#365grateful

There are many things I feel strongly about, some more important than others in the grand scheme of things. For example, having crunchy bits in my ice cream is something I feel strongly about, but is not something that I feel the need to spend huge amounts of time thinking about. Two of the more important things I am currently thinking about and trying to focus on are gratitude and accountability. I realize that I have a great deal to be grateful for and I try to express my gratitude, but I also liked the idea of sharing with the greater world what I am grateful for and also trying to be more intentional. At the beginning of this year, I saw something posted somewhere that asked "us" to do something with all those pictures we take with our smartphones and to focus our picture-taking on the things that make us grateful and then being in the age of social media that we are, to then post our images somewhere (accountability). The hashtag to use is #365grateful or #365gratitude; I can't really remember which one it was and I don't think it matters, so I use one or the other. The point being, that when I try to be intentional with my gratitude and to document it, I find that there are limitless things I am grateful for, but are they worthy of capturing an image of? How much do I want to share my images? Also, what happens if I miss a day? Am I kicked out of the gratitude club? I don't actually worry at all about being judged, because how can anyone question what I am grateful for? So, to date, I have 53 images of things I appreciate starting from January 3, and yes, I have skipped a couple of days, not because I wasn't grateful, but more because I didn't pull out my phone in time, or some things are just hard to capture in a photo. There are also some days where I posted two photos! I am going to try to keep this up for the year and see what happens. I can't say for sure if I have shifted my thinking or that I am a happier, more peaceful person, but I do think about gratitude everyday and I try to tell those around me that I appreciate them (I try). Here are a few of my images and to see more, you can follow me on Twitter (iggybb) or Instagram(bbiorn). Now, accountability, there's a BIG topic and left for another blog post. One thing I do wonder about though, is how do we teach our children and our students to be more grateful? Really grateful...

 

Nepal Part 2

The day after our trek, Mingmar invited us to his house to visit his family and have lunch, which we all quickly agreed to do. Renji came and met us at our hotel and walked us over to his neighbourhood, which was only about a 30 minute walk and got us away from most of the hustle and bustle of the city. Most people who live in the city live in apartments and the buildings are only about 3 or 4 stories high and each apartment takes up the entire floor. Mingmar and his family of 5 lived in a two bedroom apartment and his wife and daughter prepared a lovely feast of dal bhaat. All of Mingmar's children speak excellent English so we were able to have a lovely chat while we waited for our food. It is clear that Mingmar's accomplishments are a source of pride for his family and he has all of his Everest certificates and photos up around the living room. It once again reminded us how lucky we were to have someone with such experience as our guide. It was a very special afternoon and we were sad to leave and say good-bye to our Nepali friends. The only thing that made us feel better is that we know we will return to Nepal and see them again.

The next day, Scott and Rhonda were off to work which left Wes and I to explore the city on our own. We did some shopping, saw some sights and I got ready for my presentation out at SIRC.

 This photo was taken at Swayambhunath, also know as the monkey temple. I joked that I wanted to get my photo taken with these monks, so Wes told me to go stand beside them. I was actually quite mortified, but I "cozied" up to them and posed. Wes was trying to get these guys to smile by saying, "Everyone say cheese!" The guy to my right who was so serious , yet actually took out his phone and handed it to Wes so that he could also have a record of this strange tourist posing with them. It turned out these monks were visiting from Myanmar, so we were really all just tourists that day. I love that the cute old guy also had a smartphone and now also has a picture of me! Sometimes, we need to step out of our comfort zone and take a chance.

Next, it was time to board our ride (ambulance) out to Dhulikel to where SIRC is. We were all going to stay at the same hotel and drive back and forth for the workshops that were taking part over two days. We were there to do some work with a team from Switzerland and the workshops were being presented to mostly nursing students with some OT's and physios there as well. I was only going to be giving a short presentation, but I was still quite nervous! As much as everyone tried to reassure me, I still had the jitters.
The centre is a wonderful place with wide corridors, lots of outdoor space, and the sound of children laughing and enjoying time with their families. People who are brought to the centre are there for rehab and their family comes to stay with them and help with the process of rehabilitation and reintegration back to their villages. The work that is being done is quite extraordinary and it was such a pleasure to see the rewards of some of our work.

 My talk, of course went fine, and I was pleased to be able to contribute even just a little bit. I spoke about general teaching practices which may or may not have been applicable to the audience, but my friends reassured me that I did a good job. There was also a language delay with some of the audience which didn't really help with my jokes, or maybe it did!

SIRC entrance

This is me actually presenting!

After our day at SIRC, Wes and I once again had some time to explore and we decided to walk through the towns close to SIRC and our hotel.

We came upon a number of students of various ages on their way to school and many of them wanted to stop and chat while we were walking past. They wanted to practice their English so they were shouting, "Hello, how are you?" There are many private schools in Nepal and most of the students we saw were in uniform. We came upon a few groups on their way to school, so we asked to take some photos of the children of various ages.

Disney princess backpack!

We also took a walk to the Golden Buddha and to a hilltop temple where I came upon a woman with the most beautiful smile and she very kindly allowed me to take her picture.

This trip was so memorable in so many ways. It was wonderful for Scott and I to share these experiences and for him to bring me into his world just a little bit. We challenged ourselves physically and stretched ourselves to step out of our comfort zone. We met some wonderful people and had the opportunity to give back and be part of a world much larger than ours. I was able to teach a group about teaching and I so look forward to when we can go back and do more and see more. Thank you so much to Peter and Claire for finding a way to include me and give me a chance to be a part of the amazing work they are doing.
Namaste!
A few more random photos from various parts of our trip:

One of the many cows we saw in the city.

Political protest leading up to the election.

We called this guy the Nepali Ben Affleck. The best part was that he had never heard of Ben until we told him to look himup!

Buddhist nuns waiting to receive offerings.

Learning outside of the classroom-Nepal Part 1

We have been back from Nepal for over a month now and while I had hoped to blog while away and as soon as we got back, that did not prove as easy as I thought. I will do my best to give a brief overview of our trip and what the whole experience was like. I want to say from the outset; that the trip really exceeded my expectations; in terms of the trek, the work, the people, the landscape; all of it. I feel so fortunate that I was able to be part of this adventure.

We arrived in Kathmandu after 36 hours of travel, with plans on heading off after a day of rest to do our trek which would start in Jiri and head west for 8 days towards Phaplu. This trek would see us going through some beautiful scenery including getting glimpses of Everest and a harrowing plane and/or bus ride back to Kathmandu. It turned out though that when we got to KTM, we found out that the country was about to be shut down through a general strike, which would mean that we could be prevented from doing any traveling at all! We met with our guide Mingmar and luckily, he presented us with an alternate plan that would still have us doing a 9 day trek, but going in a completely different direction. We decided that we would be fine with whatever plan he came up with as we really just wanted to go on a trek! Our plan was to fly to Pokhara, hike up to Annapurna Base Camp, come back down, do Poon Hill and then back to Pokhara, so that is what we did.

A very cool Lama with his friends at the airport. 

Myself and Renji (Mingmar's son) waiting to board our plane.

Our group (Me, Scott, Rhonda, Wes) and our bags ready to start the trek in Phedi.

Stairs, stairs and more stairs...

Our home for our first night-Landrung

Trying to read outside; temperature dropped dramatically once the sun went behind the mountains. If we only knew how much colder it would get!

Each day quickly fell into the routine of eat, trek, eat, trek, drink beer, eat, sleep, with little variety in the food; great variety in the landscape and even greater variety in the quality of sleep and toilets. Mingmar was very good at making sure we went slowly enough and that we ate enough; in fact, we had to tell him that we didn't need as much food as he thought. The days were warm and sunny and the nights cold, colder and really cold. The highlight was definitely the views at Annapurna Base Camp and especially the views from the little excursion we did out to a ridge where the mountains loomed above us and the glacier was so far below us. The boys taught Renji how to form and throw a snowball (he had never seen snow before!)

Our group at 3100m

Mingmar and I peeking over the edge.

Mingmar, Scott and I taking a break.

Renji and his first snow.

Sunset on Fishtail

 When we were up at this height surrounded by the majestic mountains, we all had thoughts of, "Can we go higher?" "How much more can we do?" We were ill equipped to do more, but we understood the temptation that has brought mountaineers to Nepal for a hundred years or more. While we saw monuments to faller climbers, we were still lured by the adventure, challenge and risk and Scott and I are quite risk adverse, yet we wanted more. We felt small and insignificant in the shadows of the peaks, but also so fortunate that we are able to just be in the shadows and to bring home memories and photos of our little adventure.

Cozy, warm dinner in the teahouse at -10!

The way down after ABC was filled with warm, tropical days and many, many steps down. I learned that walking poles can be your friend and that runners are really all you need for a speedy descent. I think the biggest piece of learning I take back with me is how easy our lives are, yet we think we struggle so, and we need so much. Many of the villages we passed were a 3 or 4 day walk from a larger town with access to health care, food, etc. 3 or 4 days! The villages needed to be self-sufficient and to rely solely on porters who bring goods through on a semi-regular basis. There is no running to Safeway when you need milk, or popping into the clinic when you have the sniffles. While I can appreciate the proximity of health care if something goes seriously wrong, say you fall from a tree 

Woman cutting down feed for her animals in her sock feet and with a rather large gurkha knife.

and can't move, I do think we can learn to do more with less and to rely on our own ingenuity and intuition. There were a certain sense of calm in the villages that was not present in the larger towns we went to. We did only spend just over a week in the countryside; but I did achieve some of the perspective I was hoping I would find.

Dal bhaat: this was our standard meal for lunch and dinner; delicious and filling; free refills too!

Scott trying to carry our pack and Chandra, our porter helping him 

Beer o'clock!

All of us just before our descent into Ghorepani

Chill sunrise at Poon Hill

The trek was really made complete because of Mingmar our guide. We found him through a personal reference and we would highly recommend him to anyone doing any kind of trek in Nepal. He has climbed Everest 6 times and summited twice; amazing! He took incredibly good care of us and made sure we had an enjoyable and successful day everyday. That even included bringing us really good coffee from Kathmandu that he made especially for us every morning. He also pulled out emergency Snickers bars at a low point when everyone needed a little refueling. Mingmar told us about his life in his village growing up and his adventures as a cook, porter assistant and now guide. On our final night, he gathered us all for a special farewell dinner, complete with beer for everyone and a special cake that the teahouse staff made for us. Our porters, Chandra and Don Kumar also made sure we were happy and well cared for; and we bowed down to them for carrying our monster packs over the 8 days.  

Poon Hill Sunrise

Our final night; celebrating with our crew.

That's it for the first part of our journey. Next will be more about the work at SIRC and our days wandering the countryside.

Adventures Ahead

I feel like I have had many challenges as a principal and I recognize that I will continue to have them and that they are unpredictable and often out of our control. All of those challenges have helped me to grow and learn and I feel I have much more learning to do and I hope, many more opportunities to grow. This term has been one of pushing my own boundaries and challenging myself in and out of school. In my role as principal, I have been involved in developing a professional growth plan and sharing this with my staff. My goal was to visit each classroom once a week and see the learning that is going on. I have to admit that I have failed miserably at that; I have really only been in once a month to most of the classes. I am not discouraged however as I will continue to go on learning walks and find out what our students are learning and provide feedback to staff about what I am noticing. I am also quite determined to follow through on something once I have committed to a plan; so I will persevere. I am grateful for having a staff that welcomes me into their classrooms and wants to share their students' learning with me. I am noticing that we have wonderful learning happening and I feel I can speak with much greater integrity having been in classrooms. I also had the opportunity to go with one of our classes on a field trip and seeing learning in action outside and this confirmed for me that so much learning can happen outside of the classroom. In this particular class, there were several students who had never been in the forest before and they were amazed with everything they saw, touched, smelled and heard; and this was a Grade 7 class!

This year, we are also challenging our staff to begin a process of collaborative inquiry. I believe we are really all learners and that we all want our students to be successful and that we all want to develop our practice, and while it may be a little scary, it is also good to be a little scared and to be pushed. The challenge for me is to listen carefully, so that I know how much to push and encourage. I have also recruited some of the leaders at our school to help me gauge how the staff is feeling and if we are on the right track. I am very excited about this next phase for our staff and I know they will do amazing things. I am also excited about working with staff and supporting them with their learning. A resource I found quite helpful was the Edugains website out of Ontario: http://www.edugains.ca/newsite/plc/index.html  and particularly their work on PLC's.
Tomorrow, I am embarking on a big adventure that will stretch me as a person in every way. Scott and I are heading to Nepal to do some trekking from Jiri to Phalpu, and to do some work with a medical team from here and from Switzerland. We will be visiting a spinal chord injury rehabilitation hospital outside of Kathmandu where I will be delivering a talk on teaching principles to the medical and non-medical people at the centre.

I have a talk prepared, but I really feel incredibly challenged and out of my element in the medical world; but that's okay, remember I love a challenge! I will try to update my blog and to upload photos when I can. I have been telling the students in our school about my journey and hopefully they will learn a little bit about another part of the country. I feel incredibly grateful to my staff and particularly our vice-principal Joanne, for being such capable leaders that I feel very comfortable leaving the school in their hands. I believe we need to take advantages of opportunities as they arise and I will do my best to try to connect all the pieces of my amazing life when I come back and continue my journey here. For more information about the group I am travelling with and the work we are doing, please go to: http://spinepal.orthopaedics.med.ubc.ca/

A New Learning Journey-Feeling Greater Accountability and Liking It!

As I started this school year, the second at my school, I felt excited and ready to continue working with my staff. Many of the faces remained the same, but there were a couple of new ones, which prompted me to think about what to do at our first staff meeting. I decided I would start the same as last year with stating my values and my expectations of the staff. By doing this, I had to look at my values and make sure they were still the same and they were, as were my expectations. I believe that sharing these two with my staff is an exercise in vulnerability, but I did this last year and I believe it has made for better relationships and hopefully less assumptions. Here is what I shared with my staff:

1.     My Core Beliefs And Values (In No Particular Order)

                                                                 i.     Reflection-learning from mistakes

                                                               ii.     Continuous learning - we are all learners, experts and leaders

                                                              iii.     All children can learn and be successful

                                                              iv.     Relationships are everything

                                                               v.     Start with the end in mind - where are we going and how will we know when we get there? Share this with the students; it’s not a secret!

                                                              vi.     The students are our purpose, what is best for them is at the core of what we do.

                                                            vii.     Honest and open communication - my door is always open

                                                           viii.     Technology can be our friend

                                                              ix.     Parents send us their best kid(s)

2.    Some Basic Expectations I Have Of All Staff

                                                                 i.     We may disagree, but we never argue or yell.

                                                               ii.     Check email once a day. Both your personal mailbox and lee discussions. This is how I prefer to communicate.

- use “reply sender” as opposed to “reply”

                                                              iii.     Please don’t make assumptions about my actions. If you have a question, just ask.

                                                              iv.     No surprises for parents or me.

                                                               v.     Step up.

                                                              vi.     Invite me in.

I am also asking that people complete a goal planning sheet for themselves this year. To introduce the activity, I shared the following video with them and ask them to think about the theme of "Shake the Dust" as they completed their goal planning sheet. 

Most people have filled in and handed in their goal sheets and true to my word, I did not look at them; I just pinned them to my bulletin board where they will remain until June when we look at them again.

Gratitude for the Boston Marathon

I ran the Boston Marathon today and as I was running; I was making a list of all the things about the marathon I was grateful for and that I would want to include in a blog post. Here are some of the things I was grateful for throughout the first part of my day:
- the people at the athlete's village who gave me duct tape to fix my bag check bag
- the porta potties right at the start line that provided me with relief when I needed it
- the cheers throughout the course; especially the Boston College gang at mile 21
- the fact that I have a life that allows me to train for a marathon and then have the means to travel to take part in these events
- being healthy and strong enough to carry me across the line
- having Scott at the finish line to have dry clothes, chocolate milk and a big hug of congratulations
How would I know that at the end of the day, what I was most grateful for was that the people who were there with me were safe and that I crossed the line safely.

This is a photo of Scott and I after I crossed the line, found him and told him that I had a PB!!!
About half an hour after this, we heard two loud bangs and weren't sure what it was and didn't hear anything about it for a long time. It wasn't until we saw my training partner Pat and heard her experience from the day that the reality of what happened actually set in. Pat did not finish the marathon because a bomb went off in front of her and one behind her. She is fine, shaken and unsettled but fine. We then found out that people had died and many people were injured, at a running event! As we walked back to our hotel, the sirens were streaming past as on a non-stop basis; there was chaos throughout the downtown and again, I was grateful that we were safe. We made it back to our hotel and are watching the news and seeing the scenes of what happened and again, I am grateful.

People trying to get out of downtown and the emergency vehicles in the background.

I am also grateful for:
- all the concerned friends and family members who reached out to us to make sure we were safe
- the power of social media that told us details of what happened and could let our family know we were okay
- being able to go home to a country where this kind of threat isn't a concern
I was asked by a media person if I would do this run again and I said I would. This is an exceptional and historic event and it is run in a beautiful, welcoming city. I would likely be nervous to run here again, but I wouldn't want the organizers of this event or the people of Boston to feel that this event is a reflection of them; it is not. We still don't know the details of who is responsible for today and I am sure we will know soon enough and it won't make sense as these things never make sense. I will wear my medal proudly and with gratitude.

"What do you do for a living?"

This week I had two unusual encounters with random strangers that really made me think about how I answer the above question. The first was when I was getting my morning coffee at my local coffee shop. In the process of chatting about my weekend with the young woman who served me at the counter, she asked what I did for a job. I answered with, "I'm a principal at an elementary school." She paused and then said, "What do you really do? What is your job?" She said, "I kind of know what you do, but what is it really you do." Before I responded, I thought, here it is, it's the moment to give your "elevator" speech, about what you do. I really wasn't sure how to respond in a meaningful way that would capture all of what I do, so I answered with, "It's my job to keep everything moving forward. To make sure that students are safe, that staff are focused on learning, that parents know what's happening and that we are all moving together in the same direction." I then ended with what I always say, " I love my job and I think I have the best job."As I left, I realized that rarely do we get this opportunity to explain to strangers what we do for our job and I found I was grateful to the woman asking me the question as it really gave me pause to think. 

Later that evening I was at the Vancouver Canucks hockey game when a very chatty (and slightly nosy) fan next to us asked me what I did for a living and when I told him that I was a principal he asked what district and long story short, it turned out he is a parent in our district. What was interesting about this exchange was that he wanted to talk about the great experiences he children have had in Richmond schools. It made me very proud to talk about how terrific our schools are. He asked me for a bit more detail about my background and why I decided to become a principal. He seemed surprised when I said that I had never actually wanted to have the job I have and that I really enjoyed being a teacher and that I was glad that I still got to teach a fair bit. He was genuinely appreciative of the job all teachers do and it was gratifying to hear his thoughts.

Both of these exchanges were interesting in that it occurred to me first of all how seldom we actually chat with strangers and take the time to find out more about each other. We are so consumed with the importance of what we do that we don't often wonder about others. I think that is more of a comment of society that may be left for another blog post. 

What made me even more reflective is that I had an opportunity to share what I believe is so amazing about what I get to do each day and to give a first hand account of what happens in our schools. My goal is to continue to look for more of these opportunities and perhaps have my "elevator speech" in my back pocket so that I am more prepared the next time I am asked, "What do you do for a living?"