Tag Archives: perspective

Final Advice

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I have a friend about to be promoted from teacher to vice principal, and I offered some final advice yesterday. I shared that often people will come to you with a challenge or crisis and to them it will demand an instant response… but seldom does it require an instant response, and the response will often be better with a bit more thinking time.

Of course, emergency situations are different, and responses need to be instant in an emergency. But often the emergency being brought to your attention only requires an immediate response according to the person bringing it to you. Taking time, discovering nuances, and seeking more information will actually provide you with far more data to make your response appropriate.

So how do you slow things down?

First, acknowledge the concern. Then ask questions. And sometimes, take the time to repeat the concerns to confirm you heard them properly, and also demonstrate that you understand the issue. Then provide the person with a timeline that you’ll get back to them.

An example my friend shared was a concern of an angry parent expecting an immediate response. I suggested in this case to do what I suggested above but to take specific notes. This lets the parent know that you are taking it seriously and also allows you to feed back exact quotes at the end of the conversation to reiterate that you fully understand the complaint. Hearing the complaint read back in the exact words that it was stated in is a very reassuring way to end a meeting and let the parent know you understand why they are upset.

Once that’s done you can provide a guaranteed response that sounds something like this: “So do I have that right? Good. Obviously this is a delicate situation and I’ve got some follow up to do. I can’t promise you that I’ll have it resolved by the end of the day tomorrow (or another specific day), but can I give you a call then just to update you on my progress?”

Now you’ve got time to bounce it off of your admin team, and/or Human Resources, and/or to follow up with a teacher, and/or other students. Or at the very least you have a moment to think about the situation without it being delivered in ‘emergency mode’ when it’s not actually an emergency.

Essentially, think of it this way:

‘Your immediate urgency does not dictate the pace of my response.’

I didn’t share any of the following when giving advice but I’ll share this reflection here: Looking back at my career, I think this has been one of my superpowers. But like every comic book super hero power, there also comes a weakness. The metaphorical Kryptonite that comes with this superpower is that sometimes my reaction was too aloof. I did not address the issue with nearly enough urgency in the eyes of the person bringing it to me.

Here is a perfect example I learned from. I was a few months into running an alternative school and two boys got into a physical fight. When the teacher came downstairs to where my office was to tell me about it I asked, ‘Where are the boys now?’ One was in the downstairs lobby with the counsellor, the other was upstairs in the kitchen with the youth worker.

When I heard this, I said, ‘Ok, I’ll be there in a minute’, and quickly finished an email that I was sending to a parent. I literally took under a minute to do this, but that was taken as me not dealing with a crisis seriously. In my head, the situation was handled to a point of everyone being safe, but to my staff, who were all heightened by the very real crisis of a fight, I wasn’t prioritizing them… And upon reflection they were right.

In this case it was not just an urgency, it was indeed a crisis, and I should have responded immediately. Lesson learned. That don’t stop me from using this strategy many times later with the staff, but it reframed what they felt was a crisis rather than something they perceived as urgent but could wait. And by dealing with ‘crisis situations’ faster in the future, I was able to leverage those fast responses to delay and find out more, and respond more effectively, when I could and should give myself more time.

The real challenge is understanding not just my own sense of urgency versus crisis, but also that of the people I worked with. I’m not saying I always got it right after that, but I know that I was a much better leader when I remembered:

‘Your immediate urgency does not dictate the pace of my response.’

Pay Attention – Grad Speech

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I didn’t read it all word for word, and I ad libbed an ending to coincide with a couple references by student speeches and a video shared before I got up to speak… but here is my last grad speech, titled ‘Pay Attention’ as it was written.

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Yesterday was Father’s Day… and yes, I’m keenly aware that starting my speech with that suggests I wrote this speech as last minute as many of our grads completed their assignments over the last 4 years… but I digress. 

Yesterday was Father’s Day and I was out for lunch with my family. Two tables next to us showed me a stark contrast in how families connect or disconnect. Both of these tables had someone my age at them. One of them, a woman, was alone with her elderly father, the other, a man, was with both of his senior parents. 

The woman was leaning forward and listening intently to her dad. Juxtaposed to this, the man had his phone in his left hand for the entire meal, and barely ever looked away from it. 

He scrolled, and typed, scrolled and typed, and even when his parents spoke to him, he didn’t look up when he responded. His parents had to wait for him to finish his meal to order dessert, but he didn’t speed up his eating, he focussed far more on his phone. Two tables, two totally different dynamics. 

We live in an era of distractions. When our attention is elsewhere, it’s not where it should be. 

And with that I’ll address our grads directly: Pay attention to what matters.

You’ve had a rich high school experience with teachers who didn’t just teach you the curriculum, they taught you how to think, how to formulate your ideas, and how to come to your own conclusions about the things that matter in this world.

Don’t pay attention to people who talk about their own truths. Don’t pay attention to AI slop designed to steal your time and attention. Don’t pay attention to extreme political views that are more interested in exciting anger than encouraging understanding. And don’t pay attention to those who profit from division, outrage, or fear.

Instead, pay attention to evidence. Pay attention to people who ask good questions. Pay attention to those who listen before they speak. Pay attention to the people in your life who challenge you to become wiser, kinder, and more courageous.

You’ve had a head start. You’ve been going to school in a community that fosters your individuality; a community that is accepting of different opinions, different perspectives, and let’s face it, different levels of quirkiness. All the while, allowing you to express your true self within a kind and accepting community. Take this with you wherever you go. Be the one who others appreciate, who others admire, and who understands when to speak up and to speak out. 

The reality is that no other school makes you present and voice your views and opinions with authentic discourse more than iHub. And so, you are uniquely skilled to filter the BS that comes your way, to see through insincerity, and to be the one who speaks up and speaks out when no one else will. 

However, it all starts with your attention. 

A few of our former grads came back to talk to you a couple months ago. One of them who is on a sports team training for 20 hours a week and working part time on top of a full-time university course load said that Inquiry Hub prepared her to use her time well, and she’s shocked at how students feel overwhelmed with just their course loads. Another student said her professor complimented her on how good her essay was and she replied, “Really, I think my high school Humanities teacher would have given this a high ‘B’.”

I bring this up because you are headed into new learning opportunities where you can choose to be like other students, or you can design your learning journey like you did here at iHub. And the experience you have can be one driven by your attention, or by distractions. 

Your attention is one of the most valuable things you possess. Where you choose to invest it will, in many ways, determine the person you become when you get to my or your parent’s age… You’ve already gotten off to a good start. 

Now I’d like to address the family and friends of our graduates.  The Inquiry Hub staff: our teachers, secretaries, and custodians, have watched these young folks blossom over the past four years. They came to us with unique talents and gifts, and while some of them needed a lot of help to figure out how to thrive at school, some needed no help at all. But no matter their starting point, they have all grown tremendously in ways that are hard to measure. 

You have a lot to be proud of in this group. They have not only thrived at school, they have also thrived in their activities in the community and thrived at work. They have made us so proud of them, and you should be proud too. Think back to what they were like four years ago. 

Pay attention to the things they value and share with you. Watch the way they interact and engage with the world around them. They are wonderful human beings, and while parents can take pride and pat themselves on the back, remember that these young grads are also young adults who deserve to be appreciated for the fine people that they have become. 

Stop and pay attention, and we can see what a community can build when people choose to invest their time, their energy, and their care in one another.

Graduates, in a world where everyone and every deviceis competing for your attention, remember that your attention is your life. Every hour you give away is an hour you never get back. Spend it on people. Spend it on ideas worth wrestling with. Spend it building things that matter.

And to your families: Thank you for giving these graduates your attention long before they ever earned a diploma. They are sitting here today because of countless rides, conversations, encouragements, reminders, sacrifices, and moments that probably seemed ordinary at the time. They weren’t ordinary. They mattered.

So today, celebrate this milestone. Put the phones away and look around this room. Pay attention to these graduates, to your families, and to this moment.

Because years from now, you won’t remember what was on your screen. You’ll remember who was sitting with you, who leant you an ear when you needed someone to listen to you, and who disagreed with you in class, but did so in a way that was respectful. And even if you never do another fishbowl discussion, you’ll remember that Inquiry Hub was the school you chose, you attended, and you gave your full attention to. 

Congratulations, Class of 2026.

Reverberations

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I’ve been thinking a lot recently about endings and closure. An endings can suggest a finality while closure has a more positive sense to it, like when you finish a puzzle.

This is a frame that really works for me… for the most part.

Yesterday I had a reminder about something that I had a different kind of closure around. The closure that comes with healing and forgiveness. There is the well known saying that ‘time heals all wounds’, but the lesser known counterpart to that is ‘time wounds all heals’. Sometimes healing comes with reverberations… tiny haunts that can surface in the real world, in the mind, or both.

This kind of closure isn’t the celebratory kind, it’s the kind that lets you move on, hopefully with a previously unknown strength. The reverberations are just a reminder that there wasn’t an ending, but rather an acceptance, a sense of moving on.

The challenge with reverberations such as this is that they are often out of your control. Guitar strings starting to vibrate as a tuning fork is brought close to them do not choose to vibrate. And so it is with reverberations long after what you thought was closure.

Do reverberations upset the healing, or are they part of healing? I don’t have an answer to that question. Is it better to metaphorically feel the full vibrations or push the tuning fork away? I don’t have an answer for this question either. Time will heal, until the next reverberation and then time will wound again… hopefully with a dullness that allows for greater closure when the vibrations settle down.

Closure rather than ending

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Maybe it’s just semantics but I think the word choices we make are important. Our words frame our understanding of the world.

I’ve been having a lot of ‘lasts’ recently as I head into retirement. My last interview for a hire, my last field trip, my last principal’s breakfast meeting, etc. For a while I was seeing these as endings, kind of a shutting of a door never to be opened again, with a sense of finality. But I’ve had a shift recently.

Now I think of these endings more like closure. It’s not about an ending as much as a sense of completion. Like putting the last piece of a puzzle in. When a performance ends, the show is over, it’s time to go home. When a puzzle is completed there isn’t an instant finality to it. Closure in this sense invites time to admire what was accomplished.

It’s a small shift in language, but a large shift in perspective. It’s not an ending, it’s closure.

The June rush

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I want to say that I’m not going to miss the June rush, but I will. I always chuckle a little when people who are not in education say things like, “You must be winding down to summer now.” It’s much more like ‘ramping up’ than ‘winding down’. There is so much going on in a school in June, and adding retirement events to this just makes it feel a little overwhelming.

Today is a crazy day for me. We have next year’s incoming students visiting for the day, followed by our final PAC meeting, followed by a district retirement dinner. From the moment I hit the gym at 6am until 8pm tonight I don’t have a moment to spare. That said, it should be a really fun day too.

That’s the thing about the June rush, it is simultaneously great and exhausting. It’s a month of dichotomies. It’s I time of event-after-event, but each one of those events is a bit of a celebration. There is excitement about graduation, and ending the year, and there is the sense that the pace is all too much. There is the excitement of changes to come, and the sense of sadness of things ending.

Here’s the thing about the June rush, it’s easy to get stuck in the busyness, in the rush and the planning of event after event, in the checking off the last time you have to do something, and in the melancholy of knowing things are coming to an end. Meanwhile, each event is a gift. Each event is an opportunity to spend time with students and colleagues, and to celebrate the year that was. Yes, June is really busy, but within that busyness is hidden many moments to appreciate.

Cultural perspective

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I shared a few stories with a colleague yesterday about my time living in China. I spoke about the T.I.C. moments we had there… an acronym that we foreigners created for the term, ‘This is China!’

TIC moments had one of two distinct qualities. Either it was something that we experienced which would have been simple to do back home, but seemed impossible to get done in China, or vice versa, an experience that would never happen back home but was surprisingly simple to do in China.

Some of these things led to being flabbergasted and frustrated, others led to delight, laughter, or joy. I’m not going to share any specifics now. I have shared some in the past and I’ll share more later. Why I’m bring this up is to reflect on how valuable that experience was. To move to another country and to experience these unexpected moments of delight and frustration provided a perspective of how different cultures are.

It allowed us put some perspective on our own culture in a way that made us less judgmental and more open. It helped us realize that differences are to be celebrated, and that common sense is not always common, but kindness is. TIC moments were eye-opening experiences. Sometimes they made us feel like we entered a whole new world, other times they reminded us that deep down we are all the same.

Travel in general does that to you. It opens your eyes to how others live, why they believe what they believe, and yet helps us see the commonalities we all have. Cultural perspective requires experiencing the world from constructs outside your own culture. Travel allows you to recognize your biases, your norms, and even your privilege. And in the end your perspective on the world and all its inhabitants gets richer, along with your appreciation for others who come from different cultures.

Time gaps

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I saw a social media post that was addressed to Gen X. It shared that:

The movie ‘Stand By Me’ came out in 1986 and it was about life in 1959. If ‘Stand By Me’ was made now, in 2026, it would be about life in 1999.

What??? That seems crazy to me. They would both about life 27 years before, but the gap from ‘59 to ‘86 seems so much greater in contrast compared to ‘99 to 2026. I couldn’t imagine someone trying to write a script about the nostalgic times of ‘99. Other than the panic around Y2K, what would the young friends in the movie experience ‘back then’ that would differentiate them from now, except maybe smart phones?

Is it only my lived experience that makes me think this way. Would someone my age back in 1986 feel about 1959 the same way I feel about 1999? I’m not sure, but I’d say ‘No’. The time gap of the movie seems so much longer than it would if we went back from today.

Just fish in a pond

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Last night I was looking at some koi in a pond and I had a little epiphany. I was watching them swimming around and I realized that they are probably aware that there is a world beyond their pool, but they have no idea how big that world is? That’s when I realized… We are all just fish in a giant pond.

We are blissfully unaware of so many things beyond what our senses show us. As an example, there are frequencies of light and sound we can not see or hear. Our eyes have blind spots, and there are animals that can react to danger far faster than we can to the world around us.

Beyond of our limited hardware, there is the issue that we can’t find where in that hardware our consciousness lives? Far further beyond that, we live in an expanding universe and we’ll never get to know what lies beyond the visible universe.

Our pond is bigger than a koi pond, but the unknowns ‘out there’, beyond the metaphorical pond we are aware of, is significant. And while scientists discover things what we can see and touch, we really are just like the koi… living in a world that we know has so much more than what we are limited to observing by our hardware and our perspective.

Leadership blindspots

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We all have them, things we don’t see, even when we are looking right at them. We all have things that, over time, we get comfortable with and accept, that we would not accept if our perspective was fresh. We even have good habits that make our team better, but which also leaves us with blindspots because we focus on the progress we are making and miss the (hidden) costs of that progress.

This leaves us with two challenges:

The first being that we don’t know what we don’t know…. We don’t see our blindspots.

The second challenge is that when a blind spot is revealed, it’s often hard to accept. There’s guilt felt in not being aware of it earlier, and there is also the realization that you’ve got to move out of your comfort zone to deal with it… or ignore it and face even more guilt.

It’s an unglamorous aspect of leadership. No one is perfect, there are always things to improve, and whether you see them or not, whether you deal with them are not, you know there are blindspots… and having to face them is not easy.

Unzipping my lips

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After writing my last post, I recognized something that I haven’t thought about in a while. Being in a role as a principal of a public school, I’ve held a responsibility to ‘hold my tongue’. There are many blog post ideas I wanted to share but couldn’t. There are many points of view I would have loved to have expressed that I chose not to. I’ve had a responsibility to my position that has prevented me from being controversial.

Not too long ago I learned that a tiny reference to something that wasn’t even central to the point of a post I wrote was brought to the attention to one of my superiors. That person mentioned it to me, to make me aware, but did not ask me to change my post. I appreciated both the heads-up and the fact that I wasn’t asked to change anything I had written. In fact, I’ve never been asked to change my words on a blog post (though admittedly I was for both a Facebook post and a retweet many years ago).

While I’ve never been asked to change a blog post, I have on this blog, and my Pair-a-Dines blog, written posts that have ‘walked a fine line’, but I don’t think I’ve ever crossed that line. I didn’t cross that line in my last post either, but I did write something that could be interpreted as showing a patronizing attitude of superiority, with no real attempt at being humble. That’s not usually my writing style.

Reflecting now, I recognize that retiring and no longer having a role in a school, and a larger district, I am probably going to be able to be a bit freer in my choice of topics, and the stances I choose. No, I’m not going to be taking my metaphorical gloves off, but I am going to be able to unzip my lips a bit where I might have kept them zipped in the past.

I’m not sure how this will unfold yet, but at this moment I’m looking forward to being a little freer with my thoughts and ideas than I have been in the past… with less concern about my words misrepresenting others whom I might represent. Don’t expect instant controversy, but after retirement don’t be surprised by me being a little more loose lipped about things that I might have been more careful and cautious to share in the past.