Tag Archives: Pro-D

Reimagining Schools

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Since November I’ve been connecting, every few weeks, with Will Richardson and a group of educational leaders from around BC, Canada in a professional development session run by the BCPVPA (BC Principals and Vice Principals Association) called ‘Reimagining Schools: Confronting Education‘. Right off the bat, Will shared some framings:

• Everything is nature
• We’re not facing “problems” to be solved. We are in a predicament.
• Our predicament stems from the fact that we are out of relationship with each other and all living things on the planet. All of our challenges flow from this disconnect.
• Education is complicit in creating these challenges.
• Collapse is not new. What’s new is that systemic privilege is no longer a buffer.
• Our personal challenge is to face reality or “sit with the shit” and not run from complex, difficult questions.

There are a few deep thoughts that have brewed from these sessions, and yet oddly enough the two most impactful things came from outside the sessions.

First a conflict within me. Will shared a post on LinkedIn where he said,

“I think it’s telling that for all of the conferences and presentations and talks and essays and “achievements” that people post and discuss here, only about 2% of them seem to make any note of the fact that they are happening while:

~ecological limits are being breached
~social trust is eroding
~ AI is reshaping cognition
~ politics are destabilizing
~ inequality is deepening
~ biodiversity is declining at alarming rates

I mean, without using those contexts as a lens for our gatherings or our teaching or writing, what is the actual relevance that we can claim, not just around education, but around living life on the planet in general?

It’s either denial or ignorance. Or maybe it’s concern that if we ground our work in those lenses, no one will show up or read or listen…”

I commented:

“I’d push back a bit and ask what is the conference about?

There’s a cognitive dissonance that is invited when the mind has to weigh these things AND also take in information that people are going to a conference to learn about.

I’m seeing your question play out on social media where people are being called out for not being political and sharing their political stance… on a channel where politics is never discussed.

There needs to be a balance, we can’t stick our head in the sand, but we also can’t pretend (and I do intentionally mean pretend) that acknowledging major issues of global concern are equivalent to somehow authentically addressing them… and topically addressing them when our topic isn’t directly affected by them is to me worse than not mentioning them. It can be a distraction without gain to the intended message.”

Will responded:

“Dave Truss So, I’ll push back a bit on the push back. 🤣

I don’t think it’s a “calling out” as much as it is a reminder. And I don’t disagree that just naming them authentically “addresses” them, but it does provide a different lens for whatever question is in front of us at that moment. Every topic is affected by them. Every one.

Modernity wants to separate everything out into pieces and ignore the interconnectedness of the whole. This is the world we live in right now. It’s all entangled.”

The comment conversation continued, and is worth reading, but doesn’t add to my conflicted feelings about this. On the one hand I completely agree with Will, if we aren’t bringing a contextual lens to what we are sharing, we are somehow missing the interconnectedness of some of the things we should most value and care about. But on the other hand, I’m sitting in a place right now where just two days ago I wrote about being ‘Intentionally disconnected‘ because paying attention to the rather disturbing world events right now feels like too much. I ended the post saying, “for now I lack the capacity to engage. It seems like a futile activity that will anger and upset me, with no gain. It is rare for me to actively choose to be uninformed, but right now is one of those times.”

Therein lies the conflict. I agree with Will, yet I don’t think I’m the only one who isn’t ready to face the harsh realities of the predicaments we are in… especially when I’m trying to learn something new. I think for our students it’s the same. The last of the framings above is, ‘Our personal challenge is to face reality or “sit with the shit” and not run from complex, difficult questions.”

I get it, I really do. But when I’m at a conference or when a student sits in a class, do we really need to ‘sit in it’? Do we need to connect everything we do to the predicaments we live in? Do we need this lens to permeate what we are learning? If I channel my inner Will Richardson I think I’d ask myself, ‘But what value is the learning if it isn’t addressing the predicaments we are in?’ … Again, I’m left conflicted.

For example, can I teach students about using AI in an ethical way and not mention the cost of the energy drain? Is mentioning this once enough or should that be the bigger lesson? Do I need to bring the dire state of the world into every lesson, predicament after predicament? Is this even healthy? Maybe I’m just too stuck in the current educational context to see the bigger picture? I really don’t think that these sessions answered this for me, and yet I feel I have a deeper understanding of the need to confront hard truths… and ensure that what we choose to teach be taught with a lens of a world in environmental, political, and social challenges. Will shared the following quote in one of our sessions:

“If we fully accept the world as it is—in all its harsh realities— then we can develop the very qualities we need to be in that world and not succumb to that harshness. We find our courage, morality, and gentle, nonaggressive actions by clear seeing and acceptance. As we accept what is, we become people who stand in contrast to what is, freed from the aggression, grasping and confusion of this time. With that clarity, we can contribute things of eternal importance no matter what’s going on around us—how to live exercising our best human qualities, and how to support others to discover these qualities in themselves.”
~ Margaret Wheatley “So Far From Home”

The second insight I’d like to share came after our first session. Will invited any of us who could stay on to do so. During that after-session conversation I mentioned that I was retiring. The topic of my school, Inquiry Hub, came up and I mentioned that I was proud of what our team has been able to do, transforming the learning outside of the traditional high school box. And yet, I was disappointed that our little school has not had a greater impact on the rest of the district. Will responded saying something like, ‘Dave, if you were able to do that, you would be a unicorn because I haven’t seen that happen yet.’

That simple statement had an unburdening effect on me. It is sad, yet it comforted me. For the past 13 years my small team of teachers and I have created a very special place for self-directed learners to have some true agency over what they are learning, while still providing an opportunity for them to meet all the requirements they need for their post high school ambitions. It has been an amazing ride, and the fact that it didn’t really spread beyond our walls isn’t something that should weigh on me as I head into retirement. The test of my leadership will show if the school thrives after I’m gone.

Overall, I really enjoyed the sessions with Will, and with the other educational leaders from across BC. I appreciated the experience of sitting in the discomfort of knowing things must change in education and sitting in the predicament rather than cherrypicking shallow solutions and discussing them like we were solving all the world’s problems. I encourage educators to follow Will on his journey to confront education and reimagine schools and join one of his cohorts of educators on similar journeys of discovery.

Do not go quietly

16 years ago, January 28, 2008, I shared a presentation I did in with some SFU student teachers. Here is a clunky version on Slideshare. Here is the post I wrote about it. And here is the video I made out of it for a presentation at BLC 08 in Boston.

Do not go quietly into your classroom! 

The video had close to 100,000 views on BlipTV, which died in 2011… like many of the place I shared that you could find me online at the start of the video. A lot of those links are dead now. But this slideshow and video were pivotal in sharing my transformation as an educator who empowered students with technology. I remember the hours I put into timing the slides with the music, and the the relief of finally thinking it was good enough to share.

A day or two before the original presentation to student teachers, I found out I was going to become a Vice Principal. I was inspired to share the things I’d learned and started another blog, “Practic-All – Pragmatic tools and ideas for the classroom.” Where I shared a weekly series called Dave’s Digital Magic. It only lasted for 19 posts, but it was my way to stay plugged into what was going on in classrooms and to have good learning conversations with some of my staff.

So hard to believe this was 16 years ago… And I’m still exploring the Brave New World Wide Web and sharing what I learn along the way.

The future of conferences

In the past few weeks I’ve participated in Microsoft Teams and Zoom meetings with Jeff Borden and Dean Shareski. Both of them did a great job, but I look forward to doing face-to-face conferences again. Dean recently wrote, ‘The Future of Professional Learning Part 1‘,

“I do wonder if we’ll be more intentional about what constitutes and justifies a great face to face experience and what can be highly effective as a virtual option?”

This got be thinking about where we go with conferences post-pandemic? In response to a tweet about his post, I said,  “I was tiring of regular conferences, now I miss them. I think they will evolve to be more engaging (why travel somewhere for a PowerPoint that could be on Zoom) and I also think we might see more (online) pre/post conference engagement and learning.”

To expand on this idea, I don’t see things like pre-presentations or assignments and tasks being given before a conference (read as ‘not homework’), but I do see opportunities for conversation, interaction with the presenter, and with other conference attendees. I see icebreakers and teasers.  I see feedback to the presenter about what the attendees want. I see presenters providing clear learning intentions and a framework for their talk. I see presenters providing a personal introduction so that instead of the first 5-10 minutes of a 1 hour presentation slot being “This is who I am”, the presentation starts with an activity, engaging people with other people who have already connected online. I see interactive presentations that rely on participants being involved and engaged with the material.

Think about it. Why spend hundreds of dollars in flights, hotels, and food, to go to a room and get a PowerPoint and ‘talking head’ that could easily have been delivered to you at home? When I went to ISTE, my favourite memories are the blogger’s cafe, and meeting friends to do podcasts with (Shelly Sanchez Terrell and Kathleen McClaskey), and the people I went to ISTE with from my district. When I went to SXSW EDU, the people I went with and the podcasts that I did are the only things I remember (David Jakes, Jeff Richardson, and after the conference Miguel Guhlin). The future of conferences will need to be much more about creating experiences and making connections and less about presentations… this was already happening, but now that we have created digital experiences that will compete, the pull of conferences needs to be about enriching the experience and making it worth the effort to travel.

Conferences 2020-21

I love going to conferences, but I end up valuing the time between sessions, when I talk or interview smart – people I know, or reflect on what I saw with friends and colleagues. Essentially, I try to tap into the wisdom of the room, and not just at the front of the room presenting.

As conferences move online, I’m not interested in hopping into a virtual room to watch a presentation, and then repeat this again and again… I want time to debrief, to connect and have conversations, to discuss ideas in pairs and small groups. I’m not just talking about a 5-10 minute breakout session in an hour long presentation, I’m talking about scheduled time to ponder, discuss, and apply what I’m learning to my context, with people I work with.

The way I see it, digital conferences need dedicated collaboration, discussion, and reflection time built right into the schedule… Digital meeting spaces scheduled into the day. There needs to be opportunities for conversation, serendipity, and reflection.

The spaces between the sessions needs to be recreated in digital conferences so that conference goers can connect and share their thoughts and ideas outside of presentation sessions. We need public learning spaces, recreated hallways, coffee shops, and courtyards.

Do you know of any online conferences trying to do this?

Share your work

Here is a wonderful (first) blog post by Marcus Blair (@MrBlairsClass):

Teaching Ancient Greek Philosophy in a 21st Century Classroom

The lesson shared is on Stoicism for Grade 12 Philosophy, but there is a bigger lesson: Share your work!

I’m sure that to create this post Marcus had to reflect far more on his lesson than he had any time before writing. So, in the process of writing, he not only helps others, but helps himself too.

He made a fan out of me, but even if no one read the post, it still would have been a valuable exercise to write it. The fact that others like myself get to benefit as well is a positive by product of sharing work on a blog.

Keeping Derek Sivers idea of ‘Obvious to you, amazing to others‘:


I think one of the best professional development opportunities educators have is to share their work… so get blogging!

A day of learning

Today is the first Professional Development Day of the school year. It is an opportunity for educators to pause and reflect on their own learning journey.

When I started my career, I got to work at a school where 14 of the 30 teachers were teaching for their first year, another 2 had only a partial year under their belt, and still 2 more were in their second year of teaching. We were both struggling and thriving as we muddled through our early years of teaching. We had a handful of teachers that, with just a few tears under their belt, we brilliant and very supportive. We had a leader who encouraged us to focus on students and gave us opportunities to lead. But more than anything, we had each other.

Our school based pro-d days were so special. One of my favourites was the October retreat we would go on. It was always themed and we would arrive at the retreat all dressed up the night before our day of learning. We were grouped into sitcom characters from tv shows, we were dressed for the 80’s, we we rock stars. The night would be filled with activities and games that made us feel like kids.

Then the next day we would come together and co-run the day’s events, filled with ideas to engage our minds and the minds of our students when we went back to school.

Those early experiences helped me realize that people need to be part of their own learning journey. Learning is most enriching when participants help create the journey. When we realize who owns the learning, that’s when learning really happens.

Every Day is a PD Day

Every day is a great day for Personal/Professional Development.

Last night I was online in time to catch #Saskedchat, an education-based chat on Twitter, moderated by Kelley Christopherson.

I was having some fun on the chat and then I told Kelly that I needed to sign-off to write today’s post.

Kelly shares that, ‘Every Day is a PD Day‘. But it isn’t the day itself that is important, it’s the connections we make on that day. It’s the people we interact with. It’s the questions we ask ourselves.

After I signed off the chat inspired with the title of this post, I went looking for the earliest interaction between Kelly and I on my blog. I found a comment he wrote Friday the 25th of May, 2007, on a post called ‘Square Peg, Round Hole‘. I think we met before that when I started blogging on a site called Elgg in 2006, or on a social media site connected to that blog. So here’s the interesting thing… in 12 to 13 years of being connected, we’ve never met face-to-face. I’ve known him as a teacher, as an administrator, as a husband and parent, as a blogger, and as a Twitter connection. I’ve visited a virtual art gallery with him in Second Life and chatted about…life. I’ve read many blog posts that have been inspiration for thinking, learning and reflecting on his and my own practice. We’ve lost touch, we’ve reconnected… more than once.

Today, I learned with him and from him again… and now it’s your turn. The rest of this post is from Kelly’s Day 28 post on ‘Every Day is a PD Day‘. (Thanks Kelly!)

“Each person is a unique individual who has something to add to our experience. Ask questions, listen intently, engage in conversation. In a world that is filled with the possibility for personalization, building connections and sharing with others requires us to shift from “Do unto others” to “Get to know and treat them as unique persons”. We need to respect their dignity by accepting that there may be differences in how we might see things which requires a more personalized approach to connecting. As our connections grow and develop, people who treat those around them as unique, worthy of knowing, provide the opportunity for a personal connection built on sharing and learning. Applying one-size fits all formats to connections leaves us missing the opportunity to learn and grow.
How willing are you to personalize your approach to the connections you make? How much time do you take to ‘listen’ to what people are sharing with you in order to get to know them? When you meet with parents or other community members, how often do you provide them with the opportunity to tell you about themselves? When you are connecting with others, how focused are you on their experience?”

More Thinking about Change

Is Change the True Barrier? | The Principal of Change | George Couros

Change for change sake is not good enough.  Change to make something better is the goal. If what we are doing now is the best way of doing things, then there is no reason to change.  But, if we know something is better and serving our students in a way that is needed, is change the true barrier?

Is it that people really don’t like change or is it truly that people do not like the process that change incurs?

via georgecouros.ca

 

I’ve been Thinking About Change a lot recently:

I think we are at a point of transition now where teachers are often learning to use tools as they teach with them & so a few key things are needed to help foster effectiveness:
1. Time- Pro-D, preparation, planning & play
2. Co-teaching & collaboration opportunities
3. Models & Mentorship

…and George asks a really good question about change above.

In my comment I said:

I think part of the issue is the ‘unknown’ factor of how much change is needed. For example: When someone struggles with email and adding an attachment, the move to a wiki seems daunting. Phrases like “It’s just like using a word document,” seem comforting to some, but not to others. To me the change is minor in the amount of effort, to others it can be a huge undertaking!

I also think the education profession is it’s own worst enemy simply because it always leaves you feeling you can do more. You can have an amazing lesson that excites all but one kid and you walk out of the room thinking, “What could I have done to engage him?” So, how much do you do? You can ALWAYS be better, you can ALWAYS do more. I love the phrase “Good enough is not good enough!” but I think too often it is perceived as ‘good enough’ when the prospect of big changes are presented.

The missing ingredient that I see: Collaboration time. Put teachers together in an organized way, with clear objectives, and they’ll move mountains. Alone, the mountains are just too big!

And I think that fits well with my post I linked to above.

Dean Shareski commented:

“Teachers do not resist making changes; they resist people who try to make them change. The best change comes as a result of individuals realizing they need to change. If we believe that teachers are the right people in the role, we need to help them realize this on their own and not because they feel forced. True change is internal.”

…Which adds the aspects of empowerment and ‘owning the learning’ to the equation. I think this is a really critical point!