Tag Archives: reflection

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!

Whose problem is it?

A couple thoughts about assessment:

1. I taught Grade 9 Math for a year then after a year of only Humanities I went back to teaching Math, but for Grade 8’s. After about 5 years of teaching Math 8 I caught myself saying something as I started my unit on Exponents. I said to the class, “Every year this is the hardest unit and the hardest test that I give you.” I had to say it out loud to realize what I was really saying.

What I was really saying was one of two things, either I wasn’t doing a good enough job teaching this unit, or I was giving students much too hard of a test. Looking carefully at the test, I realized it was a bit of both. Because I had taught Grade 9 and new what was coming, when I looked at the test I realized that I was expecting students to know the content at a Grade 9 level… I was ‘preparing them’ for what’s to come. In every section of the test I had questions that started out with basic Grade 8 outcomes, but questions got gradually harder and always ended up with a couple (or more) questions that expected them to exceed what was required in the curriculum.

It was my problem, not theirs, that they struggled. I was pushing them to learn hard concepts at a very high level and testing them so that they all had to be competent at a higher grade level just to get a decent mark. My intentions were good. The outcome and experience for students who were not strong in math were not so good. I reworked my test that year, and some of my teaching as well.

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2. This isn’t one I’ve done, but my daughter has faced this. Last year in her university French course, the professor said, “Nobody gets an ‘A’ unless they are native speakers”. He then proceeded to give my daughter ‘B’s in every assignment, no matter what she did, and what feedback she used to improver her next assignment… that is, until her final exam. In her final exam, the marking was blind (the teaching only saw a number, and not the students’ names). On that exam, my daughter got an ‘A’.

If our job is to teach students, and improve their work, then what are we telling them if our message is, “You aren’t good enough to get an ‘A’.” … Is this not also saying, “I’m not a good enough teacher to help you improve.”? What message does this give to a student who is always striving to do her best and is a high achiever? What message does this give to a student who is struggling? Whose problem is it when every student that comes to your class isn’t good enough for an ‘A’ both before they arrive in class, and also after you have been their teacher for a semester?

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Assessment isn’t just measuring progress, it’s also measuring teacher expectations, and it’s up to us to make sure those expectations are realistic and fair.

Documenting your life

It occurred to me last night that a daily blog is an interesting way to document your life. It’s not a true journal, like a diary, because there are things I won’t share because it’s public… However it is a document of my thoughts and it opens a door into the things I think about.

I’m basically at a point now where I look back at old posts and some I remember writing and some I don’t. The blog is documenting thoughts I don’t even remember having. Have you ever looked back at a piece of writing and not remembered writing it? It’s kind of a weird feeling.

Kids today are doing this in different ways. They are sharing videos on TikTok, photos on Instagram, and even memories on Snapchat. Yes, even on Snapchat, the app where everything disappears, there is an option to save your video and Snapchat will share your ‘memories’ with you each year, like us old folk see on Facebook.

We are documenting our lives in digital, social spaces. Some of these spaces will disappear over time, and we will lose a piece of our histories. I no longer have my Ning and my Wikispaces memories archived, I can’t even remember some of the names of the apps that I stored memories on, that no longer exist.

But some will survive, some will get archived. While a paper journal can disappear, digital footprints might stick around for a very long time.

Nostalgic for Twitter of the past

I’m a huge fan of Twitter. I love it enough that I wrote an ebook about how to get started with it. I use it as a learning tool. I connect with amazing people on the platform, and I have made some wonderful friends along the way.

But recently I’ve struggled to stay engaged. It seems that anger is ever present. Fear is a persistent theme. Teachers with limited resources are asking others to help #clearthelist of teaching resources and items they want others to purchase for them on Amazon. I can’t even begin to talk about the vile that surfaces in political tweets.

I’m lucky that I’ve taken the time to create a great Twitter List of people I most enjoy conversing with and learning from. This reduces the distractions of things I don’t enjoy. But I just can’t help but wonder where tools like Twitter are heading, compared to where it came from?

Beyond sticking to my closed list, and ignoring the rest, I’m not sure how I will engage with Twitter going forward? I used to use it to fill me in on news, but the things that trend upward seem too negative. I used to go to my timeline to find engaging articles to read, now I spend more time editing my choices to focus on, rather than actually reading any links.

Maybe I lived in a safe bubble in the early days of Twitter, shielded from everything except my interests in education and learning? Maybe I allowed too much in? Maybe the tool itself is inviting the wrong kind of engagement? Maybe it’s time to take another break?

The Twitter of old was a really special place, and after spending some time on the tool this morning, I’m feeling nostalgic about what it used to mean to me.

A break and a lapse

Well I ended up taking just over a week off of my Daily Ink, with plans to do some writing outside of this space. I didn’t. I did have a wonderful break, including from social media, and I’ve been very slow to return. I also listened to a couple books for pleasure and truly enjoyed the break.

That said, I really didn’t write anything at all, and I’ve let my email completely pile up. I don’t feel bad about this, it has felt good to let go of things. Even today I slept in, had a really slow start and am sitting with my laptop in my back yard enjoying the sun and sipping coffee as I type. So while I’m going to make some observations about how I’ve wasted some of my time, I’m not doing so with any guilt, I’m just making observations around my expectations versus reality.

Writing: In about 9 days of not writing daily here, I ended up making 3 notes in my phone regarding the other writing I wanted to do. I can’t say that it wasn’t on my mind but without a routine and setting time to intentionally sit and write, it just never happened. I planned to do what I’m doing now, enjoying the sun outside while writing, but I never actually dedicated specific time to do so. My rest and relaxation never seemed to include taking time to write.

Meditation and exercise: I missed 2 days of meditation and 2 days of exercise (one of them being the same day) thanks to not having a regular routine. I had a long streak on my Calm app broken, but I started a new one yesterday. Last nights workout was minimal and it took me way too long to do so little. Again the lack of a routine hurt me. Still with respect to exercise, 5 days of workouts in a week is pretty good and I usually take at least one day off anyway.

Diet: I’m not on a diet, but I try to eat well and for the start of the year I was regularly doing intermittent fasting (14 hours minimum) 5 days a week. Covid ended that and I’ve never really recovered, but the amount of junk I’ve eaten the last week is horrible. I forget to eat then gorge on junk and my upset stomach has been telling me that I need to get my eating under control.

Social Media: I didn’t miss it. Not even Twitter. I thought I was going to take a break from news as well, but I didn’t although I should have. I’m disheartened by social media right now. It is polarized to the point the facts and reality no longer matter. Call-out culture, angry Karen videos, quick fixes, miss-information, anger, hate, pandemic fear… it seeps into my timelines and make me want to close my accounts.

The week+ of being off is over, and “I’m back”. While I enjoyed the break, I look forward to building a more consistent routine of fitness, meditation, and writing again, with a hesitation to spend much time on social media for a while yet. It’s funny, I thought I would need to stop writing here to get into the mood to write elsewhere, but in reality I need to keep writing and just choose to write more, (and actually make it part of my routine). I’ve enjoyed myself during this break, but I also lapsed a bit in the routines that I’ve built over the past year and a half, and I’m ready to build these positive routines back into my summer schedule.

Our online persona

No one shares all of who they are online. We share snippets, frozen moments, and smiling images. Some share to learn, others to reflect, others to seek attention. What’s clear is that we are not our public or online persona.

Writing and sharing daily, I’m keenly aware that I share a lot more than others do. How is this perceived by others? I’ve had some surprising feedback, some of it good, some of it disappointingly bad. I’ve even had it questioned if this was somehow taking away from my work day. That would have made me laugh if it wasn’t, at the time, so upsetting. I wrote a scathing retort that will probably never leave my drafts. It was cathartic enough just to write it.

And that’s what I’m reflecting on now, what do we chose to share and what do we keep to ourselves?

What do I keep to myself? What do I blog about? What do I expose? What do I hide?

A few years ago I went through 6 months of chronic fatigue. My family and coworkers knew, they had to know because I wasn’t running at full capacity no matter how hard I tried… but I didn’t really share any of this online until I found out it was from an extreme Vitamin D deficiency, and I was on the road to recovery.

I can remember going to a conference once and meeting a blogger whom I read regularly and admired. I was so excited to meet this person who ended up just being an ordinary guy who really didn’t want to talk about anything I was interested in talking about. It was a huge let down. This is especially true because before meeting him, I’d connected with so many amazing people at conferences who felt like instant friends, and whom I loved meeting face to face. I had met so many people that I felt I knew, and who exceeded my expectations as wonderful human beings. This guy just let me down.

But did he? Did he let me down or did I expect too much? Had I built him up to be something he wasn’t? Did I imagine him to be more than he was? Did I imagine my online interactions meant more to him than I should have?

On the flip side, who have I let down, disappointed, and even unintentionally ignored? Who has met me and thought, ‘Oh, that’s not the guy I thought he would be… that’s not the online Dave that I know.’

Whether we want to admit it or not, we don’t put our whole selves online. We refine our online persona by intentionally editing things out. We may not see ourselves the same as the Instagram teen deleting images that don’t get enough likes, but in some way we are one and the same. We choose to put some things ‘out there’ and we choose to leave some things out.

I have a friend who shares the most incredible photos of themselves having a wonderful time on Facebook, who I know is unhappy and struggles with depression.

I have another friend who in the past over-shared a tremendous amount of information about themselves. I was concerned and mentioned this to them. The response: “I’ve had people thank me for being so honest, and sharing things they are afraid to.” They were over-sharing in my eyes, not in theirs. It was beyond my comfort zone, not theirs. It was an uncomfortable level of sharing for me, not for them.

I can see that we are not our online personas. They are different than us. Even though this persona can say a lot about us… they don’t always say what we think they say.

How intentionally different to you is your online persona?

Do I keep going?

I was looking forward to celebrating a year of Daily-Ink on July 16th… however, I just checked and my first daily ritual post (this time around) was on July 6th, 2019. The anniversary has come and gone!

Do I keep going?

I think so.

I need to make some changes though. I’m not happy writing for the sake of writing. If I don’t have something worth saying, I don’t want to fill the (public) page for the sake of filling the page. That said, if I skip a day here and there, I know what will happen: I will get busy, I will put writing on the back-burner, I’ll miss more days, and my daily habit will disappear.

I know myself enough to know that if I don’t commit to do this daily, it will not be something I’m consistently doing a year from now.

I know so. I know that I will keep going.

What I might do is skip a day or two, here or there, with respect to choosing to write publicly for my blog. What I won’t do is skip a day of writing. As long as I’m honest with myself and dedicate to writing every day, I’ll be happy. It took a long time to finally get my Daily-Ink going, and now over a year later… I’m not going to stop.

Not so open book

It’s interesting to see how much of themselves people are willing to share online. Intimate family moments like the moment parents ask a foster child if they would like to be adopted. Moments of despair, hoping for human connection. ‘Angry Karen’ moments, though admittedly these are seldom shared by the targeted ‘Karen’. Requests for prayer for an unwell relative. Wedding proposals, break-ups, bedroom/bathroom humour, and embarrassing situations that are personal, and confidential, until posted online.

I’ve never been one to keep a consistent journal, but here I am approaching a year of journaling on my Daily-Ink, and I’ve come to realize that I keep some things intentionally out of this reflective space. Not just things I can not share:

“Many challenges in schools can be summarized as: a) Someone was treated unfairly; b) Someone felt that they were treated unfairly; c) A decision that affects more than one person was deemed unfair. Put another way: actions, perceptions, and circumstances in relation to fairness are imbalanced. The moment I dissect one of these scenarios on my blog, I have the potential to undermine any resolution that may have come out of it. I would be unfair and disrespectful to some of the people involved.”

…not just these things that affect the lives of others, but things that directly affect my personal life. It’s not that I’m harbouring some big secrets, it’s just that I choose to keeps certain personal things personal.

This makes writing hard sometimes, because the things that are weighing heavy on my mind are not things I want to write about… but normally this is where my inspiration comes from. So, I sit looking at my blank screen, wondering what I’m going to write about, and deliberately choosing not to write what comes to mind.

Still, I prefer this to being a completely open book. I think some things are best kept to myself, or in my family… definitely not to be archived in a blog post, or for others, shared in a viral video. In my opinion too many people over share, without thought, simply because they can. I share a lot, but a few pages won’t ever be open, at least not here.

Appreciating your family

Sometimes it’s easy to take advantage of the people that are closest to you; to leverage the fact that they are just ‘always there’. The very people that would do anything for you in a time of need are the same ones who you expect to be there without showing any gratitude.

Sometimes it is easy to get frustrated by your family; to roll your eyes and think ‘here we go again’, rather than seeing things from their perspective. The very people that most appreciate you for who you are do not always get treated as nicely as a stranger would be treated.

Sometimes it is easy to be triggered by your family; to be immediately upset by something they say or do, something that you would tolerate far more by someone unrelated.

There is the saying, ‘familiarity breeds contempt’, think of the first word in the phrase: familiarity. It is the family, that you are in close association with, that you know best, that can lead to a loss of respect, or lead to disrespect, from close awareness of faults or repeated behaviours that you don’t like.

It only takes an absence of these people in your lives, through time, geography, or death, to help you recognize that your familiarity also breeds love, compassion, and appreciation for those that love you, and that you love. Familiarity breeds love. Familiarity breeds compassion. Familiarity breeds appreciation. Or at least is should.

Who in your family can you show gratitude for today? What’s stopping you?

Finding the good in people and in situations

I like to think of myself as an optimistic person. In my job I deal with a lot of students, teachers, parents, and principals. I start these interactions with a simple premise: ‘these are good people, look for the good in them’. When someone is upset, they don’t tend to express that upset well. That’s not a measure of their character, it’s usually circumstantial.

Yes, there are some angry people in the world, but most people are good. Some are more selfish (both knowingly and unknowingly); some are more single minded about certain issues; some feel like there are injustices against them (and some of these are well justified, while others aren’t).

But coming back to people being inherently good, and my usual disposition towards others, I think that I’ve been in a bit of a rut for a while. I know where it comes from, I’ve thought about this a lot. I was stuck in a spot where I was running three schools and always felt like I was letting two of the down, if not all three. I was exhausted. Two years in, I felt like I didn’t want to continue. Then in February I was given a few different responsibilities and one school was taken away from me. It was a sigh of relief. I thought, not only can I do this, but I want to do this (again). Then the pandemic hit and my responsibilities escalated again!

Last week was a bit of a crescendo. On top of my own duties I had to spend a good eight hours on something that fell on my lap. I found myself complaining in front of a teacher and stopped myself. I called a good friend and ranted. Then I asked someone to get me some work to do before Friday when I had support. That work arrived Saturday. It’s done now, and I’ve put in proper supports going forward. But that same good friend checked in on me and I ranted again.Admittedly, ranting to someone in confidence did make me feel better. But it also made me think, why is that now a thing I need to do?

The ‘thing that fell on my lap’, well if I look at it from the outside, my lap made the most sense, and part of the time I had offered up. The ‘work to get to me before Friday’, well the person who asked for it on Saturday is doing his best in a new environment.

These things always happen. The difference that has me upset isn’t about them, it’s about me… and I have the power to change that! Maybe that’s the only thing I can change. I can manifest anger and upset, or I can recognize that people all around me are doing the best they can with the skills they have. I need to reflect on who else I can empower to do some of the things I do. I need to contemplate what I can and should say ‘no’ to. I need to find ways to frame things so that I don’t need to vent as often as I have recently.

It’s not what happens, it’s what you do that makes a difference.