What's in a word?

Years ago I used to lecture at the University of Connecticut. Invariably my students would gently mock my pronunciation of such words as "out" and "about" or raise a Spockian eyebrow at expressions such as "going down cellar" or "heading back north". Luckily I was smug enough to be assured that my way of saying words or use of figures of speech was, if not the norm, a sign of my excellent use of the Queen’s English (the King died when I was just a baby so I can’t claim to have picked up much from him!). After all, growing up, I knew that all of the TV news commentators from the U.S. sounded like they had been educated in Toronto—what could be more affirming than that?!

Imagine my shock the other day when my son Quinn asked me to make him an "Ang-glish" muffin. It all of a sudden occurred to me that Quinn, who has lived more than half of his life in Bermuda, had developed his own dialect that was an interesting blend of that of his school friends and his family.
In doing so, he had captured an interesting and somewhat unique aspect of life in Bermuda—a compact society, almost exclusively English speaking, with a global range of pronuncia-tions, expressions, and distinct vocabulary.

The lingua franca at Somersfield (which is a great microcosm of the country) is characterized by anglophones from the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, etc. all blended in with the distinctive lilt, cadence and expressiveness of native Bermudians. Our spellings see "u’s" added and dropped (honor, honour); z’s become s’s (organize, organise) and vice versa; "me" coming and going from programme; and even a titanic struggle for su-premacy between "zee" and "zed". One set of teachers tells students to "review" their work, while the other says to "revise" it. Petrol/gas; football/soccer; suspenders/braces, it is amazing that we can communicate at all!

My conversations are now peppered with expressions such as "no worries" (I used to say "no problem") , "brilliant" ("terrific"), and "sar" ("I am terribly sorry"). And I have learned a lot of unique Bermudianims as well: now I know how to "rest it down"; "cut cross" in a conversation; or trust my "first mind". No Canadian would ever use the word "coolish" (especially for temperatures that we would call "hot"!) and I am getting used to driving my "onliest" car. Where does all of this come from? The dialects that we hear all around Bermuda are a product of the islands’ rich heritage and history and its role as a cross-roads for the English-speaking world. Some things don’t change though. When Quinn reminds me at breakfast that he "axed" for an muffin, he is pronouncing the word exactly as Sir George Somers would have 400 years ago.

That is the richness, and persistence of language.

Running on Empty

It seemed like such a good idea at the time! Here I was in my last year in Bermuda and I had never run the “triangle”. Now let’s be clear, in high school I was always that kid who was timed with an hour glass rather than a stop watch, and I can testify from experience, that unlike the fable, in the real life of track and field, “slow and steady” never wins the race! I had a fair amount of success in international rowing (after all, you got to sit!) but the part of that regimen that I hated the most was the post-workout run!


Having said all that, it seems that in spite of my history, lured in by the enticing weather and the beautiful landscape, in Bermuda, running, for me, had become a bit of a hobby.

So, I gradually became a non-competitive (that is never in real competition as a top finisher), competitive runner. My biggest asset was my age which kept propelling me into less and less populated categories (Master, Senior Master, Over the hill, etc.). So I can usually claim to have finished in the top ten in my class. Over the last three years, I have run my share of races (my running resume sounds like a who’s who of corporate sponsors—Bacardi, Butterfield and Vallis, Fidelity Re, RenRe, Fairmont, Lindos, etc). I had even run four half-marathons (two Bermuda Day and two Bermuda Internationals). But the idea of running over 20 miles within a day and a half had always seemed a bit over the top. Until this year when, in spite of my track record, and my spotty training schedule, I decided to take the plunge and sign up for the mile, the 10K and the half-marathon—the Triangle Challenge.


Fortunately two other staff members, Taryn Pringle and Alison Beaulieu had also signed up so I knew that there was at least someone who could give my name to the paramedics! The weekend was a bit of a blur. Running the Front Street Mile in a thunderstorm; over stretching myself in the 10K, and then facing down the half-marathon. I wasn’t first, but I wasn’t last. My times were respectable, and I was given boost after boost from a host of friends and total strangers who cheered me on along the route.


So what were my “take-aways” from the experience? I was reminded, once again, of the significance of adequate (or inadequate) preparation for every challenge that you take on. I got the opportunity to share in the camaraderie of collective accomplishment. I felt the satisfaction of pushing my limits and trying something new and challenging. And, I was amazed as always, at the generosity of spirit that characterizes our community; a spirit that stands in the rain to support friends and family, and cheers on strangers mile after mile along the route. Thanks from all of us for being there!

What's worth knowing?

When I was a young teacher, the department head of math showed me his “Bible” . It was a series of laminated lesson plans for every course in the math programme. “I never have to plan another lesson”, he said, “and someday, this will be you.” “If that day ever comes”, I replied, “I’ll shoot myself.” (I was young, and not the charming and politic per-son that you know today!) Needless to say, the prospect of repeating the same embalmed lessons over and over for decades was a discouraging view of the future and not a particularly stimulating career plan. Like most teachers of my generation, I began to look for an alternative path. Around the same time, many educators were beginning to question the time honoured, textbook based approach to managing the process of student learning. Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, in their groundbreaking book Teaching as a Subversive Activity, wrote in 1969 :

"Suppose all of the syllabi and curricula and text-books in all of the schools disappeared...then suppose that you decided to turn this ‘catastrophe’ into an opportunity to increase the relevance of schools. What would you do? We have a possibility for you to consider: suppose that you decide to have the entire ‘curriculum’ consist of questions. These questions would have to be worth seeking answers to not only from your point of view but, more importantly, from the point of view of the students.”

As noted above, Postman and Weingartner posed this radical suggestion in 1969. Almost a half a century later, we are still discussing the same thing—what’s worth knowing?

We live in an age of competing curricula. You can’t pick up the paper or enter into a discussion on schooling without someone extolling the virtues of some system or another (IGCSE, IB, AP, Montessori, Froebel, Waldorf—there are about as many models are there are schools!). When you get right down to it,  what it really is about is effective teaching, and productive learning.

What’s worth knowing? When I taught history there was an on-going debate between the student-centred process guys like me and the “history is a story” crowd. For them, my scattergun approach of allowing students to delve deeply into some topics and skip others altogether was historical sacrilege. Before I pat myself too soundly on the back though, I have to admit that I didn’t really know what I was doing! My students were engaged, and they learned lots of stuff, but if you asked me what my essential questions, critical concepts, and desired outcomes were, I would have struggled to articulate them.

The fact is, everything that you do, must be tied directly into important student outcomes. Time in school is too precious to be wasted on irrelevancies and we have to design our programmes, our assessments and our teaching and learning strategies to focus on answering the key questions across every discipline and grade level.

Good teachers do a lot of these things intuitively. Great teachers do them deliberately.

With thoughtful planning and reflection, we can continue to transform ourselves, our students, and the school from good to great. We can help our students to develop the skills and acquire the knowledge to tackle the essential questions in life.

The variance and evolution in their answers across disciplines and over time are a true measure of our success as educators— the only catch is, we just have to know what’s worth knowing!

Ten Years After

There are certain moments in your life that will always remain frozen in time. One, for me, is standing in the staff room of Bannockburn Montessori School in Toronto on September 11, 2001 and watching live coverage of the twin towers in flames. At the time, I don’t think that any of us fully understood the impact that the horrendous events of that day would have upon our collective western psyches.

Fast forward ten years and we can look back upon a decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ramped up security at airports and borders, no fly lists, rendition and detention without trial, and even a boom in the “smaller than 3 ounces” toiletry business! Our world changed and swept us up along with it.

We have hardened. We are a little more closed, a little more cautious, and a little more wary of the “other”. There is no question but that one of the casualties of the events of that day was our openness and tolerance of those whose lives and values are different from our own. So, that is what happened to us, but what about our children?

My two young boys and my six grandchildren were not yet born on that September morning. Consequently, this life changing moment for us, was simply the creation of a “new normal” for them. As parents and educators it is our responsibility to help them to shape and define that new reality and to arm them with the values and attitudes that will make them positive and productive members of our increasingly global society.

At my school in Bermuda we pride ourselves on being a learning community that is committed to instilling compassion and respect for others. It is our responsibility to wean our children away from the excesses of our own fears and to begin to rebuild a more hopeful future.

On this tenth anniversary of 9/11, I hope that we can try as a community to begin to take the first steps to build new understandings and unity of purpose out of the ashes of tragedy. Our children deserve our best efforts.

The Business of Learning

Everybody likes a bargain. No matter where you go or whom you talk to, conversations invariably turn to some recent purchase that was a "steal", attesting to the outstanding bargaining skills or financial acumen of the speaker. Independent schools are no different. After all, we have a client base of parents who are spending a considerable amount of money to provide a service to their children that they could receive elsewhere for free. Consequently, it is the responsibility of every school to ensure that not only do they provide the best educational experience for every child, but that they deliver it in the most cost-effective way possible.

The Head and the Board of Governors have two complimentary responsibilities to ensure the long term health and success of any school. It is the Head’s job to design, staff and deliver the best possible educational experience for each and every child. It is the Board’s job to ensure that whatever we undertake is financially sustainable in the long-term. In a young school like Somersfield, where I am the Head, this is no mean feat! Without the large endowments and long lists of alumni that characterize many other independent schools, we have to operate pretty much on a “pay as you go” cash basis. The result is that we have to be creative and frugal at the same time. This is the month when we let parents know how deeply they are going to have to dig into their pockets to pay for next year. Although paying for schooling for their child is a bit of an act of faith, it is also critically important that they understand just where their valuable dollars are going.

To give you a baseline for comparison, the average per pupil cost of operating in the public system in Bermuda (excluding infrastructure costs) is about $23,000. At Somersfield (again excluding infrastructure costs) our per pupil operating costs this year amounted to about $16,000. We endeavor to be lean (but never mean!) in our operations, keeping our overhead as low as possible. However, a beautiful campus like ours cannot be created in under ten years without incurring significant debt. When you add in the costs of servicing and paying down a small portion of the price of constructing our fantastic gym, labs, and classrooms, our per student costs rise to about $18,330. By comparison our average tuition fee (when you factor in half-day students, and early payment discounts) is about $16,400.

Given that tuition doesn’t cover all of our expenses, where does the additional revenue come from? Somersfield does quite well in balancing its income. Tuition fees and other “hard” income (rentals of fields, gym, Common Room, playground, etc.) cover about 92% of our costs (that compares to an average of 85% in the U.S. and 90% in Ontario.) The rest is made up of donation income from Annual Giving, PTA fundraising and corporate gifts.

Where does the money go? Well, needless to say, education is a “people” business. Consequently about 70% of our budget goes to salaries, benefits, and professional development. At Somersfield, we pride ourselves on our ability to attract and retain the best faculty and staff members possible. This means offering competitive salaries and benefits and providing timely professional development to keep our staff current and on top of the latest trends and best practices in teaching and learning. Other major expenditures out of our budget include: bursaries and scholarships (5%); maintenance, repairs, and utilities (6%); classroom supplies (2%); general office and communications (2%); and loan interest and principal repayment (13%). At the end of the day, we do our best to keep costs down and quality up.

Okay, I’ll admit it, this is all pretty dry stuff! When I was being interviewed to come to Somersfield, I got asked whether I looked at the school as “a learning community” or as a “business”. The answer was, and is, simple. Independent schools are wonderful learning communities. However, they cannot provide a long-term, sustainable, positive and productive learning environment for the students in their care unless they are led and managed like a business. The two are not mutually exclusive or even in conflict. They are just the two key dimensions of any successful school.

That's the real "business" of learning.

Just another day in paradise.

In the future, when someone asks me what life is like in Bermuda, I will simply recount the time I spent in the company of the Transport Control Department (TCD) last week. After fourteen months of driving around the island in our little car and renting the occasional scooter from Oleander (they have my credit card on permanent file!), I finally decided to bite the bullet and buy a bike.

No 50cc scooter for me, I wanted something with some pep that would take two of us up and down the hills around our house without creating a major traffic jam. So, I found a nice, used 150 on E-Moo (Bermuda's "Craig's List") and plunged into the unknown world of motorbike registration. At first, it all seemed so simple. I had a bike, it was TCD tested, and it was insured until next January. All I needed were new plates (or at least a current sticker). Full of misplaced confidence, I arrived at the counter on North Street, took my number and sat patiently watching the three ads that play in a continuous loop on the plasma monitors at each end of the waiting area. When my number came up, I placed my documents on the counter, and announced my intention to license my bike.

A very pleasant (although no doubt long-suffering) agent read over my paperwork and uttered those dreaded words, “you have a problem” (As it turned out, this would not be the last time that this phrase would be used!) It turned out that the previous owner had received a “fitness” certificate, not a “transfer” certificate from the TCD and so it could not be used to register it in my name. “No problem”, she said, “just go outside and get the guys to change the type of certificate in the computer, and then come back in. I’ll let you jump the line when you return.”
I dutifully went outside circled the building in the wrong direction and finally found the bike “guys”. They cheerfully changed my form and sent me back in. “You have another problem”, she said. It was March 3rd, and my insurance was due to expire on January 31, 2011. As it turned out, to be valid, it had to expire no earlier than February 28, 2011. “Go down to Colonial Insurance, get it changed and I will let you jump the line when you return”. I dutifully went off, changed the policy, arrived back, jumped the line again (to the collective glares of everyone else).

“I can’t register your bike” she said, “you don’t have a motorcycle license. Your license is only good for cars and trucks”. No license, no transfer. So, I dutifully went around the back and made an appointment for a riding test for the next Monday. Monday morning I arrived back at the TCD. So as not to expose myself to possible legal action, I won’t recount how I got there with my still unlicensed bike but suffice it to say we both were there for the appointment. I was directed around the back.

“You have a problem”, the examiner said, “you can’t take a test on an unlicensed bike.” I explained my licensing dilemma—no license, no bike plates—no bike plates, no license. We both stood frozen in silence while he considered my plight. “Let me check inside he said” and returned in a couple of minutes “Nope, can’t be done”. “Can you borrow a bike from a friend?” I assured him that I had none. “Can I rent a scooter to take the test?” I asked. “Nope, you need a motorcycle, not a scooter.” Given that the test was just in the parking lot, I wasn’t sure of the legal ramifications involved, but there was no budging him. Then he made a suggestion that would never have occurred to me in Toronto. He said “Go to the bike shop across the street and see if they will lend you one.” I thought “Are you kidding me??! But, I was desperate. I walked in the door and sheepishly told my pathetic story to the salesperson. Before I was even finished, the woman who was working at the counter looked up and said, “Take mine!” I looked at her incredulously. She told her colleague to take a smoke break and drive her bike over to the testing range. It was one of the most wonderful random acts of kindness that I had ever experienced.
Fifteen minutes later, I was officially passed, licensed and waiting once again in line to get my plates. “You were lucky”, the agent said, “today was the last day of validity on your transfer test”.
Naturally, I thought.

But I also knew that faced with a bureaucratic maze, I was helped every step of the way by the advice and kindness of strangers. And, that is what life is like in Bermuda!

Are you bored yet?

Are you bored yet?

As a long-time teacher of high school history, and the father of five children (the oldest turned 37 last week!), I have probably heard the phrase “this is boring” more than anyone else on the planet. I have taken students across Checkpoint Charlie from West to East Berlin (“this is boring, it is taking so long just to go through this gate”); to the Tut exhibit (“can I skip the audio tour and go right to the snack bar?”); and to the steps of the Parthenon (“you mean we can’t even go inside? What was the point of climbing all the way up here?”) I have listened to my own children complain about boring car rides, airplane trips, visits to the Louvre, symphony concerts, and baseball games (okay, maybe that last example is legit!) and I have heard countless times how boring I am because I would rather watch the news than subject myself to back to back episodes of “SpongeBob Squarepants.”

For my students and even my own children “this is boring” has typically been their first salvo in any negotiation about taking on a task that is difficult, cumbersome, or requires them to apply themselves without any apparent hope of instant gratification. Oh, I am sure that there are children out there (I hear about them at cocktail parties) who relish a challenge, throw themselves into the dreariest tasks, and will one day be on the covers of magazines that my own kids will be borrowing money from me to buy. I just haven’t met too many of them.

Most adolescents, in particular, while wonderful people and delightful to chat and play with, take on a new persona when the prospect of grunt work is laid before them. Even those of us adults who love our jobs, and parenting, and our chosen leisure activities have come to understand that hard and sometimes tedious work is often a necessary means to an end. Young people, on the other hand, still live in that lovely world of believing that they only have to do those things which they find inherently interesting and enjoyable. And then there is school...

As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, teaching has never been so challenging. How do you engage students who are used to being entertained rather than enlightened? How do you challenge children to stretch themselves beyond their perceived limits when the process might involve some tough sledding before the “fun” stuff begins?

One activity that I have used with students and adults is the replication of a supplied figure (Lego Man – actually a non-gender specific model!) as a member of a team. There are a host of ground rules – as with all such exercises – but the one basic tenet is that you may not begin to assemble your model until you have completed your planning. In fact, the competitive aspect of the task is based upon the speed of actual assembly. In other words, a team that takes 10 minutes to plan and 5 to assemble will lose out to a team that spends an hour on the drawing board put puts their model together in 45 seconds. The “lesson” of the exercise centres around the cost and time efficiencies of effective pre-planning rather than engaging in a number of false starts and backtracking. The real challenge is that, for most people (adults and students) the planning part is “boring”. In fact, as a facilitator, I count on some “type A” groups plunging into the task and getting so mired in it that they never finish. As frustration sets in, and group members see that no progress is being made, the task once again becomes “boring” and one by one they disengage from the team.
Not surprisingly, students in Grades 4 and 5 are the most effective at completing this task. Not only are they familiar with the medium (lego) but they still have the patience to wait until they are absolutely certain of success before getting their hands dirty. Most adults and most teenagers are not quite so patient. The best that they can usually hope for is some sort of balance between their planning and doing.

So what implication does this have for the classroom? We all know that teaching has changed. From the teacher centred classrooms of the fifties and sixties, through the laissez-faire approach of the seventies and eighties, and following the data-driven decade at the end of the last century, the fourth era in modern pedagogy has emerged. The last ten years have seen the growth of outcomes-based, collaborative strategies that require hard work and commitment from both teacher and student. At Somersfield, where I am, Montessori programmes have always reflected this approach and, when you take the time to look past courses of study and to drill down to the unit planners of the MYP you will see that our middle school faculty embrace that philosophy as well.

The only barrier to learning then is the level of engagement of students and teachers in the process. You see, to work effectively, this approach requires a lot of “boring” work! Time consuming planning and preparation by the teacher; commitment and serious application by the student. Not every minute is going to be taken up by cool exercises with the Smart Board, surfing the web on a laptop, or watching an engaging video on YouTube. There are actually going to be some minutes, hours, and days that are devoted to plain old, boring work! Reading, researching, working through math problems, writing up experiments, practicing the clarinet – you name it, it all takes time.

The last time that I wrote in this blog, I talked a bit about homework and about the school/home partnership that is essential for student success. So the next time your child comes home complaining about being bored at school, you can take one of two tacks...you can ask them if they have completed all their assigned work; if the work is too easy; if they are getting the near perfect scores that would indicate that they have mastered this skill level and are ready to move on; and, if the answers are all yes – then it is up to us to take them to the next level in their learning. If there are some “no’s” then they still have some work to do as well.

As a parent said to me on the street yesterday – “Kids think that math is boring? This is supposed to be news? When was it ever interesting?” Or as I often had parents say to me at interview time, “I’m not surprised that my daughter/son finds History boring. I always did too.”

I guess that that’s why I’ll never be the one on the cover of that magazine!