Author Archives: David Truss

‘True Student and Teacher Agency’ – Podcast

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A huge thank you to Dean Shareski, who interviewed me for ‘The Canadian – Ed Leadership Show’.

Here is the description and contents time stamps:

Principal Dave Truss of Inquiry Hub and Coquitlam Open Learning as he discusses revolutionary approaches in education, student agency, and personalized, student-centered learning environments. Gain insights into the challenges and triumphs of running innovative educational models that support self-directed, passionate learners. Explore the impact of technology and AI in modern classrooms, and learn about fostering both student and teacher autonomy for effective teaching. Hear personal reflections on the importance of mentors, lifelong learning habits, and discover local hiking treasures like Bunsen Lake.

00:00 The Drum Set Decision
00:59 Defining the Ideal School
01:40 Introducing Principal Dave Truss
03:01 A Day in the Life of Principal Truss
03:47 The Birth of Inquiry Hub
05:10 Student Projects and Independent Studies
06:14 Collaborative Learning and Student Agency
09:09 Challenges and Opportunities in Alternative Education
17:55 Teacher Autonomy and Professional Development
21:20 The Evolution of Innovation and Technology in Education
29:00 Reflecting on Teaching Challenges
29:10 Embracing Technology in Education
30:18 Student Presentation Skills
31:15 The Role of AI in Learning
32:14 Teacher Comfort Zones
33:29 Leadership and Technology Integration
39:31 Balancing Leadership and Management
44:51 Personal Reflections and Advice
47:03 Hobbies and Interests
51:28 Hidden Gems in Coquitlam

Here is Dean’s LinkedIn post description:

I’m very excited to share this episode with my long time friend and colleague Dave Truss. Dave is the principal at the Inquiry Hub and Online Learning schools in School District No. 43 (Coquitlam) What he and his team have created is pretty special. Shout outs to Dave Sands and Stephen Whiffin who he credits for mentoring and leading this work as well.

Full episodes here:
🔵Apple
🟢Spotify
🔴Youtube

Thanks for the conversation, Dean. 🙏

(Excerpt video clip on fostering agency, on LinkedIn.) 

Outward appearances

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I remember looking at a house that was for sale. At first glance it looked like a nicely remodelled home. But upon closer inspection, it was a house being flipped with shoddy workmanship everywhere. It was missing baseboards behind the toilet. Hardwood was placed on top of the old floor and ended at the entrance to the closets. Electrical sockets didn’t match. And, the kitchen cabinets were dated and looked liked they were painted over with wall paint.

It didn’t take long to realize the house was rushed to market and would take considerable amounts of money to remodel after purchase. In an attempt to look good, a lot of the goodness was compromised, and the seller would have been better off selling it as-is rather than poorly attempting to update the cosmetics, without really addressing the challenges.

I often wonder about people who only worry about looking good. The question arises, what are they trying to hide? What are they sacrificing in order to worry about appearances? What are they losing out on because change is risky?

Are they learning from their mistakes or hiding them? Are they growing or are they stagnating at a point that looked good? Organizations can be the same. There are countless stories about companies not seeing the opportunities of the future because they are stuck in the past. Like Blockbuster not buying Netflix when they had the chance.

What would people say? That’s not what we do? What if the change reflects poorly on us?

How many opportunities are lost because it was more important to keep up appearances, to look good, rather than to make a few mistakes along the way of finding a new and better path?

Ability and Agility

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I love this quote, shared in a video on LinkedIn:

“It used to be about ability. And now, in a changing world, I think what we should be looking for is agility. I want to know how quickly do you change your mind? How fast are you to admit you’re wrong? Because what that means is you’re not just going to be reacting to a pandemic or to AI, you’re actually going to be anticipating those problems and seeing around corners, and then leading change as opposed to being a victim of it.” ~Adam Grant

It’s more than just anticipating problems, it’s about being agile, understanding challenges, and addressing them while they are small. It’s about understanding your strengths, and the strengths of your team… as well as weaknesses.

It’s about Agile Ability, which is why I titled this ‘Ability AND Agility’, rather than ‘Ability VERSUS Agility’. We need to embrace our failures and learn from them, recognize problems early, even predict them and be preemptive. This is so different than a culture of accountability and blame.

The desired student, employee, partner, colleague of the future will learn what they need to on the job. They’ll be exceptional because of their agility and willingness to learn, not just because of what they came to the table already knowing.

Athletic performance

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Today I went to see Echo, a Cirque du Soleil performance. I thoroughly enjoy watching athletes perform challenging manoeuvres that I know I never could. One performance stuck out more than the rest. I think it was a father-son routine where dad juggled his son on his feet. It was impressive with respect to speed, agility, and just pure athleticism.

The other performances were good too, but all versions of things I’ve seen before and really didn’t ‘wow’ me quite like the human juggling routine. Still, a fabulous way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

This was a wonderful early birthday gift from my wife. ❤️

Not all voices are equal

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I love the Bill Nye analogy about the climate debate. He says that if the debate were authentic, rather than having two talking heads debating, it would be hundreds of scientists on one side versus one climate denier on the other.

I saw a social media clip yesterday where a microbiologist was debunking a self declared holistic practitioner on the consumption of unpasteurized milk. The microbiologist wrote his master’s thesis on bacterial infections in cow’s mammary glands.

The self-declared expert espousing unscientific and incorrect information on social media is not an equal voice to an expert. Do they have a right to share their views? Sure. Do they deserve an audience? No.

I wish that I knew how to make the situation better but I don’t have answers. I’m extremely pro ‘free speech’. I think people are entitled to share their views. However, when I see misinformation and disinformation being shared by people with large audiences, I shudder. I worry about how their messages are consumed, by how many people they lead down a bad path.

In 2024 no one, and I mean NO ONE, should believe the earth is flat and yet the group of flat earth believers is getting larger. Imagine being able to own a telescope and see images from the James Webb telescope and still believing something that societies 5,000+ years ago already knew was wrong.

Not all voices are equal, and some voices deserve a larger voice than others. Who decides? Who polices? I don’t know, but I do know that we are entering (have entered) an era where false information gets shared significantly faster than correct information. Corrected information and updated facts don’t get the same play time on social media. So we are essentially living in an era of disinformation.

This doesn’t feel like progress, and as AI models continue to learn from the inputs we are providing, this scares me. I saw a stat that as much as 80% of the internet could be AI generated by the end of 2026. How much of that generated information will be based on incorrect assumptions and conclusions? How much of it will be intentionally misguided? Who is deciding which voices the AI models listen to?

We can’t continue to let ill-informed people have equal voices to those that have more informed perspectives… But I’m not informed enough to know how to change this.

Breaking bread

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I’ve had a few opportunities to have lunch with, to break bread with, colleagues in the past several weeks. Having a meal together, outside of the usual staffroom with its comfortable banter is a treat. It is a good reminder of the fact that we all have lives outside of this thing called work.

I find that my connections to people can become fixed in a place-based kind of experience, and we all play the roles we are supposed to play… to leave that environment and break bread is an opportunity to find new connections, to be ourselves and not just our roles.

Friendtegrity

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Just to be clear, friendtegrity isn’t a word. I just smashed friend and integrity together. That said, it is likely you read the word and knew what I was going to talk about.

I’m listening to Trevor Noah on Steven Bartlett’s podcast, Diary of a CEO. In it they are discussing friendship and Steven asks Trevor, “How do you define a bad friend?… How do you spot one?”

Trevor says, “I don’t think you spot them, I think you feel it… And I think it’s a lot easier for us to spot than you think it is. One of the easiest ones is, can you be yourself? You know, sometimes they’re not a bad friend, they’re a bad friend for you, because you are not revealing yourself to them. And so they are being friends with the idea of you but they are not being friends with you. And then you leave thinking, I don’t feel good. But they don’t even know you, so you can’t blame them for being a bad friend.”

Trevor goes on to say, “I almost think there is no such thing as a bad friend, you are just in a bad friendship… because they could be a good friend to somebody else… this is just a bad friendship for you.”

When I think of my connections to good friends, I see that my own integrity is intact. I feel comfortable enough around them that I am revealing my true self. I am comfortable with them, we can have pauses without having to fill the silence. I can be vulnerable. I can tease and joke without there being concern for harm or defensiveness, and in fact laugh at myself when the teasing is directed at me.

It’s a lot different with a bad friend, a friend with whom I feel I can’t be my true self when I’m with them. That is a friendship that doesn’t have integrity, it doesn’t let me reveal myself and so the bond is only a surface level bond. The chemistry of good friendship goes beyond that.

When you have friendtegrity, that’s really special. You can spend hours together, because you don’t have to fill the time. And equally, you can spend months or even years apart and when you meet again it’s like the time gap disappears. That’s the power of a good friendship. When you have it, you can feel it. And if it’s truly authentic, the feeling isn’t just yours, you and your friend feel it, because you are both revealing your true selves to each other.

Avoidance is easy

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I’m back in the loop of struggling to write. It makes me truly appreciate the challenges of authors who do this for a living. Sometimes the words flow and it’s like a poetic dance between thought and expression. Words, and even full ideas almost magically appear on the page, leaving me uncertain of where they came from.

Other times I stare at the blank page, or worse, I avoid the blank page. I seek distraction and call it inspiration. I am looking in all the wrong places. I am literally uninspired.

When I feel like this avoidance is easy. The ‘simple’ work of developing an idea into a piece of writing is not simple, it’s hard. Really hard. Avoiding the effort of thought when the thoughts are not coming becomes a losing game. Maybe I’ll look here for ideas, there for motivation, or over here for… yet another distraction even though I don’t want to call it that. And that’s game over. Time not so well wasted.

Avoiding the blank page is easy, but it’s not productive. How many things do we do that are the equivalent of this avoidance? For some it’s avoidance of a hard conversation, for others it’s a big task, for yet others it’s the minutiae that needs to get done but feels monotonous. Some people find solace that different ‘stuff’ gets done when they procrastinate, but does that really result in a positive experience?

How much time do we spend in a state of busyness rather than dealing with business? Avoiding the real task by doing other things, or worse yet doing something that’s merely a distraction. Some things get automated, habits get ritualized, and the work just gets done. But sometimes the struggle is real. The action avoidance becomes the easy task and the work doesn’t become the work, but actually just getting down to work. Because once you start the work gets done.

Fringe science versus science at the fringe

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I’ve started watching Ancient Apocalypse on Netflix by Graham Hancock. Hancock is a journalist that believes that civilizations have bern around since the last ice age. To some up a few of his premises:

  • There were full civilizations around 11-12 thousand years ago, at the end of the ice age.
  • The ice age end ended abruptly with meteor(s) causing a mass melting which caused massive flooding.
  • That flooding destroyed a lot of the early civilizations that nestled themselves on shorelines and coastal areas.
  • There was a significant loss of knowledge during this mass flood, a flood which almost all ancient cultures have stories about.
  • The Sphinx by the Egyptian pyramids are far older than the civilization that built the pyramids close to 5 thousand years ago. So that was not the birth of great civilizations as many believe.

I am not an archeologist, but I think there is something to these claims. The discovery of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, believed to have been built around 11,500 years ago, throws conventional beliefs about early civilizations out of whack. And this isn’t the only ancient sight doing this. More and more evidence suggests that perhaps there were civilizations far older than previously thought possible.

This is science that’s definitely on the fringe, challenging what’s known, and creating very plausible hypothesis. I think in the next 50 years we will consider a very different agreed upon history of civilizations than what we have today.

The challenge is that many people like Graham Hancock tend to be the same people who believe in fringe science. I heard a podcast with Hancock where in addition to ancient civilizations he was also talking about telepathy and moving Egyptian pyramid stones using mind power. The extrapolations seem far fetched and more based on pseudoscience than actual science.

It’s hard to sieve through a lot fringe science to find the science on the fringe… the science that isn’t necessarily conventionally believed, but has significant evidence and merit based on growing bodies of knowledge, as opposed to crazy speculation. This is challenging with people like Graham Hancock, as well as others like Deepak Chopra.

But I think when it comes to ancient civilizations lost to an ancient apocalypse, Hancock really is on to something, and we are going to see this science on the fringe make it into conventional science fairly soon. Our textbooks of tomorrow will tell a very different story about the birth of civilization compared to the history books of today.

Divided we stand

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The BC, Canada election is over… almost. There are two recounts and enough close battles that we need to wait another week to have the late arriving mail-in votes get counted.

If things don’t change, the New Democratic Party, at 46 electoral seats, will be the minority leaders with 47 seats needed for a majority. The Green Party with their 2 seats will actually have some significant influence to ensure the minority government can actually get things done.

Over 2 million people voted and that represented over 57% of those eligible to vote. There was only a 1% gap between the two leading parties.

As I look to the south, I see another election coming, and another close race with a divided vote in November. Having at least 2 strong parties is a good thing in a democracy, but having both be as strong as they are can create havoc when actually trying to get things done.

This divisiveness we are seeing is baffling to me. It’s like our provinces, states, and countries have split personalities. Dichotomies to an extreme.

But if the mail in votes change things up here in BC, I don’t think we’ll see civil unrest. There might be more recounts, but there will also be a peaceful transfer of power. I don’t see the same thing happening down south. I hope I’m wrong.

Divided we stand, I hope we don’t fall.