Tag Archives: Jonathan Sclater

Choosing to share

Yesterday I wrote ‘Choosing or observing?‘ In which I said, “How much time do we spend being observers of this world, mere victims of our circumstances, versus creators of our world, choosing our path and seeking out new experiences, new things that our senses can take in?“

On LinkedIn, Kelly Christopherson responded, “…I definitely need to be more active and choose to create and share more.”

I hadn’t though of creating and sharing at all when I wrote that post. I was thinking about time, focus, and attention, but not about the choice to share our work and what we do. I have an educational blog that I’ve barely contributed to these past few years; a podcast I keep wanting to, but rarely, add to; and a monthly email subscription that I haven’t written in over a year. I’ve also drastically reduced my sharing on social media. I’m not sure if this is just a phase I’m going through or if social media just feels less social these days?

That said, since July 2019 I have written and shared a blog post daily. That’s a year and 3/4 now of sharing something every day. I won’t lie, it has been a challenging commitment. I’ve written a few later than midnight and back-dated the post… I was still awake and consider this part of the day before, since I haven’t gone to sleep yet. Beyond that, I might have missed one or two along the way, but I don’t think so?

So, my educational blog and podcast have been pushed aside, and maybe I’ll try to get that monthly newsletter out starting after this summer, but I’ve shared something here on this Daily-Ink for well over 600 days in a row… and I don’t see myself changing this habit any time soon.

So, why did Kelly’s comment strike a cord with me? For a while he and I, along with Jonathan Sclater, shared our fitness adventures with each other. Recently, I’ve been going through the motions with my workouts, struggling to push myself, and I wonder if I shouldn’t start connecting with these guys again to help push me. I think it’s time to share a little more. To not just engage but interact, be more social, and share.

Future Success

Future success comes from the habit of pushing yourself beyond what you can do today. I can have goals, and I can make plans, and I can talk about what I want to do. I can ‘do’ all of these things, but it is actions and effort that make the difference.

Here I am failing to do handstand push-ups against the wall.


I scraped some skin off me knee on that last fall. However, that last fall came after 3 successful reps. That’s 3 more than I did on the first set. I’m getting there. That doesn’t mean the failures feel good. That doesn’t mean the next 3 will feel easy… yet. I have a lot of hard work and effort to get there.

Six weeks ago, if you told me that I could do something like this, I would have ‘No, waaay too hard!’:


But that’s only 32 days after trying to do just this:


After sharing my fail video above, Kelly Christopherson tweeted:


The reality is that Kelly and Jonathan Sclater have been inspiring me as well. We are sharing our efforts publicly and push each other: To keep improving; To appreciate effort and hard work; and, To recognize our incremental improvements;

My future includes being able to do a 30 second, unassisted handstand. I failed at reaching this goal on my original two timelines. My next timeline is aggressive and I might not make that either. But it will happen. The journey will include more failures, and false starts, and frustration.

I started by saying, ‘Future success comes from the habit of pushing yourself beyond what you can do today.’ If I’m going to push myself beyond my comfort zone, I’m going to reach failure points. But last months failed attempts got me where I am now, and tomorrow’s failures will bring me future success.

Podcasting-Pairadimes-by-David-Truss

Conversations worth having

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had some wonderful conversations that I’ve had on Zoom and recorded for my podcast.

I’ve known Kelly Christopherson since I started blogging in 2006. We’ve never met face-to-face, yet I’ve spent years learning with and from him. His philosophy that ‘Every day is a professional development day’ is something I enjoy following on Twitter daily.

I met Jonathan Sclater in late 2011 or early 2012, and was fascinated by his Imaginative Learning classroom. I didn’t realize until this talk that I helped to push Jonathan into blogging and sharing his practice digitally.

Joe Truss and I connected on Twitter last year. We had a quick conversation about our last names, trying to see if we had any connections. That conversation led me to learn more first about his school’s meditation practices, and then about his inspiring work promoting culturally responsive leadership.

One thing that all four of us have in common is that we have taken to physically taking care of ourselves, and that has led us all into more resilient spaces where we have more to offer than we did before. Working in education can seem all-consuming at times and that often leads to poor habits around physical fitness and taking care of ourselves. The idea that a healthy body promotes a healthy mind is one that we have all been working on, and that comes through in all three podcasts.

I love having these conversations, and I think it’s wonderful that I get to share them. I also like that they are conversations that are as long as they need to be… they aren’t 3-5 minute sound bites, but rather full conversations. This is something I’ve enjoyed about listening to podcasts myself and I’m glad that these wonderful educators were willing to share their time with me… And you…
I’ve shared the podcast descriptions below along with links (names and images) for you to get to the podcast page to listen to them. Enjoy!

Kelly Christopherson: “Every Day is a PD Day!” Kelly and I have been connected online for 14 years, starting on a blogging platform called ELGG, which included a number of different educator communities and social networking apps that predated Facebook and Twitter. Although we have never met face-to-face, we have been connected members of each other’s personal and professional learning networks.

Jonathan Sclater is an Elementary School Principal in Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada. He completed a Master of Education curriculum studies degree in Imaginative Education from Simon Fraser University in 2011, and he was awarded The Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence in 2012. Jonathan is passionate about using imaginative thinking in his role now as a lead learner. We discuss Imaginative Learning and the importance of taking care of ourselves in order to be able to give more of ourselves as leaders.

Joe Truss and I start the conversation off talking about taking care of ourselves so that we can be better leaders. Then we move on to meditation in schools, and then on to what it means to be a culturally responsible leader. The focus is on hearing the voices of the disadvantaged, and power differences for those that are disadvantaged, including students in relation to teachers and adults. “Moving from more equitable to equal.”

Share your work in the open

I already shared this quote that helped me decide to blog daily:

“For years, I’ve been explaining to people that daily blogging is an extraordinarily useful habit. Even if no one reads your blog, the act of writing it is clarifying, motivating and (eventually) fun.“ ~Seth Godin

As a result of blogging daily, and having it also post on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, I now transmit a lot of posts about my own work, and I’m sure that for some, that can feel like too much.

Last night I was chatting with Jonathan Sclater and, like me, he has some healthy living goals he is working on. One of the things he now does is share his morning runs on social media. Here is his Tweet from Monday,

My #health #oneword2020 keeps me moving forward. 5 hours of sleep last night, so I felt like sleeping in instead or saying “maybe tomorrow”. But I got up anyways and put in the work. Won’t stop pursuing my goals. Don’t let anything get in the way of yours today!

#runlap

#health

I love to see sharing like this. Jonathan questioned if some people thinks he is over-sharing regarding his runs, and I responded that I think it’s great! We don’t have to worry about that. If someone doesn’t like it, they are free to unfollow, but sharing your passion and commitment are inspiring.

Similarly, Kelly Christopherson has been sharing Exploring Personal/Professional Learning One Day At a Time. Here is an example from Twitter:

Every day is a new opportunity to try something new. Each one of us is capable of doing great things if we only give ourselves permission to try without limiting ourselves to what we know we can do. Every day is a PD day. #myPDtoday @DomenicScuglia @dteneycke1 @LoriMeyerMseJaw

Sometimes he tags me in the Tweet and I appreciate it, and actually asked for it. Kelly’s regular reflections on living a life of continual thinking and learning ‘out loud’ is inspiring.

It’s not for everyone watching and reading, and that’s ok. It doesn’t have to be daily, but share your work. Share the things you value, or simply share your love for writing, or taking photos. Have fun, enjoy the process, and know that others can be inspired by what you share.