Tag Archives: professional development

Staying in the discomfort

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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.

Full STEAM Ahead

Yesterday Dave Sands presented to our teachers and shared the district STEAM initiative with us. He also ensured that the presentation was tailored to our school.

Three concepts that really stuck with me from the presentation and conversations I’ve had with Dave:

1. We are moving from trying to do STEAM education in course silos, to multidisciplinary projects, to ‘transdisciplinary’ – fully integrated STEAM initiatives and perspectives.

And the path to do this is through more inquiry based learning.

2. This isn’t about doing a project and thinking, “Oh, I can add this Math concept here, and this is the way I will tie in Science.” Neither is it about trying to pull out curriculum outcomes from each of the subjects. Instead, this is about doing projects that foster curiosity in these areas and then students needing to delve into these areas to learn and do more.

3. The approach to get students there is through different lenses. A lens provides the opportunity for both teachers and students to approach a project with intention, and allows for a specific line of questioning that makes the connections easier to see and make.

Lenses help students focus on what’s important, and not just get lost in the busywork of the project, without making the necessary connections to the learning.

While I think Inquiry Hub is already focused on multidisciplinary learning, the idea of lenses can help us do this even better, and move us more towards transdisciplinary learning.

Choice time for teacher Pro-D

Last Friday I had a Pro-D, Professional Development Day, with the Inquiry Hub staff. We started the morning with a book talk, sharing what we have learned from books we are reading.
A few weeks ago, I had my teachers fill out a form sharing the title and link to a book that they wanted to read for their own personal development. I said that it didn’t have to be education-related, just something they wanted to learn from. Even though I said no obligation for follow up, my iHub staff suggested the book talk as part of their Pro-D day.

I loved hearing all the ideas and educational connections they made to the books they were reading.

Next, we moved on to personal learning time. We each shared what we were exploring, planning, or investigating, and then had an hour and a half to work on it. For example, two teachers worked on updating a questionnaire we give students when the apply to the school. Another teacher worked on a unit in one of his courses he thought needed work, and another teacher created a ‘Diversify your feed’ document and shared it with our staff and students:

I decided to create this image using information our team developed at our previous Pro-D. My way of making sense of our vision for the school:


We got together again (digitally, we weren’t meeting face-to-face) after lunch to share what we’d done, then we did some group planning around our timetable next year… a real challenge in a small school with a small staff that offers so many options for students.

Most of our day was about choice. Teachers got to share learning from a book of their choice, then they got to choose what they wanted to work on, before getting together for collaboration time. We spend a lot of our day at Inquiry Hub giving students time to work on things they want and need to work on. Our students have a lot of self-directed time at our school. It only seems fitting that when it’s time for our staff to learn, that we do the same.

Even though teachers got to choose what book they learned from (it didn’t have to be the one I gave them, although that seemed to be the one they mostly shared from), they were able to be really diverse in their sharing. Even though there were no constraints on what their personal learning time was used for, we shared our intentions before splitting up to spend that time on our own, or together by choice. We had accountability built into the day, but it was filled with personal choice.

It’s not just our students who benefit from choice in learning, our teachers benefit greatly too!

Face-to-face Conferences

While I’m looking forward to our Professional Development Day this coming Friday, I wouldn’t be being honest if I said that I wasn’t missing conferences. I’ll be attending from my laptop, alone in my office. I won’t be going to a large auditorium for a keynote, sitting next to friends, making lunch plans, geeking out in conversations with people I don’t usually get to see, making podcasts between sessions… there is a lot of appeal to engaging with connections beyond the sessions you go to at a conference.

For me, it usually includes meeting ‘digital friends’, people that I know from online/Twitter, whom I’ve never met before face-to-face or whom I have met, but less times than I can count on one hand. These connections invariably make the conference great for me. And not only do I get to meet these wonderful people, they tend to be people that like geeking out with me about what we’ve learned. If I go to a mediocre session, no problem, I can chat with someone who went to a better one. Go to a great session, and now I’ve got someone to share it with out loud, to help me solidify what I’ve learned.

But beyond the learning, there is the human connection. There is the opportunity to be with people I don’t get to see often but I enjoy their company. It’s about being with my tribe. I’ll enjoy the sessions on Friday, but I really look forward to a time in the future when I can once again go to a conference, pick up my swag, and connect with people that make the whole conference experience great!

Easier targets

Today I moved my archery target about 2/3rds closer. Of course my shooting was much more accurate, but that’s not the point. With the stress of hitting a bulls eye at 20 meters removed, and the target itself being so much larger, I could focus on my release much more. I’m still new enough at archery that I need to think a lot about what I’m doing, and the one aspect of my shot that my brain wants to focus on most is my aim. Doing so, I often forget about my release and squeeze the trigger rather than using the back tension of my arm. So, 15 minutes after moving the target closer, I found myself hitting the bulls eye, and also doing the things I want to do with my release.

How often do we move the targets closer for our students who struggle? How often do we give them the chance to succeed on smaller tasks, on their way to more challenging ones? Yes, we often do this in Math. But where else is this strategy useful? How else can we move the targets closer, help students find success, then make the task progressively more challenging?

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.

Podcasting-Pairadimes-by-David-Truss

Conversations worth having

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had some wonderful conversations that I’ve had on Zoom and recorded for my podcast.

I’ve known Kelly Christopherson since I started blogging in 2006. We’ve never met face-to-face, yet I’ve spent years learning with and from him. His philosophy that ‘Every day is a professional development day’ is something I enjoy following on Twitter daily.

I met Jonathan Sclater in late 2011 or early 2012, and was fascinated by his Imaginative Learning classroom. I didn’t realize until this talk that I helped to push Jonathan into blogging and sharing his practice digitally.

Joe Truss and I connected on Twitter last year. We had a quick conversation about our last names, trying to see if we had any connections. That conversation led me to learn more first about his school’s meditation practices, and then about his inspiring work promoting culturally responsive leadership.

One thing that all four of us have in common is that we have taken to physically taking care of ourselves, and that has led us all into more resilient spaces where we have more to offer than we did before. Working in education can seem all-consuming at times and that often leads to poor habits around physical fitness and taking care of ourselves. The idea that a healthy body promotes a healthy mind is one that we have all been working on, and that comes through in all three podcasts.

I love having these conversations, and I think it’s wonderful that I get to share them. I also like that they are conversations that are as long as they need to be… they aren’t 3-5 minute sound bites, but rather full conversations. This is something I’ve enjoyed about listening to podcasts myself and I’m glad that these wonderful educators were willing to share their time with me… And you…
I’ve shared the podcast descriptions below along with links (names and images) for you to get to the podcast page to listen to them. Enjoy!

Kelly Christopherson: “Every Day is a PD Day!” Kelly and I have been connected online for 14 years, starting on a blogging platform called ELGG, which included a number of different educator communities and social networking apps that predated Facebook and Twitter. Although we have never met face-to-face, we have been connected members of each other’s personal and professional learning networks.

Jonathan Sclater is an Elementary School Principal in Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada. He completed a Master of Education curriculum studies degree in Imaginative Education from Simon Fraser University in 2011, and he was awarded The Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence in 2012. Jonathan is passionate about using imaginative thinking in his role now as a lead learner. We discuss Imaginative Learning and the importance of taking care of ourselves in order to be able to give more of ourselves as leaders.

Joe Truss and I start the conversation off talking about taking care of ourselves so that we can be better leaders. Then we move on to meditation in schools, and then on to what it means to be a culturally responsible leader. The focus is on hearing the voices of the disadvantaged, and power differences for those that are disadvantaged, including students in relation to teachers and adults. “Moving from more equitable to equal.”