Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
I’ve created a survey for my Grade 11’s and 12’s. They are the only students in our school that know what our community and culture was like pre-lockdowns and pre-restrictions into cohorts to deal with the pandemic. The 11’s only saw this from September to February of their grade 9 year, the 12’s experienced it for a year and a half. I am asking them these questions for a few reasons:
1. I want them to remember what makes our school special.
2. I want them to share their perspective so that we know what students find valuable about the culture we had before restrictions altered our environment.
3. I want to learn what students didn’t like or enjoy, so that we don’t bring those things back.
I created the questionnaire and shared it with teachers for feedback. I also shared it with one of our grade 12’s. The teachers said, ‘good questions’ and gave a suggestion or two. My student said the same, then went on to give me a whole slew of suggestions that will make the survey easier to understand and respond to, and provide better (clearer) feedback to us. This student’s suggestions allowed me to see the survey through a student’s eyes, and gave me perspective that I could not have had otherwise.
Sometimes we do things for students without having empathy for their experience. We design activities and assignments without thinking of the user experience… without including them in the design process. Often we can make these activities and assignments for students so much better… if we just remember to ask a student.
Yesterday was the last of school for students, and today is the last day for teachers. For the past couple years, we’ve had grads where the students came one at a time, and so part of that included them giving a short interview.
The 3 questions we asked were about favourite memories, advice for new students, and future plans.
Then yesterday afternoon I decided to interview two of our teachers who are leaving us next year. I don’t have the video ready, but a couple questions I asked them were, “What could other schools learn from us?” and, “If you could wave a magic wand, what would you change about Inquiry Hub?”
I really enjoyed my conversations with these teachers and they made me realize that I should be asking our grads more questions before they leave us. I also had a conversation with one of previous grads and mentioned I’d love to interview him as well. We can learn a lot from exit interviews, and I plan to take advantage of this in the coming years.
Last night we held iHub Annual where we highlighted some student performances, our Ollie Awards, and our grads.
Our Ollie Awards are our awards based on our motto: Dream – Create – Learn, and students from all grades and all levels of academic achievement can receive them.
The show opens at 4:45 with a song co-written and performed by students for the annual. My speech to the grads is at 39:40, and our Valedictorian and Spirit of Inquiry award winner’s speech is at 49:17.
This is a presentation put together with so much student work, and it comes off quite polished. It is a celebration of the year that was, and for a few moments while watching it, I forgot about the challenges this year presented.
I can’t wait for the opportunity to run this event live again, but watching last night from the comfort of my home, I was thrilled to see students in the chat enjoying the show, and I was grateful that I wasn’t in a stuffy theatre on one of the hottest days on record.
It truly is remarkable to work in a school where students know that it’s their job to Dream and Create, as well as to Learn.
This was my yearbook ‘message from the principal’ for Inquiry Hub this year:
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Make Lemonade
When the backdrop of your school year is a Global Pandemic, it’s hard to think of the things you got to do, and easy to think about all the things you didn’t get to do. It’s hard not to think this way when so much has been taken away from us. We are used to students mixing across grades and getting to know everyone in our community through events and potluck lunches. Well, this was not a year for those things. But when you look at the year we had, we were lucky compared to many high schools.
We provided all-day schooling when other schools were having students only come to school for half a day and doing another course online, then switching these two around. Meanwhile we had our cohorts in school for the entire day. Other schools rushed students through quarters, with 2 courses at a time. We continued with our year-long classes. Courses in other schools were paired down to the essential curriculum. We had students continue to follow their passions and interests with Inquiries and IDS courses, and teachers continued to look at things in depth, and had time to follow student interests along the way.
I was watching a TikTok recently and it was about things non-native English speakers didn’t understand when they first learned English, (I am definitely on grown up/teacher TikTok and have a different feed than a younger-than-me generation). The phrase that this person didn’t understand was “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” To most of us this is a phrase that means, when things are sour and going against you, make the most out of it. However, this woman was from a country and culture where lemons are used to spice things up, and the taste of a lemon is truly enjoyed. To her, “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” meant, appreciate the good things in life. She never understood the phrase to mean anything negative. When life gives you a wonderful lemon, well then celebrate and make some lemonade!
When you look back on the past year, I hope you can see it from the perspective of this lady, and find the delicious lemons you made lemonade out of. Who did you spend more time with? What did you enjoy doing that you don’t usually do? What do you feel lucky that you had, that others didn’t have? If you were living in Toronto this year, you would have spent almost the entire year doing school from home, whether you wanted to or not.
Also, we are heading into a summer with much less restrictions than last year. What are you looking forward to that you will enjoy even more than you ever have? What opportunities are you going to take advantage of, that you probably wouldn’t have? Where is your family going to travel next?
It’s time to enjoy your summer… and make some lemonade.
At Inquiry Hub students learn the difference between a working portfolio and a presentation portfolio. They don’t get electives in the same way a student in a large high school gets theirs. Instead of a Grade 9 looking at a large catalogue of courses to choose from, students get a couple ‘mandatory electives’… yet they end up with more choice and variety than students in big schools with many elective choices. This is possible because one of the mandatory courses is Foundations of Inquiry, where students get to choose their own topics.
In Foundations of Inquiry, students create a working portfolio. Using OneNote, they share their documentation of work and progress with their teacher. They will include photographs, videos, and journaling, as well as reflections, progress reports, and copies of presentations done as part of the process. These notes are not public, beyond teacher access. In a way, these portfolios are the rough draft of what’s being done.
We also encourage students to publicly share their work. This can include on a blog or website, or a presentation beyond the classroom. It can include contacting mentors and experts and sharing what they have done. And it can include creating videos or doing presentations to family and community at school. These are public opportunities to share their portfolio, and this portfolio is polished and ready for sharing out in the open.
A daily journal like this is sort of a mix between the two kinds of portfolios. Writing every day, I don’t get to share polished work. I have no editors, I am generally sharing my first draft, looked over only by myself, once or twice, before scheduling the post to go live at 7:22am on most mornings… a random time I have selected and stick to on weekdays, when I’m up and writing before 5:30am. Weekends I publish later, and immediately after writing, rather than scheduling.
This is by all means a working portfolio. Some of my ideas are half baked. Some are fleeting thoughts expanded into a handful of sentences. Some are ideas like this where I give a long background before getting to the idea at hand. Some are thoughtful reflections that seem far more thought out than they actually are. And some really aren’t that good, and wouldn’t pass an editor, or even myself if I looked at it two days later.
A journal like my Daily-Ink is a constant work in progress, it is a working portfolio of ideas and thoughts. Yet, it is also very public. When I schedule a post, it automatically goes to RRS feeds, it gets put onto a Facebook page, and it is shared through Twitter and LinkedIn posts. It is put on public display on many fronts for anyone interested to see. It’s a glimpse into my mind, and it shows the rough edges. It is at once a draft and a final copy.
I don’t think many people would be comfortable doing this every day. I have to say that it is a huge commitment, but a rewarding one. Sometimes words flow and I feel an incredible sense of satisfaction. Sometimes I stare at a blank page with no idea what to write, questioning why I do this to myself? But, I wrote this one day and now share it as my blog tag line:
Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
As I state in the post, “The act of writing makes me a better writer. The commitment to this act every single day is itself a reward, making me feel like I’ve accomplished something before I even start my work day.”
It’s not perfect, (in fact I found a typo in the quote above that I went back and changed). This is a working portfolio… it just happens to be one that I share publicly.
We had our final PAC meeting of the year last night for Inquiry Hub. At the end of the Principal’s Report I did a quick ‘Thank You’ to parents, students, and teachers. One thing I mentioned when I talked about the students was resilience. I am so impressed with how resilient students were this year.
We’ve had students deal with family hardships that no kid should have to deal with. We’ve had students who have had their own struggles that they need to face. We’ve had students who have struggled previously that have stepped up and found ways to be more successful. These students are especially resilient, and may not even realize it.
We’ve also had many students who have come to school every day and just made the most out of this year. In many respects it has been a challenging year, one where things did nothing go as expected. But students have come together and created community. They have supported each other. They have found ways to thrive.
And they’ve learned so much! I’m absolutely impressed with some of the inquiry projects that were done this year. And when I’ve watched student presentations, I’ve seen slides that are so well put together that you would think they were going to a design school. They aren’t just putting information on a page, they are conveying a coherent story. While this is usually something we consistently see with seniors, this is now something that we are seeing at every grade.
And students are committed to helping each other. They have come together and showed how much they care for one another, and supported each other. The examples I can think of are plentiful, but also a little too specific to share here without asking permission. The point being that during a global pandemic, when I’d expect to see more individual concerns for student well being, I’ve instead seen resilient kids coming together to help each other.
We don’t always give kids the credit they deserve. They are amazingly resilient and at a time when many people are dealing with hardships greater than they normally have to face, our students, our kids, have been dealt a challenging school year and have made it through this year surprisingly well.
I can’t wait to see what these kids do when we are able to provide them a full school experience next year… it’s something I really look forward to. I’m already excited about what September will bring.
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.
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As a fun aside, this is the same student that called me ‘The Big Shebang‘.
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.
We don't all have our books with us, but today's Pro-D Day started with us sharing what we've learned in books we've read for our own professional growth. pic.twitter.com/JvV4Kn9blh
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:
Combining Jim Collins (@level5leaders) Hedgehog and Flywheel, as we look ahead to the learning community we are trying to develop and foster @InquiryHub. (Some spelling errors corrected after the video:) pic.twitter.com/223l97rQ25
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!
I surveyed our Grad 9’s a couple days ago. Coming from middle school, and getting stuck in a single cohort, they really didn’t get the experience at our school we wanted for them. At Inquiry Hub our students usually connect across grades, and interact as a larger community, which is important in a really small school. But although we were able to give them full days, unlike large schools with a lot more cohorts to manage, the environment our 9’s came into is far more like an extension of a single class in middle school than a high school. That said, they really don’t know what they are missing compared to a regular year here… they’ve never seen it.
I asked them to write on a piece of paper, a positive, a challenge, and/or a suggestion or wish, and I collected them. They could write about any or all of these.
Here are a few of them:
The challenges and suggestions were all related to covid restrictions, with less clubs, and a lack of connection with other cohorts. Beyond that the comments were very positive.
“I like the open and just overall welcoming environment.”
“I like how you can structure your own day…”
“I like how our courses let us set our own goals and learning paths.”
“Even though our community is so small, I like how close we’ve all gotten.”
One comment in particular was quite interesting to me:
“I love how much the teachers trust us here.”
I agree that our teachers give students a lot of freedom, and choice. And students at iHub get a fair bit of unstructured time to work on what the want/need to work on. But I never thought of this through the lens of trust, like this student.
When students feel trusted, they feel empowered, they feel they have a responsibility to keep that trust. It’s an interesting lens to see the dynamic of the classroom through. How does the relationship between the students and the teachers change when trust is given and valued? Where does the responsibility for learning fall in a trusting relationship? What else is fostered in a trusting environment?
Kudos to our teachers for creating such a wonderful learning environment in these challenging times.
This video came up as a Facebook memory from 4 years ago.
The process of applying for an award like The Cmolik Prize for the Enhancement of Public Education in BC was rewarding because it forced us to reflect on what we do. We have really evolved as a community since this video was made, and while we don’t necessarily give students as much freedom as we have in the past, we’ve created better scaffolding to support students getting their work done… on both the school work they need to do, and the projects they want to do.
A couple recent Daily-Ink posts have focussed on the school: Students design the school about student designed and created murals; and, Obstacles become the way about a student working through a problem rather than letting that problem become an obstacle or a failure point in his project. Creating the space for these things to happen is, as Al says at the end of the video, a worthy goal. Weve fostered a pretty special community where we get to see our students thrive.
