Moped We are on vacation in Thailand. Four days ago I hopped on a moped to take a practice spin before talking my girls for a ride. My first mistake was staying too close to the edge of a bend in the road… which led to driving over some gravel on the road… which led […]
Category: compassion
Going to the hard places
When talking about building good relationships we seldom talk about those times when we have to be critical or offer challenging feedback. As a Vice Principal I learned this from my Principal. He always said to me, “If you aren’t willing to go to the hard places, then you aren’t helping your staff or your […]
Share:
Confession from a bully
In Junior High, (Grade 7 to 9), I was a shrimp. At the end of Grade 9, I stood at 4’11” or just under 150cm tall. There were, in a graduating class of over 250, just one boy and one girl in our grade that were shorter than me. They were both quite popular. I […]
Share:
Parents as partners
I firmly believe that “It takes a community to raise a child” and so without cooperation and communication between a school and their parent community, ‘we’ cannot fully support our children and their learning. That said, I often wonder about how we can more meaningfully engage parents in a way that they want to be […]
Share:
A Culture of Caring
At our school we have a little rhyme that we say to remember three big ideas that make a school a great place to be. The saying is simply: Care, Share, Dare. So what does this mean to us? To Care – In a school we need to care first for ourselves, our well-being and […]
Share:
The Role of a Principal
(You probably won’t find these in a job description, though you should!) – Hand-holder – Zipper-fixer – Tear-wiper – Peace-maker – Pants-buttoner – Ball-retriever – Nose-wiper – First-aider – Firm-talker – Cheer-leader – Toy-mender – Toy-confiscator – Mouth-wiper – Rule-implementer – Ice-provider – Argument-settler – Wrapper-opener – Photo-taker – Hallway-monitor – Coat-zipper – Skip-rope-holder – […]
Share:
T’was two nights after Christmas… A story of lost innocence.
It was only two nights after Christmas and both kids were tucked away in bed. Then the older of the two came from her bedroom and, doing all that she could to contain her tears, she sat on her mother’s lap. “Mummy, I think I’m old enough to know and I want you to tell […]
Share:
Shifting Education
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment. To the unshifted: Shift or retire… regardless of your age and number of years experience. We have the means to teach differently, now! It doesn’t start tomorrow, it starts today. Pick one thing you don’t like […]
Share:
moments
How would you define a moment? I love how this video takes absolutely random visuals and makes a story out of them… a story about the value of time, or at least single moments in time. This video changes my breathing pattern, it alters my thoughts, moment by moment, in a way that says more […]
Share:
Caring across the curriculum
Caring across the curriculum Sometimes I get tired of seeing the school day broken into subject-matter based courses. We don’t teach subjects we teach students, and students of all ages engage in a real life that matters across individual fields of study. Watch the video* Miniature Earth: How many different ‘subjects’ can we teach with […]
