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 our learning. It is important, as well, to care for one another, and we need to also care for our school and the world around us. We do this by ‘Caring for YOE!’, an acronym for Yourself, Others, and the Environment. When we create a culture of caring, the school, and specifically our classrooms, become ideal places for learning.

To Share – It isn’t enough just to care, we also need to be engaged in our learning, contributing what we can. We can share our ideas, our resources and our cultures. Schools are social environments and everyone gains when all members of our community are caring and also willing to share.

To Dare – To dare in school is to take chances with our learning, and learn from our mistakes. If we don’t make mistakes in school then we aren’t working hard enough. Learning involves risk-taking, we need to be prepared to be the only one willing to answer a question, even if we aren’t sure it’s the right answer. We need to explore topics and ideas we know very little about, and we need to challenge ourselves to try things we have not done before.

The intent of our little saying, ‘Care, Share, Dare’ is to encourage all of our students to value some common beliefs about how we should treat each other in school, and how we should be fearless learners, that contribute to our school and to our classes, always striving to do our best. We do this while respecting many of the different beliefs and cultures at our school and celebrating all the benefits of being at an international school. We also do all this by starting first and foremost with a culture of caring, where we strive to make the school an inviting environment for parents, staff and students alike.

Care, Share, Dare.

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Published in the ‘Focus on Dalian’
April/May Edition 2010, page 51

For me it is a little bit difficult to think about the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics right now… I’m in a car outside of Hanoi, Vietnam heading to Ha Long Bay for an overnight boat cruise. The car ride is about 3.5 hours long and so I thought I’d use this time to plug a great project happening on the other side of the globe.

If, (unlike me), you are at a school that is in session during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, be sure to share this link with your students. Chris Kennedy, Assistant Superintendent of West Vancouver School District, has helped to organize 12 student bloggers to report on events at the Olympics.

These student reporters will be given access to many of the Olympic events & venues and they will be blogging, photographing, vlogging, tweeting, and updating their Facebook group page with all kinds of reports about the Olympics. I think it is fantastic to have students sharing their perspective on the Olympics and that we are starting to give students a legitimate voice in documenting world events. What will make projects like this really meaningful is interaction between these students and students around the world, so I’d like to encourage educators to get students and classrooms to follow these reporters and engage with them online.

Today, before leaving on this trip, I was connected to the hotel lobby wireless, checking email, and saw that Danny from Jan Smith’s grade 6/7 class left a comment on my blog, (Jan told me on Twitter that he did this on his own). I had a few minutes so I commented back on his blog. I mention this here because I think that as we encourage students to blog and connect online it is important for us to not just encourage but also to support these endeavors! One of the key things that makes blogging an effective learning tool is that it gives students a legitimate audience. Danny ends his comment with, “…so thank you for being a blogging teacher from the other side of the world!”

Also, Danny’s classmate Lizzie commented on my daughter’s fledgling blog and asked a question, so I encouraged my daughter to reply and then I helped her go to Lizzie’s blog and comment.

The next time I get online, after posting this, I’ll be visiting Jim Wenzloff‘s wife, Chris’, new class blog, THE CLEM, and commenting on some student posts… And I’ll be mentioning that I’m writing from Hanoi Vietnam & living in Dalian China. I would like to encourage anyone reading this to take the time to comment on some student blogs from across the hall, across the city, across the country, or across the world. If you don’t know of any then visit Chris’ or Jan’s students… Or check out Sue Waters who is an excellent advocate for student bloggers that deserve a global audience.

And finally, I’ll end where I started, recommending that you help connect students around the world with the student reporters at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.

It’s time again for the K12 Online Conference.

It was David Warlick‘s Keynote that introduced me to this wonderful, free online conference, and although I had a blog for 6 months before that, I wrote a key post that influenced my future as a blogger.

And now a much admired friend Kim Cofino has created this wonderful 2009 Pre-Conference Keynote:

Going Global: Culture Shock, Convergence and the Future of Education

As someone living in Asia now, Kim’s metaphors in Part 1 really hit a chord with me. I especially like from about the 5:30 mark until the 14:30 mark: ‘Lessons from Culture Shock’. At the 7:45 mark of this presentation Kim states,“We have to find ways of more nimbly, realistically and effectively adapting to the new status quo.” What excites me is that the ‘status quo’ is based on connecting the students in our world in more meaningful ways… We now have the ability to foster cross-cultural connections with kids who aren’t just ‘growing up digital’ but also ‘growing up global’.

As one of Kim’s connections in Asia, I had the chance to play a small part in this presentation. I sent her the video below that she edited and added to the presentation above. The idea for this actually came from a Twitter discussion with John Davitt as he was preparing for a presentation. I sent him these-two-tweets and very shortly after Kim asked for a video clip… it was already written, I just had to film it.

Here is my ‘Connected World’ Video that I made for Kim:

It is a fabulous time to be an educator! Watch Kim’s presentation. Watch it again and think about the potential for what we can do in our classrooms today. Connectivity is key. Adaptability is key. We live in a connected world and our students are going to have to learn about each other, connect with each other and adapt to different working and living environments. Let’s adapt our schools to meet the needs of student today, instead of trying to make students fit into an old model of what schools used to look like.

After a month in China, I’ve come to realize that North Americans live in a bubble wrapped world.

In the ‘Western’ world we walk around oblivious to our surroundings, going about our business feeling safe and secure. I don’t mean safe in the sense of being cautious of others, since in actual fact, I have always felt safe in China (other than in the occasional taxi), and in fact Dalian feels safer than downtown Vancouver or Toronto when I’m out late at night.  I mean safe, in the West, in the sense that there are laws and bylaws and rules in place to make sure that we are ‘protected’ from unexpected harm: Guardrails and warning sign and lit-up crosswalks with pedestrian controlled lighting abound.

In the bubble wrap West we occasionally read or hear about someone who slips right next to a ‘wet floor’ sign or trips on an uneven curb and they end up blaming and suing others: “It wasn’t safe”, “It was faulty”, “The step was too high” or “The railing was too low”. Our day-to-day environment is safe, secure, sheltered… and sterile.

In China, things are different. Pedestrian walkways are a suggested crossing location and give no rights to the pedestrian. White and yellow lines on the roads are mere suggestions for where a pedestrian should stand as cars zip by at speeds up to 60km/hr, the occasional horn blast reminds you not to make any unexpected moves.

Here, doorways have immediate steps going up or down as you cross the threshold. You must walk with your eyes on the curb as a missing tile, or a sudden step may appear, unexpected by Western terms but fully expected here.

At the far end of Xinghai Square there is a structure I’ve only ever heard called ‘The Open Book’. The book opens up with concrete slabs raised to more than 6 meters on the sides, with no rails and a simple yellow line painted to suggest a caution. Nearby a beautiful walkway has a single chain fence that sits gently near the path, supported by short concrete posts- on the other side of the rail, a two+ meter drop onto rocks. Two examples of things that just wouldn’t exist in the west… there just isn’t enough bubble wrap present to permit them.

I think schools have become a bit too bubble wrapped too. We protect the kids from impending harm, bubble wrapping their learning. However I think sometimes we harm them in our attempt to keep them safe. Here are a few digital examples:
1) Instead of teaching them intelligent searching, we filter websites.
2) Instead of teaching them online safety we stop them from creating online profiles.
3) Instead of letting them connect and learn socially, we ban them from social networks where there is potential for bullying.
4) Instead of letting them seek out experts, we hand pick the guest lecturer.

What we are doing is creating a facade of security, nothing more than an illusion of bubble wrap.

1) Filters prevent teachers from knowing what a search will show students at home.
2) Students create online profiles behind teachers and (more specifically) parents backs and put personal information on the profiles since they have not had any adult advice about how to protect their identity.
3) Social websites like Facebook, unsupervised, becomes a playground where the bully tends to ‘win’.
4) Students have no idea how to ‘talk to strangers’ online, but they don’t have their parents or teachers advice when (not if, when) that happens.

Well now it is time to pop some of the bubble wrap. It’s time to remove some railings and teach kids to be careful. There is a whole world ‘out there’ to explore! Yet, I’m not saying be reckless.

My daughters have experienced freedom here like they have never had before, ‘Go play outside and be back by dinner.’ – something I got to do at their age, but my kids didn’t really get in Canada. But, I’m not letting them cross a busy street on their own yet, (the overprotective dad in me says they won’t cross a street alone in Dalian until they are in their 20′s), because they are still at a stage where, if scared they might do something a driver won’t expect, and human/car mistakes aren’t ones I want my daughters to learn the hard way. My point: we will all have different comfort zones, but if we don’t start popping some bubble wrap, we are not really protecting our kids like we think we are.

Sometimes you can’t just take baby steps, and you’ve got to commit fully to experience something…

I’m leaving my job, my home, and my country.

I have just accepted a Principal’s position in Dalian China for September. My wife will be teaching at the school and my daughters will be attending it. We weren’t actually looking for different jobs, they found us several years after my wife and I had applied to a number of International Schools for teaching positions. A path opened up before us… it wasn’t the planned path, but it was certainly worth investigating.

I can’t describe the turmoil my wife and I went through deciding whether or not we should uproot our family, and leave great jobs, friends and colleagues that we care about. Then finally we asked ourselves a simple question, “If we don’t do this, will we regret it later?” The answer was ‘Yes’.

And now that the decision is made, I am so excited about the new adventure!