Tag Archives: retirement

Unmasking

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We play different roles in the lives of different people: A child, a parent; an employee, an employer; a host, a guest; a friend, a foe. People get different views of you depending on both your relationship and the role you play in their lives. And we act differently in each of these roles. It’s like we have no one defined identity. We wear metaphorical masks that reveal only limited aspects of who we are, depending on the roles we are playing.

Having just retired from a 27 year career, I’m leaving behind a mask that I no longer need to wear. I’m not going to ‘play that role’ anymore. I’ve unmasked from that identity. I thought maybe I would feel a loss, but I feel more like I’ve removed an unneeded layer. It’s reassuring to feel this way, I made the right decision.

On Wednesday my wife organized a wonderful group of family and friends to celebrate my retirement, then I spent a few more days with my sister, my cousin, and his family. It was really special to have this time, around people I love, feeling fully unmasked and completely comfortable.

Today I popped by to visit my predecessors, something we planned last week. I saw someone in his element, ready to thrive. This is even more cathartic. As a leader, I did what I could to leave things as best as I could. The factor I had no control over was succession… that was up to my bosses, not me. To see that the right choice was made and that the conditions for things to improve are in the hands of someone capable, with the right philosophy, and the skills to be awesome, makes it even easier to let go.

I don’t know what new masks I will put on in the future, but it feels fantastic taking this one off. I feel like I wore this mask for just the right amount of time, and deep down I know it is time to remove and ‘retire’ it. I can’t describe how good it feels to know this.

Habit revamp

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Summer is here and I’m don’t have a morning routine anymore. I’m currently between sets at a gym I don’t usually go to, because last night I stayed with a cousin in a nearby city. I’m here 3 hours later than usual, which is perfectly ok, I really don’t need to be out of the house at 5:45 anymore… or anytime in the foreseeable future.

I don’t care about the actual time I work out, or write my daily blog post, or meditate, or take my vitamins, but I do care that I actually do these things very regularly. A perfect example is that today I went directly from cardio to weights and only now realize that I skipped my stretching routine… a key ingredient to keeping my back healthy and ready to do weights.

Basically I had a habitual routine that was rock soiled while I had a work schedule to plan my routine around, and now that’s gone. I’m not going to figure this out today, and new habits take a while to form, but I want to figure out a kind of flexible routine in terms of times of day, location, and summer plans. I don’t actually know how to do this, so it may be messy for a while. Even so, I know me, and if I don’t have systems in place I miss getting things done.

There is a saying that if you want something done, give it to a busy person. That was me for a long time, now that I have more time I really need to create systems that will ensure all the healthy habits I developed are part of my new patter and pace of life.

Taking it slooow

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I had a wonderful afternoon yesterday with friends and family, and I had a longer sleep in before going for my usual morning workout. The day started great. Then I had a nap, stayed in bed a while, had a shower, and then had another long nap.

I realize that I’ve been pushing myself hard physically and then with all the usual year end events at school as well as all the extra retirement celebrations, I’m also emotionally wiped too. Both my social and physical batteries needed a recharge. And the beauty of it is I don’t have an agenda to worry about.

Now I’m going on a mini getaway, heading to spend time with my sister and cousin for an extended weekend and we literally have nothing scheduled. The timing could not be better, I’m off to do a whole lot of nothing… and it feels good.

One… final… celebration

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After what feels like more than enough attention on me, my wonderful wife has planned one more retirement celebration for me. This afternoon family and a few close friends will gather at our house to welcome me into the world of retirement.

As a last minute thing, my wife just had me staple this poster to our fence. Well, last minute for me, this was obviously planned. The adapted meme first showed up at my shared retirement with my buddy Dave, and I thought that was the end of it. Apparently not.

I truly feel blessed to be surrounded by such wonderful people, and I think this is a Canada Day I’ll remember for years to come.

Accumulation of stuff

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I’m in the process of clearing out my office. It’s fascinating to see the kind of things that accumulate in an office when you’ve been in it over a decade. I am admittedly comfortable with clutter, my slightly ADD brain does not come equipped with OCD superpowers to have a place for everything and everything in its place. So I admittedly have a lot of ‘unnecessary’ stuff.

The hardest things to get rid of are keepsakes that have sentimental value, and yet they’ve ended up in a drawer or the back of a bookshelf, and haven’t been seen for years. While they bring back some memories I’m left wondering, ‘If I take this home, where, except for a back of a drawer or bookshelf, would I put these and when in my life will I look at them again?’

I’m finding the process simultaneously cathartic and melancholy. Melancholy is the wrong word, it’s not a sadness it’s a solemn reflectiveness. I’m excited to be over, to move on to new things, and yet these hidden reminders in my office pull me back to thoughts and memories of the people and experiences I have enjoyed and even loved about this job.

And back to work I go. Serious question: Do I keep the the small hand carved song bird? The piece of brain coral? The stamp set of my name in Chinese? The beautifully hand painted rocks? How about the crochet rainbow bumblebee?

I’m going to be here a while.

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.

Last day with staff

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Tomorrow is my last day with my staff before the summer break. While I’m not quite done yet, this is it with respect to working with my two teams I’ve had the privilege to work with for 14 years (COL) and 13 years (iHub).

Farewell to being a principal.

It has been an honour to serve both communities. I was blessed not to be moved for that duration. Both schools are so unique, I really feel like I would not have thrived in the same way in a more traditional context. Fortunately I didn’t ever have to find out.

On to new adventures soon enough, but first, some heartfelt goodbyes tomorrow.

The last grad

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I wrote my last Principal’s grad address last night and I’m delivering it tonight. I’m proud to say that since we started our first grad ceremony in 2026, every speech I’ve given has been uniquely written. Nothing is rinsed and recycled. This one is about where we put our attention, and while it’s a bit more preachy than in the past, it is also very much about praising our grads and our school community.

I’m looking forward to my final grad, and I’m happy to say that nothing in this speech is about me. I’ve had my retirement parties and celebrations, and they have been wonderful. Tonight is about our grads at our tiny, unique school, and they deserve all the attention to be on them.

I’ll miss this. I think of all the nostalgic feeling I may have about retiring, the grad is the thing I’ll miss the most. Seeing the culminating event of awkward, young grade 9’s blossoming into amazing young adults is something I cherish every year, and it’s going to be sad seeing the last one end. I honestly haven’t said that about anything else related to retirement. I feel ready to retire and to close this chapter, but I’m really, really going to miss grad.

Fortunately, I know that I’ll be invited back to watch, and I’d love to do so for at least 3 more years (when the current Grade 9’s graduate). Knowing that I’ll have a chance to be in the audience at future grads makes this transition a lot easier.

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.

Career spanning wisdom

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When I shared this story with my Principal and Vice Principal colleagues this morning, I joked that I’d blogged about it previously. However, while I was able to find a couple references to the story, I realized after a search of my blogs that I have not shared the full story before.

This morning was our final face-to-face meeting of the year, and our assistant superintendents shared a few words about retirees before each retiree got a chance to say something. I shared this story.

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It was early on in my teaching career, long before I knew if I’d ever get into administration, and so I didn’t know the impact this conversation would have on me.

I was teaching a class about 10-15 minutes after lunch when a good student, Garrett, showed up at my door. He didn’t show up after lunch and I just assumed he signed out, this is not a kid who would skip a class. I looked up at him as if to ask ‘Where were you?’ And his face sunk as he said, “I got in trouble.”

We had the attention of the whole class and I didn’t want him to have to share what happened in front of everyone. “Have a seat,” I said, “We’ll talk about it later,” and then I caught him up on what he missed. The day ended and I totally forgot to follow up with him, so around 4pm I headed down to the office to learn about what Garrett had done.

When I got down to the office our Vice Principal, Gary Kern, was just finishing up with a student. I didn’t teach this student, but I knew of him. In fact, just a couple months before this, I saw this student being arrested with a man, who I think was his dad, outside of a neighbourhood grocery store. As this student walked out of the office, Gary trailed behind him, shaking his head with a bit of an exasperated expression on his face.

I asked what Garrett got in trouble for? Gary said it wasn’t a big deal, he and a friend were horsing around at lunch and Garrett pushed his friend, who fell back and hit his head on a tree. It was witnessed by a noon-hour supervisor who brought the kids to the office, and the only follow up was an apology. Then Gary said something and I carried this ‘lesson’ with me for my entire career.

Gary said, “This job has taught me a new respect for the kid I’d never want to be.”

He continued, ‘Your kid, Garrett, I’d trade lives with him… Good family, respectful, plays hockey, good friends.’

‘…This other kid? No way I’d want his life. This job teaches you to provide a kid, who you’d never switch lives with, with forgiveness, understanding, and respect, because if you wouldn’t want to be them, they deserve a break.’

I know my colleagues understood this when I shared it with them. I went on to share how this impacted me. And I thanked all of my colleagues for their understanding of this idea. I thanked them for not treating kids like life is baseball and knowing when a kid deserves more than 3 strikes. I thanked them for being a student’s advocate and for treating a kid with dignity and respect, even when the kid’s parent didn’t treat them the same way. I thanked them for all they do to support the needs of the students in their community, and thus making our entire community better.

~

I can’t tell you how many times I thought of this conversation with Gary in my career, but I will say that this was a frame of reference that I held with me, and reminded myself of time and again. It gave me strength when I felt frustrated. It allowed me deal with angry people, and to not take a kid’s attitude personally.

Now, at the end of my career, I can say that Gary was absolutely correct, “This job has taught me a new respect for the kid I’d never want to be.” Because that’s the kid that needs us to be their advocate.