Blog Posts

Welcome (back) to the KGMS Community

9/7/2018

What a great week this has been! On Tuesday the school and grounds were packed with families and friends and teachers and tutors who were all getting together to celebrate the start of another school year here at KGMS/Maplewood. This was a time to check things out, to make new friends and to reconnect with old ones. An army of parent volunteers sprung into action to offer food and fun activities and staff had the chance to spend some time with parents and students, so that we could dial back potential anxiety, and demystify what they might experience the next morning. General consensus? It was great to be back!

Now don't get me wrong, I haven't heard a single person complain about the summer that we all just enjoyed. Long sunny days, mild evenings, and a seemingly endless series of opportunities to enjoy the beautiful environment that surrounds us. That is not to say that there weren't challenges - near drought conditions in many communities; a proliferation of wildfires and the taste of smoke in the air even here in the Lower Mainland; but, in many ways, this summer was reminiscent of the ones that I remember from my childhood, the ones that seemed to go on forever.

But now, we are back in business, and on Wednesday morning the doors flew open and in surged a sea of faces: some excited, others anxious; some frowning, others with wide, sunny grins; some timid, others bold; some determined, and others reticent – and those were just the parents! Our students came tumbling in the same way – there were the cautious steps of the newly arrived; the relaxed swagger of the old pros; and, everything in between. No matter how they stepped through the door however, by the time the school day came to an end I think that both our students and their parents made their way home feeling good about their days and their choices.

Needless to say, sooner or later the honeymoon will be over and the real tough sledding will begin. But for now, it's gentle as it goes as we ease into another long and productive school year. One of the greatest challenges in a school like ours is the development and nurturing of a sense of community among students, staff and families. There is a danger that people will see themselves as transient – taking time out from “real” school to do some academic skill building, personal reflection and growth, and, re-establishing a positive self-image before continuing on with their academic careers.

But this is a misconception. A year or two or three is an eternity in the life of a child. Each day is a new experience to be celebrated and integrated into a student’s sense of self and the world around her or him. That is why it is so important for us, as adults, to do whatever we can to provide opportunities for our students to feel that they are an integral part of something larger.

Research indicates that family collaboration with schools increases student achievement. The benefits of parent and family involvement include higher test scores and grades, better attendance, more completion of homework, more positive attitudes and behaviour, higher graduation rates, and greater enrolment in higher education. The payoffs for learning are obvious, not only for younger children, but for all our students. Although parent interest and attention is typically strongest at the primary level, continued involvement through the middle grades and in high school is important in encouraging and guiding our children’s development and achievement. At KGMS, we regard our relationship with our families as a partnership in which school and home share responsibility for each child’s learning. When this partnership is extended to include the larger community, the benefits are greater yet. Perhaps most important is that when responsibility for children's learning is shared by the school, home, and community, children have more opportunities for meaningful and engaging learning opportunities.It is our ongoing goal to provide a variety of experiences both inside and out of the classroom to continue to help our students to make those connections to the larger world.

Great summers, like this past one, allow us to recharge. Students, parents, and educators all emerge refreshed and reinvigorated from a summer like this. It’s a funny thing though, as much as I love summer, each fall when I experience first-hand the joy of learning once again, I remember that I love September even more!

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Boring is in the eye of the beholder!

8/23/2018

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As a long-time teacher of high school history, and the father of five children (the oldest of whom will turn 46 this Fall!), I have probably heard the phrase "this is boring" more times than anyone else on the planet. I have taken students across Checkpoint Charlie from West to East Berlin ("this is boring, it is taking so long just to go through this gate"); to the Tut exhibit ("can I skip the audio tour and go right to the snack bar?"); and to the steps of the Parthenon ("you mean we can't even go inside? What was the point of climbing all the way up here?"). I have listened to my own children complain about boring car rides, airplane flights, visits to the Louvre, symphony concerts, and baseball games (okay, may the last example is legit!) and I have heard countless times how boring I am because I would rather watch the news than subject myself to endless YouTube videos of questionable comedic value!

For my students, and even my own children, "this is boring" has typically been their first salvo in any negotiation about taking on a task that is difficult, cumbersome, or requires them to apply themselves without any apparent hope of instant gratification. Oh, I am sure that there are children out there (I hear about them at cocktail parties) who relish a challenge, throw themselves into the dreariest tasks, and will one day be on the covers of magazines that my own kids will be borrowing money from me to buy. I just haven't met too many of them! Most children and adolescents, while wonderful people to chat and play with, take on a new persona when the prospect of grunt work is laid before them. Even those of us adults who love their jobs, and parenting, and who would prefer to spend more time on their favourite leisure activities, have come to understand that hard and sometimes tedious work is often a necessary means to an end. Most young people, on the other hand, still live in that lovely world of believing that they only have to do those things which they find inherently interesting and enjoyable. And then, there is school....

As we approach the end of the second decade of the 21st century, the task of teaching has never been so formidable. How do you engage students who are used to being entertained rather than enlightened? How do you challenge children to stretch themselves beyond their perceived limits when the process might involve some tough sledding before the "fun" stuff begins? What implication does this have for the classroom? We all know that teaching and learning have changed. From the teacher-centred classrooms of the fifties and sixties, through the laissez-faire approach of the seventies and eighties, and following the data-driven decade at the end of the last century, the fourth era in modern pedagogy has emerged. The last ten years have seen the growth of outcomes-based, collaborative strategies that require hard work and commitment from both teacher and student.

Consequently, at the risk of being boring myself, the only real barrier to learning is the level of engagement of students and staff in the process. You see, to work effectively, this approach requires a lot of "boring" work! To be effective there must be time consuming planning and preparation by the teacher and tutor and serious application by the student. At Kenneth Gordon, we know that not every minute is going to be taken up by cool exercises with the SmartBoard, surfing the web on a laptop, or watching an engaging video on YouTube. There are actually going to be some minutes, hours, and days that are devoted to plan, old, boring work! Reading, researching, working through math problems, practicing songs, - you name it, it all takes time and effort.

If we want students to be capable, self-directed learners then we have to give them not only the tools to be successful, but to foster the attitudes that lead to success. Time dedicated to Social/Emotional Learning at our school is at least as well spent as hours on Language Arts and Mathematics. Students need to develop the confidence that they can learn, and that they can succeed in both school and in the larger world; and, they need to develop the ethic that, although some things don't come easily, they will come eventually, with hard work and parental and school support. If the outcomes are worthwhile, the attainment of them should be intrinsically exciting.

As for me, I always subscribe to the philosophy that "boring is in the eye of the beholder". The task in front of us is always neutral. How we perceive it, is entirely up to us!

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The Banality of Zero Tolerance in Schools: A Donald Trump Story

6/25/2018

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People who read my governance blog (https://21stcenturygovernance.weebly.com/the-governance-corner) will be familiar with my series of posts on the lessons to be learned by school leaders from the actions and reactions of the current U.S. disrupter in chief in the White House.

This past week however opened up a new and significant series of events that are also instructional for not only administrators but teachers and parents as well. The separation of refugee children from their parents created a communications, logistical and human catastrophe on multiple levels. Based on a newly proclaimed "zero tolerance" policy for dealing with refugees entering the country illegally, the administration proudly proclaimed that arresting parents and seizing their children would create a "deterrent" that would prevent future violations of the laws and policies surrounding immigration. The result of taking this step, as we now all know, resulted in a human rights crisis and a public relations nightmare. And, even in backing down (while typically blaming everyone else), Trump and his leadership team demonstrated a remarkable degree of both tone deafness, and incompetence. Doubling down this morning, the President tweeted that all illegal refugees should be immediately deported to their native country without any legal remedy and offered to reunite families at the airport if the parents agreed to be shipped home without having the chance to make their case for asylum. Due process by damned!

So what are the lessons here for schools?

1. To begin with, zero tolerance disciplinary policies are invariably losers. In institutions that pride themselves on valuing the worth of each individual student, and that are committed to personalizing learning, the idea that "one size fits all" with respect to discipline runs counter to the expressed ethos of any school. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't have clear expectations, and a range of possible consequences, but they have to be tailored to the individual and applied with care and with a clearly articulated rationale. Arbitrary punishments are most often seen as unfair and lead to an "us and them" attitude towards school climate rather than a collaborative "we".

2. The threat of punishment is a very weak deterrent. Most people in our society operate on the assumption that when they break the law they probably won't be caught and therefore the potential consequences of their actions are immaterial to them. I would hazard a guess that there isn't a car-driving adult reading this blog who doesn't speed on a regular basis, or roll through the occasional stop sign, or check messages when stopped at a light. The fines are often quite hefty for these actions but our normal response is that we are "unlucky" when we get caught rather than seeing ourselves as guilty of an offence. Kids are the same way. They are not being defiant, or reckless, or sneaky when they break the rules. They are just being kids. Getting caught gives us a chance to act as educators with respect to acceptable behaviour - not as judge, jury and executioner.

3. Due process is important! We are rightly outraged when people are incarcerated or deported without the benefit of a fair hearing and representation, but we violate the rights of our students that way every day. We isolate students from their supports, extract confessions, pressure them to testify against their peers, threaten to contact parents, and then mete out consequences in a kind of Principal's Court of Star Chamber. Like Donald Trump, we often convince ourselves that the ends (compliance, contrition, confession) justify the means. As the U.S. administration has found this week, fast tracking the process is fraught with peril and often results in unintended consequences for the school. In our case we have found that providing a student advocate (counsellor, trusted teacher, parent etc.), while making the process a little more convoluted and messy, usually results in a deeper student understanding of the issue at hand and results in a reduction in repeat offences.

4. Most parents, teachers and kids want a calm, positive and productive learning environment for everyone. Tom Bennett (@tombennett71), the leader of the researchEd movement worldwide, notes that "Low level disruption sounds cute, but it’s kryptonite for any lesson. It normalizes rudeness, laziness, and grinds teachers down over weeks and months. It is no small issue. It is the most common reason for classroom behaviour to disintegrate." He is right! And the best way to counter low level disruption is by setting and enforcing clear guidelines, expectations, and classroom norms. Buy-in comes from consistency, and peer community acceptance, and not from Draconian enforcement measures. Unfortunately, driven by the debasing of discourse through social media, we have become a society of "low level disruptors" which is why the extremism of the past week, while repugnant, was not particularly shocking to anyone. Schools are the key place to reverse that trend by reinforcing civility and social norms and expectations and not by turning a blind eye and a deaf ear towards breaches of classroom community norms.

There are a lot of strident voices in the United States right now falling on either side of the refugee debate. Illegal immigrants are either seen as innocent victims of the system or potential gang members trying to jump the line in order to get easy access. Currently there is little middle ground consensus on how to effectively address what is clearly a problem without trampling on people on the way.

Schools are like that too. An administrator friend told me recently that they had developed a "zero tolerance" policy for skipping school. If a student accumulated so many undocumented absences that they were affecting her or his academics, they were to be suspended for a week. When I gently pointed out the absurdity of exclusion as a consequence (reward?) for skipping, she looked at me blankly and said "There have to be consequences for skipping beyond simply failing the course!"

I guess we still all have a long way to go!

If you are interested in reading my ebook "Avoiding the Trump Trap: A Primer for Aspiring School Leaders" you can get it free on iBooks or by clicking this link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/797724

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What happened to the teaching part of teaching and learning?

6/3/2018

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This past week I had the pleasure of spending a day at Camp Jubilee, on Indian Arm north of Deep Cove, with our Grade 7s. A 20 minute boat ride takes you from the hustle and bustle of urban life into the edge of the backcountry and gives students the opportunity to try new experiences and test their limits in a safe and supportive learning environment. From high ropes to kayaking to archery to trekking through the bush our students were constantly challenged and rose to the occasion. Taking part in these activities, I was reminded of what a critical role teachers play in this learning process. One episode in particular stands out for me. One student, after completing his first climb up a cliff face, was sitting dejectedly on the prep bench. He was clearly upset and done with the process. Rather than letting him sit and watch his classmates, his teacher sat down with him and helped him work through the issue that was bothering him about his first climb. After a few minutes of quiet conversation and processing, the student agreed to give it another try. He would go on to scale the cliff five more times and by the end of the session, was beaming! Experiential learning is not just about the learner. The teacher plays an essential part in making it work.

One of the most popular oxymorons that currently dominates educational circles is the phrase "growth mindset". Given the fact that "mindset", by definition, is a fixed set of beliefs, then the flexibility and potential for change and growth would actually mean that a learner had no "set mind" or mindset about learning at all! The use of terms such as "mindset" or "grit" or "moxie" is just a trick for taking schools off of the hook, and placing the blame for a failure to connect squarely on the shoulders of the student. In actual fact, it is our job as educators to change attitudes about learning. What we are really talking about is nurturing a young mind to embrace new experiences and challenges, supported by a low-risk learning environment, and dedicated to student growth and continued success. It doesn't just happen. We educators and parents have to make it happen. We have to help students to take a systematic approach to learning. Sometimes it means focusing less on content and more on attitude. It challenges us to ask: How can we create a culture of success? How can we help students to see challenging themselves is not risky, but is actually interesting and rewarding?

A number of years ago, in another professional life, I was engaged by the Japanese Ministry of Education to review the delivery of their educational programmes, their teacher training, and their five year plan for moving forward. I spent a month touring schools; meeting with teachers, parents and students; consulting with university and Ministry personnel; and sitting in dozens of classes.

One experience during this time still stands out for me. I was in a classroom in a university laboratory school in Hiroshima. At the front of the class was a senior mathematics teacher – back to the room – scribbling formulas on the whiteboard and muttering fairly incomprehensibly about what he was doing. At the back of the class were ten student teachers furiously copying down everything that he wrote on the board so that they could someday use it in their own classrooms. In between were forty Grade 12 students who were paying no attention whatsoever. There were lots of conversations going on, some outstandingly artistic doodles being created, and a number of people catching up on an obvious lack of sleep – but no-one was actually learning mathematics. In my post-class focus groups, I discovered two things. To begin with, the teacher felt that it was his responsibility to teach, but not to ensure that anyone actually learned. Secondly, the students felt that it was their responsibility to learn, but that the venue for that was not school, it was at home or at an after school cram session where they would spend hours self-teaching and practicing problems. It was this disconnect that the government was trying to address. The challenge was, that the issue was more cultural than pedagogical.

You know what Neil Postman would say, “I taught it, it’s just that they didn’t learn it” is akin to hearing a car salesperson say “I sold it, it’s just that they didn’t buy it”. We know that effective teaching and learning is an interactive process, and that to be meaningful, both partners have to actively engage in it. The transmission culture that brought us radio and television is rapidly being supplanted by the interactive culture that uses Google and Wikipedia and invites the user to engage and generate knowledge, not just receive and record it.

At Kenneth Gordon, like most schools, we sometimes fall into the trap of assigning what we feel should be a simple task and finding that a student has become paralyzed and unable to proceed. Even with the luxury of small class groupings and daily individual instruction, we are constantly presented with a variety of learning puzzles. Why did this student balk at this task when the nine who came before breezed through it? What necessary steps did I leave out, that account for my inability to engage this particular learner in a fashion that would enable her or him to feel confident in their ability to take this on?

This is a pivotal moment in the teaching/learning process. We can just shrug and pat ourselves on the back for a 90% success rate, or we can double down and become learning detectives, committed to finding the piece of the puzzle that eludes us. The response to this challenge is a window into the culture of a school. All students have a unique approach to learning. Most fall within a broad range that is typically addressed in school, but many are outliers. They have great, untapped potential that needs to be coaxed to the surface, nurtured and reinforced. It is hard work, for both educator and learner, but the possibilities are endless. Part of our challenge is to make students understand this correlation between work and performance, between perseverance and progress.

In all of the superficial discussions about "mindsets" and "learning styles" there is still a fundamental truth. If an educator is unable to convince a student to open her or himself up to the possibility of learning then no amount of instruction will result in a positive and productive outcome.

This is the true art of teaching.

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Experiential Learning & The Hidden Curriculum: A Hot Dog Story

5/29/2018

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In my last post, I wrote about the winning combination of experiential and knowledge-based learning that I had seen in action accompanying our Senior High School Science students to the Bamfield Marine Science Centre earlier this month. What I didn’t talk about was what we used to call the “hidden curriculum” that was also embedded in the organization and execution of the trip.

In order to ensure a successful experience in May, bookings were made a year earlier and active planning began in earnest in September. One of the key enabling components to ensure that the trip was accessible for all interested students, was figuring out how our kids could raise the funds necessary to defray some of the costs. The students were an active part of the planning process, looking at various fundraising options and finally settling upon that tried and true proven money-maker – hot dog sales! Now, we all know that this is not the most healthy option, but as a once a week lunch alternative, nestled between two days of our nutritious hot-lunch programme, they decided to give it a go.

So, what did that mean for our students? It meant drawing up a business plan; researching the relative cost of hotdogs, buns, condiments etc. from various sources; setting up a work schedule; and, advertising this new service at school assemblies. It involved collaborative teamwork, commitment, and a strong work ethic, not to mention the mastery of cooking and assembling lunch; counting money and making change; and dealing with a highly demanding clientele.

Thanks to the perseverance and hard work of our students and Tyler Gilowski, their Science teacher, the business was an unqualified success! Over the next six months they raised over $5,000 and were able to cut the cost of the trip in half through their efforts.

So what was the takeaway in all of this? To begin with, instead of just putting their hands out for cash from Mommy and Daddy, they took ownership of the problem. They came together as a group, worked in concert for a common goal, and took pride in the outcome. Week by week, they kept their collective “eye on the prize” and by the time that the trip itself rolled around, they were a solid unit.

I saw the results of this hidden curriculum first hand when I joined them on their trip. They supported one another, worked together effectively in every task presented to them and kept one another engaged and included. There were no social cliques or conflicts. For all of their differences, they were united in a common purpose, no-one was just along for the ride. The rest of the not-so hidden curriculum – being away from home, living in a dorm, eating unfamiliar foods, spending long hours in transit on ferry and bus were all made far more manageable by the easy camaraderie that they had established over the previous months.

Next year, we adults might nudge their successors towards selling a more varied and nutritious menu to their peers, but at the end of the day it will be their problem to solve, their team to build, and their business to run.

And isn’t that what authentic learning is all about?

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Head and Hands: Getting Meaning out of Experience

5/15/2018

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There is probably no term more ill-used in education circles than "hands-on" learning. It has become a synonym for a wide variety of strategies such as: discovery learning; experiential learning; kinesthetic learning; learning by doing; constructivism; or exploratory learning - to name a few. The basic premise in many of these terms is that through exploration or discovery, a learner can engage in "problem solving situations where the learner draws on his or her own past experience and existing knowledge to discover facts and relationships and new truths to be learned". Or, as another school of thought states, "hands on learning is "gaining knowledge by actually doing something rather than learning about it from books, lectures, etc."

The implication in both these definitions is that modes of learning are an either one thing or the other. But the fact is, effective learning is always an "and" not an either/or. I think of it this way, the first time that I ever went to Paris, I had read about all of the highlights first and then experienced them in person. And, even as I was admiring Notre Dame, I still had my Michelin Guide clutched in my hand so that I could make sense of what I was seeing. That is the true value of experiential/hands-on learning, a delicate balance between knowledge and experience with the result being a far greater depth of understanding than either method could produce on its own.

Last week I had the pleasure of tagging along as our senior high school Science students traveled to spend four days at the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre, which is perched high above Barkley Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Reading over the itinerary in advance, I knew that there would be some great field experiences along the shore and out at sea in the Centre's research vessels. I noticed too, almost in passing, that sandwiched in between these excursions there were a number of labs scheduled as well. My first inclination was to conclude that the labs would be interesting "fillers" while we waited for the next on-site adventure. I couldn't have been more wrong. Rather than being diversions, these labs were an essential component of the learning process. For example, on the first day, students took part in both an invertebrate lab and a seaweed lab. In each case, through a combination of lecture/demonstration; the study of resource materials; and, practical hands-on experience, the students learned how to identify and classify different types of marine life found locally. Armed with this knowledge, the next morning found them out on the Sound in a research vessel dredging the ocean floor for specimens and the following day hiking to a nearby beach at low tide to look at life in the tidal pools first hand. At each stage, the students acquired, deepened and applied their knowledge and understanding of invertebrate life and the symbiotic relationship with aquatic plants and, eventually, plankton. This was experiential learning at its best. Solid preparation, acquiring key background knowledge, hands-on reinforcement in a laboratory setting and then practical, real world observation and application to gain a greater understanding of the local environment.

I have spent the last 10 years living near the ocean, walking the shoreline, gazing into tidal pools and picking up and discarding shells. But all this time, I had been the classic tourist without a guidebook. I saw but didn't understand in more than a cursory fashion the living world around me. Many of our students were the same, but now that has changed. Information can be found in books, or online, and experiences can wash over us like the incoming tide. But, until you put them together, real knowledge and understanding generally remain just out of reach.

Want to really learn something? Do your homework first, and then be prepared to get your hands dirty. It's an unbeatable combination!

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Self-inflicted Wounds

3/9/2018

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Last Sunday my Grade 6 son went with a friend's family to a Vancouver Whitecaps game. It was his first time at a professional soccer match. Before going, he asked if he could borrow one of our cellphones so that he could post game shots on Instagram. Pretty harmless entertainment and nice for him to be able to share a new experience with his friends in real time. He went, he clicked, he posted. In doing so he was part of an Instagram network of almost 700 million users who post almost 100 million photos a day. Having had a Blackberry for 20 years (which, until my new KeyOne, took the world's blurriest pictures) I never got into Instagram. My Twitter habits keep me quite busy enough and, besides, my life really isn't interesting enough to share globally! But for many of our students, Instagram is an on-going visual conversation through which they keep their friends constantly close at hand (or in their hip pockets!) Should we be concerned? Maybe.

Lost in all of the public conversation about cyber-bullying is the fact that people in general (students, parents and educators) do a generally lousy job of communicating electronically. Cyber-bullying is, in essence, an extreme form of our day to day, cyber-foolishness. Over the years I have arranged countless sessions for students centring on the very public nature of "private" communication on the internet. We explained to them just how exposed they really were in their emails, texting, tweets, and especially on social media sites like Instagram and Facebook. What they were beginning to grasp was that the actual audience for their comments was far broader than their intended one. Instagrammers, for example, quite regularly cut and paste or forward personal images and comments to people who were never intended to see or read them. And, once they are hung out there on the line for everyone to see, it is virtually (and physically!) impossible to reel them back in. After much discussion and sharing of experiences, I had begun to feel like the kids were getting it, and in some small way maybe we were helping them to self-edit what they were willing to share with the world. Having said all of that, I feel now that I may have missed the mark and in fact, all of these years I have been directing my efforts at the wrong target (or rather at only one of our at-risk groups). And also, perhaps, misreading their motivation for sharing.

Last May, the U.K.-based Royal Society for Public Health recently named Instagram and snapchat the worst social media apps for mental health. Its study of almost 1,500 Britons ages 14 to 24 found that young people were most likely to associate Instagram with negative mental well-being and feelings of inadequacy and anxiety. The report observed:
"Social media has been described as more addictive than cigarettes and alcohol and is now so entrenched in the lives of young people that it is no longer possible to ignore it when talking about young people's mental health issues."

The crux of the problem seems to be one of self-image. Instagram users are bombarded with images of people wearing the right clothes, travelling to exotic places, and taking part in cool events. Vicariously sharing the "great" lives that other people appear to be enjoying, children and young adults can often self-amplify their own feelings of inadequacy as they reflect on the boring or mundane nature of their day to day existence. While most of us can sit back and recognize the basic disconnect of what people are posting from "real" life, for others those lines are blurred or non-existent. A recent story in the New York Post highlighted the case of a young woman (26) who had run up debts of over $10,000 in order to create an online personna on Instagram. She bought high-end clothes she didn't need, took trips to exotic locales that she couldn't afford and tried to cultivate an image that she couldn't maintain. Now, six months later, she is broke, in debt, and somewhat wiser.
With a casual search I found a number of coaching sites that instruct neophyte users how to have the greatest impact and build their personal brand and "story". One even shared the optimum days and times to post to reach the widest audience (hint: more than half of the times are between 10 pm and 3 am - are you still wondering why your child is on their device late at night?)
A study published five years ago by the American Psychological Association concluded that millennials were almost twice as fixated on wealth and fame as baby boomers were a half a century ago. Online platforms have become the medium to generate celebrity and, for students in B.C., Instagram is the vehicle of choice.

At present, my son is far more interested in hockey and baseball than in Instagram and Snapchat and so now is probably the time to gently monitor his habits and become one of his Instagram followers. It's kind of for my own protection, because if in the future he begins to post about haute cuisine or high-end travel, he'll probably be using my credit card to pay for it!

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Using your RAM to avoid being rammed!

2/6/2018

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This morning, my son Morgan missed the bus for school. My previously calculated plan to see him off, stop at Starbucks, beat the traffic down the Cut and arrive at school were rearranged to include a ten minute drive in the wrong direction, drop him at school, adjust my route to avoid the now-jammed up Cut and arrive at KGMS a little later than I had planned.
Sound like a typical morning at your house? As parents we are often on "auto-pilot" as we manage the routines around work, school, activities and errands. This management skill is called executive functioning. It allows us to set goals, plan, initiate, monitor our progress, review our successes (or failures) and learn from our experiences. In short, executive function is the set of mental processes that helps connect past experience with present action. We use it to perform activities such as planning, organizing, strategizing, paying attention to and remembering details, and managing time and space.

Needless to say, school success is highly dependent upon executive function. It enables students to regulate their behaviour and to perform those tasks that that facilitate learning. EF allows students to plan; keep track of time; multi-task; build on past experience; evaluate and reflect; make mid-course corrections; ask for help; and, exercise self-control.

However, unfortunately, many of our students have challenges that get in the way of their executive functioning skills. These problems manifest themselves in a number of different ways. Students who struggle with executive function have difficulties with initiating projects; predicting how much time a task will take; relating a story in a sequential fashion; planning and prioritizing; adapting to changing conditions; or retaining information from something that they have read while trying to answer questions about it.

Often when educators think about executive function, they focus on organizational skill development such as time management, developing organizational systems or planning and prioritizing. While this works for many students, there are clear barriers that prevent some children from easily mastering these skills. For them, this traditional approach does not work.

A key EF challenge can be a product of working memory, which is the ability to hold information in memory while performing complex tasks. It incorporates the ability to "draw on past learning or experience to apply to the situation at hand or to project it into the future". As an analogy, I recently heard on Quirks and Quarks that while the "hard drives" of long term memory in our brains can store an impressive 100 terabytes of information, our RAM - or working memory - holds very little but that limited data is critically important to the management of our moment to moment operations.

"It’s like mental juggling", says H. Lee Swanson, PhD, a professor of education with the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Riverside. “As information comes in, you’re processing it at the same time as you store it,” he says. "A child uses this skill when doing math calculations or listening to a story, for example. She has to hold onto the numbers while working with them. Or, she needs to remember the sequence of events and also think of what the story is about" .

Other executive functioning skills include: response inhibition which is the ability to think before you act including the ability to resist the urge to say or do something before you take the time to evaluate what impact your behaviour might have on a given situation; emotional control, that is, the ability to manage emotions, controlling and directing your behaviour in order to achieve goals and complete tasks; and, sustained attention which is the capacity to maintain attention to a situation or task in spite of distractibility, fatigue or boredom.

At our school, every class and tutoring session involves working on developing and enhancing executive functioning skills with our students. Our academic division core teachers work in partnership with our Social Emotional Learning counsellors to support all of our students in this process. It is all part of our universal design approach to learning. Looking around the school you will see all kinds of strategies in action such as:

Working memory supports including cognitive orthotic devices such as written agendas or organizational apps; posting daily schedules, weekly calendars, "to do" lists; giving directions that prompt reference to past experience; breaking tasks into manageable chunks; organizing student workspaces to minimize clutter (at home this could mean having dedicated spaces for certain tasks); and, making sequentially stepped process checklists ("first do this, next do this, etc.").

For response inhibition and emotional control issues we provide distractions; set time limits; model delayed gratification; reduce or eliminate triggers; remove the student from the situation; and, teach and rehearse coping strategies until she or he has internalized them.

To sustain attention we work on reducing distractions; modifying or limiting the time on task; using peer coaching; providing active exercise breaks; and, reinforcing successful focussing.

In the final analysis, success in school, like everyday life, demands that you not only effectively plan and implement tasks in a logical, sequential fashion but also learn how to self-regulate as well. After all, we all know drivers who have their destination, route, and timing all planned out in advance but cannot cope with any variation that might get in their way. So next time you see someone gripped by "road rage", you are undoubtedly witnessing a breakdown in their executive functioning. Probably a good idea to just get out of their way!

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Timing is everything!

1/20/2018

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I never miss an opportunity to read whatever Daniel Pink authors, or give up a chance to hear him speak on podcasts, or interviews, or in person. His books: A Whole New Mind; Drive; and, To Sell is Human are three of my favourites and rarely spend much time on my book shelf, as either I take one down to refresh my memory about an idea, or a staff member drops in to grab one of my copies.

Pink's latest work - When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing hit the bookstores last week and once again he doesn't disappoint. One of the central themes is his examination of the research studying the correlation between performance and time of day. Scientists have known for a long time that most living organisms have internal clocks or "circadian rhythms". Pink's research takes this one step further as he considers the impact of these rhythms on our day to day performance at work, school, or play.

“For most of us mood follows a common pattern: a peak, a trough, and a recovery.” Most of us seem to peak in the morning, trough at midday, and recover in the later afternoon. But, as he notes, even casual observation reveals that not all of us experience this pattern in the same way, in fact, we’re all different “chromotypes.” About a quarter of us are “larks” that excel in the morning; others are “owls” that hit their peak in the wee hours, and still others — between 60 to 80 per cent of us — are “third birds,” somewhere in between. Knowing your chromotype is critical to avoid making dangerous mistakes or becoming the victim of other people’s time-sensitive errors. Pink points out that although most of us fall into that middle group, this is not a consistent pattern throughout our lives. Young children tend to be "larks", up at 'em at the crack of dawn. After puberty there is a significant shift towards becoming an "owl". Research shows that for most teenagers, 6-7 a.m. is the physical equivalent of the middle of the night. And, anyone who has tried to dynamite a teenager out of bed in the morning, or watched adolescent zombies walk the halls of a high school before lunch will understand that completely. Eventually, most young adults tend to gravitate to the middle ground in their 20s but will eventually become more and more "larkish" in their 60s and beyond.

So, what impact does all of this have on schooling? To begin with, for elementary students, it is a reminder - which all teachers and tutors know from experience - that the most challenging academic tasks are best performed before the early afternoon. Pink identifies the trough period for most people as hitting between 2 and 4 p.m. but for younger "larks" in the early elementary it may come as early as 11 or so. High School students are more productive if, either their day starts a bit later, or begins with less academically demanding courses such as phys-ed or one on one direct instruction, where they can be individually coached and encouraged, scheduled at the beginning of the day.

Can you break this rhythm, or are we doomed to wallow in the afternoon trough with declining focus and productivity? Well, in this case, Pink gives us a little hope to counter our own circadian rhythms. He suggests that the mid-afternoon is a good time to focus on mundane, administrative tasks. If morning is our peak analytical time, and later in the day is our most creative, then the mid-point might just be a time to grind it out! He also points out that research shows that taking a break (not an extended siesta, but rather a deliberate active change of scene) can also be rejuvenating. I heard Pink speak about this on Quirks and Quarks last week. He recommends a brief - 10-15 minutes - brisk walk, outdoors, ideally in the company of a friend or colleague. This tends to clean out the cobwebs, improve mood, and get you back on track. For elementary students this might mean a "body break" on the playground. For high school kids, a 10 minute afternoon opportunity to walk to the corner and grab a snack. These "time wasters" are actually a great investment in productivity.

So next time you have trouble getting your kids up in the morning, or getting them to focus on homework in the evening. Don't blame them, blame it on their chromotype!

Timing is everything.

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From Angst to Thanks

12/19/2017

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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. Every day we are bombarded by the media with images that reflect all of our worst nightmares. Last week the internet was crowded with remembrances of that horrific day five years ago in Sandy Hook. 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, he met a girl. She was interested in school and driven to succeed. Fast forward twenty 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 math homework rather than gravitating to his iPad? Or get Quinn to realize that there is more to life than watching hockey and baseball?) 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 and 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 instil 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!

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