Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
You can’t always bring your A game to everything. This is something we try to teach kids with a perfectionist streak. We run scrum projects where we give a clear ‘definition of done’. We encourage them to choose where best to focus their perfectionism, because trying to be perfect everywhere is debilitating, and students tend to get overwhelmed and not get everything done.
This is an aspect of the gifted student profile that can be both a superpower and also the Kryptonite that weakens the student. Perfectionism can be the thing that makes a student produce exceptional work, and it can be the reason they give up, or end up handing something in late, because while the project or assignment is good (even very good), it isn’t meeting a high or previous standard already achieved and so it’s just not good enough to complete, or sometimes even to try.
And so sometimes you need to teach kids to bring their ‘B’ game. Show us what you’ve got right now, because it’s probably good enough. Let’s see it? Great, you’ve met the outcomes, let’s move on. No, it’s not your best work, yes, if you put more hours into it, it could get a higher mark. If you want to improve it later… and if you have time… then go ahead, but why don’t we just focus on the next assignment now, and not fall behind again.
It sounds like easy advice to give, but to a perfectionist kid, this is hard work. What’s even harder though is expecting that you can bring your ‘A’ game to everything you do. Because this isn’t just debilitating as a student, it’s hard as an adult too.
When you’ve got more tasks on your ‘to do’ list than you can achieve; when email seems insurmountable; when meetings fill your schedule; and when getting one task done is taking time away from two or more other tasks, well then bringing your ‘A’ game is impossible. Sometimes you have to just embrace you ‘B’ game and give everything you do just enough to get it done… and save your ‘A’ game only for things that really matter.
As the principal of our district online school I hear a lot of stories about kids not wanting to attend school anymore, and so they are looking to try online learning. A former, retired principal of a nearby online school, Brad Hutchinson, had a quote about this. He said that, “Online learning is a school of first choice and last resort.”
When a student takes an online course because they want to: they want to upgrade, or they want to create room in their school schedule for another elective, then our success rates are very good. When a student comes to us as a last resort because nothing else is working for them, our success rates are awful.
It’s so hard as a principal. Every time they come as a last resort they, or their parents, believe this is the best choice. But a kid who won’t attend school, or won’t do work for a teacher who is right in front of them, is very unlikely to do school for a teacher that is on the other end of an online course, and not in their faces reminding them of the work that needs to be done.
We try. We offer supports. We even occasionally see some initial results. Then we don’t see anything. Another powerful quote about online learning came from a former ministry employee, Tim Winkleman, and this is one that I say a lot, “No pace is not a pace.”
When nothing is being done, when students choose not to proceed, or feel they can’t, then that’s simply not progress. It’s hard to be a school of last resort where regular attendance is not expected. It’s hard to see students give up on trying when they feel like this is their last chance to find success in school. It’s also really hard to tell a kid or a parent who is desperate to avoid other school options that this is a bad option to try.
There have to be some better last resort options out there for kids who struggle to attend school regularly… I just don’t know what those options are?
I met two young, gifted students yesterday, interested in attending our school next year. It’s fascinating to meet 13 year old kids who aren’t just good students but passionate learners. Kids who see school as places to connect with friends and get exposed to ideas that they wouldn’t get exposed to if they stayed home. Kids who want to go to school because it’s more interesting than staying home.
It excites me to think that these kids will come to our school and part of their day will be dedicated to them perusing passion projects that they design. They aren’t just going to be taking notes, do practice questions from a textbook, or comple ‘cookie cutter’ styles projects where most of the final products look the same.
I think some kids learn despite the system they are in. These kids I met yesterday would be successful no matter what school they attend. But they deserve an opportunity to attend a school where they get to shine… Where they get to try something that can fully engage their passion for learning. Even where they can try something too big and fail, but learn that this too is a learning experience.
When I see kids with a passion for learning, I see kids that should have some autonomy over their day at school. They want to learn, let them discover, explore, and innovate. Let them follow their passions and interests. Let them own some of their own learning.
Before I share this, no, it’s not a reflection on my parenting. I’m not wallowing in worry about how I’m messing my kids up. This is just one of the most powerful comics I’ve ever seen, and I think about it a lot as a school principal. Also, profanity warning for the comic below.
Now that I’ve got the disclaimer out of the way, let me share that I think this is one of the most challenging times to grow up in the last few decades. More young adults are living longer with their parents, or committing long hours to be able to afford rent. Many have not hit 25 yet and they don’t see themselves ever owning a house, or having a back yard like the one they had as a kid. Many more are disillusioned by what they see in the news and on social media.
Meanwhile, parents are doing their best not to make the mistakes of their parents, and yet struggling to navigate what that looks like. Some parents are doing all they can to help a disengaged kid stay in school. Others are lost trying to figure out inappropriate behavior. Still others are doing everything to protect their child, but preventing them from learning from failure. And still others are doing everything ‘right’, which works for one kid and doesn’t work for another.
And those are the resourceful parents that are trying their absolute best. They aren’t the divorced parents who fight in front of the kids every time the kids are passed off. They aren’t the ones struggling with their own demons of abuse, drugs, or mental illness. Still doing the best they can with the skills they have, but just not skilled in ways that support their kids.
We don’t want to make the same mistakes our parents did. We don’t want to follow the same patterns. That can be, but probably isn’t, a disparaging complaint about our own parents. Rather it’s a recognition that we want to do better, be better.
But try as we might, family dynamics is challenging, the world we live in is challenging, and this comic sums up the parenting challenge perfectly.
We have a Professional Development Day today and so we held our Remembrance Day Assembly yesterday. It was completely organized by our student leadership club. My only contribution was a suggested theme, and it was shared because I was asked. Beyond that the agenda, setup, sound, performances, and every word spoken was done by students.
The main organizer, in Grade 12, is an exceptional writer, and I could hear his voice, his excellent vocabulary, weaved through the presentations. But he didn’t speak, he sat with the team working on the sound system.
I didn’t get to hear the rehearsal like I’d hoped, but one of our Grade 10’s assured me that it went really well. This was obvious in the assembly, because everything went smoothly. The performers were mostly from Grade 10’s, all future leaders capable of taking on running the event next year.
There’s a difference between student leaders who help a teacher run an event, and student leaders who take full responsibility for an event. There is an authenticity that comes with full control. Of course the students need to be ready for this. Putting them fully in charge but unprepared is not a recipe for success, but there is another side to this.
What if things go wrong? Well, there are different kinds of going wrong. If a student is playing an instrument and misses a note, that’s not a big deal. If a student says something inappropriate in a formal assembly, or obviously doesn’t take the event seriously, that’s different. If someone forgets a line, that’s different than if the event feels ad hoc and unplanned.
When students are ready, they need to be provided with authentic opportunities to lead. And when they step and truly lead, it’s impressive to see what they can do. One of the highlights for me, a thing that really made me feel impressed, was that the main organizer did the same thing we did. He stepped back, work done before the event even started, and he let the younger students MC, he let his team run the show. He distributed the leadership the same way it was distributed to him.
There is no doubt that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is going to influence the way we do school in the very near future. I have been pondering what that influence will look like. What are the implications now and what will they be in just a few short years.
Now: AI is going to get messy. Unlike when Google and Wikipedia came out and we were dealing with plagiarism issues, AI writing is not Google-able, and there are two key issues with this: First, you can create assignments that are not Google-able, but you are much more limited in what you can create that is un-AI-able. That is to say, you can ask a question that isn’t easily answerable by Google search, but AI is quite imaginative and creative and can postulate things that a Google search can’t answer, and then share a coherent response. The second issue is that AI detectors are not evidence of cheating. If I find the exact source that was plagiarized, it’s easy to say that a student copied it, but if a detector says that something is 90% likely to be written by AI that doesn’t mean that it’s only 10% likely to be written by a person. For example, I could write that last sentence in 3 different ways and an AI detector would come up with 3 different percentages of likeliness that it is AI. Same sentence, different percentage of likelihood to be AI written, and all written by me.
So we are entering a messy stage of students choosing to use AI to do the work for them, or to help them do the work, or even to discuss that topic and argue with them so that they can come up with their own, better responses. We can all agree that the three uses I shared above are progressively ‘better’ use of AI, but again, all are using AI in some way. The question is, are we going to try to police this, or try to teach appropriate use at the appropriate time? And even when we do this, what do we do when we suspect misuse, but can’t prove it? Do we give full marks and move on? Do we challenge the student? What’s the best approach?
So we are in an era where it is more and more challenging to figure out when a student is misusing AI and we are further challenged with the burden of proof. Do we now start only marking things we see students do in supervised environments? That seems less than ideal. The obvious choice is to be explicit about expectations and to teach good use of AI, and not pretend like we can continue on and expect students not to use it.
The near future: I find the possible direction of use of AI in schools quite exciting to consider. Watch this short video of Sal Hahn and his son, Imran, working with an Open AI tool to solve a Math question without the AI giving away the answer.
When I see something like this video, made almost 6 month ago, I wonder, what’s going to be possible in another couple years? How much will an AI ‘know’ about a student’s approach to learning, about their challenges? About how best to entice learning specifically for each student? And then what is the teacher’s role?
I’m not worried about teachers being redundant, on the contrary, I’m excited about what’s possible in this now era. When 80% of the class is getting exactly the instruction they need to progress to a grade standard in a class on the required content, how much time does a teacher having during class time to meet with and support the other 20% of students who struggle? When a large part part of the curriculum is covered by AI, meeting and challenging students at their ideal points of challenge, and not a whole class moving at the class targeted needs, how much ‘extra’ time is available to do some really interesting experiments or projects? What can be done to take ideas from a course across multiple disciplines and to teach students how to make real-world connections with the work they are studying?
Students generally spend between 5 and 6 hours a day in class at school. If we are ‘covering’ what we need to with AI assistance in less than 3 hours, what does the rest of the time at school look like? Student directed inquiries based on their passions and interests? Real world community connections? Authentic leadership opportunities? Challenges and competitions that force them to be imaginative and creative? The options seem both exciting and endless.
The path from ‘now’ to ‘the near future’ is going to be messy. That said, I’m quite excited about seeing how the journey unfolds. While it won’t be a smooth ride, it will definitely be one that is both a great adventure and one that is headed to a pretty fantastic destination.
_____
Update: Inspired by my podcast conversation with Dean Shareski, here.
I mentioned in my podcast with Dean Shareski that a favourite part of my job is asking myself, “How do I get to ‘Yes’?” when students come to me with big ideas and challenges that are not easy accommodate in a school. Yesterday I had an easy one, any easy ‘Yes’ when a student came to me wanting us to purchase a silk screen printing kit.
The student came to my office with the pitch just a couple minutes before I was set to have an online meeting. I told her that I had the meeting coming up and asked if she could email me, and one of my teachers, and explain why this was something good for the school, and to provide me with an Amazon link to the kit she wanted to purchase. Knowing the kid, I probably should have expected what I got from her 35 minutes later, but still, I had to chuckle at her email. Here it is in full. If you don’t want to read it all, the funniest ‘justifications’ were #12 and #15. Also noteworthy is #6, her commitment to make it easier for others to use.
Dearest Mr.Truss,
We have gathered here today to discuss the impacts a screen printer would serve this school, If you kindly agree to the purchase.
PROS
Number one. It will elevate the school’s shirt making/crafting personality. As you may know the school already own a Cricut (only cuts one colour) and a sublimation printer (only prints on white polyester shirts). We need to fill an obvious gap. We need a tool that can print multiple colours on a darker coloured shirt. A screen printer would be able to achieve this and not only that but….
Number two. It saves on material/waste used. As you may or may not have noticed but the Cricut requires the user to weed our bits of material that is unwanted in a design, creating lots of little bits of garbage. The sublimation printer uses entire sheets of paper per design. The screen printer however would not add to the amount of waste produced from our shirt making machine collection.
Number three. I have talked with Mr.Hopkins and he thinks it’s a good idea. He mentioned that he would consider making it a media arts project so other student would be able to learn how the process works.
Number four. The screen printer is not even a machine tbh. It’s literally just a frame and some ink. So it wouldn’t take up much space in the classroom.
Number five. Though you might think that the ink will be messy, I assure you that I will personally make sure that anyone using it will have the proper coverage on the surfaces they’re working on.
Number six. I will create a document with step by step instructions so people can refer to it if they need reminders or instruction on how to work it.
Number seven. Because the screen printing screens are reusable and because screen printing itself is long lasting. It opens the possibility to mass produce clothing. Similar to the pink shirt day assembly line, we could possibly make clothing or designs for the school.
Number eight. The Amazon kit that I am proposing provides a light. We could use the light for Media Arts as well.
Number nine. Your students will be amazed. Incoming students will be impressed with the amount of tools at their disposal. There are many students who are interested in fashion, so they could perhaps use this new system to create their own clothing designs.
Number ten. It does not require the use of the heat press. Unlike the Cricut and sublimation printer you won’t have to worry about students burning or pinching themselves in a hot press.
Number eleven. The kit itself is reusable, with the photo emulsion remover you’ll be able to put different design on the screen, so you won’t have to spend more money on more screens. And even if, for whatever reason it does need a new screen, you can probably go to fabricana to get some cheaper screen and purchase it by the yard.
Number twelve. If you desire I could make u a complimentary shirt.
Number thirteen. If you’re gonna mass produce shirts for the school, maybe you could create shirts to sell to other people and earn more than the money you invested into this kit. I’m just saying, you’ve got students who are good graphic designers, it may be time to put them to work.
Number fourteen. Mr. Sarte was talking to me about how beneficial a screen printer could be last year, so he’ll probably be happy if you get it too.
Number fifteen. As a student I really value my time, but I’m sure you can imagine how much time it has taken me to write this email, thus i think it is important and worth my limited time. I could be working on my UBC personal profile right now…..
Number sixteen. This screen printer will bring you’re students closer together. It is with this screen printer that we will become an even tighter knit community. I mean you could create intramural shirts with this thing.
CONS
Number one. It doesn’t come with yellow ink, so could we please get some so we’ll have all the primary colours and can mix different colours from there?
Thank you for considering this purchase. I’d be deeply grateful if you gifted the school with a screen printer.
Here is a link to the Amazon kit that has all the tools we would need. [Link to item]
Here is a link to some yellow ink. [Link to item]
Much appreciation, [Student full name]
All that for a $180 purchase of an item the whole school can use. Here was my response:
Thank you for using your valuable time for this proposal [Student name]!
My concern isn’t the cost of the purchase, but rather the quality.
I’ve asked a few teachers if this will do, or if we should spend a bit more on a kit that is more durable/better quality… You too can make suggestions (if you have time).
Thanks,
Dave
If I didn’t have a meeting that I had to attend just a couple minutes after this student came to my office, this would probably just have been a short conversation and an easy ‘Yes’. As much as the bad timing created a lot more ‘work’ for the student, I’m glad that it happened this way. I think it’s a valuable process for a student to through, and if I’m honest, reading her email was the highlight of my day.
One of my favourite nicknames to give someone is Sunshine. I call both of my daughters Sunshine at different times, and it makes me happy to call them that.
Occasionally I nickname a kid at school Sunshine. It’s usually someone who visits the office regularly and leaves the office staff smiling. Walking in with a happy disposition and leaving a little happiness behind when they go.
One of these kids, who graduated a couple years ago, just connected with me on LinkedIn. Sure she was an amazing student, Valedictorian and Spirit of Inquiry winner (more prestigious in our school than Valedictorian), but that’s not what I remember about her. What I remember is the delightful way she and a friend came to the office daily to spread a little sunshine.
Who spreads sunshine in your life? And are you someone who spreads sunshine?
There is a cliche saying that, ‘There is no such thing as a dumb question.” Tell that to a teacher who has just started an engaging discussion in a class and a kid undermines the flow of the conversation with a dumb, often unrelated question. The reality is that questions have innate and even measurable value and there is depth and quality to good question asking.
Think about how important good questioning is in the new world of AI. We need not look far on social media these days to find a post about how to generate intelligent prompts… intelligent questions, well posed, and designed to give you back optimum responses. Design the right question and you increase the chances of an ideal answer.
What’s the best way to promote good questioning in schools? How do we teach ‘Asking good questions?’
At Inquiry Hub we have students design their own inquiries. They take a course developed around the students figuring out what their inquiry question is, then answering it. And they don’t do this once, they do this several times over the year for their first two years, then in Grade 11 they design a full year course.
All the while, students are asking questions, then seeking answers. It’s the practice of asking the questions and not just seeking the answers that makes this process special. They aren’t just asking questions Google or AI can produce answers to. They are not answering a question the teacher asked. They are forming the questions and thus the direction of the learning.
You don’t start asking better and better questions just by answering other people’s questions. You don’t ask better and better questions without practicing forming the questions yourself. Students need to be designing the questions. Because if they are only in charge of answering them, there will be tools and upcoming technologies that will find the same or better answers, faster. The future innovators of the world will be better at writing the best questions, not just answering them.
