Yesterday I went to renew my drivers license and after being away for a year I did not realize that the office had moved. So, a planned, (very short), walk to the renewal office became two, (very long), bus rides across the city of Coquitlam into Port Coquitlam. But this isn’t a post to whine […]
Category: education
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 […]
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One last time
Here is a little slide show of me in one of my ‘roles of a principal‘: Ball-retriever. Before I got into administration, my good friend Dave Sands always used to say, “Being an elementary school principal is like being a rock star in a boy-band“… I got the first taste of that two weeks into […]
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Who Owns the Learning?
I found a really handy tool recently: blogbooker.com “BlogBooker produces a high-quality PDF Blog Book from all your blog’s entries and comments.” I then took the pdf and archived it on Scribd, Slideshare, and a fun (but not-so-convenient) reader called Youblisher. Bookblogger numbers links and adds them at the end of posts and does a […]
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Photosynthesis and Learning: a learning metaphor
A few weeks back I was in a Grade 9 class that was working on Lit Circles. The conversation progressed to the teacher asking, “So why do we do lit circles?” The first student to answer said, “To get an ‘A’.” I know the student well enough that I was able to interject and say, […]
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Shifting Attitudes
Have you made the Shift? Are you an agent of change? Where do you fit? This is Part III of a 3 part series. When I started this series I had an outline that I only vaguely ended up following, but I knew from the start that what I wanted to say was too much […]
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Choose Your Battle
Choose your position: Are you a gatekeeper, policemen, guard… or teacher? All these jobs are necessary, but which one belongs in schools? Choose your battle: Filters that also filter learning -or- High expectations about appropriate use? Banning POD’s -or- High expectations about appropriate use? Teaching without technology -or- High expectations about appropriate use? Make no mistake, having […]
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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 […]
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Great things in the classroom
Here is a little tribute I shared with my staff at our staff meeting today. I took 3 or 4 of the photos last week, and then yesterday I visited classes and took the rest. It seems that whenever I talk to my staff the conversation is always about the things we need to do […]
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iPads are for iConsumers
I’ve been thinking about writing about the iPad since I saw this image a few months back: Today I commented on a great post by Ira Socol ‘Welcome iPad and Web 1.5‘ and I said, “I’m a huge Mac fan, but I have no interest in a bigger version of my iPhone that isn’t a […]
