Tag Archives: learning

Staying in the discomfort

A couple days ago at our start of the year administrators meeting, we had a presentation by Jo Chrona. She was presenting on learning in Indigenous and anti-racist education, and she said something that still sits with me. She talked about how the learning isn’t easy but the real challenge is sitting, and staying, in the discomfort.

This isn’t an easy thing to do. We spend our days as problem solvers. We see the challenges and the issues we face and we tackle them. But systemic problems are not something with a quick fix, and if we have a ‘fix and move on’ mentality, we aren’t really dealing with the underlying issues. If we move away from uncomfortable issues they don’t really get meaningfully addressed. If we don’t sit in the discomfort, we don’t learn or help our community learn.

But it’s not human nature to stay in an uncomfortable place. This needs to be intentional. Being vulnerable and having the hard conversations, rather than trying to immediately make things better, is when we can really reflect, listen, learn, and heal. And of these four things, listening is the most important. If we are fixing, we aren’t listening.

One of the powerful things about staying and sitting in the discomfort is that we only really learn things well when there is a struggle. And so when we allow ourselves time to struggle, to understand the struggle of others, we create the space for deep learning to happen. We create the opportunity for meaningful learning and meaningful change to happen.

Lateral Thinking

Like I mentioned yesterday, my dad passed away leaving hundreds of boxes to sort through. Today I found a few with memorabilia and one specific one I was looking for with a diesel fuel formula he invented. Most of the other boxes were files with copies of patents and research my dad collected. Although, there were also quite a few boxes with some strange topics he also ventured into.

As a self taught generalist, my dad was always taking ideas and combining them, and he wasn’t afraid to delve as deep into ‘wu wu’ science as he did into ‘legitimate’ research. He had a knack for seeing connections where others didn’t.

So it was no surprise when I found these periodic tables where he was identifying the elements that were prime, double prime, and Fibonacci numbers, and looking at their isotopes.

This is the kind of thing my dad did. He would think laterally and make unusual connections that would be completely missed by anyone else… and the reason they would miss it is because there isn’t a logical connection.

My dad developed a CRO/REDOX process to chemically extract platinum and other precious metals from catalytic converters and recyclable computer components. He actually got a test lab built and proved the technology, while scientists at the Ontario Research and Technology Foundation (ORTECH, now ORF-RE) said it couldn’t be done, and even after it was proven said, ‘This shouldn’t work’.

But like many things, my dad had a different angle, and in this case a different perspective on the chemistry behind the process. And when he built the prototype, he made it modular so that he could expand it rather than rebuild it. For many reasons, including terrible timing with a stock market crash, this project never got off the ground.

The ideas that my father combined allowed him to be extremely creative and innovative. He was brilliant in the connections he made. Yet that same ability was also a disability. My father was also an end-of-the-world prepper, and followed a lot of conspiracy theories.

The same lateral thinking that made his scientific mind so brilliant also created lateral (read more as sideways) connections to far out conspiracies that kept the ideas alive long after others had moved on. Among his boxes and boxes of printed patents and research are other boxes with articles that I would describe more as delusional rather than just ‘fake news’. In fact these articles date back as far as 2004, long before the term fake news existed.

I think the internet broke my dad. He was a doomsdayer since the 80’s. After we watched World War III, a miniseries that aired on NBC on January 31, 1982, he turned the TV off and had a heart-to-heart with his kids. He basically told us that WWIII was inevitable in our lifetime. I remember getting upset not just that the world was going to end, because at 15 I believed everything my dad said, but also that my younger sisters were crying as he broke this ‘news’ to us. Why did they need to know this at those ages?

It got really bad with Y2K, that’s when he started ‘prepping’, storing food and collecting thousands and thousands of dollars worth of supplies. Supplies we now need to get rid of for pennies on the dollars spent. But what really made it worse after that was the internet. Dad found all kinds of websites that he considered reliable, some of which where known Russian propaganda sites, but that didn’t phase my dad who believed all kinds of conspiracies about big media. Now I’m not saying that big media is fully trustworthy, but I’d put more weight on them than on Russian propaganda websites.

So lateral thinking was both a blessing and a curse for my dad. Making incredibly insightful scientific connections made him a brilliant scientist and inventor. And making incredibly dubious doomsday connections made him a paranoid prepper, who always believed ‘the shit is going to hit the fan’ at any moment.

There is a fine line between brilliance and madness.

City on the Edge of Forever

I’ve been on a few hikes, but “City on the Edge of Forever” has to be one of my favourite hike trail names.

The views were spectacular and I connected with a friend whom I’ve mostly known online, in meetings, and at conferences. Yet every time we connect I feel like I’m with a lifelong friend. The one difference… each time we connect I learn something new about him.

We all have past experiences that are stories from another era in our lives. It’s easy to dismiss them as ancient, to share them as if they were ‘in a past life’. But these stories are the stories that made us. They are the stories that created the person we are today.

Sometimes people can get stuck on who they ‘used to be’ and I don’t think that’s healthy. But it’s also not healthy to reflect on those past experiences like they belong to someone else.

I’m no longer an athlete. Even when I was one, I was a hard working grunt, not a talented athlete… but I was still an athlete. I take care of myself now, but I’m no athlete, and honestly unlikely to be one ever again. But the skills I learned, the work ethic, the sportsmanship, the dedication to something I loved doing… those things I take with me to the edge of forever.

The scenery today was great, but learning more about my friend was even better.

Grad Commencement Speech 2023

This was my speech at our Inquiry Hub Secondary Grad. As I mentioned a couple days ago, there were unexpected technical issue, and so I can’t share the video, and I’m just sharing text with slides below. The 4th and 5ht slides were gifs, but I’ve just included still photos. I enjoy writing a new speech each year, and this is my 8th one. While I didn’t share a title for it, it did have a title in my notes. Here is “Technology and Community”, shared Wednesday June 21, 2023 at Inlet Theatre in Port Moody, with the grads and families of Inquiry Hub Secondary School:

It was the summer of 1985.

I was 17, and I got to see a movie called Back to the Future when it was in the theatre, not streaming on Netflix. It’s a story about a boy named Marty who was the same age as me… and about the same age as our grads now. Marty went 30 years into the past and had all kinds of adventures and misadventures.

Then a few years later Back to the Future 2 came out, and this time Marty went 30 years into the future… all the way to October of 2015. That future he supposedly went to was almost 8 years ago now.

In Marty’s version of 2015 Nike had shoes with power laces that tightened themselves. There were 3D hologram advertisements, hoverboards, and of course, flying cars. While Nike has made a version of the power laces, we still have a way to go before any of these technologies are as accessible and pervasive as in Back to the Future 2’s version of 2015, and I’m not sure we’ll even get there by 2045?

It’s hard to imagine these things when personally, I’m still waiting for a phone battery that will last me a whole day.

I remember reading that we tend to overestimate the changes that will happen in the short term and underestimate the changes that will occur in the long term. That may be so, but what we define as short and long term now tends to be shrinking. I’m not sure we are going to see hovercrafts and flying cars circulating in our communities any time soon, but…

I do marvel at how fast technology is moving, and the world of Artificial Intelligence is quickly advancing from being good at playing board games and doing math, to doing some really interesting things.

We have AI tools that create amazing art,

write computer code,

and even write grad speeches… and while I wrote these words myself, ((really)), many of the visuals I’m sharing are the product of AI. My point though is that if I told you just 4 years ago, when our grads were in Grade 9, that we would have this technology before they graduated, you probably wouldn’t have believed me.

Our grads are headed into a world where, just in the last few months, job descriptions that have been the same for years are now being redefined. A world where they will probably get into automated cars that drive themselves. And a world where living to be 100 could be as common as living to 65 years old today.

I’ve worked for the same company for 25 years now… I am not sure many, if any, of our grads are headed on that same path. Times change. Technologies change. Jobs change. How we interact with the world changes.

But I hope one thing stays the same. I hope that our grads remain as kind, accepting, and caring as they are today. I hope that they find a community of people to grow old with that is as wonderful as they are… and remember, you are going to grow really, really old! One of the pleasures of working at a small school is getting to know students well, and getting to really see how students interact with each other in a quaint, caring environment. Our grads are fun, quirky, and unique. They want to do well in school and they are willing to work hard. For some of them this came easy. For others, they were initially dragged along by their peers and teachers, but they are ‘there’ now.

That’s the amazing thing about the journey through high school, it’s a hero’s journey. It’s not an easy path, it’s not supposed to be.

On an Inquiry Hub student’s journey through school, we ask them to do really challenging things… from Mr. Soiseth’s Philosophy classes, to cross-grade Shakespearian acting and filmmaking, to designing their own year-long courses. It’s not unusual for a student to spend significantly more time on an inquiry than they are expected to. And our students leave school doing more presentations in a year than most students do in their entire high school career. Even here we see the respect and kindness of our students, who make an excellent audience and provide considerate and thoughtful feedback to each other.

Technology can change us. It can change our careers. It can change our lifespan. It doesn’t have to change what kind of people we are, and how we treat one another. I’m proud of who our grads are today, and you should be too.

It doesn’t matter what job they end up with, if they will be driving flying cars, or buying their kids hoverboards in the future. What matters is that they will be a positive influence on their community. They will be thoughtful, kind, and considerate of others. They will be the kind of people you want to be around. And that, that is the highest compliment I can give them.

Honoured guests, parents, teachers, and students, I present to you Inquiry Hub’s esteemed and wonderful graduating class of 2023!

A matter of perspective

Dogs smell things that we can’t. Cats see better in the dark. Time passes more slowly for flies. Many animals have faster reaction times than us. And on top of that, our eyes lie to us, filling in blind spots and colour. And then there is our minds… Our learned habits and expectations… Our patience or lack of patience. Our demeanour, and our tolerance for errors, cleanliness, and even each other.

All these things suggest that the world we see is unique just to us. Us as a species as well as us as individuals. I look outside and I see a plant with yellow leaves, someone else sees that the leaves have some green in them too. Still another person can name the plant, and someone else is more concerned that it need watering or pruning. In every case it’s the same plant.

There are so many things I’ve been dealing with recently where perspectives are completely different. I can see this from perspective, but I’m finding it challenging helping others to do the same. Sometimes this is because I lack the skill to do so. Sometimes people aren’t willing to consider other perspectives. And sometimes it’s a combination of these two things.

I often wonder, what am I missing? What am I not seeing? How can I share what I do see meaningfully? How can I better understand the differing perspectives? How can I illuminate an issue so that differing perspectives come a bit more together?

These are not easily answered questions. Or at least that’s my perspective… which I might need to change. 😀

It’s going to be messy

“Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn’t have to experience it” ~ Max Frisch

One of my favourite presentations I’ve ever created was back in 2008 for Alan November’s BLC – ‘Building Leadership Capacity’ conference. It was called: The Rant, I Can’t, The Elephant and the Ant, and it was about embracing new technology, specifically smartphones in schools.

The rant was about how every new technology is going to undermine education in a negative way, starting with the ball point pen.

I can’t was about the frustrations educators have with learning to use new tools.

The elephant was the smartphone, it was this incredibly powerful new tool that was in the room. You can’t ignore an elephant in the room.

The Ant was a metaphor for networking and learning from others… using a learning community to help you with the transformation of your classroom.

I ended this with a music slideshow that I later converted to video called, Brave New World Wide Web. This went a bit viral on BlipTV, a now defunct rival of YouTube.

The next year I presented at the conference again and my favourite of my two presentations was, The POD’s are Coming, about Personally Owned Devices… essentially laptops and tablets being brought into schools by students. These may be ubiquitous now, but it was still pretty novel in 2009.

These two presentations and video give a pretty strong message around embracing new technology in schools. So my next message about embracing AI tools like Chat GPT in schools is going to come across fairly negatively:

It’s going to be a bumpy and messy ride.

There is not going to be any easy transition. It’s not just about embracing a new technology, it’s about managing the disruption… And it’s not going to be managed well. I already had an issue in my school where a teacher used Chat GPT to verify if AI wrote an assignment for students. However Chat GPT is not a good AI checker and it turned out to be wrong for a few students who insisted they wrote the work themselves, and several AI detectors agreed. But this was only checked after the students were accused of cheating. Messy.

Some teachers are now expecting students to write in-class essays with paper and pen to avoid students using AI tools. These are kids that have been using a laptop since elementary school. Messy.

Students are using prompts in Chat GPT that instruct the AI to write with language complexity based on their age. Or, they are putting AI written work into free paraphrasing tools that fool the AI detectors. Messy.

Teacher’s favourite assignments that usually get students to really stretch their skills are now done much faster and almost as good with AI tools. And even very bright students are using these tools frequently. While prompt generation is a good skill to have, AI takes the effort and the depth of understanding away from the learners. Messy.

That final point is the messiest. For many thoughtful and thought provoking assignments, AI can now decrease the effort to asking AI the right prompt. And while the answer may be far from perfect, AI will provide an answer that simplifies the response for the the learner. It will dumb down the question, or produce a response that makes the question easier.

Ai is not necessarily a problem solver, it’s a problem simplifier. But that reduces the critical thinking needed. It waters down the complexity of work required. It transforms the learning process into something easier, and less directly thoughtful. Everything is messier except the problem the teacher has created, which is just much simpler to complete.

Learning should be messy, but instead what’s getting messy is the ability to pose problems that inspire learning. Students need to experience the struggle of messy questions instead of seeking an intelligent agent to mess up the learning opportunities.

Just like any other tool, there are places to use AI in education and places to avoid using the tool. The challenge ahead is creating learning opportunities where it is obvious when the tool is and isn’t used. It’s having the tool in your tool box, but not using it for every job… and getting students to do the same.

And so no matter how I look at this, the path ahead is very messy.

Attention to what really matters

Yesterday I had a couple meetings that took me out of my school for most of the morning. I got back to my building and immediately started my lunch. It was about 20 minutes before teachers would be in the staff room and so I was there alone. A student saw me through the clear glass walls and asked to speak to me.

She was honoured with doing a speech at our district’s indigenous student graduation ceremony next week and she wanted advice. I invited her in, listened while I ate, and provided some initial feedback. She’ll work on it and come back to me.

Just as I was ending that discussion there was another student at the door. She invited me to see her Independent Directed Study final presentation the next day (today). I told her I’d love to see it and set an alarm on my phone to remind me.

What a productive lunch! Instead of sitting and eating alone, I got to spend time talking with students, and it was by far the best part of my day. I love that students feel they can come to me for help and want me to see them present. It reminds me of why I like my job, of what my job is all about.

It’s easy to get buried in the work of running a school. I can spend my entire day in my office and in meetings… doing important work that needs to be done. But if I don’t make time for students, if they only see me as a guy in my office too busy to talk to them, then I don’t know why I got into this position.

As I come off an extended leave due to a herniated disc, I’ve been absolutely swamped trying to get back up to speed. It’s easy to get lost in the work and to forget what really matters… our students. And if we can’t find time for them, they won’t look for us to help and support them. They won’t see us as part of their learning community. These relationships are key to foster, and moments like this lunch remind me that I’ve got to put the time in, or moments like this won’t happen.

Title-less leaders

When people follow others because they want to, not because of their title, it’s because the person they are following is a good leader. When the person they follow leads without the title, it is because they are good team members, and also good leaders.

When a problem arises, these title-less leaders seek solutions. They don’t try to do it on their own. They will solicit the help of their peers, and they might also ask the person leading them… but only if it requires that help, and only if that leader is helpful.

It is a mistake to believe that the title-less leader only ‘escalates’ a problem if it can’t be solved without help. If the titled leader is a valued team member, then the title-less leader will come to them just as they would go to another colleague. But if the titles leader is not effective then the title-less leader might leave them out.

Title-less leaders get a lot done. And what they lack in title they deserve to earn in respect and accolades. Even though outwardly the title-less leader may not want the accolades, they deserve it, and it should be given.

The people who take on leadership roles without needing the title are the ones that make an organization great. And when they get promoted, their teams will follow them. But long before they get the title, their leadership should be recognized and explicitly appreciated.

Something really special

I sometimes forget how lucky I was at the start of my teaching career. I worked with some amazing leaders and educators, and we created very special learning experiences for our students. When I meet former students from those teaching years, they often share a few different comments such as:

  • Middle school was my favourite time in school.
  • You guys made school so much fun.
  • You taught us life skills I still think about.
  • We could tell you all loved teaching and loved working together.
  • It was such a special school!

Today my wife and I (we both taught at the school back then) met up with a former student visiting from Ottawa. She had invited friends and former teachers to meet at a local park. This student is pregnant with her first child and she talked about wanting to find a future school for her newborn that was as special as Como Lake Middle was to her.

She said, ‘For years I thought every middle school was as fantastic as our school’, and that it was comments on our Facebook pages about how special our experience was (from other former students) that made her realize, ‘Wait, that isn’t normal for every middle school?’ She said she thought that’s just what middle school was before talking to her husband and others that didn’t have such an amazing experience.

She brought up a specific lesson I’d shared in a leadership class, and like others she mentioned how much fun the teachers had together. She brought up an experience in PE class where the Vice Principal highlighted her effort in PE, even though she was, as she described it, ‘in the middle of the pack athletically’. And she mentioned a teacher visiting her class on the first day and teasing her teacher in such a fun way that everyone had a good laugh (including her teacher being teased).

I need to spend more time reflecting, fondly reminiscing, and appreciating those years, and the connections to students from those years. They really were something special.

Use it or fall behind

Check out what Khan Academy has done so far, since getting early access to Chat GPT4 last August.

And here’s what’s coming soon:

The gut reaction to using new technology in education is to ban, block, and/or punish students for ‘cheating’. While I’m not going to link to the many times I’ve already said this, I’ll say it again… the technology is not going away!

So how do we use it effectively, creatively, and for learning? 

That is the question question to ask… and Chat GPT4 and tools like it probably have better answers than you can come up with.