible occupation. We change lives. We make learning fun and engaging. And our teaching goes well beyond the curriculum. We don’t teach subjects, we teach kids. We teach kindness, collaboration, cooperation, and creativity. We don’t just teach classes, we teach young adults who want to do well, who soar, who struggle, and who do the best with the resources they have.

Some come to us full of support and resources, others come to us with much less. The less the resources, the more compassion we need. The greater the challenge, the more patience we must have. The more we are challenged, the higher we must rise.

We can be the purveyor of the status quo, or we can be the change agents we want to be. It all begins today… here we go!

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I wrote the following in 2011:

My Open Educator Manifesto

‘We’ educate future citizens of the world

Teaching is my professional practice

I Share by default

I am Open, Transparent, Collaborative, and Social

My students own their own:   (Learning)

• learning process

• learning environment

• learning products

• learning assessment

My students belong to learning networks

Every student deserves customized learning

• Student voice

• Student choice

Every educator deserves customized learning

I have high expectations

I Care, Share, and Dare

I am a role model

I am the change I want to see in Education!