Failure can be very unproductive. It can stem from a lack of effort, resources, support, knowledge, and reflection. Failure can also be an amazing tool for learning, and perhaps one that every student should experience before graduation. Stephen Whiffin, who conceptualized the Inquiry Hub, suggested that every student should have ‘My Epic Failure’ as […]
Category: metaphor
Behaviour Modification
Last year I wrote Classes of Donkeys, about a tool called ‘Class Dojo’. Just recently Karen Langdon wrote Thinking About Classroom Dojo – Why Not Just Tase Your Kids Instead? It basically approaches the same concerns I have, but from a different angle… and it adds further value by suggesting alternative approaches to dealing with […]
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Risk and Reward
I've been reading Seth Godin's Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, and he wrote this: How to be Wrong: “The secret of being wrong isn’t to avoid being wrong! The secret is being willing to be wrong. The secret is realizing that wrong isn’t fatal. The only thing that makes people and organizations great […]
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Positively Memidemic
Dean Shareski started it! (And that's a good thing.) In his post It’s Not Really PD, Dean says about the (mis)use of the term 'Professional Development' ('PD') to describe an event: “I guess we butcher our language all the time. Using the word “awesome” to describe a great sandwich as well as the beauty of […]
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Looking Back
It’s just after 6am on my last day of work before summer, and I’m in a Starbucks having a coffee. I had to drop my daughter to her synchronized swimming practice and decided to just wake up a little early and head to school. Only after getting my coffee did I realize that the school […]
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Leadership and Capacity
“I’ve come to realize that I’m not the only one that wishes I had more capacity to do the things I really want to do as a leader.” I said that on a post about Leadership and Management back in October. Two weeks ago, as my school year for the Inquiry Hub was coming to […]
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A Lesson on Win-Win
After years of teaching this lesson I finally wrote it down for my masters terminal paper for the University of Oregon: DEVELOPING AN EFFECTIVE MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENT LEADERSHIP PROGRAM. Yesterday, I revisited this with current Inquiry Hub students and incoming students for next year. I should have spent more time on the debrief, but I […]
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Lessons on living life
Two days ago Zach Sobiech died. He was 18. It was expected. I just sat with my wife and oldest child watching this 22 minute video. It says more about how to live your life than anything else that I’ve seen. Watch it now. Here is Zach’s full song “Clouds“. Here is the celebrity lip […]
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6 key ingredients to the art of storytelling
It seems to me that storytelling should be an intricate part of what we do, and what we teach in schools. In my first year at university I had the privilege of taking history with proffesor Gunnar Beonhart. He was one of the reasons why former Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre Trudeau, brought the 1983 […]
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The Teachings of Roy Henry Vickers
Roy Henry Vickers (Tlakwagila Copperman) – Artist Biography, LinkedIn, @RHVickers —– It was the morning after Titia and Servaas’ wedding and I was flying home from Smithers, BC to Vancouver later that afternoon. The newlyweds were at the hotel (with two cars), helping other guests get to the airport for their respective flights. Titia said, “Dave, you […]
