Tag Archives: learning

Leadership Storytelling

I had the opportunity to be one of 6 Principals and Vice Principals to speak at a series for teachers called Building Leadership Capacity. The theme was Storytelling and so I decided to share a fable:

THE MOUSE TRAP

A mouse looked through a crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife opening a package. What food might it contain? He was aghast to discover that it was a mouse trap. Retreating to the farmyard the mouse proclaimed the warning: “There is a mouse trap in the house, a mouse trap in the house! “The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, “Excuse me, Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it.”

The mouse turned to the pig and told him, “There is a mouse trap in the house, a mouse trap in the house!” “I am so very sorry Mr. Mouse,” sympathized the pig, “but there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured that you are in my prayers.”

The mouse turned to the cow. She said,”Like wow, Mr. Mouse. A mouse trap. Like I am in grave danger. Duh…NOT!” So the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer’s mouse trap alone.

That very night a sound was heard throughout the house, like the sound of a mouse trap catching its prey. The farmer’s wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see that it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer’s wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital. She returned home with a fever.

Now everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup’s main ingredient. His wife’s sickness continued so that friends and neighbours came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig. The farmer’s wife did not get well and a few days later she passed away. So many people came for her funeral, that the farmer had the cow slaughtered, to provide meat for all of them to eat.

I shared this from memory so it differed in a few details, and I ended here. The fable continues with this:

So the next time you hear that someone is facing a problem and think that it does not concern you, remember that when there is a mouse trap in the house, the whole farmyard is at risk.

What I said instead was that Good Leadership is organizing the volunteers that came to help the farmers wife, and being stoic and organizing the funeral, and supporting the grieving friends. And Great Leadership is addressing the concerns of the mouse. But then I gave a disclosure that in this school year alone I could think of two occasions where I had to do my best to be a Good Leader because only in hindsight could I them when you don’t identify the concern as being as big a concern as the other person. I shared how important it is to really listen, and understand your staff, and not just look at things from your perspective.

I was asked, ‘How do you know when you’ve got it right?’ And I said that our egos tend to make us believe we’ve always got it right and so it’s when you get it wrong that is important to identify and try to fix before it becomes a bigger problem. The example I gave here was when I was in my first role as a Vice Principal. A teacher sent a kid to the office and when I asked him what he did, I didn’t believe him. The reason he was sent to the office was trivial and something that I would never have sent a kid to the office for.

So, I had him rehearse an apology to the teacher and frame how he would change his behaviour, I had him practice a few times on me and sent him back to his class. Five minutes later he was back at my office and when I looked at him in surprise he said, “Mr Truss I did exactly what you told me to do.” So I took him down to the teacher and we resolved the issue together, and he went back to class.

And that was the moment I realized that just because I came from a school where teachers handled most situations on their own, and just because I only sent 2 kids to the office in a decade of teaching, it doesn’t mean every teacher is like that. I learned that I had to appreciate the concerns of the teacher as well as the student, and if the student was going to be successful in getting back into the class I had to really understand the teacher’s perspective and not just the student’s behaviour.

Being a Good Leader isn’t that challenging for the people that choose to go to a series like Building Leadership Capacity, they would already be leaders in their building. Being a Great Leader is hard for everyone. It involves building strong relationships with your staff, really knowing them, and understanding how to support them in ways that are different from each other and yet still bring the team together… and sometimes the best you can do is be good at handling the aftermath when you don’t realize how threatening the little mouse traps are.

Defining the Unconventional

Inquiry Hub is a very different school than a conventional high school. Students get a lot less direct instruction, they do a lot more group work and presentations, and they get time in their day to work on passion projects. These passion projects serve as their elective courses, and they get credit for doing them. And while we can’t offer the amazing array of electives courses students get in a large high school, students get to go in-depth on topics of interest in a way that they just don’t normally get to in a ‘regular’ high school.

Despite our grads moving on to programs like engineering and computer science, and despite acceptance to UBC, SFU, Emily Carr, BCIT, Waterloo, McGill, and other universities, colleges, and technical schools, we still get parents concerned that somehow their kids will be disadvantaged by going to our school.

Our kids transition to university very well, and do not struggle in their first year, unlike 12-15% of grads across the province that graduate high school successfully then don’t make it through their first year of university. But incoming parents are still worried that their kids won’t be prepared for university. The skills they learn in our school to self advocate, self-direct, and structure their own learning are exactly the skills student don’t get in far more scripted learning environments where the teacher tends to determine what students are doing for almost the entire day in a traditional block schedule.

Skills learned at Inquiry Hub not only help students when they get to university, but these skills also help students be more entrepreneurial, more innovative, and more prepared to be productive in a knowledge economy. Our students will prepare presentations for a midpoint in a project that would blow away what a team would do for a final project in another school, or even what a marketing team would do for a client pitch. Guests in our school are continually blown away by the confidence and professionalism of student presentations.

We are still iterating, we are still learning, we are still figuring out how to help students who struggle… but that’s part of what makes the school great. The environment is dynamic, flexible, and responsive. And students learn that learning is a process. They learn to share their learning in meaningful ways. And they learn to be productive members of a learning community. If that’s considered unconventional, we’ll just keep being unconventional.

Lack of Resourcefulness

Working with kids, I sometimes see a pattern where students who struggle would avoid their own struggles by trying to help others. They can’t get their own struggles in order so they try to become the helper and healers of others. It’s easier to be the saviour than the person needing saving. The endorphins from being needed masks the depressed feelings of needing help and feeling helpless.

But when this happens, the kid doing the helping and avoiding their own work that needs to be done is not resourceful enough to actually help the other kid. They are just helpful enough to create a dependency, to build a mutual reliance on each other, with the co-dependent relationship being the only real benefit.

Now you’ve got two kids that both need help, but they look to each other for that help, rather than looking to someone that can really help them. Furthermore they are now both avoiding the work they need to do for themselves.

This is why students having at least one adult on the building that they have a positive relationship with is so important. Because kids don’t always have the resourcefulness to help other kids, and adults need to intervene when students are hindering growth by trying to help each other. But an intervening adult who doesn’t have a good relationship with the kid or both kids can actually embolden the unhealthy relationship between the kids.

This is one of the most challenging things to deal with in a school, when un-resourceful kids are trying to help each other in order to avoid doing the things they need to do to become more resourceful. It’s a cycle that needs to be broken or it can spread to even more kids. In the end, it’s about providing support and helping build resourcefulness rather than allowing un-resourceful kids try to help each other.

The shallows vs the deep

When you meet some people, you instantly like them. They are friendly, personable, and genuine. Some people take a while to grow on you. There isn’t that quick assessment, and you need time to figure them out and have them figure you out. They can easily be as genuine as the people you like instantly, but you don’t immediately know.

Then there are the ones you instantly dislike or mistrust. There are those that seek to complain, and are quick to annoy you or to be easily annoyed themselves.

Isn’t interesting how much time and thought we spend on these different kinds of people? Those that have a depth of quality, we appreciate and want to know, but we don’t necessarily think or talk about them when they aren’t around. But those that annoy and frustrate us consume more of our thought and attention than they deserve.

We spend too much time focused in on the shallow end of this continuum and not enough time going deep with those that deserve more of our attention. We play and replay scenarios dealing with shallow people instead of doing the work to let go of petty things and investing time with those that lift us up in body, mind, and spirit.

Sometimes I’m surprised by my inability to move beyond the shallow end. I try to convince myself that I’m not interested in playing in the shallows, but I allow small conversations and interactions to consume too much of my thoughts. And then I wonder why I don’t have the time or energy for more intellectual endeavours?

This is why I seek people to converse with one-on-one. I create the opportunities to go deep, to invest time with people that are intelligent, forthcoming, insightful, and enjoyable to be around. I create time away from from the shallow end, where conversations can go deep. We might still splash around in shallow conversations but these are enjoyable rather than taxing, playful rather than confrontational… and always open to going deeper.

Teaching in an era of AI

Yesterday I wrote about Next level artificial intelligence and since then I’ve learned quite a bit about ChatGPT capabilities. It’s an amazing tool and people are catching on, with over 1 million users trying it out in just 6 days. The implications for teaching are huge. Students can use this AI to have original work created for them that will not show up in a Google search if a teacher suspects plagiarism.

For years now I’ve heard the mantra that teachers need to ask questions that you can’t find the answer to on Google. But those questions could be uniquely answered by Chat GPT with no way of a teacher knowing it wasn’t done by a student… other than the fact that the writing might be of a higher quality than usual.

I don’t see Chat GPT completely doing all the work, but it will be a tool students use to build on. For instance, I asked this AI to do the following:

Write a 5 paragraph essay that compares and contrasts Winston Smith in George Orwell’s novel 1984 with Bernard Marx in Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World.

This is what it came up with in about 5 seconds:

Winston Smith and Bernard Marx are both characters in dystopian novels, but they have some significant differences. In George Orwell’s 1984, Winston is a rebellious member of a totalitarian society who secretly resists the oppressive government. In contrast, Bernard Marx in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is a member of a highly technologically advanced society where the government has complete control over its citizens.

One of the main differences between the two characters is their relationship with their respective governments. Winston is actively opposed to the government, and he goes to great lengths to avoid detection and to resist their control. Bernard, on the other hand, is more accepting of the government’s authority, and he is content to live within the strict societal boundaries set by the ruling class.

Another significant difference is their social status. Winston is a low-ranking member of society who works in the Ministry of Truth. He is not well-liked and is considered an outsider by many of his coworkers. Bernard, on the other hand, is a high-ranking member of society and is considered to be one of the ruling elite. He is well-liked and respected by his peers, and he has access to privileges and luxuries that are not available to the lower classes.

Additionally, the two characters have different views on love and relationships. In 1984, love is considered to be a dangerous emotion that must be suppressed. Winston, however, longs for intimacy and connection, and he ultimately falls in love with Julia despite the risks. In Brave New World, love is viewed as a primitive and outdated concept. Bernard, like many other members of society, is content with superficial relationships and casual sex.

Overall, Winston Smith and Bernard Marx are two characters who live in vastly different societies, and they have different attitudes towards the government and their own social status. While Winston is a rebellious outsider who longs for love and connection, Bernard is a conformist member of the ruling class who is content with the superficial relationships of his society.

Now I don’t think this is a great piece of literature, but I will tell you that the comparing and contrasting that was done offers insights I might not have made if I was writing this essay on my own. This would be a great starting point to a more comprehensive essay… which I could further get Chat GPT to assist me with.

This is a game changer for teaching. The question won’t be how do we stop students from using this, but rather how do we teach students to use this well? Mike Bouliane said in a comment on yesterday’s post, “Interesting post Dave. It seems we need to get better at asking questions, and in articulating them more precisely, just like in real life with people.“

Indeed. The AI isn’t going away, it’s just going to get better. When I asked the question above, I didn’t ask the AI to give specific examples as evidence. That was my first and only attempt. What happens if I iterate a bit more? Add more detail? Put the result back into the AI and ask it to make improvements?

We aren’t going to be able to teach around this tool, so we are probably going to have to teach students when and how to use it. Teaching in the age of very articulate AI is going to have to look different than teaching just a few years ago.

Been there, done that

No you haven’t.

I don’t know why, but I can’t seem to link to this Nov. 12, 2017 post by Alec Couros, or my response on Facebook, so I’ll just share them here. Alec said:

‪”Every “new” revolution or trend in education is inevitably accompanied by the critics who wisely note “We tried this back in the x0’s.

‪If you want change to happen and to stick, engage your historians to better understand why things failed the first time around.”

And I responded:

“When I read this I think of Dweck and growth vs fixed mindset. Yes some things ‘come back’, but there can be innovation (and research) since the last time.

For example, much of the ‘learn at your own pace’ of 20 years ago meant ‘here is the (printed) package of work so that you can move ahead’ (on your own). Now with online resources, discussion forums, YouTube, access to research and experts… that ‘own pace’ can be far more collaborative and richly supported. Even more so in a learning environment that focuses on competencies & skills, rather than content.

So in this, and many other examples, it’s not like ‘we did this back in the day’… it’s fundamentally different. It still warrants critique & criticism when it’s due, but it doesn’t warrant dismissal because ‘we’ve already tried it’.

This is the difference between using old tools and tools that are transformative, tools that allow you to engage differently than you could before. A blog isn’t just a digital version of a paper journal. A blog lets you edit more easily, it lets you spellcheck as you go, it allows you to link to sources and other content. It exposes the writing to more than just the teacher, it invites comments and further conversation. It makes the writer a publisher, who as a result tends to care more about editing and presenting better work.

Back in the days of my high school English classes the only audience my journal writing had were my teachers, except for a poem I had published in our yearbook one year… and I can’t exactly find that in a Google search today.

The next time you try something new and someone says, “We tried this back in the x0’s,” or “Been there, done that,” take a moment to think about what’s different this time before dismissing it as something already tried and abandoned… it might just be significantly different this time around.

—–

Here is the list of 6 suggestions I shared in my post, ‘Transformative or just flashy educational tools?‘ which I linked to above:

So what makes a tool great? Or, a better question than that: What should we do with tools to make them great? Here are some thoughts and feadback is appreciated, this is not an exclusive list!

1.Give students choice.

We don’t assess the tool, we assess the criteria, and we want students to meet specific learning outcomes.We can provide students with a choice of tools or even a choice of projects, and not every student in the class needs to meet the same outcomes in the same way.

2. Give students a voice.

Classroom discussions are great, but how else can we provide students with an opportunity to share? What venues can we provide for them to be heard?

3. Give students an audience.

So often we give students an audience of one… the teacher who marks their work. As a teacher, I told students ‘write to your audience’ but I never truly understood those words until I started blogging. If you want students to write to their audience, then give them a legitimate audience.

4. Give students a place to collaborate.

This comes with a caution: A place to collaborate does not in and of itself create good collaboration. You might be using a great collaboration tool, but do your students know how to collaborate effectively? Do they have specific roles to play? Do they have the skills to learn cooperatively?

5. Give students a place to lead.

Whether it be by choosing a tool, or teaching you a tool, or simply choosing their own topic to study, let your students be the lead learner and even the teacher as often as possible.

6. Give students a digital space to learn.

I’ve talked about blogs as learning spaces. Stephen Downes says, ‘To teach is to model and demonstrate, to learn is to practice and reflect.’Give students a space to practice and reflect that is not limited to the confines of a classroom or notebook, and one that helps them build a community, or rather a network, of teachers and learners.

A tool is just a tool! It’s not the tool, but how you use it that matters.

School 2.0 Participant’s Manifesto

I wrote this on February 5th, 2007. It was one of my early blog posts as I immersed myself in blogging and using Twitter to connect with educators around the world. It was an exciting time to be an educator. New online Web 2.0 tools were coming out all the time: Photo sharing, wikis, live chat boxes on blogs, live video streaming, and many other tools that gave you access to be a creator on the web in ways that were unimaginable just a couple years earlier.

I saw the potential of getting students not just to participate, but to be creators of content on the Brave New World Wide Web.

And I saw the walls of the classroom disappearing:

But it wasn’t just about the web and using these tools. It was about looking at the classroom differently. It was about creating a space where everyone in the community was an active participant. So, without further ado, here is my (15 year old)

School 2.0 Participant’s Manifesto

When I enter our learning space I will be prepared to learn, to participate, to engage, to discover, to play, to inquire, to create.

We are all different. Our opinions are different. We all learn differently. Our learning will be differentiated.

Respect makes all the difference.

We are not all equal, but we must all be ethical, just and fair.

Classes are not rooms; they are learning communities.

Our community will use technology effectively, affectively and appropriately.

Curriculum describes and directs; it is not to be prescribed or directed.

Knowledge is static. Synthesis is dynamic. We create meaning.

Collaboration is a series of learned skills.

Grades are measurements; Rubrics offer feedback.

Self-reflection is mandatory.

When I leave I will be more literate, more resourceful, more involved, more collaborative, more connected, more thoughtful and less willing to accept injustice of any kind.

I will make a positive difference in my world.

Playing with geometry (again)

I’ve already shared that I’m playing with geometry a lot with Joe Truss. We met on Zoom today and talked about living in a ‘Tetraverse’, a universe that is built on the structure of a tetrahedron.

Today we spoke about how this Tetraverse would (and does) affect gravity and wheels spinning on axis. Then I went back to my magnetic ball and rod 8-frequency tetrahedron that I built a few weeks back and played some more. It’s late and I’m not going to try to do a synopsis of the intricate patterns I saw. What I do want to say is that it’s fun to play in a space where I am constantly learning both by being taught and by discovery.

It’s amazing what we can learn through play.

Invisible hold

The things that hold us back the most are usually invisible to other people. It’s a lack of confidence, a crippling amount of self doubt, a hesitation for fear of not being right, or valued, or heard. I see it a lot in students. These internal stressors are portrayed as avoidance, distraction, shyness, hesitation, and even self deprecating humour.

Don’t understand something? “I’m stupid.” Or just pretend to understand to avoid looking stupid.

Treated poorly by a fried? “I deserved it.”

Don’t know where to get started? Just do something else off topic rather than ask for help.

Sometimes it’s not a lack of work, but putting too much in that’s the problem… “It’s not good enough”, “It’s not my best work”, or “It’s not ready”… and all the while it’s better than what most students will submit. Perfectionism is crippling and sometimes “I didn’t try” is easier to face than trying hard and it not being up to par, or knowing just how hard it is to always do great work all the time.

We see a lot of undesirable behaviours, but we don’t see the hidden challenges, the internal struggles, the invisible hold of insecurities that are the root of the behaviours. We see the byproduct of the struggles but not the struggles themselves. Addressing the behaviours does not always address the problem.

This is why it’s important to teach students and not just subjects. Why relationships matter as much as content. Why it takes a village to raise a child. Helping students reduce the hold of their challenges and doubts is as important as any subject we might teach. The best thing we can teach is the wisdom to know themselves, and the confidence to know that they can be and are valued members of our community.

Big rocks

I remember a story about a professor who teaches students about dealing with all the problems and pressures in their lives. He brings a glass jar to class with some sand, pebbles, and slightly larger rocks. He describes these items as all a person’s problems and challenges, and the jar as the person. He tries to put all these items into the jar, starting with the sand, and they don’t fit. Then he starts with the pebbles, and again they don’t fit. Then he starts with the slightly larger pebbles, puts the smaller pebbles in afterwards and shakes the jar so that the smaller pebbles fall between the larger ones, then pours the sand in, which fills the empty spaces. Everything now fits. The lesson is to pay attention and take care of the biggest problems first and you make room to handle all your problems.

I think it’s a neat story, but I never really agreed fully with the message. I don’t think it’s healthy to always be trying to deal with the big problems you face first. Sometimes if you ignore the little problems for too long, they become bigger problems too. “Kill a snake when it’s small,” my grandfather used to say. And sometimes it’s in dealing with smaller issues that the insight comes as to how a larger issue can be solved.

But sometimes it’s easy to avoid the ‘big rocks’ by staying busy tending to smaller issues, and actually avoiding the bigger ones. That’s when the professor’s advice becomes wise. Kill a big snake before its too big to ever deal with… before it’s too big for your jar.

So when do you deal with the big rocks first? I think it’s an upside down bell curve that should drive your attention.

Imagine an attention graph on a scale from not thinking about something at all to always thinking/worry about something. When you are stuck worrying about a problem too much and, on the other extreme, when you are altogether ignoring that problem, that’s when it should be dealt with swiftly, putting aside other smaller issues. But you can’t spend your life only taking care of your big problems and feel like these big rocks are all that matter. No, they should only be a priority when they are bothering you too much, or when you are trying to escape them. At these points it’s time to face the big problems head on.

That doesn’t mean that you ignore them at all other times, it simply helps you determine when they should be the snake you kill… no matter how big it may be.