Tag Archives: students

Sharing appreciation for their teacher

My wife, Ann, teaches a grade 4/5 class in our community. Yesterday at 4pm, while she was still working from home, a parade of cars started honking their horns. About 20 cars, driven by the parents of her students, slowly drove by with Ann’s students waving and holding signs.

I was given some advanced notice that this was happening and was home to make sure Ann went outside when the horns started. I shared some video live on Twitter:


But the quality of the video was quite poor. Luckily my kids and I captured more video and shared some on Facebook.

This was a wonderful gesture that brought tears to all of our eyes (my kids too). I actually had to tell Ann to pull herself together after they passed by because I knew they were turning around and driving by again. This allowed Ann to really enjoy the moment and thank the families as they drove by, since she was overwhelmingly surprised during the first drive-by.

Remote learning has been really challenging for students and parents, and it has also been challenging for our teachers. This gesture was heartwarming and so special. This was a moment our whole whole family will remember and cherish.

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Thanks to all the teachers out there who are giving their best, and caring for their students, as they face the challenge of teaching from a distance. I’ve seen some wonderful ways that teachers have gone above and beyond to connect with their students at this time, and they deserve to be recognized for doing such an amazing job during these challenging circumstance. Thank you teachers, principals, and support staff!

This is not the ‘new normal’

Note to educators:

This is not the ‘New Normal’, this is a pandemic that will come to an end. This is temporary.

We need to be positive. Communicating that this is ‘normal’ is not encouraging to students or parents. 1/3

* This is an opportunity to try new things.

* We are learning at a distance only until we can work together again.

* What a pleasure it is that we can still see each other online.

* Aren’t we lucky to be living at a time when we still get to share experiences digitally! 2/3

Let’s face it, the term ‘New Normal’ is going to be tossed around a lot outside of education, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t construct positive vocabulary and language around these unusual times, in our digital classrooms, and in our communication home. 3/3

That is a thread of 3 tweets that I shared yesterday, and I want to add a little perspective:

Imagine being a grade 12 graduating this year and it was your last high school play that got cancelled, or your final season of Track and Field, or your graduation dinner-dance.

Imagine that you come from a single parent home, your parent works 10 or 12 hour shifts, you have siblings that you don’t get along with, and your daily escape to school is gone.

Imagine that you are 6 years old, and you can’t have a play date, can’t use the playground, and can’t spend time with your grandparents, who usually visit you every weekend.

Imagine any one of thousands of scenarios where your routines, your friendships, your family structures, your family financial well being, and all of your extra-curricular activities are disrupted.

Now let’s just call this the ‘New Normal’… No.

COVID-19, schools closing, and ‘social distancing’ have taken so much away from our kids, let’s not take ‘normal’ away from them too.

Expecting appropriate student behavior online

14 years ago was the first time that I tried blogging with students. Here is a quote from a blog post about the rules I created for this new online space:

There is one thing above all others that significantly impressed me with this experience: Students owning the learning, asking the important questions, and helping each other to learn. They showed an incredible willingness to contribute/share their ideas. 

I wasn’t sure what rules I should give around ‘Safe Blogging’ so I pared it down to some basics. In our school we have been slowly rolling out the ideas of Restitution and we have developed 4 basic beliefs: Respect, Safety, Inclusion, and Learning. So I thought why not use these beliefs as the guiding principles for the blogs and communities? 

The idea was simple. What rules and expectations do we apply to our school community? Those also apply in our digital spaces.

Now more than ever, we are going to see issues of behaviour in online learning spaces that are inappropriate? Why? Because we have students and educators who are new to these spaces who are learning as they go. It is important to talk about appropriate use and expectations, if you want to be proactive rather than reactive. But creating draconian rules and conditions won’t help. When I see this happening I always go back to a quote I first heard from my colleague, Dave Sands, “Laws create outlaws.”

Instead, think about what the underlying behaviour expectations are in classrooms and in schools? Then ask, how do these same expectations look online? The idea here is that digital citizenship is just citizenship. Digital spaces might be new frontiers for some educators and students, but they are frontiers in classroom learning spaces that have been around for a very long time. If we know how we want students to act in our classrooms, we also know how we want them to act in their digital classrooms.

When schools start in September, teachers create expectations for their class. Often this will involve conversations and even participation by students in determining what a good learning environment looks like. The same should apply to entering new online learning environments. The choice is simple, be proactive and explicit about expectations, or be reactive when things don’t go as expected… because the expectations aren’t clear.

One final thought, even when you lay out all the expectations, students will make mistakes. At this point a decision needs to be made: will the response be punitive or will the response be a learning opportunity?

Having Back Channel Support in an Online Video Class

I don’t think this is a word, but I’m going to use it anyway: Backchanneller.

There are many educators using tools like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Adobe Connect for the first time. These educators are learning that it is very hard to be presenting with these tools and also pay attention to the chat, and what is happening in the digital room, while also delivering instructions or a lesson. One thing that can make this easier is to have a back channel helper, or a backchanneller.

People who run Twitter Chats understand this. They use a team of people to help welcome people to the chat, retweet, and like good responses, while the main moderator pushes out the questions and engages with individual tweets. A single moderator struggles to do it all.

For video-based classes and lessons the teacher/presenter will often struggle with:

  • Following the chat
  • Picking out good questions
  • Helping to orient latecomers
  • Finding the person with their mic on, causing a distraction
  • Keeping the chat on topic, or at least monitor the chat for people causing a distraction.

It’s hard to do these things while also trying to be engaging and/or creating an interactive lesson.

The primary role of the backchanneller is to monitor what’s happening in the chat in the background, and to assist the teacher/presenter. These are the main roles:

  • Look for good questions
  • Respond to simple questions
  • Choosing the right time to interrupt, if the question warrants it… and avoiding questions that would interrupt or derail the lesson, or that can wait for an appropriate pause in the lesson.

There are other things the backchanneller can do, as mentioned above, but the moderation of the chat is key.

It’s hard to run a lesson and watch a chat conversation at the same time. It’s easy to unintentionally let the chat take over the lesson. Having a backchanneller, who can be a student, who understands the responsibility of the role, can help a lesson go considerably better. A backchanneller reduces the cognitive load on the teacher/presenter and lets them focus on the intent of the lesson or presentation.

It’s great when a participant, a student, can take on the role of backchanneller. It’s empowering. Explicitly explaining the importance of this role, and reflecting on the person’s effectiveness can also be a useful thing to do, to help the audience or class understand the value of this useful teaching assistant. And that’s the ultimate role of a backchanneller, an assistant, someone who monitors and manages a conversation stream while the teacher pays attention to the lesson or presentation.

Good people

While you wouldn’t know it from watching the news, our world is filled with many amazing people. Some gestures are big, others small, but so many people are inherently good.

In the last 24 hours:

  • I watched a video of a senator in the US demanding that testing for Coronavirus be free regardless of a person’s medical coverage.
  • I saw a news clip of exhausted doctors and nurses working tirelessly in hospitals in Italy, where the Coronavirus cases are growing exponentially.
  • My wife received an adorable thank you letter from a student, thanking her for ‘pushing me to my limits and above’ and for being ‘a teacher I will always remember and love’.
  • I received an update from a former student who is going into family medicine because she ‘loves the idea of getting to know patients over a long period of time… and being the ‘first line’ of care’, and thanking me for my influence.
  • A subscription-based podcaster emailed to say that if the pandemic puts anyone into financial need, they can email for a free subscription.

We are heading into a time of uncertainty, when our social and medical services will be stretched. Some people will be scared, others desperate. I hope that the good in people shines through, and that people will come together to support those in their community who are in need.

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.

Kids do well if they can

I love this video by Ross Greene:

Moving from ‘kids do well if they wanna’ to ‘kids do well if they can’ is a significant change in philosophy. I like that Ross admits that this philosophy is “a lot harder and… more productive”.

It’s easy to blame a kid who doesn’t want to do school work. It’s hard to figure out what’s getting in the way of their learning. But which of these models provides the most reward, for the student and the educator?

I know there are students who are really hard to figure out. I know there are students who refuse to accept help. I know there are educators willing to bend over backwards to support kids who still opt out. But if you believe they will do well if they can, then you are still in a better mindset to find a way to support a student than you would be believing they just don’t want to do the work.

Kids do well if they can.

Resilience #OneWord2020

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.

Let the holidays begin

It’s the last day of school before the holiday break and I’m really looking forward to the time off with my family! I’m already eating too much, and so my treadmill run this morning will be longer and slower for a good calorie burn, and I will try to keep up my time-restricted eating to prevent some of the late-night snacking. But I will also indulge a bit too. Last night I was in bed by 8:45pm, I can tell that I need a break.

One thing that I always think about this time of year is how different the holidays are for many of the students in our schools:

  • Some will have holidays that make us envious, while some will stay cooped up at home with ‘nothing’ to do.
  • Some will celebrate the holidays with presents, some will not.
  • Some will eat to their heart’s content, some will eat whatever they can get.
  • Some will feel the love of a complete family, some will feel the loss of a loved one more than any other time of the year.
  • Some are excited about the break, some are dreading it and wish it wasn’t so long.

We sometimes forget that the joy we feel for the holidays is not always felt by everyone. For those of you in schools, pay attention to who might need a bit of your time and attention today. Celebrate the start of holidays by spreading some cheer with some of the kids that need it most.

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Also, if you are in the spirit of giving, help Inquiry Hub Student, Andrew, raise money for young teens that will have very little over the holidays. Support Covenant House in Vancouver.

Happy holidays!

Gas in my tank

Yesterday evening was the Inquiry Hub Open House.

Here is a snippet from the ‘Cold Open’ that started the event, a song written by one of our students.

I wrote about the rehearsal and shared it here.

My day started with my meditation at 5:30am and getting to work by 7:20. I got home after the event at just before 10pm. I should have been exhausted, but the event was so rejuvenating! I came home and had a late night 2nd dinner, and was asleep just after 11pm. That should be a wipeout kind of day.

It wasn’t.

Watching our students showcase their school and their passion projects was wonderful. The enthusiasm was contagious. The night filled my gas tank. Sometimes we need events like this to pump some fuel into us, and get us off ‘E’. I’m ready to cruise through the craziness of the month ahead.