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.
My personal best archery score in a Vegas 300 is 289. I’ve done this a few times, first in May of 2021 and most recently again in December. But I’ve been in a slump for most of 2022. In fact, I’ve had a couple scores lower than I’ve seen since before I got my personal best last May.
Today I seemed to have turned a corner and I scored a 288.
In fact, had I not had one bad shot at the top of the tenth end, I would have tied or even beaten my record.
Slumps are never fun, and this was one where I just didn’t know what I was doing wrong? I ended up moving closer and shooting again and again at closer range until I felt successful enough to move further away. This seemed to work.
I believe the slump is finally over and I’m anticipating a new record soon. It’s time to get the monkey off my back and finally score in the 299’s.
Most of us can’t imagine working on something for an hour or two then ripping it up or clicking ‘Select All’ and then hitting delete. But for students who are bitten by the perfectionist bug, it’s just something they do when what they’ve done doesn’t meet the high standard they place on themselves. They will miss a deadline because what they have written will only get them a low ‘A’, rather than a much higher one that they have their heart set on. They will have done 2 hours work on something they think will get them a 90%, then another hour and a half making it a 95%.
This is achievable for a perfectionist working on one project, but will absolutely bury them when they are trying to do this on 3 or 4 assignments simultaneously. The thing is, trying to tell a perfectionist something is ‘good enough’ is like telling a Golden Lab to save some food for later. It’s just not in their nature.
The message we try to give at our school, which has its fair share of perfectionists, is to choose your perfectionism. Don’t disregard it, but use it in some places and not in others. We do agile/scrum projects where part of the project is ‘defining done’ so that students can achieve tasks and move on, rather than spending too long on too many parts. We set challenging timelines where the focus is on completion rather than perfection.
It’s not about taking perfectionism away from a perfectionist, this is a skill many others need to learn. Instead, it’s about helping them learn to harness this skill without it consuming them. It’s about channeling perfectionism where it matters, on projects that matter, and not overwhelmingly on everything. It’s not a habit to break, it’s a skill to use when doing things where perfectionism makes a difference, rather than being something that consumes a kid with unrealistic stress and hours of wasted time.
When we moved into our house we did a renovation upstairs, converting from 4 bedrooms to 3. The front bedrooms were 9’x9′, 8’x9′, and 10’x9′. The smallest, middle room had a tiny closet and wasn’t really functional as a bedroom, and so we created 2 larger rooms out of the three. We were also able to add more room to the master bedroom, creating a second closet and an alcove for a large chest of drawers.
In the process, we tore up the ugly carpet in the hallway. We cut the carpet at the top of the stairs, and just had the plywood floor between bedrooms. When the rooms were done, we painted upstairs, and while doing so I painted a message to my wife. Her nickname is Bean, shortened from Ann-E-Bean, and so I wrote ‘Hi Bean’ halfway out of the hall closet, knowing that we were going to carpet over it in a few days.
The only thing is, we didn’t put carpet back in for about 5 years. We had a carpet runner down the hallway, and my little message was there long enough for my oldest daughter, who Ann was pregnant with when we moved in, to be able to read on her own. There was always something we were spending our money on that kept us from spending some on this final part of the upstairs renovation.
When we moved in, we knew we couldn’t afford to renovate the kitchen as well as upstairs, but after moving into a house with purple countertops and pink tiles with a pink motif behind the stove, and pink wallpaper… we realized that the house would never feel like ours if we didn’t change this. Then we updated the back yard, replaced the hot water tank, and replaced the furnace.
Instead of replacing the carpet upstairs, we’d buy new living room furniture, bedroom furniture to replace the Ikea pieces we moved in with, replace all of our windows. There was always something we were working on, and since it’s only our family that lived upstairs, we just tolerated the plywood underfloor and runner down the hallway until finally a close friend of ours essentially told us, “Either you buy carpet for upstairs or I’ll do int for you… it’s ridiculous that you’ve been living ‘under construction’ for your kids’ entire lives.”
She was right and we finally put carpet in.
Now, as we are remodelling our main floor, another 17 years later, and we decided to extend the main floor flooring up the stairs and into the upstairs hallway. Last night we came home from work and the hallway carpet was pulled up. For me it was a complete blast from the past to see my little message to my wife painted on the plywood. It brought back some fond memories. It was something that was part of our lives for years, and it was fun to see it uncovered again. It will probably be covered up today, never to be seen by us again, but I did take a photo and it really was a treat to see it again.
I also added this to our first’s bedroom, but it was covered so we didn’t see it often.
Inquiry Hub is a school where students need to be self directed. A good portion of a student’s day is determined by the student. On any give school day students can have 1-3 hours where they are deciding what they want to work on. There is always work to be done for courses. There’s always a student chosen inquiry to work on. There’s always a distraction that can pull them away from their work, since they have full access to their laptops and the internet, and access to any other personal device they bring to school.
It’s a subject of a future post, but I’d love to develop a K-12 Inquiry Hub with a vision where it’s a school for every kid. But we get students at grade 9, and if they come to us without self-directed skills, and distractions prevent them from independently working and getting things done during their school day, or if they don’t self advocate when they are stuck, then our school becomes a really challenging place. It becomes a place where a student is always overwhelmed, or catching up on work, and never doing their inquiry projects… which is precisely why they came to our school.
When we interview our applicants (an interview with students and parents), we have a series of questions we ask, which really help us uncover their learning habits, and if they will thrive in our school. One question that we ask near the end doesn’t always tell us a lot about this, but it’s my favourite question. “Tell me about a time when you really had to work hard to accomplish something.” I then elaborate, “You felt a great deal of accomplishment when you were done, but it wasn’t easy.” And, “It doesn’t have to be school related.”
This question is about grit. It digs into a personal story of perseverance. And students often share some really interesting stories. We often learn about an aspect of their lives that we would not have learned otherwise, like the student has their black belt in Karate, or they’ve done 8 years of dance. I also like asking it at the end of the interview, because it finishes the interview with students thinking about something that gave them a good sense of accomplishment.
Last night we did our last scheduled interview, and I’m looking forward to a freer evening schedule, but overall, I really enjoy the process we go through and we end up with some truly amazing kids in our school. Students who thrive and find their tribe.
It’s great to have champions of technology who can really show you what’s possible, but they are often operating at a level that’s far too intimidating for other educators, and so they don’t necessarily make the best technology leaders. If you really want to find innovation, yes it’s important to help those front runners who are capable of doing amazing things with technology. However you won’t take everyone further unless you invest in making sure that everyone in your learning community is moving forward.
A few things can help here:
1. Everyone gets access to the same tools. Sure, your tech champions may ask for access first, but once a tool is valued it needs to be accessible to all.
2. Access doesn’t guarantee adoption. With access, there needs to be two things also shared: need and training.
Why is the technology needed? What problem does it solve? What does it achieve more easily, faster, more effectively? Or what does it allow you to do that you couldn’t do before?
How easy is it to adopt? Who can help with training? When can training happen? What’s available for support when a roadblock arises?
3. Collaboration. How can the community support itself, what opportunities are there to share and learn from each other? How can this be embedded into meetings and when can time be given within the current schedule, without adding to it? How can the team use the technology themselves in a meaningful way to become more effective?
4. Recognition and/or appreciation. This doesn’t have to be public, but it does need to happen. How does leadership recognize adoption and use of the new tools? How do people on the team share their success? How are those that support others be supported themselves?
A technology champion can be a leader, but they aren’t inherently leaders. They aren’t always aware of the struggles of others. They don’t always see the roadblocks or pitfalls others do. They don’t always use tools or strategies that others see value in. The trick isn’t to adopt everything they try, or to have them lead by trying first. The trick is to harness their lack of fear and innovative spirit, to learn from them, and to figure out who else on the team will be able to find and share success with the same tools.
And finally, who are going to be the resisters? Who on the team will be most likely to struggle? If you know, then you know who to go to, and support, even before the full implementation starts. Help the resisters understand why. Help them see the value. Help them be part of the positive change.
We need the technology champions to bravely challenge the status quo. But, we also need others on the team to help lead the adaption and transformation of the team, of the learning community. That’s not necessarily the job of the technology champion. It’s the job of leadership to recognize who else needs to lead, and who needs to be supported.
‘Doing STEM’ or ‘Doing STEAM’… there is a saying, “Put lipstick on a pig, and it’s still a pig.”
I don’t want this to sound like a rant, and I don’t want to knock teachers for trying to do STEM projects. I do want to say that if 5 years ago a teacher did a project with kids where they broke them into groups and had them assemble a limited number of straws and a specific length of tape into the tallest possible tower, and if they do it again today it isn’t suddenly a STEM project.
Now, if that same lesson included teaching geometry and/or structural integrity; or if students had to design it such that their design had to have a function such as offices or apartments; or hold a weighted satellite dish; or if it had to factor in wind resistance (such as a blow dryer at close range); or if they had to model their design first and estimate the height they will achieve… if there was some thinking, designing, modelling, or estimating that was required before or even during the build process, well then it’s looking more like STEM.
Hands-on does not equal STEM. Building something does not equal STEM. Group challenges does not equal STEM. Meaningful integration of cross-curricular concepts, where problem solving requires thinking in more than one subject area relating to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math is STEM. It doesn’t have to check all the boxes, but it should include thoughtful integration of at least a couple of these.
It’s about making the cross-curricular connections explicit, or at least thinking through how the outcomes and expectations relate to these connections. It’s about developing competencies in the areas of STEM and not just doing a project that looks like STEM.
I just read this thread of tweets by Sahil Bloom and it needs to be shared! Click on the tweet and read them all. More than one will speak to you. These are indeed paradoxes that you will have experienced and understood intuitively at some point in your life.
Yesterday I wrote about this quote, “Mindfulness is a pause – The space between stimulus and response: That’s where choice lies.”~ Tara Brach
And Shiela Stewart shared a post she wrote with a similar quote, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ~ Viktor E. Frankl Man’s Search for Meaning
Sheilawrote this in July of 2014, over 7 years ago. Although Iwasn’t blogging every day back then I had already been blogging for 8 years. In those early blogging years I was an avid reader of other blogs, including Sheila’s, and a whole host of other educators. We were all writing, and reflecting, and learning from each other. We were in a community that understood the power of sharing our thoughts out in the open.
But there were other people who didn’tunderstand why we would do this. There were those that questioned how we had the time. Those that thought we were self-indulgent and thought we were only writing for self promotion rather than self reflection and learning. That’s still around today but not as much.
The reality is that I enjoy writing. I’ve enjoyed it since high school. And I feel like a writer when I share my work publicly… when I share my work in a community of other writers. When I add to the blogosphere.
And I absolutely love when another blogger shares their work with me. I totally see why Sheila connected the two quotes above. I understand her ‘blogger’s mind’ that thinks, ‘Dave will appreciate me making this connection’. I love that the connection was to a 7-year-old post, and the Sheila was able to put the connection together so many years later. Bloggers can do that. They can pull an idea up from a decade ago and see how it relates all these years later. And they aren’t afraid to share those thoughts.
This is driven by an understanding that when we learn in the open we are exposed to more connections and ideas than when we keep our learning to ourselves. The idea of being an open and connected learner is one that I think can still be misunderstood, but it isn’t misunderstood by those who are doing it, only by those on the outside that don’t get it. This isn’t ‘insider information’, it’s not a secret. We happily share it out in the open, here in the blogosphere.
There’s a lesson I do yearly with incoming grade 9’s when they are working on resumes. I have them fill out a restaurant chain’s application form, and then we discuss what is important to share on application forms and resumes, then they get into threes and do mock interviews, with an interviewer, interviewee, and note-taking observer.
I share my experience as a busy Starbucks manager in a downtown store that received 90-110 applications a week, explaining how I didn’t have time to give applications 1 minute each, because just that first once-over would take me 90 minutes plus… so I’d look at just one question on the application to narrow the 90+ applications down to less than 12 that I looked at more closely. I make a big deal out of bad applications going into my ‘circular filing cabinet’.
I talk to them about how to emphasize strengths on a resume, but be careful not to exaggerate things you can’t really do. Then I share how I got a reference to help me get a job by emphasizing a strength, and I also share an embarrassing story of how I got fired because I exaggerated my abilities on an ordering system in a restaurant.
One interesting thing that happened when I was talking about references this year, was that after sharing a slide saying ‘Your references will be checked’, I shared this slide and talked about how these days potential employers will Google you.
A student who was very active in a local political campaign, in our recent election, asked if his political posts shared on social media could be an issue? I paused and had to say that personally, I like to see students involved in politics at a young age, because it shows that the student cares about the future, and their community, and is willing to volunteer time… However, I felt compelled to add that some people very well might see it as a problem if they disagree with your views. I wouldn’t have shared this a few years ago, but now it is something that I think could affect someone getting an interview. I also added that if a person who is going to be your boss holds your politics against you, they probably aren’t someone you want to work for anyway.
I enjoy doing this lesson with the new Grade 9’s. They get to know me a bit better. They get to laugh at my embarrassing story about getting fired, and the mock interviews prepare many of them for that first job interview that they will soon be doing. Because in the end, the application form and resume only get you in the door, and then the interview is what gets you the job.
Mathematician and philosopher Gian-Carlo Rota on teaching: “A good teacher does not teach facts, he or she teaches enthusiasm, open-mindedness and values.” Source: Indiscrete Thoughts
I remember once, early in my career, the topic of abortion came up in my class. It was a student that brought it up as we were discussing debating skills. I decided that I wouldn’t share my opinion. I would let the class make their own choice. That they deserve to decide for themselves.
It was at that moment I realized that I was telling them mychoice. I was sharing my values.
We can’t teach without sharing our values. To pretend otherwise is ignorant. And so we should be thoughtful about the values we choose to share.
We need to value kindness, forgiveness, and openness to new and different ideas. We need to value effort. We need to show that when we discipline bad behaviour, we are disappointed in the behaviour not the child. We need to be restorative, not punitive. Patient, not easily frustrated. Willing to admit we are wrong. Tough with our expectations, but supportive rather than combative when expectations are not met.
Our values define the kind of teachers we are… and we pass those values on to our students whether we think we do or not.
