There is no job that is more angst-ridden than being a parent. As much as you would like to cocoon your children from the hurts and disappointments and harsh realities of the world – it is simply not possible. This week, in particular, we have been bombarded by the media with images that reflect all of our worst nightmares. If you let yourself, you could drown in depths of grief for those involved in the horrific events that took place last Friday in a small town in Connecticut. There are no words that can express the sorrow and the outrage that consumes us all when we allow ourselves to reflect on this kind of violation of what should be one of the safest places on earth for our children.

It is often far too easy to dwell on the dark possibilities of life.  But, as parents, we can not and should not go there. Quite the contrary, this time of year should be a time of giving thanks. Thanks for our children and all of the joy that they bring to our lives. Thanks too, to all of the amazing people in their lives who care for them and support them; the people who make sure that they don’t “fall between the cracks”.

Many years ago, one of my older sons declared in the middle of Grade 12 that “school is irrelevant” and stopped attending. No amount of begging, lecturing or threatening would make him budge, and if it hadn’t been for a cadre of teachers who were determined to make sure that he didn’t throw everything away in the last weeks of high school, the end of the story might have been quite different. As it was, he graduated, and then took two years off to work as a short-order cook. More angst! Eventually however, as most boys do, he met a girl. She was interested in school and driven to succeed. Fast forward fifteen years and they are both university professors in Winnipeg with two lovely daughters and very successful and satisfying personal and professional lives. And his father? I still remain full of angst -  transferred quite seamlessly to my two young sons (how will I ever get Morgan to sit down to his homework rather than gravitating to the computer? Or get Quinn to realize that he no longer lives in Bermuda and has to wear a coat when he goes outside?) and to my grandchildren who are too far away for me to micro-manage in the way that I want to. That is the nature of parenthood. We want the best for our children and woe be to anything or anyone that gets in the way of it!

Sometimes however, we get so focused on the perceived barriers to our children’s future successes, that we forget to reflect to appreciate those circumstances and people who are not holding them back, but propelling them forward. As our children get older, and our direct influence wanes, those factors (the values, the work ethic, and strength of character that we have tried to instill in them) and those people (their teachers, coaches, friends and extended family members) play a greater and greater role in the path that they choose to follow.

As the term draws to a close, and we look forward to celebrating a holiday season that is more about family than about turkeys and presents, it is a great time to be thankful for all of those people who are helping our children along their way. No doubt, if we could be in a hundred places at once, we would try to do it all ourselves but sometimes, we just have to let go, hope for the best, and trust that the foundation that we have built for our daughters and sons will carry them through just fine.

So, from me, this is a letter of thanks to my own children’s teachers, past and present, to their friends (and friends’ parents) and to the hosts of cousins, Aunts and Uncles, and Grandparents who have been such an important part of their lives. You don’t relieve my angst, but somehow you make it all come together for my kids.

Have a wonderful holiday!

When I was a young teacher, the department head of math showed me his “Bible”. It was a series of laminated lesson plans for every course in the math programme. “I never have to plan another lesson”, he said, “and some- day, this will be you.”

“If that day ever comes”, I replied, “I’ll shoot myself.” (I was young, and not the charming and politic person that I am today!)

Needless to say, the prospect of repeating the same embalmed lessons over and over for decades was a discouraging view of the future and not a particularly stimulating career plan. Like most teachers of my generation, I began to look for an alternative path.

Around the same time, many educators were beginning to question the time honoured, textbook based approach to managing the process of student learning. Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, in their groundbreaking book Teaching as a Subversive Activity, wrote in 1969:

Suppose all of the syllabi and curricula and text- books in all of the schools disappeared...then suppose that you decided to turn this ‘catastrophe’ into an opportunity to increase the relevance of schools. What would you do? We have a possibility for you to consider: suppose that you decide to have the entire ‘curriculum’ consist of questions. These questions would have to be worth seeking answers to not only from your point of view but, more importantly, from the point of view of the students.

As noted above, Postman and Weingartner posed this radical suggestion in 1969. Almost a half a century later, we are still discussing the same thing—what’s worth knowing?

We live in an age of competing curricula. You can’t pick up the paper or enter into a discussion on schooling without someone extolling the virtues of some system or another (IGCSE, IB, AP, OG, Montessori, Froebel, Waldorf—there are about as many models are there are schools!). When you get right down to it though, what it's really about is effective teaching, and productive learning.

What’s worth knowing? When I taught history there was an on-going debate between the student-centred process guys like me and the “history is a story” crowd. For them, my scattergun approach of allowing students to delve deeply into some topics and skip others altogether was historical sacrilege. Before I pat myself too soundly on the back though, I have to admit that I didn’t really know what I was doing! My students were engaged, and they learned lots of things, but if you asked me what my essential questions, critical concepts, and desired outcomes were, I would have struggled to articulate them.

The fact is, everything that you do, must be tied directly into important student outcomes. Time in school is too precious to be wasted on irrelevancies and we have to design our programmes, our assessments and our teaching and learning strategies to focus on answering the key questions across every discipline and grade level.

Good teachers do a lot of these things intuitively. Great teachers do them deliberately.

At Kenneth Gordon we have begun a complete restructuring of our curriculum. Based on the “Understanding by Design” model we have been having active discussions on critical outcomes and key learnings. The next step will be to construct a detailed and organic curriculum map from Division 1 to Division 9. This will help our teachers, tutors, and especially our students to navigate their way through the vast sea of knowledge and skills the lie before them and will inform the building and constant revision of our IEPs.

With thoughtful planning and reflection, we can continue to transform ourselves, our students, and our school from good to great. We can help our students to develop the skills and acquire the knowledge to tackle the essential questions in life.

The variance and evolution in their answers across disciplines and over time are a true measure of our success as educators— the only catch is, we just have to know what’s worth knowing!