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!