Let me start off by saying that this isn’t a veiled attempt at sympathy. I despise sympathy, I will have no pity party. I have always tried to be open and honest in my writing and that is all this is. I also believe that I can help other people by talking about my current situation.

For those of you that have read my blog, you will know that this year I was given a great opportunity to take on a head coaching position at a small college in Edmonton. It was, and has been, very exciting, made only better by the support of my school division when they agreed to give me the time off necessary.

At the beginning of the year I was flying on adrenalin, excited by the potential of my young team and the possibility of big things. I was also very excited to return to the classroom after my first year in administration, and the energy I drew from the classroom had me revved up as well. I looked at my busy schedule and thought that while it may be a little stressful, I could handle it. In hindsight, it was very arrogant of me to think that way, and I am now seeing the error of my ways.

I am not able to balance the schedule I have created for myself. To go one step further, I am not balancing my life very well right now. I am not a good teacher, a good coach, a good husband or a good brother/son. To put it simply, I am not doing anything well right now. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a TERRIBLE teacher, coach, husband etc. I am just an adequate one. The problem is that for me that is not good enough. Anything I do I want to do to the best of my ability. At this pace, that simply will not be possible.

When you take on more activities/responsibilities in your life, other sacrifices have to be made. The problem is I have made sacrifices that are not sustainable. I have not exercised, I have not been eating well, I have not gotten enough sleep and I have not dedicated enough time to my wife. What is the result?

In the past three weeks I have been sick twice, missing two practices and two days of school. I am in the worst shape of my life. My wife and I spend most of our time just getting done what needs to be done and not spending any quality time together. I am tired at work, and have to struggle to provide the type of energy and engagement in my lessons that my students deserve. I have neglected my professional learning (never on twitter) and my own reflection (haven’t blogged in quite some time). I have not felt satisfied with anything I have done, and without that feeling of pride in what I do, I have even less motivation.

Changes need to be made, and I am working to make those changes happen. Some changes will be made now, and some in the future, but I need to find balance. And that is my message. I am living proof of what can happen when balance is lost. When it comes to our profession, the teacher is the machinery, and we need to take care of ourselves. We deliver the lessons, we provide the energy and enthusiasm, and we are the sole protectors of the process for our students. If we neglect ANY of the things we need, we are ruining the most important tool for the education of our students.

I believe it is important to have more going on in your life beyond the classroom, and to bring those passions outside the classroom back into the classroom in anyway you can. But in the end if we aren’t healthy, in mind, body and spirit, none of that passion will be translated into what we do. In the months to come I will find balance, and I will write about how it has improved what I do. For now, I have work to do, and this work needs to be done well.

I have been reading about Finland. I know, who hasn’t? I have had some conversations with my principal about Finland, had some conversations with people on Twitter about Finland. There’s lots to get behind when you read about their reform, and a lot of what they have done/are doing is inspiring. But a funny thing happened every time I read an article or a blog post, or talked with someone either online or face to face about Finland. I always felt a real negativity about it happening here.

Why? I am a pretty positive person, and I am always excited about the idea of being part of change in our school system. I couldn’t put my finger on it until I had a conversation with a colleague yesterday about school movement within our division. We were talking about how long we would each be in the school we are currently working in. I told him that I didn’t expect to be at this school very long, regardless of the fact I think it is the best school I have ever worked in. He was quite surprised, and I told him that I was sure an opportunity would present itself where a school might benefit from my help, and I would jump at the chance at a new challenge. He was puzzled, and his opinion on changing schools stuck with me, because I think it is fairly prevalent. To many, the idea of changing schools goes against many things they hold dear – comfort, security, loyalty and routine. To many, they work for their school, but to me, I work for my school division. If my school division needs me somewhere else, doing something different, I’m in.

This got me thinking about school reform where I live. So many projects are taken on by a school, many more are taken on by a division, and finally we see reform at the provincial level. Where I see the difference between what we do and what happened in Finland was that they addressed education reform by looking at what would be best for the COUNTRY.

We don’t do this. We always seem to be competing. Competing province against province (From what I hear, state against state too South of the border) to have the best system. Division against division to be the leaders in some area, or to have the highest testing marks (BLEH!). Even school against school to be the “Best school in the division”. Yes, I am aware of how the governance of education works. Provinces handle education, school divisions report to provinces, schools report to school divisions. I am aware of this hierarchical system, but it is this system that I think stands in the way of us really making the type of change we are all ready for.

Pasi Sahlberg, an international education researcher and former member of Finland’s Ministry of Education, said this recently in his blog

“Believe it or not, schooling in many countries is becoming like a market commodity. This trend is based on the assumption that competition and information are the primary drivers of improvement. The logic is very simple; competition is the driving force behind efficiency and economic growth, therefore competition between schools and students must be the best way of improving student performance, the corporate school reformers think.”

So my question to you is, who do you work for? Do you work for your school? Your division? Your province/state? Your country? I think you all know that we work for kids. We want what is best for kids, kids everywhere. If we are going to improve the system, I think it is important we keep that in mind. There is no need for competition when it comes to learning, everyone can win. If we are going to make change, the power will come from a collective push to do what is right for our students. Achievement tests, reports from the Fraser Institute (BLEH again!), school division rankings all serve to take away this power from us. How we ever let competition into this arena I don’t know, but its time for it to go.

Wow, when I was a kid there weren’t many things I hated hearing more than “Wait and see”. I admit it, I wasn’t a patient child and I am not the most patient adult. When I know that something exciting is going to happen I suffer through the anticipation. I think the reason I am this way is that I have been blessed with a pretty active imagination. Once I get an idea in my head, I can quickly turn it into something so much bigger than it probably will turn out to be. To be honest, I am ok with it, because while my imagination can lead to the occasional minor disappointment, it also helps me be a better husband, brother, son, teacher, and coach.

Where I really get in trouble is when I get an idea in my mind about how I can improve the education I provide for my students. Yesterday, I wrote about an iPad for every Teacher and I got a lot of feedback. A lot of the time I hear the reasons why an idea can’t happen, often its about cost, and I have to accept that while an idea might be good, we’ll have to “Wait and see if the money is there”. I don’t do well with this. Our division is on the verge of opening up the WiFi in every building so that students can access the network with their own devices. We are lucky here, I know many school divisions are a ways away from this step, but we have had to wait for some time. I didn’t deal well with waiting for this either.

I read a blog post by a principal in our division Shaye Patras, in the post he wonders why our schools haven’t changed in the last 100 years while every other profession, field and industry has? I believe it is because of the year-to-year micromanagement that is required to balance budgets and run schools. I remember speaking with George Couros last year when I was working as an Assistant Principal and discussing making decisions on technology in our building. I asked him how he moved forward in his building and started 1-to-1 initiatives in some of his classrooms. There were many things he told me about, but the main idea was that he had to break from traditional practices and creatively come up with ways to find the money and buy what his students needed. I find it sad that it takes so much work to make change happen.

This is no indictment of school administration, of school division executives, of education departments or even governments. Its more of a challenge to everyone to be sure that they are doing everything they can to make change possible.

iPad for every teacher? Can we look at stopping our purchasing of textbooks and dedicate the money towards this initiative? Can the government give a tax break to any teacher who buys their own iPad? Can a school division work out a purchasing agreement with Apple to get a better deal? Can a Parent Council take this on as a key fundraising project?

I am not satisfied with “Wait and See” solutions, or waiting for others to solve our problems. The only way we can break free of the chains of this type of thinking is to change our thinking. The only way to change our schools is to break free from what we have always done. At some level, someone needs to step up and change what is being done, so that we don’t have to have our students “Wait and See” if they can have the quality education they deserve.

I have been in on conversations about the validity and affordability of setting up every student with an iPad or other tablets. I always have advocated for devices like these in the classroom, the ones our students will be using in their near futures (or for many, right now!). What I noticed the more I played with it was that it really could serve teachers in a large number of ways.

1) Digital Camera/Video Camera

In most schools I have worked in, the school makes a large financial commitment to ensure the school has a number of cameras, for documenting school events, for classroom activities etc. Along with the cost of the cameras comes the cost of memory cards, batteries and cases. There is also a hassle with making sure the batteries are charged, the disc has enough room and that the camera works. I have done more video recording in the past two weeks with my iPad then I have in the previous 10 years I have taught. It is so easy to use, the camera works quickly, and the files are easily transferable and archived using cloud resources.

2) Mobile Assessment

I have always found it difficult to circulate around my classroom and accurately record assessment of my students at work. Whether I scribbled stuff down in a duo tang, or on a prepared form, I never felt like it worked very well. The other day, as I was working in my Robotics/Technology option, I whipped up a quick Google Form with check boxes and specific criteria I was looking for. That, in addition to video of the students at work, made for easy assessment of their collaborative use of the technology provided to create a robot that could complete the assigned task.

3) Supporting Resources

So I am big on finding a video, an online article, a picture or simply a concept explained in another fashion. If I am teaching integers I want to relate the lesson to as many different real world examples as I can, and in as many types of media as possible. If in my class I saw students having trouble with negative integers, I would try and find some footage relating to bank accounts, temperature or maybe a sport like golf or football to express this in another way. It would probably require me to find a good video, hook up my projector, and stop the ENTIRE class to show my video clip, to help those 3 or 4 students who need the concept reframed. Well with my iPad, I can sit right beside a student and we can search for a video clip or article right at the desk, and watch it on the screen.

4) Planbook & Calendar

With some purchased app software I have been able to make my iPad work as a Teacher Planner, an efficient classroom calendar, and a nice place for reminders and to-do lists. Using cloud computing, I obviously can access these from multiple machines and can be sure that I always know what I need to prep, mark or plan for. You can of course have this on a laptop or a desktop computer, but I find the portability of the iPad means that I can easily take this to meet with my colleagues or administration and not have to worry about hauling a laptop and cords around with me.

I have only been using my iPad in class for a couple of weeks, so I know with more research and play time, I will find even more uses for it. The idea of dropping $600 on an iPad for each student quickly becomes a deal breaker for most administration, but $600 on every teacher is a different story, especially when it can take the place of other technology you may be purchasing.

One day, the idea of having an iPad in every students’ hands may be affordable and realistic for most schools, but for now I don’t believe that having an iPad in every teachers’ hands is that far fetched. What do you think? What am I missing?

That is one of my favorite pictures. It is me, coaching my team from Drumheller, probably the most rewarding coaching experience I ever had… so far. I look at that picture and I am immediately filled with the feeling I get when 12 pairs of eyes are looking at me and they are all ready to do whatever it takes for our team to be successful. To be honest, it is nothing less than amazing.

Coaching has always been my dream teaching job. It seems like you always have a captive audience, committed learners, collaboration, dedication, teamwork and goal setting. I am passionate about basketball, and I am a lifelong learner when it comes to the game. I desperately want success for every member of my team, and do everything I can to read my players and provide for them exactly what they need. Some I push hard with stern tones and strong motivation, some I handle with kid gloves, and use care and compassion to help them find their way. I live for coaching, and I get so much more out of it than I give.

Tomorrow is my first game as a head coach of a college team. I am nervous, like my first time in parent teacher interviews. I have been practicing with the guys for months now, but tomorrow we let everyone else in on what we have been doing. I am on, and sink or swim, its time for us to do our best to be successful. It is a preseason, exhibition game in our home tournament, so the stress level isn’t as high, the onus on winning isn’t there to the same degree, I am resting injured/ill starters and key bench players, but I still want us to do well. This is a dream realized for me, and I would obviously like it to go well.

Tonight, we finished practice with a team meeting and I talked to my players about the importance of us having each others’ backs, about contributing to the team through individualized roles, and about our understanding and exemplifying of our team identity. It made me think about how great it would be to have a similar conversation with my Gr. 8 classes. I want a classroom where everyone has each others’ backs, where students find roles they can fill and contribute in those roles, and a classroom where the identity is clearly defined and exemplified in our day to day interactions. Why not have a “team meeting” and do the same thing with my students?

I don’t know if that idea will work, but I do know that my coaching provides me with a lot of great ideas that transfer to my teaching. I remember being pleasantly surprised and a little shocked when my school division supported me in taking this coaching job and providing all the support I needed to be able to do both coaching and teaching. I mentioned it to a lot of people and more than a few times I heard people say things like “it will make you a better leader/educator for the division” or “this will only benefit the division as well”. I didn’t really see that, but I am starting to.

Tomorrow I coach Game #1 in my college head coaching career. I have no idea how successful we will be, or even how many games I’ll get to coach in my career, but I am excited. Tomorrow I truly will be working in my “Dream Teaching Job”, and I do believe it will make me a better educator in every position I have in my career.

 
I love telling people I teach Grade 8 or Grade 9. I love seeing the WIDE range of reactions that come with that news. Many feel that I am crazy to be working with students this age, “little hormone bags” was the comment. Others are intimidated by adolescents, citing “poor attitudes” and “smart mouths”. Many parents share with me that its the toughest age to deal with for them. I have of course seen my share of angry teenagers who don’t know how to deal with their anger in a healthy way. I have seen self involved students who are totally unaware of their impact on others or their environment. I have been called a few foul names and had my tough days like anyone else, but make no mistake: It’s my favorite age to work with. This week reminded me again why.

One of my favorite things about students this age is how many will put on the facade of being aloof or above whatever it is we are doing. They are way too cool to be excited about anything, especially anything happening at school. Younger kids are still openly excited about things that happen at school, and older students are comfortable enough in their own skin to be honest about how they feel about what they are doing (I generalize). In the midst of a fairly simple lab exercise, testing the solubility of some common household items (salt, sugar, baking soda) the engagement of the moment broke down many of those faux-apathetic stone faces and gave way to smiles, wide eyes and excitement. When all the groups had reported their solubility values, and we had averaged the numbers for the class it was time to reveal the expected values for the three solutes. When the students saw how close they got to the real solubility of sodium chloride (salt), glucose (sugar) and sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), genuine “oohs” and “aahs” and exuberant comments filled the room. They forgot about being above all of it and let down their guard.

I am someone that loves a challenge, and getting genuine reactions of any kind out of Gr. 8 and Gr. 9 students is a challenge. Trying to make them laugh (with you not at you), trying to get them to see outside of their small bubble, or trying to get them to really care about their education is tough. I prefer tough, I like having to work for student engagement or excitement.When the right learning opportunity is presented, these “tough nuts” will crack and they will get excited about their learning. They just won’t want you to tell anybody.

I have always been someone who had an opinion. I also probably shared my opinions far too often when I was young. I don’t remember being stifled too often, but it happened. I remember asking my Dad why one political party didn’t have someone from another political party in their cabinet. I figured if you wanted to help opposing parties to work together, let one of their best people be a cabinet minister (I am from Canada, we have cabinet ministers instead of secretaries – Minister of Finance vs. Secretary of Defense). He laughed at me, not in a mean way, and explained that this would never happen. The fact I remember that conversation shows you it had an impact on me. While 99.9% of the time my Dad supported my opinionated nature, that one time he didn’t really stuck with me.

Allowing our students to voice their opinions is an important part of the education process. When we value someone’s opinion we show them that we value them, and respect their ideas. We might not agree with what they are saying, but it is important we show them we value both their opinion and their willingness to share it.

In my school we have a big push for Inquiry, and for helping foster creativity and innovation in our students. For the first few weeks of this year my teaching partner and I have done a lot of work to have students share their opinions, their thoughts and their feelings through classroom conversations, through classroom activities and through reflective journaling. Yesterday, as I read through my student journals I found this:

“You know what? This is the only place in the world that everyone keeps asking me the same question – What’s your opinion? I’m not saying that this is a bad thing, but I just find it kinda weird that’s all.”

It was this quote that inspired this post. I am glad that this student feels like we are looking for her opinion. It validates a lot of what we have done in the first few weeks. What I really took from this writing though was that the student felt it was weird that we were asking for her opinion.

I see a genuine connection between creativity/innovation and confidence. By hearing, valuing and validating our students opinions we send a message to them that we want to know what they have to say. We want them to voice their opinions, and we want them to feel ok when they find their opinion is unique or not supported by the masses. Creativity and innovation require people to put forth ideas, inquiry requires people who aren’t afraid to ask questions. This all starts with an environment that support students speaking up and being heard.

There is a lot of power in asking “What do YOU think?”, and a lot of the skills we want students to develop in the 21st century require us to foster their willingness to tell us.

George was right. He told me I was crazy to think that I could write a blog post for everyday I taught. I should just know that he will be right when it comes to anything related to social media/twitter/technology. Last night was an especially busy night for me with my coaching commitments having me at the University from 5:30pm-11:15pm and teaching from 8:30am – 3:30pm. When I got home I was exhausted, and just couldn’t bring myself to sit down and reflect. The tank was empty, and I surrendered to the comfort of my bed.

Now this isn’t the end of the world, and I know that, but it did bother me. It was a lofty goal and I wasn’t able to achieve it, so part of me was upset. After 10 years in the classroom, the other part of me knew this was ok. Setting lofty goals and striving to achieve them is a great practice that benefits us even when we are unsuccessful. This is an important lesson for our students, and our newer teachers too.

Things are not always going to go well for us in what we do, but that doesn’t mean we should simply stop trying to achieve anything. As a new teacher, it is great to try new things, put together exciting and interesting lessons and to strive to be an amazing educator. In your first few years, in the midst of all that energy, enthusiasm and excitement, there will be lessons, projects or even entire days that don’t go as planned. So what do you do? Go to the safe and easy lesson, and give your students the same vanilla education that has been delivered for years? No, of course not, because you know what is right and you need to do what ever you can to provide your students with the best learning experiences you can create for them.

On our basketball team, we have a new motto for this season. “Next Play” is something we stole from a successful NCAA coach and its about what you do when you experience difficulty, or even failure. He preaches that his team’s focus must always be on the next play, and not whatever has just occurred. Because of this motto that his teams live every practice and game, you rarely see one of his players argue a call with a referee, or hang their head when they miss a shot. They know that the right thing to do for them and their teammates is to worry about the next play, and whatever they can do to help the team be successful in that next play.

So new teacher, or experienced teacher, we should always be focused on the “Next Lesson” when our plans end up falling flat. We should focus on the “Next Project” when the one we thought would inspire, bored our students into a near catatonic state. We should focus on the “Next Day” when we have rough day with our students, and need to come back strong for them and us. For me, I was focused on the “Next Blog Post”…and there it is.

I found a video that shows glass artists melting glass in extreme heat and shaping their pieces of art. That alone might have made this video effective, because it provided great visual displays of what melting glass looks like, and how knowledge of changing the state or matter is necessary for all of these glass artists. The artists had to carefully cool their finished work to avoid the glass breaking, because of what is occurring with the particles in the glass. It was a real world example of what I was trying to teach.  What made this video even better was that it was interactive, in that it cued students with questions that made them think and gave them a visual countdown of how long they had to decide their answer. They weren’t always great examples of inquiry, but they definitely got students interested in what the answer was, and it also surprised them with the results. Glass was being melted at an insane 2400 degrees Fahrenheit. A 1 pound ball of melted glass was stretched to a distance of 40 feet on the screen. After the first couple of questions, I started to hear discussions at tables, reactions to right and wrong answers and genuine engagement from most, if not all, in the room. Check it out:

Video is a great learning tool, we all know that, but it can result in students tuning out. I think I know what videos will grab students’ attention and keep them involved, but I am sometimes wrong. This video, because of the way it had students thinking and answering thought provoking questions, made for 5 minutes of learning instead of 5 minutes of zoning out.

While I won’t be writing a full post, I wanted to stick to my plan of posting something reflective everyday I teach. I know this is probably a lofty goal but its worth a try.

Today my Gr. 8 Math classes worked through an activity that was designed to provide a real world context for their current Math studies. We are currently working through Surface Area, and measuring two dimensional shapes. I thought it would be fun to allow them to design their own youth center. With our continuing theme of dreaming big, they were allowed to put anything in it they wanted as long as they fit a few basic criteria of including a square dance floor made of checkered tile, a linoleum area for food and drink, and a carpeted area for couches and chairs. By putting in the criteria, we were certain that they would need to lay out shapes and measure their area. By having the fun and real world context I thought the students might enjoy the learning. What I didn’t realize was this provided a time to shine for some of our students. For a few, drawing and creating is what they do best, and I found some engaged and smiling faces that weren’t so happy when we were doing pencil and paper math.

Its nice when a lesson provides some added benefits that we didn’t predict, but what the lesson really did was remind me of the benefit of varied learning activities. This activity gave some students a chance to shine, students that may not always be eager to share in a math classroom.

I snapped a few pictures with my iPhone, check out some of the work turned in by some shining stars!