Tag Archives: students

The Big Shebang

Part 1

I had a really funny exchange in the office with three Grade 10 students. They were talking to my secretaries when I came in and they told me how good their presentation was in their last class. The Grade 10’s are in scrum teams researching books like: Good to Great, Dare to Lead, Atomic Habits, and The Practice, and creating presentations that summarize the book and run students they are presenting to through an activity to learn a concept or two from the book.

One of the girls was sharing some strategies they used to keep students engaged, and another one said, “It was so good, we were awesome. I wish you were there to see it… Actually, no, I’m glad you weren’t because we were already nervous enough.” To this I responded, “You see me in your class all the time and I stay and watch presentations whenever I can. Have I ever been scary? Why would me watching make you nervous?”

She responded, “Well… because… you’re the Big Shebang!”

I laughed and told my secretaries that I needed a new name plate for my office.

Part 2

One of the other projects that Grade 10’s are working on is to make improvements at the school. Four of the groups have decided to do murals and part of the process created by the teacher is “Mr. Truss’ approval”. This has been great and has given me the opportunity to share some feedback. Often, I’m very aware that my suggestions can come off as instructions, and I have to be careful not to derail their plans or vision by making an off-the-cuff suggestion that they think they now need to meet to get approval. While on the other hand, some suggestions just make sense and should be done.

An example of the latter is a mural with 3 panels, and in the middle panel a small item (a blueprint) was coloured a different colour than everything else in the mural. I suggested they use one of the colours of the image the blueprint was about, visible on both the other panels. This simple change took attention away from this small item, and created continuity for the piece. That suggestion was given as, “Try changing the blueprint colour to one of the colours of the item it’s a blueprint of, and see if that ties the 3 drawings together.” And they came back agreeing that it did.

I was far less pushy with another suggestion about an identical grass silhouette at the base of each hill they are drawing, to suggest that these panels are of the same hill rather than 3 different ones. While I like this idea, I didn’t push it the same way, because it was a suggestion that they could take or leave. It would tie things together, but it’s not as compositionally important, compared to an out-of-place, uniquely coloured item pulling attention to it unnecessarily, like the blueprint.

What I’ve really enjoyed is that “Mr. Truss’ approval’ is a big thing. It’s an affirmation that their work meets a standard of expectation. What I’m keenly aware of is that as the approval giver, I can overshadow or derail the vision of the students if I’m not aware of how my feedback can be taken.

Part 3

Inquiry Hub is a very unique school. As principal I get to see students visit my office with ideas, suggestions, and permission requests all the time. While I’ve dealt with minor discipline issues, they tend to be so minor that they don’t even make it into my office. So, I don’t hold the presence of a scary principal. Furthermore, I’m invited into classes all the time to see presentations (I wish I had more time to actually go sometimes). Yet, there are still times when students get nervous that I’m watching. There is the Big Shebang effect. To me it’s humourous, but I need to remember that to some students, it’s a big deal.

Covid daily routine

Early on in the pandemic, I read that ventilation and fresh air circulation was very good in helping to reduce spread of the virus. At that time my morning custodian was not consistent and so I had different custodians coming to the school, so I decided that I would go to each of our 5 classrooms at Inquiry Hub and open windows to start the school day. We have early morning principal meetings on Thursdays, and on that day I didn’t get around to opening the windows until just before classes started.

On this day I was able to see and chat with a lot of students on my route. So, that time slot has become my daily routine. In a couple of the classes I will end up asking students to open the windows if they are already seated nearby and I can’t access them and be socially distanced, while the other 3 room windows are always easy to access. But more than that, it puts me in every room, each morning, to say greetings and chat with students.

I know that I’m lucky to only have 5 rooms to do this in, with my other school being the online school with no physical classrooms to visit, and for some principals this would be a massive undertaking. But for me this is a wonderful way to start my day. Sometimes I just say quick good mornings, other times I get into full conversations with students.

Yesterday I spent time hearing about the progress of one of our grade 12’s who has been working on a massive project since grade 10. Monday was just a catch-up on the winter break. This routine can take me about 5 minutes or it can take over 15. No matter how long I spend, it has become a wonderful routine that starts my day off right.

Students are so confined in their movements now compared to pre-covid. Even in our small school they use 3 different entrances and have no common hallways. With things being so isolated between groups of students, this little covid inspired daily routine has really helped me connect to students in a way that I would have otherwise missed.

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?

Jeff Hopkins on the Pacific School of Inquiry and Innovation

Last night I saw this tweet by Jeff Hopkins promoting a new vlog/podcast series ‘School of Thought Victoria‘. Perfect timing since I just finished my most recent audio book and ended up in long drives today. So, I’ve already devoured 3 of the four videos already (I listened, I did not watch,  which is all you need to do since it is a discussion).

So much of what Jeff has shared with Alex Van Tol about the Pacific School of Inquiry and Innovation resonates with me, and what we are working on, and towards, at Inquiry Hub Secondary School. In this series, Jeff is outlining 20 convictions that the school is modeled on. I am looking forward to every one of these conversations.

Here’s what I’ve listened to so far,

Agency:

Inquiry Process:

Learner vs Student:

Subscribe to the channel, and listen to Jeff’s wisdom.

When students own the learning

Last night was Inquiry Hub’s open house. I shared a post about our open house last year: A Place to Dream, Create, and Learn. A year ago we packed around 200 people into our gym and had a great night of presentations:

But with Covid-19 this year the event had to go digital. We held a YouTube Live event. Show starts 26 minutes in or you can watch topic-based sections here: InquiryHub.org/open2020

It is such a privilege producing something like this with these students. They worked so hard preparing the event. They created scripts, videos, music, and designed posters, (like the 16 individual posters that fit together to create a single poster below, used as one of our backdrops). And students learned how to use all the equipment along the way. We had 3 cameras and a slideshow presentation, and while transitions could have been a bit tighter, I’m so impressed with how this student-organized event went.

One neat thing that we did was that we had a question submission form that we advertised before and during the show, where viewers could ask questions. Then we answered them live, throughout the show. Our student producer fed the questions to our student MC, and she directed them to our student and teacher panel depending on who she thought should answer. This is a challenging thing to do well in a live show… especially having never done it before. Of all the questions asked, I think I offered one of the weakest answers (because I rambled a bit on what should have been a 10 second answer). Beyond that flub, we didn’t need to have an answer clarified by someone else.

We had over 180 live viewers at the start of the show and still had over 170 viewers 40 minutes in. To keep that many people watching for that long is a testament to how smoothly things went.

Through the night, one thing was clear: when students take pride in their school, when they feel they own the learning, they will step up and deliver a great product when called upon to do so. Students thrive when they own the learning.

—-

(Just dug up another similar post I wrote about one of our previous open houses, prompted by a Facebook memory,)

 

Logo Composite Design by Maddison D, Grade 10

What students remember

What students forget:

  • The Krebs cycle
  • Historical facts
  • How to solve quadratic equations
  • The homework they did
  • Answers on tests
  • Worksheets
  • Teachers who will forget them

What students remember:

  • Teachers who will remember them
  • Teachers who listened
  • Teachers that made them laugh
  • Teachers who were passionate about teaching
  • Teachers who didn’t give up on them
  • Friends
  • Engaging projects
  • Sports and clubs

These lists are not extensive… but they are the inspiration for a question: What will students remember about school during the 2020-2021 pandemic?

Teachers have it tough right now. Students too. More than ever teachers need to focus on teaching students, not subjects.

Yesterday I saw an article with a title like, ‘Study shows students are months behind in reading skills due to remote learning.’ Squeezing one more book into the year won’t change that. Showing students a passion for reading will.

Focus on students… and they will remember you, and what you taught them, for all the right reasons.

Voice and choice

This was my Facebook memory from 3 years ago:

Spent well over 15hrs at work today and came home totally pumped! Students rocked their presentations at our open house tonight.

The whole event exceeded my expectations, starting with about 240 people coming (more than I had reservations or seats for), and ending with students interviewing each other with questions from the audience.

It is simply amazing what student’s can do when they are given voice & choice, and they are provided with time to explore their passions and publicly share them.

Congratulations to our Inquiry Hub students, you were amazing school ambassadors today!

I’ve been thinking and writing about giving students choice, voice, and an authentic audience for over a decade now. And, I’ll always remember this night as the night I really saw it fully come to life.

Everything about this open house went amazing. The only challenges where parking, and adding more seats to the gym. The students did 90% of the planning and executed a seamless event with perfect sound and incredible presentations that opened people’s eyes to what’s possible when students feel empowered in a school.

The best part of the night was watching students interviewing students about their inquiry projects. Our students got to share what kinds of projects they do, designed by them, to follow their passions and interests as part of their school day. This is the real strength of what we do at Inquiry Hub.

There are students just like ours in every school. The difference is, in many other schools, students spend their days following a pattern of going class to class and doing what the teacher tells them to do. Yes, some of those things teachers ask them to do are amazing. But students seldom get a part of their day to choose what they want to work on. Students seldom get to design their own learning on a topic of their choice.

What we’ve learned as educators at Inquiry Hub is that to do this, students need scaffolding and support, working on progressively bigger projects. Students need assistance with time management and being self directed. And students need to try, fail, learn, and grow.

Whenever I hear a senior student at Inquiry Hub talk about their projects, they talk about being fearless learners who aren’t afraid to fail along the way. They will often do this while telling a story about something others would consider a huge success, but to them there was still more to do, or aspects of the project not yet achieved. This resilience only comes when students feel they have voice and choice in their learning, and this open house three years ago told me that we were finally achieving the kind of student empowerment we were hoping to achieve when we started the school.

Averages and Parachute Packing

This is Part 2 of:

Average tells us nothing.

Here are some very well rounded marks of a hypothetical student in a course:

The student starts out very average with 60% on the first 3 tests:

On the next test, the student shows much greater comprehension:

Then on the final test, the student shows mastery of the PLO’s, the prescribed learning outcomes:

Now if these were tests on completely different units, unrelated to each other, you could argue that the student deserves a 70% final. However if the student was learning information that was cumulative and knowledge at the end of the course required understanding of previous work, then wouldn’t the student deserve a higher mark?

For example, if the student was learning to code, and the simple(r) concepts learned at the start of the course (that the first 3 tests were on) were required understanding to do well in the second part of the course: Shouldn’t the student’s final mark represent greater understanding of the course than the 70% final mark from the average of all 5 tests?

The Parachute Packing Analogy

I love the simplicity of this example! There are 3 students who are in a parachute packing class:

Students take 3 tests during the course.

Student A starts off strong and gets an A on the first test, gets a B on the second test, is over-confident, flounders and gets a C on their final test.

Student B is a solid B student and gets B’s on all 3 tests.

Student C struggles on the first test and gets a C, starts understanding the concepts and gets a B on the second test, then totally understands all the concepts and finishes with an A on the final test.

All 3 students have a ‘B’ average in the course.

Which student do you want to pack your parachute?

Average tells us nothing.

Part 1

It might be an exaggeration to say that it tells us nothing, but averages don’t usually give us enough information to be useful.

Individual student level: In Math class, kid gets an ‘A’ on his test on positive and negative integers. Then he gets a ‘C’ on fractions. Score averages to a ‘B’… but when the kid moves on to algebra, and most of the algebra includes solving problems with fractions, it’s unlikely the kid will do better than a ‘C’. The important information is the ‘C’ in fractions, not the ‘B’ average.

On a team level: When some team members have done amazing things and other tram members have done nothing new, measuring the average means absolutely nothing. You can’t look at averages when some team members will move and some won’t. The reality is that everybody has to be moving in the right direction, and when some are standing still, it doesn’t matter where the average is, it doesn’t matter if the average is moving slightly up.

The fact is that we are failing or we have failed if we don’t figure out where we are weakest and improve where we need it most. Athletes get this. They know that the weakest part of their performance is the area where there is the most room for improvement… this is a mindset we need on our teams to move forward.

Part 2: The Parachute Packing analogy and school grades.

Resilience Revisited

Right now it seems like I chose the right #OneWord for 2020: Resilience. But as you read my last post of 2019, written before we learned about the impending pandemic, remember something… We are social beings and we are not incredibly resilient on our own. We need a community, we need friendship and love, we need each other.

Relationships, be they with family, friends, co-workers, student/teacher, and even pets, build our resilience, and our ability to not just cope, but to thrive.

Let’s support one another and show our resilience together!

Here is the post:

December 31, 2019

If I were to pick 2 words for 2020, I might pick “Growth Mindset”, but if I’m only choosing a single word, it would be:

Resilience

The world needs this word right now. Here are some specific places I see a need to pay attention to this #OneWord in 2020.

In Schools:

Student anxiety seems to be on the rise, and anxiety lowers resilience and the willingness to try new things. Words seem to ‘injure’ students in ways that victimize them rather than make them stronger. This is not to say that students should tolerate bullying or inappropriate language or slander, rather they should speak up, defend themselves, and report poor behaviour. Instead it seems that they feel wounded and do not act. This is a sensitive topic, but one where I’ve seen a greater awareness of adults who want to support students and at the same time I see students allowing words to hurt them deeply, giving too much power to the transgressor.

In Politics:

I said this in Ideas on a Spectrum, “In a civil society, dialogue is the one problem-solving strategy that should be sacred. To do this, free speech is essential. But right now there is a culture of ‘attack the opposition’ that is very scary.“ – We need to be resilient when hearing opposing views, and understand that, “…we must be tolerant and accepting of opposing views, unaccepting of hateful and hurtful acts, and smart enough to understand the difference.” When we can’t have conversations with people that have different political views, we don’t grow as a culture or as a society.

In Online Spaces:

People will make mistakes online. They will say things that are unintentionally hurtful, or blindly offensive. This is different than someone being intentionally biased and rude. If the slander is intentional, it should be reported. If it is unintentional, even to the point of ignorance, we need to be more resilient about what our responses are. When every transgression is treated with an attack, the most severe/bigoted/rude/biased transgressions are not given the heightened alarm that they deserve. With lesser errors and mistakes, we need to let people have a venue to recognize their errors and invite conversation rather than damnation.

Growing up, I heard the playground retort to taunts, “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never harm me.” We are past the era of letting nasty people say whatever nasty things they want, and just turning the other cheek to pretend we are not hurt. This is a good thing. We want to live in a world where that behaviour is not acceptable. But it does not serve us well to treat the attacker like they can not repent or be sorry. It does not serve us to let the words said hurt us too deeply. By being resilient we can speak up, clarify our perspective, and engage in conversations that help us feel empowered rather than victimized.

Resilience allows us to be strong, flexible, and engaged in a society that is the kind of society we want to live and thrive in.