Tag Archives: connections

Intersections revisited

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There are some things I write here on Daily-Ink, and when I read my own writing a month or two later I barely remember or even recognize my own writing. I wrote that?

But there are other things I write and I remember. There is one post in particular that I think about regularly. Tonight on (another) walk with my wife we reached an intersection where we were crossing the road. Perpendicular to us, on the cross street’s sidewalk, were two men who reached the intersection exactly the same time as us. We all slowed down to let each other pass. They were the only other people walking anywhere near us and sure enough we intersected at the one place our paths crossed.

Despite thinking about the following post regularly, I hadn’t actually re-read it in a couple years. I didn’t consciously remember that it also started with a walk with my wife, but what I do remember, what I reflect on when it regularly happens, is that we are somehow drawn to these intersections.

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October 27, 2021

Human intersections

Last night I went for a walk with my wife. Minutes from home we were walking on a quiet, empty street that doesn’t have sidewalks. Then a car approached from in front of us. We started to move to the side of the road, and noticed car lights coming from behind us as well. The cars crossed paths right where we were on the edge of the road, having had to slow down to cautiously make space for us and the other car. Then we continued our walk with no cars approaching us from either way until we arrived home.

I find it fascinating how we seem to be drawn, pulled to intersecting points with other people. For the amount of times someone walks by our house, or the front of my school when I arrive before any students, I’m amazed how often I have to wait for a pedestrian to walk cross the driveway before I can make the turn… amazed that as I wait, I can see no other pedestrians for an entire block.

In a car you are turning left and must wait for the one car coming the other way to pass.

At a shopping plaza you go to open a door to a store and the one other person in sight is coming through the door the other way.

On a path in a park, you are walking faster than the people in front of you, and as you go to pass them, other people are approaching from the other way crowding the path at your takeover point.

I think we find ourselves at these intersections at a rate that is greater than probability would suggest… The likelihood of such intersections happen far more than just by chance. Like magnets passing one another, there is a pull towards others, an unseen force that draws us into each other’s path. It isn’t a case of bad timing, it’s not that we are unlucky and forced to slow down, wait, or squeeze by someone else. It’s actually just the opposite. We naturally seek each other out on some unconscious level. We are drawn to human intersections.

It was special

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The reason we gathered wasn’t a happy one, but we took the opportunity to gather.

I became a teacher in 1998, and I joined a staff where 14 of 28 of us were brand new with another 2 teachers that had less than a year’s experience. It was Como Lake Middle School, and over the next 9 years I worked with an absolutely incredible staff.

We learned so much together. We had so much fun. When I speak to former students from that era they all share one or more of these quotes:

“We could tell that you liked being teachers.”

“We could tell you were all friends, liked each other, and liked coming to school.”

“We could tell you liked us and cared about us.”

“You guys made middle school fun.”

I thought I’d try high school or another school after 5 years, and I stayed for 4 more because it was too hard to let go of such a fantastic community. These people helped sculpt me as an educator and a leader.

Connecting with them yesterday reminded me of what an amazing group of people I ‘grew up with’ as an educator.

I feel blessed to know these people.

Sliding into DM’s

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Maybe I’m just too skeptical, but I am always suspicious when I connect with someone on social media and they quickly jump into a private message. I immediately think they are there for one of two reasons, to sell me something or scam me.

Yesterday I got a follow on BlueSky. I followed the person back and then received two direct messages:

Hello, David, I’m [Name]. Nice to be friends with you here

I just got here. What do you think of the place?

This was my response:

Haven’t invested enough time here to say. But FYI, I don’t spend time on social media messaging people I don’t know, sorry. Happy to respond to public @ responses, but this will be my last private message with you. Nothing personal, just not how I use social media.

Then I got this long response:

I just arrived here and I am curious about everything here, so I will send you a signal to make friends. After all, making new friends is always good. What social media do you use? I have WhatsApp and Telegram, and I usually communicate with my family and friends there

That’s enough for me to end both the conversation and connection. I’m not interested in playing games. I’m not interested in flirtatious banter. I don’t need to waste my time with someone who sounds inauthentic.

I usually respond to DM’s in some way. I try to assess intentions, I try to be polite. But I also feel like my effort to be nice, to engage, is an invite to waste time with people who do not have good intentions. Blocking may seem harsh, but that’s what I do. This one seemed scam-ish from the start, and the first part of this person’s profile was a vague description, ‘Businesswoman from LA’, so my initial response was colder than usual. I’m more open to an honest response from someone who is an educator.

Fortunately this is quite rare. Most of the people I end up connecting with are indeed educators, and if I get a direct message it’s usually good. But when a stranger just slides into my DM’s just to be friends, my stranger danger alarms start to go off, and I am starting the conversation with caution and skepticism.

So if you are new to connecting to me, by all means do say hello, but no need to slide into DM’s. Just @datruss me publicly. There really isn’t a reason to DM me unless you know me. Am I the only one that looks at DM’s this way?

From bird to sky – a social media switch

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For about a year and a half now I’ve been ‘transmitting’ my blog to not just Twitter, but also to Threads and Blue Sky. I use the term ‘transmit’ because I haven’t engaged much on these platforms, I just post my blog post and leave. However, I have more engagement, and conversations on LinkedIn and my blog’s Facebook page.

But I’m starting to see a move to Blue Sky. For me, it means moving from over 12,000 connections on Twitter to under 100 on Blue Sky, but I’m ok with that. I think the community will grow, and for me Twitter was amazing even at 450 connections. The bigger question is weather I’ll actually go back to spending time there or if I’ll just continue to transmit?

For now, LinkedIn seems to be the place I converse more, engage more, and even learn from more. And my Facebook page following is small, but a wonderful community. As I watch people leave Twitter and move to Blue Sky, I wonder if I’ll get a taste of what old Twitter was like pulling me in to this new(ish) site, or if it’s just one more place I post and ignore? Do I need another place to engage, or is LinkedIn and Facebook more than enough already? I’ll figure it out soon enough, but if you are on Blue Sky, let’s connect.

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.

Meeting face-to-face

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Today I’m headed to Surrey to meet with other principals in charge of Provincial Online Learning Schools. My commute is less than an hour, some of my counterparts from around the province had to fly or drive in last night to get to the meeting on time this morning. We will be meeting with a representative from the Ministry of Education in the morning, and also have a full agenda for the rest of the day.

In many ways I have more in common with these colleagues from other school districts than I do with most colleagues in my own district. Being a principal of an online school has very unique demands, policies, and challenges which make our jobs unique. We don’t fit in the box of a traditional school principals, and often when I come across a challenging situation it is these distant colleagues that I turn to for support or clarification.

When we meet as a group it is usually online. But today we connect face-to-face. I can’t express the value it has provided to connect with these principals in person. Over the years I’ve made some valuable friends, and gotten to know some amazing educators thanks to these meetings. I’ve built relationships that would have been much harder to make if we only ever met through a screen.

There is a lot of power in physically getting together for a meeting rather than just doing so online. As a principal of an online school, that’s an important thing to remember and reflect on.

Information abundance requires pattern recognition

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What a fantastic quote by Adam Grant,

“The hallmark of expertise is no longer how much you know. It’s how well you synthesize.

Information scarcity rewarded knowledge acquisition. Information abundance requires pattern recognition.

It’s not enough to collect facts. The future belongs to those who connect dots.”

Pattern recognition and synthesis are the path to innovation, ingenuity, and invention. The collection of knowledge is not enough. Wisdom comes from recognizing how to make connections across different fields, how to make meaning out of relationships that not everyone sees.

Artificial Intelligence can give us the knowledge we seek. It can dumb down the ideas to our level of understanding, and even teach us with relevant examples when we are stuck. More information won’t be what we seek. Instead we will seek new connections, patterns, and relationships.

The desired experts of tomorrow are probably not the siloed experts we once sought. Instead they will be information generalists who understand how to take information from different fields, identify relationships others don’t see, and synthesize information such that they can tell a story others won’t know to tell.

How are we preparing the next generation of learners for this new future? How will schools need to change to help students prepare for the future in a world of abundant and easily accessible information? It certainly won’t be by feeding them content. Instead, the future of education lies in creating challenges where students need to synthesize information and recognize connections and patterns across different fields of study.

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Related: My ‘Transforming Our Learning Metaphors’ Ignite Presentation from almost a decade ago.

You can’t make old friends

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In the past couple weeks I’ve spent time with a friend I met on the first day of university, a friend I met in a class at the start of high school, and (via social media) the brother of one of my first friends when I moved to Canada. I’ve known these guys for 38, 41, and 47 years respectively. Add to that the only other friend I’ve spent time with recently, and he’s someone I started my career with 26 years ago. And just over a month ago I got to connect with some lifelong friends I hadn’t seen in a while. A commenter on my post about this said, “You can’t make old friends.”

It has made me realize how the bond of friendship transcends time. It takes a while to make a good friend, and then they last a lifetime. It makes me think of the good friends I’ve lost touch with, or don’t get in touch enough with. They are too valuable to let go.

I’m going to reflect on this a bit and try to reconnect with some people whom I’ve really valued over the years… friends and family I don’t see or talk to enough. It’s hard to make old friends at my age, so I need to take care of those long term friendships I already have.

Lifelong friends

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I’m back in Ontario and I was invited to my friend’s cottage. He specifically invited friends that I’ve known for years. Most of them I met in 1986, one of them I met back in ‘83. One I hadn’t seen in over 25 years, another one I’d last seen close to a decade ago.

Every one of the boys, in the photo I’ve shared, I’ve played water polo with. All of them have also coached. There was a lot of reminiscing today. A lot of teasing, and a lot of mutual respect and admiration.

There is something so special about lifelong friends whom you can have long breaks from and still easily connect with. The time we spend with them is priceless!

Fully Present

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To be fully present is challenging. To keep focus and not let attention sway. To listen without worrying about what to say next. To not let the mind drift to the next task, or any other task. To quiet distracting thoughts, and to be singularly engaged.

A child at play, an engrossed artist, an athlete in the zone, a writer in a stream of consciousness, an inspired entrepreneur, a reader enthralled in a good book… all moments of focus… all hints of what we are capable of, when we are fully present.

In everyday living it is elusive. Distractions reign, and partial presence prevails. But oh, how special those fully present moments are… they are moments when you are living your full potential.

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Related: “You have my divided attention”