Tag Archives: respect

Here we go

The school year begins. 180 school days.

I am nervous about the balance of things: work/home life/exercise; leadership/management; priorities/budgets; teaching & learning; support & independence; planning & follow through; time & efficiency.

I may be nervous but I can feel the potential… the promise of a great year ahead. Physiologically there is almost no difference between anxious nervousness and excitement. So I’ll reframe my thinking, I am excited.

I hope all educators are equally excited. We are in an incredible occupation. We change lives. We make learning fun and engaging. And our teaching goes well beyond the curriculum. We don’t teach subjects, we teach kids. We teach kindness, collaboration, cooperation, and creativity. We don’t just teach classes, we teach young adults who want to do well, who soar, who struggle, and who do the best with the resources they have.

Some come to us full of support and resources, others come to us with much less. The less the resources, the more compassion we need. The greater the challenge, the more patience we must have. The more we are challenged, the higher we must rise.

We can be the purveyor of the status quo, or we can be the change agents we want to be. It all begins today… here we go!

— — —

I wrote the following in 2011:

My Open Educator Manifesto

‘We’ educate future citizens of the world

Teaching is my professional practice

I Share by default

I am Open, Transparent, Collaborative, and Social

My students own their own:   (Learning)

• learning process

• learning environment

• learning products

• learning assessment

My students belong to learning networks

Every student deserves customized learning

• Student voice

• Student choice

Every educator deserves customized learning

I have high expectations

I Care, Share, and Dare

I am a role model

I am the change I want to see in Education!

We teach values

Mathematician and philosopher Gian-Carlo Rota on teaching: “A good teacher does not teach facts, he or she teaches enthusiasm, open-mindedness and values.” Source: Indiscrete Thoughts

I remember once, early in my career, the topic of abortion came up in my class. It was a student that brought it up as we were discussing debating skills. I decided that I wouldn’t share my opinion. I would let the class make their own choice. That they deserve to decide for themselves.

It was at that moment I realized that I was telling them my choice. I was sharing my values.

We can’t teach without sharing our values. To pretend otherwise is ignorant. And so we should be thoughtful about the values we choose to share.

We need to value kindness, forgiveness, and openness to new and different ideas. We need to value effort. We need to show that when we discipline bad behaviour, we are disappointed in the behaviour not the child. We need to be restorative, not punitive. Patient, not easily frustrated. Willing to admit we are wrong. Tough with our expectations, but supportive rather than combative when expectations are not met.

Our values define the kind of teachers we are… and we pass those values on to our students whether we think we do or not.

TJ’s Story

Today we will wear our orange shirts. At Inquiry Hub, students will be wearing ones with a design by one of our students with indigenous heritage, Madison D.

On Orange Shirt Day 3 years ago, I shared this on Facebook:

Tomorrow will be the first Truth and Reconciliation Day holiday. We are moving forward, and people will remember.

The wrong hill to die on

I came across this Tweet and felt compelled to discuss it,

“Can someone please explain why a student wearing a hat or a hood in class is so bad?

Why is that a hill so many teachers are willing to die on?” @ryanr_lester

I’ve worked in schools where ‘No hats’ was the rule, I’ve worked, and still work, in schools where it doesn’t. Students appreciate the freedom to wear hoodies and hats, and while I’ve dealt with policing this in schools where it is policed, I can’t think of an instance where this was a major issue in the schools where it isn’t.

Could a kid pull the rim of a hat down low to hide their face? Yes, but that might be something that helps them cope in a stressful situation, and that might also be something a teacher addresses… it depends on the moment. And if you think that moment that needs addressing would have vanished if the hat wasn’t on, well then you probably haven’t worked with that many kids who would do this… they would find another way.

Rules like this are about control and compliance, masked as issues of respect. Respect is neither earned nor demonstrated through control and compliance.

This is an uphill battle. You are better off choosing a different hill, and taking the high ground.

I’d rather be a sheep than a lemming

Dear anti-masker,

Go ahead and call me sheeple. You might think of me as easily influenced or docile. You might think I’m willing to give up my rights to follow the crowd. Sheep find comfort in community, and the herd helps others to be safe, not just themselves… kinda like masks do.

At least I’m not lemming, running off a dangerous cliff because others are doing the same. I’m not willing to endanger others with my choice of behaviour.

Now in reality lemmings aren’t really suicidal, and people thinking about their community doesn’t make them sheeple. In fact, most communal animals are very community minded and they do their part to keep their community safe.

It pains me to see something like this happening in Toronto. This isn’t community minded, it isn’t considerate of others. It’s metaphorical lemmings, except they aren’t just jumping off the edge, they are pulling the weakest and most vulnerable along with them.

Wanting to connect

This is one of the headlines that came across my news feed several times yesterday, “Ontario to maintain group size restrictions amid rising COVID-19 cases, crowded parks”

It seems that many people wanted to take advantage of the great weather and social distancing took a back seat to social gathering, despite an uptick of COVID-19 cases in southern Ontario.

This isn’t unusual behaviour, with similar things happening in parks and on beaches across North America. It isn’t something that bodes well when considering that economies are opening up and people are beginning to be exposed to more interactions with others. Social distancing needs to be something that we continue while things open up. So, why are people behaving like this?

We have a natural affinity to want to spend time with people and to be social… well, most people do, definitely not everyone. This is the typical overreaction we see with teenagers, when they get new freedoms and want to push the line. How many times have you heard a phrase like, “Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.” Well, seems like this is as true for adults as it is for kids.

People want to connect. They want to congregate, they want to celebrate.

I know many people that have had to cancel travel plans. My own summer plans with my wife and two other couples is no longer going to happen. I know of two cancelled weddings, one was a local celebration and one was a destination wedding. These are big events to change! These are celebrated gatherings that will not happen for a while yet. This is tough to miss out on.

But it’s not as tough as not being able to visit another country to say goodbye to a loved one who is dying, it’s not as tough as knowing you are the one that spread a virus to someone that didn’t recover like you did. It’s not as tough as shutting down the economy a second time, when the curve isn’t flattened enough and there is a fear of hospitals being overwhelmed.

The economy has to be opened up. We need to be returning to some sense of normalcy, we need to create opportunities to connect with others in our communities, to work along side each other, and to do things that are more social than they have been. But we need to do so in recommended and respectful ways.

We need to accept some risk, but not be risky. We need to connect, and not crowd each other. We can’t wait for a vaccine, and we can’t stay shuttered in place indefinitely. We need to connect responsibly, and in ways recommend by experts. We can’t ignore the need to engage in our society, but we also can’t be reckless.

A lesson taught with dignity and respect

My grandfather, Leon Bernstein or ‘Papa B’ as he was known, was an amazing man. As I shared at his funeral:

Papa B. is a Giant!

Like many of you, I know this because he told me so.
Papa wasn’t boasting when he said this, he was just telling you the way it is. If you were to measure a man by the legacy he leaves behind Papa would come as big as they get. In this way he is still a giant and always will be.

Here is a lesson that he taught me, wrapped inside of another lesson. It speaks to his character, and to the kind of person I want to be, that I strive to be. It’s a lesson he taught me when I was about 14 years old.

It happened at a family gathering at our house, it was the weekend and both sets of grandparents and a few aunts and uncles were over. It wasn’t a special occasion, our family often connected without a specific reason. I specifically know that it wasn’t a special occasion because I went for a bike ride with a couple friends, and if it was a special occasion, like a birthday, I would have had to stay at the celebration.

When I finished my ride, just before dinner, I came home and I remember that I was going very fast. I reached my driveway and I didn’t slow down. I made the sharp turn on my neighbour’s shared driveway and kept my speed up as I headed to the garage. But at the speed I was going I couldn’t make the turn and I hit Papa B’s car. My handlebar scraped across the car door leaving a scratch longer than a ruler, over 12 inches or 30cm. Then I fell to the pavement and scraped me knee.

It wasn’t a bad scape but standing up I looked at the scrape on me knee and then the large scratch on my grandfather’s car and I started to cry. I went into the house crying and I told my story of riding up the driveway and hitting the car. I didn’t admit to going too fast.

A few adults came outside to look at the car. I still had tears in my eyes as we looked at the large scratch on the front passenger car door. There was a remark about how big it was and the tears flowed. My grandfather spoke up, “It’s all right boy, the important thing is you weren’t hurt. Your knee will heal and the scratch can be fixed. All good.”

And with that we all went inside, me hobbling with exaggeration behind everyone that came outside. I got a bandaid from my mom, and the scratch on the car wasn’t mentioned again that night. I had convinced myself when I scraped the car that I was going to get in big trouble, but my grandfather said it wasn’t important, what was important was that I was ok. It was ‘All good’.

A couple days later Papa B came over and he asked me to come outside. He took me by the hand, something only he could do to a 14 year old in a way that felt natural. Holding hands was something Papa B did with all his grandkids. We walked to the passenger side of the car and he pointed. “See that,” he said pointing to the scratch I had made. “The scratch is horizontal. You were going too fast. If you were going a safe speed, the scratch would have pointed down as the bike fell, but you turned too fast and this scratch tells me so. It’s ok, I know it was a mistake, but I wanted you to know that I know you were going too fast.”

That was it. We went inside and it was never mentioned again.

This has shaped the way I have spoken as a teacher to students in my class, and now as a principal to students in my office. Papa knew all along, but he didn’t want to share this in front of an audience. He waited and taught me a lesson with dignity and respect. It’s easy to be angry and heated and forget to be like this.

That isn’t to say that I always choose to deal with things this way. And sometimes it’s good for students to see you upset, or disappointed with some emotion. But my default is to strive to be like Papa B. To choose a moment that isn’t public. To be gentle and respectful, but also to face the issue rather than let it pass.

Students make mistakes. People make mistakes. I make mistakes. When I remember this story, I remember that how we react to a mistake can be as much of a lesson as the lesson the mistake has to offer. Others deserve the same respect that my Papa B gave to me.