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!

The Culture of Learning

A number of years ago, in another professional life, I was engaged by the Japanese Ministry of Education to review the delivery of their educational programmes, their teacher training, and their five year plan for moving forward. I spent a month touring schools; meeting with teachers, parents and students; consulting with university and Ministry personnel; and sitting in dozens of classes.

One experience during this time still stands out for me. I was in a classroom in a university laboratory school in Hiroshima. At the front of the class was a senior mathematics teacher – his back to the room – scribbling formulas on the whiteboard and muttering fairly incomprehensibly about what he was doing. At the back of the class were ten student teachers furiously copying down everything that he wrote so that they could someday use it in their own classrooms. In between were forty Grade 12 students who were paying no attention whatsoever. There were lots of conversations going on, some outstandingly artistic doodles being created, and a number of people catching up on an obvious lack of sleep – but no-one was actually learning mathematics. In my post-class focus groups, I discovered two things. To begin with, the teacher felt that it was his responsibility to teach, but not to ensure that anyone actually learned. Secondly, the students felt that it was their responsibility to learn, but that the venue for that was not school, it was at home or at an after school cram session where they would spend hours self-teaching and practicing problems. It was this disconnect that the government was trying to address. The challenge was, that the issue was more cultural than pedagogical.

Neil Postman once said that hearing a teacher say “I taught it, it’s just that they didn’t learn it” is akin to hearing a car salesperson say “I sold it, it’s just that they didn’t buy it”. We know that effective teaching and learning is an interactive process, and that to be meaningful, both partners have to actively engage in it.

Fast forward to last year, in his book The Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell looked at predictors for success in international, standardized mathematics examinations. It was his rather astounding discovery, that there was a direct correlation between how students filled out their demographic information with how they performed on the test. Those national groups of students who were disciplined enough to complete the pages of 120 identifying data questions (birth date, gender, level of education, etc.) did significantly better on the exam than those students who rushed through the “boring” demographics and jumped feet first into the problems. Gladwell concluded that the issue in math performance in this instance was not pedagogy or even natural ability but, rather self-discipline and, ultimately, culture.

This year at Somersfield under the leadership of Rosanna Luzarraga, our new Chair in Mathematics, we are working actively to rationalize our programming and to ramp up our pedagogy in mathematics from P5 to M5. Interestingly, this appears to be not simply a Somersfield concern, but a Bermudian one. In our conversations with other schools and with the Ministry of Education, we have been focusing less on content and more on attitude. How can we create a culture of success? How can we help students to see that hard work and application is not boring but actually interesting and rewarding? How can we get them to see homework not as something that keeps them from sailing or soccer but rather something that can help them to establish a work ethic and a set of skills to aid them in their future endeavours? How can we make our students understand that, just as they know that they have to spend hours practicing tennis or rugby or dance or the saxophone in order to be proficient, the same is true in mathematics, or reading, or modern languages? I said earlier that teaching and learning is a partnership. But it is not just between teacher and student. It is a three-way commitment, with parents playing a crucial role, to build a culture of learning that becomes a norm for all of our children.

Who puts the "smart" in Smart Boards?

As I was droning on in a meeting the other day about what we are doing in technology, one parent stopped me and said: “I don’t want to appear uninformed, but what are these “smart” boards that you keep talking about?”
It was a great question, and the kind of one that educators need to hear more often. We tend to get so immersed in our own world of jargon that we sometimes forget to stop and make sure that our intended audience knows what on earth we are talking about!
SMART Boards (actually a brand name that has become synonymous with the product - like we used to always say “xerox machine”) are interactive digital whiteboards that work in concert with the teacher’s computer to run simulations, store written discussions, and provide a myriad of hands-on learning experiences for students. Over the past year, with the support of a local reinsurance company and our PTA, we have installed eleven of these electronic marvels in our P5/6 and MYP classrooms.

But, does the addition of these kinds of resources guarantee a better educational experience? The answer is, “not necessarily.” As one of our teachers has said: “it’s not about technology, it’s about learning.” This should be the mantra of every classroom in every school. There is no point in investing in interactive digital “smart” boards or LCD projectors if they are only going to be used as 21st century blackboards and overheads. That is not good enough. What needs to be happening, has to begin with our academic vision of the school. We have to ask the questions: “How can we enhance student learning and academic performance with the aid of technology? What could we do more effectively with technological support than we could do without it?” and, “How do we make students and teachers see the available technology not as a gimmick, but rather as a stepping-stone to take learning to the next level?”
We have recently seen the provision of teacher and student workstations in every classroom in our school; the installation of LCD projectors in most rooms; the beginnings of an interactive digital board initiative; and, with the support of our corporate partners at KPMG we have been able to establish two mobile computer lab “laptop carts” to provide greater flexibility to teachers.
However, the point of all this innovation is not to simply “decorate” the school with technology, but rather to continue to use it to make us a better school. Many schools pride themselves on having a smart board in every room, or requiring every family to buy their child a laptop. They might make for great marketing, but ineffective use of those resources – while good visual p.r. when prospective parents or visitors glance in the class – can impede rather than enhance the learning process. There is no practical reason for stretching limited technological resources to ensure that every teacher in every class has her or his students sitting at a keyboard. What makes more sense is to focus our resources where they will have the greatest impact. In the best schools, students excel in the use of technology because teachers who “get it” are given the support and the infrastructure they need to push forward the frontiers of learning. It would appear to be far more effective to guarantee that every student has at least one exceptional on-going experience with technology in her or his timetable rather that to try to provide a series of mediocre ones.

Teaching and learning is the ultimate interactive experience. Whether or not it involves the use of technology is far less important than the extent to which it engages, challenges, and meets the needs of our kids.

That is why, as much as we have invested in technology in our classrooms, our real priority is to continue to staff them with “state of the art” teachers. They’re the “smart” in smart boards!

Back to School

Summer always seemed so much longer when I was a child. The days were endless, the weeks seemed to stretch out forever and I really cannot remember a time that wasn’t sunny!
I have always loved summer.

This July my family took a few weeks away from our home in Bermuda to spend at our cottage on Georgian Bay. Between swimming and sunning and climbing rocks with the boys, I spent a good deal of my time rebuilding a major section of our docks. The job involved prying up old planks, hauling rocks and timber, and sawing and levelling and shimming to give at the least the illusion of being square. But, as with every job like this, most of all, I hammered.

I have to admit, there is something intrinsically satisfying about pounding nails. Unlike people, they generally go where they are needed, stay where they are put and, even when they get a bit rusty, continue to do the job that you ask them to!
Definitely good for the soul!

Aside from this therapeutic hammering, I was faced with an interesting engineering challenge of tearing out an aging infrastructure that had been in place since the cottage was built in 1945 and starting from scratch with a new design, updated materials, and a clean slate. That is not to say that I didn’t have various generations of family critics who lamented the changes and ached for the “good old days” of stepping through rotten boards or tripping on uneven joints. But even they appreciated the eventual outcome which was a blend of the old and the new and provided the opportunity to stand on what was firm and had stood the test of time while appreciating the value of change and growth.

Schools are a bit like my dock. Once in a while you have to tear things out and start over, but for the most part, each school year sees a new and unique blend of the traditional and the innovative, skilled experience and energetic learning on the job and the amazing dynamic that is created when differing approaches combine to create a wonderful learning experience for each child and young adult.

This September was my first back in a school in over 10 years. As the hot and humid days of August wound down, things cranked up in every corner of the campus. Repairs and renovations which had proceeded at a languid pace for the previous month, quickly ramped up with the iminent arrival back of staff and students. Garbage was carted away, floors were stripped and refinished, lawns and fields were mown, the gardens tended and bit by bit the place began to shine in anticipation of the year to come. Late in the month, the faculty began to trickle back in. A hour or two here, a morning there, full days for others and soon the place was humming with the sound of productive effort in each and every classroom.

Schools like to pretend that that first week back of professional activity days and meetings are what starts the school year off on the right foot. But as I stood up at our opening staff meeting and pontificated on my lofty goals for the year, I knew that I was following, not leading, the pack. Ideas had already been shooting around - by email, over drinks on the beach, and even through Facebook - and most of the staff arrived back that Monday morning prepared to hit the ground running. My real role was to keep myself and my leadership team out of the way!

Oh, I held a staff breakfast, and hosted afterschool drinks at our house, but for the most part I became a voyeur as the real work of preparing for our students got underway. The end of the week saw a few teasers for what was to come - an open house for the 3 year olds; a first half-day for the P1s; and a stream of parents and kids parading through to purchase uniforms, check on first day details, and generally try to get a glimpse of their new teachers and classrooms.

Then came Tuesday, the day after Labour Day, when the floodgates openned and a sea of shining faces streamed in. The energy level was palpable; the excitement - electric! Teachers and students alike were genuinely thrilled to see one another after two long months apart.

And so it begins. You know, I have always loved summer - but this year I remembered that I love September even more!

Going Public

I had it all wrong. 

Last spring we spent considerable time and effort speaking with kids about the very public nature of "private" communication on the internet. In two assemblies and a parent session, we had outside resource people come in and explain to our students how exposed they really were in their emails, texting, tweets, and especially on Facebook.

After one such session I had the opportunity to gab with a group of P5/6s about cyber bullying, stalkers, and generally the inherent risks in hanging out all of their personal information on  the web for just about anyone to see. What they were just beginning to grasp was that the actual audience for their comments was far broader than their intended one. Facebook "friends" quite regularly cut and paste or forward personal comments to people who were never intended to read them. And, once they are hung out there on the line for everyone to read, it is virtually (and physically!) impossible to reel them back in.

After much discussion and sharing of experiences, I began to feel like the kids were getting it and that in some small way, maybe we were helping them to self-edit what they were willing to share with the world. But...

I had it all wrong.

This summer I realized that we were directing our efforts at the wrong target (or rather at only one of our at-risk groups). As the beginning of the school year approached, I was intrigued by the increase in on-line traffic from staff members (both friends and friends of friends) publicly commenting on their lack of interest in going back to school. Sandwiched in between the expected "life would be great if we didn't have to work for him" comments were some pretty fundamental (and discouraging) observations like - "only 180 teaching days until next summer" - or "this year I plan to coast and do as little work as possible" and "I'm putting off going back in until the last possible minute". In addition there were some pretty negative remarks from individuals about their teaching colleagues and the quality of their schools.

People have always said this stuff, but when I was a young teacher, it was shared over a couple of beers in  the backyard or at the local pub. Everyone took the opportunity to vent, critique, and proclaim their incredibly brilliant (and invariably simplistic) solutions to the complex issues around the running of their respective schools. It was a healthy letting off of steam, a little bit of big-mouthed posturing, and mostly harmless. If a negative comment about a colleague did get back to her or him it could usually be defused by a claim that the author had been misquoted, misunderstood, or just plain drunk! The fact is that the only "permanent" record of these observations was usually an embarrassing half-memory and a bit of a headache.

No more. In our age of instant messaging, our rants to our friends have become the stuff of public record. Comments permanently recorded on the web arrive there without context, and without the tone of voice, or note of exasperation or raised eyebrow that would cause a personal audience to take it with a grain of salt and pretty quickly forget about it.

As adults, we should know better and as professional educators, we should do better. Every teacher and administrator receives the occasional sarcastic (and sometimes venomous) email from a parent about some imagined injustice done to their daughter or son. In our instant age, we all know how this happens. A person gets ginned up (or perhaps "rummed" up in Bermuda) bangs something out and sends it. The content and language are such that they would never use over the phone or in person. But in an email or in a Facebook comment they can make the most outlandish remarks without fear of interruption or correction. Their spin on things becomes a part of the permanent cyber record and no matter how many subsequent conversations or comments lower the temperature of the exchange, the original comment remains, white hot, frozen in time and cyberspace.

Having suffered from these abuses of electronic communication we should, and must, do better to prevent ourselves from committing them as well. In discussion about just such a case with a colleague this week it was clear to me that the fact that something that had been posted as a very personal comment about a peer, had landed on my desk, was quite a shocking revelation to the author. I was definitely not part of the intended audience. The ripple effects of this incident remain to be seen - hopefully they will dissipate as quickly as hurricane Bill - but perhaps, if we're lucky, the lesson learned will have much more permanence. 

Everybody talks about the weather...

I always thought that it was a Canadian thing. Before discussing politics, religion, or even hockey - it was obligatory to talk about the weather. Canadians pride themselves on suffering through every extreme of climate - even those of us who lived in relatively temperate Toronto - were able to ascribe to the great national pioneer myth of "roughing it in the bush" (apologies to Suzanna Moodie!). The greatest thing about complaining about the weather was not its actual effects but, rather, speculating on how bad it was going to get. As soon as the first flakes started to fall there were moans about upcoming driving hassles, expected delays in ploughing streets, anticipated flight cancellations and, of course, shoveling! 

Spring meant flooding; summer blisteringly hot and humid days (unless we were able to gripe about the unseasonably cool weather - "will summer ever arrive?"); and, fall - this good weather can't last! The only time that you could hear your friends speak positively about the weather was when they were reflecting on last year - "what a great summer that was!" or "last year I never even took my snowblower out of the garage" or "why can't we have another spring like that one!?"

Having said that, weather in Canada is all pervasive and unpredictable. During the 2002 Winter Olympics - I watched the quarter finals of the men's hockey in 20C weather on a pub patio in Toronto; the semis in a minus six chill in Winnipeg two days later; and the finals two days after that insulated by layers of down and bottles of wine in a minus 35C deep freeze in Calgary. Exigencies of weather are part of time honoured regional bragging rights.

Fast forward - winter 2008-2009 - landing in Bermuda where the forecast tended to be: high 20C; low 18C. We celebrated through a beautiful spring and early summer of hot days and warm nights and returned to Canada for our holidays not really caring about what weather we found there because we knew that we would return home to hot and sunny beach days in early August.

Then, Bill came to town. Not Bill Clinton (who has just escaped the island as I write) but rather hurricane Bill - charging up from the eastern Caribbean, determined to wreak havoc on our little corner of paradise. It was then that I learned a great cultural life lesson - obsession with the weather is a human, not just Canadian, preoccupation. All normal conversation ground to a halt. Commerce was focused on stocking up for the onslaught. Public broadcasting was dedicated to reiterating lists of "to dos" (ratchet down the shutters; flip the patio furniture; fill the bathtub; gas up your car; take cash out of the ATMs before they crashed; stock up with non-perishables; buy batteries, candles, etc.) At school everyone had the weather website bookmarked for hourly checks on stats that were only updated eight times a day. In the meantime the conversations swirled around the last great hurricane - Fabian (unfortunately I seemed to be the only one who remembered him as a singer!). Fabian devastated Bermuda. He ripped off roofs, blew in windows, and knocked out power for upwards of three weeks. For the "veterans", Bill was "Fabian redux". They regaled us with the horrors of what lay in store for us. But, even as we battened down our hatches and topped up our tubs it began to become clear that this storm might not live up to his "Billing".  As he marched closer, he seemed to lose interest and, even though the weather channels kept trying to hype his sagging potential, it began to appear that we weren't going to be able to market too many of the "I survived Bill" t-shirts that I had been silk-screening in the basement.

I am writing this about 10 hours before Bill is scheduled to hit his Bermuda peak. We looked over the south shore earlier this afternoon and saw the surf pounding in, but for us in north Devonshire - it would appear that we suffered through more substantial winter storms in February than we will be facing overnight tonight. Having said that, this has been a good dry run for us. We have learned how to work the shutters; stocked up on essentials; and have taken the appropriate precautions with water, gas and power. I got to go through the paces at school and, was struck at the parallels to our experiences with the great Montreal ice storm in January 1998.

Next week I am looking forward to the post mortems. The "woulda, coulda, shoulda" stuff that always comes after events such as this. The old timers will tell me how lucky we were, the newcomers will have their own personal war story to use in years to come, and for me, I will listen to the speculation, the comparisons, and the complaints about the weather and feel completely at home!

The World Has Changed: Part 2

Okay, now it is six months later (read the previous post if you have no idea what I am talking about!). I have had a chance to continue to reflect on what we are all about in education and, although the "honeymoon is over" (for both Obama and me!) there is no question that the message that I heard on that breezy January day still resonates in the hot and humid dog days of summer. This is what I told our graduates last week:

The world has changed, and we must change with it. (Barack Obama, 2009)

The world is changing around us. But even with all of the economic upheavals and uncertainties of the past year, we still live in world of privilege. Globally, every member of our Somersfield community belongs to the tiny percentage of the world’s population that is well clothed, housed, and fed. We enjoy fresh water, some weeks more than others, clean air, and a temperate and embracing climate. A higher proportion of Bermudians have internet connections than anywhere else in the world and we have access to about 100 more television channels than anyone could possibly want to watch

Our Montessori children have the advantage of a strong and child-centered programme with a proven track record for preparing them for higher learning. Every student in our Middle School – from M1 to M5 is already a member of the educated elite, having had more schooling than ninety percent of the rest of the planet! We truly live in a world of privilege.

This has been a year of celebration and reflection as we look back on 400 years of Bermuda's history. But has also been a time for looking forward to a somewhat fluid and uncertain future. What might that future hold for our students? How can they build on that privileged beginning that has been given them by their parents, extended family, teachers and school?

They will live in a world where education makes all of the difference – families and teachers can provide them with opportunities but it is up to them to make the most of them.

They will live in a world where character counts. Where honesty and integrity and compassion are not old fashioned values – they are the critically important ones for future success. They are privileged to have had role models at home and at school to demonstrate how true this is. It is now their responsibility to live up to those examples.

They will live in a world that is interdependent. A world where every citizen must do her or his part for social justice, to improve the environment, to take part in the political process and to be a good friend and neighbour. It is their responsibility to take an active role in the life of their community – and not just be a bystander.

Finally, they will live in a world that is going to be radically different from the one that their grandparents, parents, teachers and I grew up in. A world where doing the same old thing in the same old way just isn’t going to cut it anymore. Teachers and parents have tried to prepare our students to face challenges that we can’t even imagine using ideas and technologies that haven’t even been thought of yet.

It will be their responsibility to take a leadership role in that world.

That is the responsibility of privilege.

The World Has Changed: Part 1

Early on, when we first arrived in Bermuda, I spent some time reflecting on "why here?" "why now?". I had built a career over the last ten years of criss-crossing the country, dropping pearls of wisdom, and then heading back to the local Maple Leaf Lounge before the dust had settled.
Planting my feet firmly on "the rock", I took some time to think about what clarion call had brought me back to my roots with kids, and families and dedicated front-line educators. Interestingly, it took events not in Canada or Bermuda to help to clarify things for me, but something quite unexpected. Here is what I recalled and reflected to my "new" community at the end of that first month:

One January, when I was in elementary school, we were marched down to the common room to watch history being made. On a black and white screen, with a shaky signal coming in over rabbit ears, a school full of Canadian school children watched John F. Kennedy take the oath of office to become the 35th President of the United States. Even then we knew that something had changed. His inaugural address was a call to action not just to Americans, but to a generation. The next decade saw great strides forward in democratic reform, tackling poverty, upholding civil rights, and even the “conquering” of outer space. Kennedy’s call to service was embodied in the line: “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Forty-eight years later, I once again sat in a common room full of students, a thousand miles and a world away from where I grew up. Once again I watched a black and white image, brought in by online streaming, but still with rabbit ears and once again I knew, as did everyone in the room, that something had changed.

The audience of Somersfield students and staff, a wonderful blend of races, nationalities and faiths, sat in respectful silence, punctuated from time to time by spontaneous applause, to listen to the words of the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama. He did not disappoint. Like my experience at the beginning of the 1960s, our students heard a new call to action.
Two parts of his address in particular resonated with me. The first:

The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness…for we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.

I don’t need to tell you that at Somersfield this statement embodies the heart of who we are. In our Core Values, in our Montessori and Middle School classrooms, on our playgrounds and in our day to day lives, we practice peace and we strive to help our students to understand not only their own cultures and personal histories, but to be open to the perspectives, values and traditions of other individuals, their families and communities. We honor the strength and ourage to stand for truth and we encourage our students to act with integrity and honesty; with a strong sense of fairness and justice; and, to continually show respect for the dignity of each and every member of our school community and beyond.

The second was also aimed right at us:

To those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say that we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

At Somersfield, we believe that our students should have a personal commitment to service and act to make a positive difference to the lives of others and to the environment. Our challenge is to continue to help our students to maintain that balance between personal endeavour and accomplishment; and social responsibility and a sense of community. Because, as we all know, Barack Obama’s words and our core values and commitments make for ringing oratory and great reading, but they can sometimes get lost in the pressures and priorities of our day to day lives. It is easy to espouse values, but it is much more difficult to embrace and live them.

Like Kennedy, Obama has thrown down the gauntlet. We all know what we need to do, now it is time to role up our sleeves and make it happen. In education, we often talk about “teachable moments”. They take place when something unexpected happens that engages and inspires our students to think about things in a totally different way. For that room full of kids and their
teachers, for our families, and for our society, this is that ultimate teachable moment. It is our challenge to take that call to action and help our children internalize it as their mission as well. That will be our goal as a school, and hopefully of our community.

The world has changed, and we must change with it.

Slow down please!

Since the time that I was old enough to swing a hammer, I have spent part of almost every summer working on the docks at our family cottage on Georgian Bay in central Ontario. We have torn them down, built them up and torn them down again. Over the years I graduated from gopher to crew chief but nothing much has really changed. We still reuse every nail, trim the rot and hammer back tried and true boards, and spend hours arguing about what the best way is to level a certain stretch that will never really be straight.

The one constant on our docks, as they have grown and shrunk and been drowned and then left high and dry by changing water levels, has been a sign painted by my grandfather in the 1940s and touched up annually ever since. It reads simply, “Slow down, please”.

Now the intended audience for this message is the boaters who race passed our dock and whose wake does on-going damage to every log, board and spike (not to mention banging our own boats constantly on the sides). But it has occurred to me that maybe, all of these years, we have been pointing the sign in the wrong direction!

For decades, as a teacher, administrator and parent, the frenetic pace of the school year has been replaced by an equally manic need to cram every possible bit of activity into summer vacation. Part of this has been growing up in a climate where July and August were like a fine late spring day in Bermuda and the rest of the year struggled to keep up. Part of it has been a product of living in a fast paced urban environment in which relaxing meant wasting “valuable” time.

This summer will be different. Oh, I will still be swinging the hammer, straightening nails and sawing boards – but I know already that my pace will have changed. I am going to take my grandfather’s advice to passing boaters, and slow down. I have young children and grandchildren to play with and enjoy, sand castles to build, rocks to skip, fish to catch, books to read and batteries to recharge.

So don't bother trying to get me to ramp things up and to cram in more than is humanly possible into a few short weeks. If you want to spend time with me, I'll be down at the dock leaning up against my grandfather's sign!

Cash Advance

Years ago I was reviewing a school in western Canada and giving all sorts of sage advice about how to effectively raise money, build an alumni base, track annual giving, etc. The advice was well-received, my recommendations implemented, and positive change was made to the advancement programme. The only problem is that I wasn't really sure what I was talking about! Oh, I had been in dozens of schools and met with a host of highly successful fundraisers all over Canada, the United States and Europe. I am confident that I was giving proven and workable expert advice, however (and this is a common problem in education) what was lacking from my repertoire was a solid track record of raising funds myself. My experiences in Montreal taught me a lot about event planning and community building; they taught me about the difference between what people said that they would do and what they could actually deliver; and, they taught me the difference between highly "public" giving and true philanthropy. But, the bottom line at Weston was that we raised money by generating surplus revenues through operations, not through the generosity of external donors. This was a lesson that was lost to some extent on my successor (supported by equally myopic Boards of Governors) who, depending on the vague promises of "generous" constituents, ran huge losses and slowly bankrupted the school while they waited for their advancement ship to come in and bail them out.

Fast forward ten years and there I am, thousands of kilometers away in the middle of the Atlantic, standing at the mike and thanking a host of volunteers for staging an outstanding fundraising event at an art gallery set in the beautiful national botanical gardens. The night was a highly successful component of what is slowly emerging as a comprehensive development and strategic financial plan.

I have always said that timing is everything. When I joined Somersfield in January there appeared to be three strikes against expanding our development prospects. To begin with, a long-standing, highly respected and locally connected Head of School, my friend Margaret Hallett, had stepped down at the height of her game to pursue other interests; the long-serving development officer had been lured to a powerful rival school early in the fall, taking contacts and relationships with him, and hadn't been replaced; the school had just finished a massive and exciting building campaign which had inspired giving but now was completed (and about $12 million in debt); and - wait, did I say three strikes? - we were plunging headfirst into a major global recession which was bound to have an impact both on our school population and the financial liquidity of our donors!

It is now six months later. Standing at the botanical gardens on Saturday night I was able to announce that we had just completed the most successful annual giving and fundraising campaign in the school's history. How did this happen? Well, the same three (four?) strikes turned out to be to our advantage. To begin with, the current economic climate galvanized the Board into reassessing its financial position and willingness to carry a significant debt load. The finance committee began to discuss strategies for long-term sustainability; we created a formal development committee to set priorities, name targets and identify new sources of funding; and, the Board opened itself up to expanding our student base in key areas as a hedge against future contraction - the result was an improved cash flow, a manageable debt-reduction strategy, and a revitalized development mandate.

Secondly, Margaret had hired, in consultation with me, an atypical candidate for development officer. Starting the same day as I did, Megan brought no advancement experience, but offered a wealth of energy, enthusiasm and personal connection with members of the parent body and the larger community. In fact, we used our newness as an advantage as we were able to talk about change and growth and the fact that somebody else had build up the debt but that we were left to pay it off!

Over the next few months, we launched some new academic initiatives: the Somersfield Chair in Mathematics; full-day programming for three year olds to support working Bermudian parents; lap-top carts; SMART boards; and, the introduction of PYP strategies to our Foundations division. Before you knew it, companies and individuals became interested in what we were doing and wanted to get on board. One company (KPMG) donated 40 laptops and two lap-top carts to kick-start our "mobile computer lab" initiative; another (MS Frontier Re) funded the expansion of our SMART board capabilities; and our parents' association got so excited about what we were doing that they raised money to create a new entry-level classroom; upgrade our theatre facility; and make significant technology purchases at all levels of the school. Other companies and individual parents supported our Math initiatives and before we knew it, we had recorded the best year ever in raising funds (in half the time!)

So what did we learn in all this? Three important lessons have emerged in our first venture into the potentially shark infested waters of development. The first, is to tell the truth. We have been up front and open about our debt challenges, our cash flow concerns, and our worries about the escalating need for bursaries and scholarships. Donors have welcomed our candor and have been interested in being a part of helping us find solutions. Secondly, we have been grateful. Saying thank you and giving public recognition have been a big part of what has caught people's attention. There are no tax breaks for charitable giving in Bermuda. Our supporters are just that, supporters. They are interested parents, good corporate citizens and friends of the school. Our events are as much about community building as they are about fundraising and we want people to feel good about attending, not merely good about getting out without spending too much!

Finally, we have been cheerleaders for what we are doing and what we are going to do. I wrote to our parents last week that in a young school like ours with no deep-pocketed alumni to keep us afloat our only recourse was to outperform our rival schools; outperform our expectations for ourselves; and then do even better the next year! They responded that that is something worth supporting.

We will always measure the success of our advancement initiatives in terms of dollars and cents, but there is so much more to it. As long as there are development strategists that think that heavy handed pressure tactics and guilting out potential donors is a long-term sustainable strategy - we should continue to do quite well by comparison!

In some races, nice guys don't necessarily finish last!

Living without addresses

This morning I got an invitation to go out for lunch later in the week. I was told to meet my host at "the Dinghy Club in Paget". No address, no directions - I knew where Paget was, and could find the water, but after that... 

I emailed back and asked if this was somewhere that everyone knew - the response (along with an anecdotal description of how to find it -"turn left at the chain-link fence", etc.) was that everyone but me knew - but now, I did too!

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a map freak. I study them constantly (often missing what I was supposed to be looking for because I was staring at the page rather than looking out the window). Maps, Michelin guides, Eyewitness Top Tens - you name it, I've bought it and committed it to memory. Nothing makes me feel more complete than visiting a strange city and being able to give random passers-by accurate directions to get where they are going.

Then I moved to Bermuda. It's not that the streets don't have names, or that houses and buildings don't have numbers, it's just that no-one really pays them much mind. All directions are couched in terms of commonly known points of reference. It's probably not a bad idea because road signs (where they exist) tend to only be visible from one direction and not the other. A street that you have passed ten times before traveling west, becomes unmarked when you are searching for it in an eastbound car or bike. Distances are measured in minutes and specifics are addressed in terms of "just before, across from, or just passed" some locally notable landmark. For years I told taxi drivers how to find the school by telling them that it was the "old National Sports Club" just passed the Devonshire Marsh - worked every time! Now that I live here, I find myself slowly devolving into the same practice.

Our house (112A North Shore Road, Unit 4, Devonshire FL03) cannot be found by anyone simply by giving them the address (not even the post office on a regular basis). It is identified as: "the first orange house in Palm Gardens, just before Terceira's Shell station on the North Shore Road coming from town." The market is "at Bull's Head car park"; the bookstore is "by the birdcage"; T-ball practice is "in that churchyard just past White's Market in Warwick". When I tried to give directions the other day to a friend who was looking for the only pub in Hamilton where you can play NTN, I told her that it was at the corner of Front and Parliament. She looked at me quizzically and asked: "That's all well and good, but if I was staring at the Pickled Onion, would I go left or right?"

So, even though the roads have wonderful names like: Point Finger Road; Corkscrew Hill; and Parson's Lane - they never get mentioned. For my Bermudian friends it is a bit of a come down to have to actually resort to numbers and streets to locate an address. The sign that you have truly acclimated, it would seem, is to master the ability to pinpoint a house by visual picture rather than by an alpha-numeric label.

Oh well, the only saving grace for me is that now when someone wants to know specifically what street something is on, my Bermudian colleagues always say - "ask Jim, he'll know!"

Some things never change.

Always learning

I have spent the last 10 years yapping at Boards and Heads about governance. I knew it all. Based on my experiences in L&A, at Weston, and over sixty CESI reviews, I thought that there was little that you could tell me about the mechanics of good governance. Wrong, as usual!

Last night we had a Board retreat deep in the wilds of Hamilton Parish. Sitting on the porch of one of the most wonderful homes that I have ever visited, the Somersfield Board took its own spin on the nature of governance and schools. The meeting didn't run according to plan or schedule, it didn't specifically address its stated objectives and outcomes, but it was wonderful. 

My Chair, and friend, Tom Vesey takes a low-key, somewhat folksy and self-deprecating approach to leadership. But he is masterful at his task. There was a wealth of bright and creative minds around the table and they doggedly pursued tangents, got mired in "what ifs" and generally tried to stray as far from closure as possible on any topic. The result was a discussion that was rich and nuanced and full of surprises. And what did they discuss? Philosophy and vision and kids and learning and sustainability and legacy and everything that you would want a strategic board to talk about. What did they avoid? Nuts and bolts and day to day and niggling concerns. They are parents and community members, educators and business people, entrepreneurs and professionals of all stripes. 

What did I learn about governance? I learned that effective "management" of the Board process is not necessarily effective leadership. I learned that talented Boards trust their Head but don't necessarily believe them on any given issue. They challenge, they push and they question. An old colleague of mine, Willis Boston - Director of the Lennox and Addington County Board of Education - once said to me that Boards never make the wrong decision. If they don't do what you want, it either means that you were wrong or that you didn't make your case well enough. In either case, it is up to you to change not them. 

I feel fortunate to work for people who believe in the school and its mission and who are going to hold my feet to the fire to ensure that things happen the way that they should.

Life gives you what you need. I came to Bermuda to enjoy the daily company of my wonderful partner and beautiful young boys after spending years where I knew the Maple Leaf Lounge at Pearson better than my own living room. That has been beyond amazing!

But I have rediscovered something else en route. The joy of being part of a learning community. The energy and resilience of children. The amazing depth of commitment of teachers and staff to do everything they can for the families that trust in them. The amazing contribution of volunteers who could just as easily be sipping cocktails or playing tennis but instead give of themselves to ensure that everyone's child gets just that much more attention.

Mostly I have been reminded that I have been an "expert" for too long and that I really needed to go back to school.

I even pack a lunch - although most days I feel like I am eating crow!

Getting out the door

Used to be that I did my best thinking in the shower or on long drives down the 401 or up the 400 to the cottage. Since I moved to Bermuda I found that these two staples of life in Canada no longer worked for me. The scarcity of fresh water for long showers and the fact that the farthest I can drive from my house is a relatively short and attention demanding twenty kilometers to Ireland Island means that I have had to search out a new venue to clear my head and tackle the issues of the day.

Palm Gardens, our family's oasis in the middle of the Atlantic, sits on North Shore Road overlooking the ocean. A step out of the front door leaves you looking at passing cruise ships, sailboats, the occasional Dockyard to St. George's ferry and a vast expanse of some of the most beautiful blue water that you have ever seen.

Behind us is a steep incline to the top of a ridge which runs parallel to the sea and overlooks, on its south slope, the campus of Somersfield Academy. Half-way up our side, winding through farms, forests, a golf course and the occasional pocket of houses is our section of what used to be the rail bed of the old "Rattle and Shake" Bermuda's short-lived, narrow-gauge railway that ran from one end of the island to the other. The railway is long gone, supplanted by the overpopulation of cars and motor-bikes that now clog the local roads, but the rail bed is still there. Converted into a running/walking/biking/horse riding trail, the legacy of Bermuda's brief participation in the age of steam is a car-free passage that intermittently can take you from the outskirts of St. George's in the east to Somerset in the west.

It is the railway trail that has become my new respite from the incursions of the day to day and has become an integral part of my exercise regimen - four or five good runs a week - and my almost daily walking route to and from school.

So, like the horse droppings that I often have to dance around or dodge with the running stroller, these are my trailings - thoughts that come to mind and get deposited during my trips along the trail. No doubt some will be worth avoiding but hopefully some will result in the fertile growth of new ideas and responses.

I'll keep you posted!