Tag Archives: learning

Dave and Dave podcast 28

7 Parenting Tips During Covid-19 – Video Version

I recently revived my podcast. I’ve had conversations with Kelly Christopherson, Jonathan Sclater, Joe Truss, and Dave Sands. Because of COVID-19, I can’t sit next to people to interview them for my podcast. I couldn’t do that for Kelly in Saskatchewan or Joe in California anyway, but for sure that would have been the preferred approach to interview Jonathan and Dave. For all 4 of these interviews I used Zoom, and Dave and I were talking last week about the idea of also putting the podcast out on video. So, here it is, my podcast with Dave Sands in video form.

Description: This is the video version of Podcasting Pair-a-Dimes #28 with David Truss. My guest is Principal Dave Sands. We discuss 7 tips to help parents, who are supporting their kids learning at home (as a result of remote learning due to COVID-19). The 7 tips are:

    1. Manage Expectations
    2. Make a Schedule
    3. Minimize Distractions
    4. Learning occurs everywhere
    5. Set daily and weekly goals
    6. All screen time is not created equal
    7. Model learning.

I think this topic is relevant almost everywhere in the world right now, and I believe that we discussed some great tips for parent, not only when dealing with their kids learning at home, but also in general to support their kids success at school.

The garden

7 years ago we had a community day at Inquiry Hub Secondary when 3 students organized the construction of our school garden. It was a wonderful day filled with food, family, and community support. But mostly it was about students showing pride in their school. Everything was organized by the students and the event was a complete success.


I’ve been thinking a lot about how empty the school feels these days. Students are working from home, and our garden is empty when this is the time it is usually thriving. It made me think about how some students thrive while others don’t.

Joe Truss asked in a Tweet:

The achievement gap is really the gap between ______ and _______.

And I responded:

…between
those that easily thrive
and
those that need to survive.

This has made me think about the inequality of what students deal with, in a metaphorical sense of a garden.

Some students are given every opportunity to grow… they are raised in a home like a garden filled with fertilizer, and they are given all the nutrients to not only sustain themselves, but to thrive.

Some students have a patch of dirt rather than a garden, and the elements support them sometimes, and sometimes the conditions are harsh.

Some students have parents and teachers who are good gardeners that know how to foster health and growth.

Some students have parents and teachers who are frustrated by their lack of growth and unaware as to how to foster healthy development.

Some students grow like weeds, regardless of the conditions and environment.

Many other students depend on those conditions, and can strive or just survive depending on how they are nurtured.

Schools aren’t perfect, but we can do a lot at schools to help give every student an opportunity to grow. We can be the wards of the community garden sustaining every child, and doing what we can to help them thrive.

Students are learning from home, but are schools still nurturing our students in the same way? Are we just giving them sustenance, or are we fostering opportunities to blossom?

Unprecedented time for collaboration

It’s a phrase I’ve both heard, (and felt), for decades: “If only I had more time!”

Well this is the time! With educators working from home, and with some autonomy over their schedule, the idea of having something like a common prep time, daily or weekly, with colleagues has never been easier!

The idea of doing something cross-curricular has also been opened up.

The idea of extending the learning beyond the school walls has taken on a whole new meaning.

This is still the early stages for many, and trying to figure out ‘remote learning’ while take some time. But that time will go much easier with collaboration. And as you figure out a schedule, now is the time to figure out when it’s best to collaborate with peers and mentors. As things settle a bit, this could be the time that teachers have always hoped for, and seldom got… time to collaborate, learn, and dare to try new things that was never time for previously.

The tech won’t always work… and that’s ok.

I’ve been ‘playing’ with digital learning and technology for a while now. My first blog post was in 2006 and my first podcast was in 2012. It’s Sunday night and I published a podcast over an hour ago. It usually takes a while to get onto iTunes, because first it has to go to a podcast hosting site called Blubrry. I did this a week and a half ago, and it went to Blubrry and then to iTunes pretty quickly. But tonight the new podcast won’t move to that first step, and I have no idea why? Even after I ‘ping‘ the website, (even though that should happen automatically), my post won’t go to Blubrry. That’s the frustrating thing, I don’t think I did anything different but somehow it won’t work. It might need time, and everything will be fine in the morning by the time this is published. It might not and I’ll have a whole lot of troubleshooting to do.

I do podcasts for fun. I do podcasts to learn. I’ll learn from this, but right now it doesn’t feel like fun.

Educators, as you head into the new world of ‘remote learning’, while we cope with social distancing, empty schools, and COVID-19 continuing to keep us physically separate, please realize that the technology doesn’t always work as planned. It doesn’t always work for the neophytes, and it doesn’t always work for the people like me that think they know what they are doing. When you get frustrated, and you will, remember this: Remember a time when you were really excited to teach a lesson. You stayed up late figuring things out and setting up the handouts for kids. Then you got to school and the photocopier jams horribly. You have no time to get your printing done. Dang! Your whole plan is done and needs reworking. At that point, you didn’t say to yourself, “That’s it, I’m never using the photocopier again!” That would be silly.

You’ll try using some technology for the first time and it won’t go as planned. You’ll try doing a video conferencing lesson and it will flop. You’ll have students doing things you didn’t expect them to do. And you’ll work it out. You’ll connect with your students. You’ll laugh at yourself and they’ll laugh too. You’ll get a lesson or two from a student that knows more than you. And soon, you’ll feel much better about the technology and the strategies you are using.

Oh, and even then, there will be times when the technology doesn’t work… and that’s ok.

It’s not a failure if it leads to success

I love this video:

https://youtu.be/0cF2LyYGDWA

It reminds me that the path to success isn’t always easy, and failure isn’t failure when it leads to success.

On a personal note, I started a 30 Day Challenge to do a 30 second freestanding handstand.

Progress until last night was pretty good:

https://twitter.com/datruss/status/1243331006767210497

https://twitter.com/datruss/status/1245227496930340864

But last night didn’t go as well as I hoped:

But here’s the thing, I’m pushing myself pretty hard. Also, I just want to handstand for 30 seconds but I’m actually doing the training to walk on my hands. On top of that, I’m trying to do a 5 step plan in 30 days, and 1/3 the way through I’m on step 3.

I need to slow down. The videos show me that my core is a weak spot. My shoulder no longer hurts, but it isn’t fully recovered from an injury. I’m going to hit my goal if I’m smart, and don’t rush, and if I do every step really well before moving on. Back to step 2 I go.

Meanwhile at work, I see similar things happening. With Covid-19 shutting down schools, we have educators scrambling to figure out how to teach students online and from a distance. All around me I see teachers trying to do too much, too fast, and getting frustrated. I shared this on Twitter recently:

When everything is so new and so challenging, mistakes will be made. Those mistakes will not be seen as failures in the long run if we learn, grow, and improve ourselves along the way.

Transforming Exponentially

It’s 15 minutes to midnight on the first Monday after March break, and I still haven’t done my ‪#SDFitnessChallenge‬ exercise yet today. I will work on my handstands after writing this and I’m not waking up early to workout and finish this post tomorrow morning, like I usually do. I’ll sleep in a bit later. Today the work day just kept going and tomorrow is already a busy day.

My fitness progress is incremental. My commitment to daily writing is a marathon, not a sprint. Even my dedication to transforming education moves slowly… but the school closures for Covid-19, and the Provincial commitment to a ‘Continuity of Learning’ is promising to be exponentially transformational.

I wrote a post a while back called Isolation vs Collaboration, and in it I said,

“Educators who work in isolation improve incrementally, while educators who collaborate transform exponentially!”

Kathleen McClaskey posterized the quote, and shared by in a Tweet and on the Personalized Learning website.

Recently Michael Buist also posterized this quote and shared it in a tweet:

https://twitter.com/buistbunch/status/1244352249947660289

With almost every educator in the province looking to connect with students digitally, many are quickly realizing that trying to do this alone is overwhelming. They are connecting with colleagues, and district support teams who are developing resources to support them.

With endless resources available online, educators are realizing that information is abundant, and students developing literacy and numeracy competencies, and skills, are more important than just focusing on content.

With an inability to proctor tests and supervise exams, teachers are rethinking assessment and evaluation.

Doing this all at once can be a bit scary and overwhelming, but working with colleagues and mentors can help. Collaboration will be key. This is not a time to try things on isolation, it is a time to work together. For now changes have been forced upon us. These changes can lead us to rush and just do small incremental changes in individual practice. Or we can be slow and thoughtful and ensure that these changes lead to a collective, exponential transformation in the way we look at content, skills and competencies, as well as our assessment and evaluation practices.

Let’s commit to working together, sharing openly, and transforming our practice exponentially.

Break in routines

It’s Monday after the March break and the week ahead will be far from routine. I’m starting my work day in less than an hour but students won’t be walking in the school doors and I’ll only see my teachers digitally. I’ll start the day reviewing emails I’ve flagged that remind me about new procedures and expectations around dealing with Covid-19, and the ‘new normal’ that will be far from normal. Next I’ll join a district team in a digital meeting to discuss supporting administrators and teachers. After that I have two meetings with two of my different school staffs. After that, communication to students and parents.

Usually, returning from March break means going back to a normal routine, but this year there is nothing normal about what I’m returning to. Yesterday I wrote that the quick answer isn’t always the best answer, but starting today I’m going to have many people wanting immediate answers from me. Some will understand my need to find out more and ask more questions before responding, some will get frustrated with my lack of answers. Some will approach me with resilience to handle the abnormality of our new situation, some will feel frustrated, nervous, and even scared. Some students or parents won’t engage in asking questions even if they have them.

In general we are creatures of habit and we like routines. Not all the these routines we have are positive and healthy, but routines help us cope with challenging situations and help us stay calm and resilient. When routines break, some of those coping strategies are lost. This is a time when we have to be supportive to those that do not handle changes and breaks in routine as well as others. This is a time to remember that we are dealing with human beings going through a challenging time. This is a time to remember that we ourselves are going through a challenging time.

This tweet by Dean Shareski really hit me this morning:

We need to focus on the needs of those we work with and for. We need to remember that that students, parents, and educators can struggle with new routines. We need to put people’s well being ahead of concerns about curriculum and learning. As we navigate the new teaching and learning routines we are creating, we’ve got to put people first. The rest will fall into place as long as we don’t rush and, while going slow, we show that we care for one another.

Down the rabbit hole

The afternoon I went down a very dark rabbit hole. First I read a tweet from an influential twitter profile that grossly miss-communicated some data comparing the flu to COVID-19, making it look like this coronavirus was only a threat to those over the age of 60. This tweet went to her 2.2 million followers. Then I went to another public figure’s tweet that was very controversial and did something I almost never do, I went to the tweet and read the conversation/reply thread that followed. Wow. I remember now why I don’t usually do this.

It was dark. It showed the bipolar divide that I spoke about in my post, Ideas on a Spectrum. It was nasty, it was mean, it was ignorant, it was a complete waste of my time. It achieved nothing. Not for me, not for anyone that commented. The lines were drawn and both sides could only preach to their side.

I’m glad that this isn’t my typical experience on Twitter. I’m sorry for those that spend a lot of time in this sad, angry space on both Twitter and Facebook. I’ll happily go back to my world of educators geeking out, sharing, and learning on Twitter… and I’ll stay there for a while. A word of advice as we spend more time at home, more connected than usual to news and our social streams: Keep away from the rabbit holes and check your sources for news and for click-bait headlines.

A while back I wrote about a new tragedy of the commons. In this post I said,

Indeed we have a new, social-emotional, tragedy of the commons. Despite our understanding that perpetuating the onslaught of negative news is, ‘contrary to [our] long-term best interests’, we still do it. And social media isn’t making things any better. We used to be able to blame the media monopolies and moguls, but now we are the news-makers: We publish freely, and quickly and without thought as to how we are part of the problem.

We don’t need to feed this negative loop, and we don’t need to feed on it either.

Just shifting online or shifting the learning?

Across the globe schools are closing due to Covid-19 and the learning is being moved online. I recently shared in my Daily-Ink post, ‘Novel ideas can spread from a novel virus‘:

Discussion about the possibility of remote learning invites questions about blended learning where some of the work, both asynchronous and synchronous, is done remotely. It also invites conversations and questions about what we should be spending our time on when we do get together?

…this virus is impacting the world the way it is might impact how we think about operating our schools and businesses in the future. What excites me isn’t the idea that more work might be done remotely, but rather the ideas behind what we do when we connect face-to-face, and how we use that time? Will we focus more on collaboration, team building, social skills, construction and creation of projects, and more personalized support? How will we engage students in learning when they might not be coming to school every day?

With the shift of learning at school moving digital, the only thing that seems to be shared on my Twitter feed as much as Coronavirus updates are online resources. There are tons of free resources that you can use/share and teach with. But the idea that all we need to do is put work we are usually doing in a class online can lead to disengaged and overworked students.

“In a world where information is abundant and easy to access, the real advantage is knowing where to focus.” ~ James Clear

Here are a few things to think about as course content is moved online, and lessons are taught from a distance:

What can you do synchronously? There are amazing tools like Microsoft Teams and Zoom that allow you to meet with students. How will this time be used? Will you lecture or allow students to meet in groups? Will it be a Powerpoint presentation or a discussion? If you are giving a presentation that can be pre-recorded or viewed online asynchronously, then are you utilizing your synchronous time effectively?

What can you edit out? Taking everything you do face-to-face and trying to put it online will be overwhelming, especially for students that already struggle in class. What are the essential things students need to learn? What skills and competencies do they need and how can you create a positive learning environment to learn these skills?

What assignments can you create that engage the learner with questions that do not have a single correct answer? How can you make the assignments open ended? For instance, these video writing prompts invite students to personalize their writing, and can provide a variety of writing samples that can show you their writing competencies… while not being cookie-cutter assignments that box students in. The videos are easy to embed and share, and the answers can promote great discussions when you meet synchronously.

To summarize, ask yourself a few questions when you are shifting from regularly meeting students to providing an online/digital program:

  1. What should you do to most effectively utilize synchronous time, when you have it scheduled?
  2. What can you take out of your course so that you are reducing the expectations of students working from home, with less support than they get at school?
  3. How can you make assignments engaging, interactive, and interesting?
  4. What kind of things will you assess and how can you ensure that assessment is something that authentically assesses the students skills and competencies?

How can you shift the learning experience beyond just shifting everything online?

Also shared on Pair-A-Dimes for Your Thoughts.

A lesson taught with dignity and respect

My grandfather, Leon Bernstein or ‘Papa B’ as he was known, was an amazing man. As I shared at his funeral:

Papa B. is a Giant!

Like many of you, I know this because he told me so.
Papa wasn’t boasting when he said this, he was just telling you the way it is. If you were to measure a man by the legacy he leaves behind Papa would come as big as they get. In this way he is still a giant and always will be.

Here is a lesson that he taught me, wrapped inside of another lesson. It speaks to his character, and to the kind of person I want to be, that I strive to be. It’s a lesson he taught me when I was about 14 years old.

It happened at a family gathering at our house, it was the weekend and both sets of grandparents and a few aunts and uncles were over. It wasn’t a special occasion, our family often connected without a specific reason. I specifically know that it wasn’t a special occasion because I went for a bike ride with a couple friends, and if it was a special occasion, like a birthday, I would have had to stay at the celebration.

When I finished my ride, just before dinner, I came home and I remember that I was going very fast. I reached my driveway and I didn’t slow down. I made the sharp turn on my neighbour’s shared driveway and kept my speed up as I headed to the garage. But at the speed I was going I couldn’t make the turn and I hit Papa B’s car. My handlebar scraped across the car door leaving a scratch longer than a ruler, over 12 inches or 30cm. Then I fell to the pavement and scraped me knee.

It wasn’t a bad scape but standing up I looked at the scrape on me knee and then the large scratch on my grandfather’s car and I started to cry. I went into the house crying and I told my story of riding up the driveway and hitting the car. I didn’t admit to going too fast.

A few adults came outside to look at the car. I still had tears in my eyes as we looked at the large scratch on the front passenger car door. There was a remark about how big it was and the tears flowed. My grandfather spoke up, “It’s all right boy, the important thing is you weren’t hurt. Your knee will heal and the scratch can be fixed. All good.”

And with that we all went inside, me hobbling with exaggeration behind everyone that came outside. I got a bandaid from my mom, and the scratch on the car wasn’t mentioned again that night. I had convinced myself when I scraped the car that I was going to get in big trouble, but my grandfather said it wasn’t important, what was important was that I was ok. It was ‘All good’.

A couple days later Papa B came over and he asked me to come outside. He took me by the hand, something only he could do to a 14 year old in a way that felt natural. Holding hands was something Papa B did with all his grandkids. We walked to the passenger side of the car and he pointed. “See that,” he said pointing to the scratch I had made. “The scratch is horizontal. You were going too fast. If you were going a safe speed, the scratch would have pointed down as the bike fell, but you turned too fast and this scratch tells me so. It’s ok, I know it was a mistake, but I wanted you to know that I know you were going too fast.”

That was it. We went inside and it was never mentioned again.

This has shaped the way I have spoken as a teacher to students in my class, and now as a principal to students in my office. Papa knew all along, but he didn’t want to share this in front of an audience. He waited and taught me a lesson with dignity and respect. It’s easy to be angry and heated and forget to be like this.

That isn’t to say that I always choose to deal with things this way. And sometimes it’s good for students to see you upset, or disappointed with some emotion. But my default is to strive to be like Papa B. To choose a moment that isn’t public. To be gentle and respectful, but also to face the issue rather than let it pass.

Students make mistakes. People make mistakes. I make mistakes. When I remember this story, I remember that how we react to a mistake can be as much of a lesson as the lesson the mistake has to offer. Others deserve the same respect that my Papa B gave to me.