Rainy Day Ramblings

Already November and my last post was July. Pathetic, but doesn't mean I haven't been thinking, just means I haven't been sure what to write about; how to choose which of my rambling thoughts do I want to put into some form of intelligent writing. I am at a new school this year and I am still settling in and getting a lay of the land. Coming to a new school is an opportunity to reinvent myself or to do all the things I had intended to do at my previous school. I think what I have discovered is that I don't actually want to reinvent myself, I like who I am, but I do still want to do things differently and be my better self. I heard a quote today that I like: "Complacency breeds mediocrity." I want to be better than mediocre as a leader at our school. And I hope that the people at our school would want the same for themselves and our students.
I told staff at our beginning staff meeting what my beliefs and values are and here they are:
 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 kids

                                               I want to live these values and show they are really what I believe. I also want us as a staff to say what we believe for ourselves and for our school; these are difficult conversations to have, but extremely important ones. I also told the staff that my personal goals for the year are: model, inspire and celebrate. Easier said than done, I'm finding.  I just finished Brene Brown's book, "Daring Greatly"and she talks about being vulnerable and how to embrace vulnerability. I think I will add this to my goals, to not be afraid to try, to not be so hard on ourselves when we do try and fail and to realize that everyone is really just trying their best. I am looking forward to a great deal of learning this year, lucky me!

Thank You

5 years. A lot can happen in 5 years. There can be births, deaths, marriages and divorces. Children learn to read and write and run and play basketball and walk down the hall in a line. People form close bonds and learn to trust and count on each other. All of these things have happened over the last 5 years during my time at Thompson. As I said in my last post (yes, I know it was a long time ago), I have many, many memories of the last 5 years of the children, staff and parents I met and worked with at Thompson. The group  above is quite the exceptional group of people. They sang me a song yesterday that made me laugh and cry and confirmed for me yet again, how grateful I am to have been able to work with them.
When I think back on my 5 years, I hope I have left a legacy, although I am not sure what that legacy might be. I hope it would be a legacy of caring and learning. When I reflect on my time at Thompson, I have great pride and no regrets. I know I learned a tremendous amount about how to work with a group of people and I hope I have learned from the mistakes I have made. I did make mistakes and at the moment I made some of the decisions I made, I thought they were the best decision at the time. With time and reflection, I probably would make different decisions when confronted with the same situation. I also have great pride for the things I added to the school and I hope they will also be part of my legacy.

I am still sorting out what it means to me to be a leader and what my leadership style is. What I do know is that one person alone does not lead a school. I believe one person guides others to lead and provides encouragement as needed. I like to get out of people's way when they are on a roll and to be there to provide support. I think the same applies to the students we work with. They are leaders and can be given many ways to show that leadership. We need to listen to them and to really hear their stories.
As I move on to be a Lee Lion, I will continue my learning journey and will do my best to continue sharing my learning.
But now it is summer, which for me means a time for rest and reflection... and sleeping in!

Starting to say good-bye

My First Terry Fox Run-2007

About six weeks ago, I had the difficult task of telling the staff, students and parents at my school that I would be moving to a new school for the next school year. I felt sick as I was telling people and saw the sad eyes looking back at me. I know the school will be fine, and the new principal will be loved by all, and I will very soon be a distant memory, but I'm still sad and my reasons for feeling sad are actually quite selfish. I am sad because I feel like this school is my home; I love coming here everyday, I really do. This is the school where I became a principal.
When I arrived at the school 5 years ago, I had the title of principal but I didn't know what that really meant and I now I am beginning to learn what it is to be a principal and I have the community here at Thompson to thank for teaching me how to be and guiding me when I forget. I have had enormous challenges here and I have learned how to brave, to stick by what I believe and to really realize that what we do everyday is about building and maintaining relationships. If children feel loved and cared for (I believe these are two different things), then they will learn and they will be happy. Over the next few weeks, I will share my memories and my gratitude. In my head, I am beginning to make the transition to my new school, my heart will follow soon.

Kes and Emerson-2007-They Are Now Both in Grade 6

Learning to set goals...

When I began this blog, I was super keen and thought I would do all kinds of writing and I think I did an okay job. I had stories to tell about iPads and new learning, but now that school has gotten quite crazy busy, I've realized that writing is not something I naturally turn to when I want to communicate what is happening in my world. I think I also probably thought that I didn't have really anything interesting to share. So, to get back at it, I thought I would share something that happened in my personal world that also crosses over into my school world.
I am a fairly active person and I like to talk to students about my athletic pursuits so they can see that even old people can be active and especially that even old "girls" can be active. I also like to talk to them about goal setting and that I am always setting goals and I typically have a plan to help me achieve my goals. I also tell them that I need to have a team of people to help me achieve my goals and I ask the students to think about their own goals and who their team is that helps them achieve their goals. For some students they can relate very easily to me, like Matthew, who is 10 and a swimmer and his goal is to go to the Olympics. I am quite convinced that he will make it there and he knows at this early age that he will have to work very hard to get to the podium and that he has to set short term goals in order to get to his long term goal. I love having these kinds of conversations with students because we are relating to each other as athletes and not as principal and student.

The most recent goal I set for myself was to achieve a personal best at the Vancouver Marathon. I had a bad bout of injuries last year and this year I wanted to see what my recovered body could do. I told the students in Mrs. Dow's Grade 5/6 class about my goals and that I actually had three goals for the race. My first goal in any race is always just to finish. My second goal was to get under 3:45, which has been my goal for the past 4 years. My "the stars aligned" goal was under 3:40. Well, the day came and went and I did achieve all my goals: I finished and I went under 3:40. I suffered some minor trauma to my foot: I actually loved showing this photo to the students because it is sooo disgusting!!! I also was pretty proud to tell them that I had achieved my goal with the help of a lot of people, including them.

Jump Rope for Heart

It has been a little challenging this year to try to do school-wide activities, so it was such a relief and so much fun to do our Jump Rope for Heart activity last Friday. We met as a committee to plan the event and one of the main things we wanted to have happen this year is that kids got into the gym in multi-age groups to skip and shoot hoops. I worked with one of our teachers and our two UBC teacher candidates who had some great ideas about what to do and it was so nice to sit and talk about what our plans are.

We had 3 classes at a time go into the gym to run through 7 stations over a 45 minute period. That all sounds pretty straight forward and not that exciting, but once we got the kids into the gym, explained what they had to do and turned on the music (loud), the real fun began.
The older students played and helped the younger students and the younger students learned some new skills. In the picture to the right, you can see Ramon, Grade 7 and Karen, Kindergarten doing buddy jumping, so great!!!

The kids left the gym sweaty, smiling, happy and I hope proud of themselves for working together as teams of kids. What this morning showed me is that despite what's going on in the political arena, school's are still lively places with teachers involved in making school be about more than just a great math lesson; they are places where students are having fun with each other and with their teachers. This year will pass and I am hopeful that we will be left with mostly the memories of kids smiling, jumping and laughing.

The Tigers that Live in My Office

It's been ages since my last post and I'm determined to keep up with this blog-thing, so here we go again. There was Spring Break and Easter which interrupted things, but that really is no excuse.
In the picture to the left are my tigers; these are the tigers that live in my office. It's really not as scary as it sounds because as you can tell most of them are small and all of them are not real. A few of them have stories and all of them are big attractions in my office. First I want to tell you about the small one to the right of the group. This tiger came to me a few years ago by way of Trinity. At the time, Trinity was in Grade 1 and she gave me this tiger for Valentine's Day. It used to have a homemade heart-shaped tag around it's neck that said, "Happy Valentine's Day", but that has long since disappeared. I love this tiger for a few reasons; first, it came from Trinity who found it at a garage sale and thought I might like it, so she brought it to school. Secondly, it's legs move, so when I have some spare time I can actually play with the tiger and have him pose, third and most important, the tiger has a small button on it's neck that when you press it, it roars. And it's a pretty good roar, so good that I have at least one child stop by my office each day to ask if they can press the tiger and make it roar.
The big tiger (Tom) came with the office, which is kind of the end of its story except that each day, a boy in Grade 3, Jamal, comes to visit the big tiger (and to press the button on the small tiger). This started a few months ago when Jamal decided that visiting my office needed to be part of his daily routine (lucky me!). Jamal comes to my door with his EA and he knows to ask to come in (which he does), asks if he can hold my tiger and then spends a few minutes cuddling with the tiger and chatting to his EA and me about the latest video game he has been playing. I have to admit that I love when he shows up at my door for his visit. Whatever seemingly important thing I had been working on screeches to a halt and my attention goes to him. Today, he brought me a new tiger for my collection, the one beside Tigger. This tiger came from Room 2 where Jamal spends some time each day and we thought new tiger might be more comfortable with some friends. Jamal arranged all the tigers so they would be close and cosy; I added the plastic one on the right for my blog photoshoot.
The other two tigers just came from home when we were cleaning out the stuffy bin. But I bet in a few years they will have stories of their own! Oh, I think I forgot to mention that we are the Thompson Tigers, which is the real reason I have tigers in my office!

Pink Day at Thompson

Today is day 2 of the teacher's strike and I was thinking about how I would tie that into my blog, or even if I should and I decided the best way to do that was to tell about our Pink Day here at Thompson on February 29. Like many schools we take this day quite seriously and both our staff and student council like to get involved and this year was no exception. Our student council made a movie to show why we recognize Pink Day as an anti-bullying day and our staff planned an activity for our family teams to do. What are family teams you ask? Well, they are basically teams of kids from Kindergarten to Grade 7 that meet from time to time throughout the year to do various activities together.

The Grade 6 and 7 students are the captains and co-captains of the teams and it is their responsibility to make sure the activity goes according to plan, that no children are in tears at any point during the activity and that everyone has fun and feels included. Our students always rise to the challenge and do an exceptional job as leaders of their teams. We try to keep students on the same teams throughout their elementary years so that they really get to know one another and form close connections with their teammates.

So, how does this relate to what is happening politically in our province around education? The parallels are endless I think, but a few obvious ones are: the power of strong leadership, the importance of collaboration and teamwork, how important it is that everyone feels they have a voice, how much staff at our school do to make a difference in the lives of the students they work with...

iPads in Action!

I have struggled with how to tell the latest news about our iPad journey and I have started this post about 3 times now, but I think I need to start with some gratitude for a few people. First, I need to thank Rosamar Garcia who delivered our district's mobile iPad lab to us and not only did she deliver it to us, she spent some time walking us through the basics (how do you turn it on?), to showing us some really cool apps. People started to get excited and off they went with their new little best friends clad in white vinyl. Next I need to give a huge thanks to the staff at Blair and in particular to their principal, Mark Hoath, who took all of the iPads we have (all 27 of them), and offered to sync them all for us. What a world of difference that has made for us as now all of the iPads have the same apps. I know, I know, that is what syncing does; there really isn't anything magical to it. Let me tell you, there is magic at work here.

Once we got them back. we were able to start using them. And, staff were also able to take them home again and get to know some of the new apps.

I decided I would be bold and continue on my journey and try out the iPads with the classes I take to the computer lab. Again, there was magic at work. When these students get a hold of their own device, it really is a lovely thing to see; they just jumped right in and figured out what to do! They were like little word explorers, boldly striking forth with both curiousity and confidence, happy to welcome any new challenge that came along. Their squeals of excitement that came from the pure joy of discovery gave me chills and made me think that maybe we are on to something here.

One of the most dreaded moments as a principal is when you have to announce that it is an inside day. Everyone, students and staff alike dread these words as we know it generally means our 45 minute lunch can feel like a 3 hour lunch. Students typically don't know what to do with themselves, which means they can often wreak havoc. This week I had to make the dreaded announcement and off I went to supervise in the computer lab which we open as a place of refuge during wet rainy lunch days. This day was different; this day I said students could either use the desktop computers, or..... iPads!!!

Many students asked for the iPads and then realized that they had nowhere to sit as many students were sitting in front of computers occupying that space. When I pointed out that all they really needed was a chair, they formed these little mixed grade groupings to explore the devices; what an amazing sight to see!

Now, I know I haven't really talked about any great educational applications (yet), but that will come soon. I was just so pleased with the enthusiasm and excitement I saw when we put these devices in even the smallest hands. The students are marching back to class thrilled with what they have done and that which I had very little part in creating. My next hope is that more of our teachers will catch the enthusiasm and take some baby steps on their own journeys.

Pumper Truck Visit

 I often tell people that I have the best job and one example of that was last week when Ms. Byrne, one of our Kindergarten/Grade 1 teachers asked if I would help supervise her class when the pumper truck came to visit our school. You see, the pumper truck is a HUGE deal for these  6 and 7 year olds. They get to get up close and personal with not only the firefighters, but they also get to climb up into the truck and see how it all works. The students have been learning all about community helpers and their brilliant teachers (Ms. Byrne and Mrs. Rose) invited the truck to come to us. This is always a slightly dicey move as sometimes the truck (and the firefighters) have to actually report for duty and so they may have to cancel their visit if duty calls. But not this time. Both of our Kindergarten/Grade 1 classes got to have a look and ask lots of questions and I think that was my favourite part. "What's this?" was asked about 3 thousand times and the firefighters very calmly and patiently showed all the cool stuff on the track and explained what it did. The kids learned way more from each other and the firefighters than they would have from looking at books. The highlight of the day was of course when the fire crew had to leave with their sirens going because they got a call. Thank you to the students of Division 9 for letting me watch and enjoy your curiosity and thank you to all of the staff from these two classes for organizing such a fabulous learning experience!

Evan and Isaac; so excited!!!

Learning from Captain Dave.

Burla-future fire captain?

Division 9 students looking on.

Amber, Sam and Jem looking at the hoses.

Adrian-"Can I ring the siren?"

The crew from Division 8.

Sammi driving the truck.

Joven ready to go!

Kai and Derek learning from firefighter Bola.

Amber driving the truck.

More Ok Go

In a previous post, I shared a music video by the band Ok Go. They now have a new music video (see above). The video is pretty cool, actually very cool and worth watching a couple of times. It is also worth going to www.caranddriver.com to learn about the making of the video. Why am I including the video in my blog? Well, for me showing these videos in the computer lab with the classes I teach is a great and easy way to integrate technology into what we do and show kids the variety of things that are available on the net. What was especially satisfying for me yesterday was when I brought my Grade 4/5 class to the lab and said, " I'm really excited, I have a surprise for you!" and one of the students said, "I know what it is, "Ok Go" has a new video." At first I was a little disappointed that he had burst my bubble, but then I realized that he was excited about something I had shown him in the lab, something that he may not have been aware of before. Once we watched the video, the kids commented about how it compared to the band's other videos, and I had them do some writing about that (see Division 3 folder). Their opinions are still developing, but I appreciate how they are trying to think critically and make comparisons. I hope to do the same thing today with my Grade 3/4 group. Look for their writing in the Division 4 folder.

Last week, the elementary principals and vice-principals took a little field trip and got to go to the Apple Canada offices here in Richmond. We spent a good deal of our time there "oohing and aahing" over things like the cool coffee maker, the floor to ceiling white board walls (is he really going to write on the walls??) and the two 103" plasma screens in the main classroom. We were also impressed that they would do FREE afterschool sessions with staff and/or parents and to think of their facility as an extension of our schools.
I appreciate Apple's efforts to help and I try not to be too cynical about this effort ie. they just want us to buy more stuff. They do make really great, creative products that we will be using for many years to come, and the people we met were enthusiastic about what their products can do for us and for our students. If they are truly the only game in town and they provide something we want and perhaps need, then let's play. Let's also talk to our students about the fact that Apple may be at the forefront, and may make things that kids feel they can't live without, but that they are a business with a ton of money to put into advertising to convince us that we are not complete without an iPad. I guess this topic leads us into what it means to be a digital citizen... My musings for a Monday morning.
PS I also finished the Steve Jobs biography yesterday. Great read and certainly gave insight into the man and the company. Let's put it this way, I would still drink the kool-aid if he handed it to me.

They just keep multiplying!!!

We went from 2 to 26 overnight (iPads that is); now I'm really asking, "Now what???" and "Why and how?" I think I'm at the point where I have far more questions than I do answers and that seems to be a common thread in my conversations with people. I think we just need to keep the conversations going and keep the "why" at the forefront.
In the meantime, I keep trying to find ways to add kids work to this blog because I want them to see themselves as part of the technology and that technology is about much more than playing games. So for now, I will start slow and keep asking questions. Answers anyone???

Cue iPads, now what???

You know that feeling when you wake up on your birthday and you know it's going to be an amazing day, but you really don't know exactly what's going to happen? You may have an idea of what you would like to happen, but sometimes it's out of your control. That's kind of how I'm feeling this week. The technology train is about to roll into Thompson station, but who knows what the cargo is or where the train is heading next?
We have our school district's mobile iPad lab on the way and two of the 5 iPads we've ordered have arrived. Now what??? I just keep thinking how great this will be, but I'm not sure how or why. I keep hoping someone will magically appear and tell us what to do and what we need, then I pause and think, "No wait, maybe I need to be that person." That fills me with equal parts excitement and panic. I know very little about what this new technology can offer, but I guarantee I will be learning it from someone like Amber (with the headphones on). I also know I need to step aside and listen to Amber and to all the others in our school who know so much more than me.
Stay tuned for where the train goes next!

Well, the snow finally arrived and with it came shoveling, mopping and salting, but even better than all of those things, there also came snow angels, snow forts and attempts at making snow people. Out we went for recess and lunch, despite the frigid West Coast temperature of -2. 
A special thank you to Mike for helping out at recess and making sure the snow throwing was kept to a minimum; we are so mean I know!!!

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass - Rube Goldberg Machine version - Official

I've shown this video now to three classes ranging from Grade 2 to Grade 5. Most of the responses have been, "Cool, Awesome..." The best response though came from Shane (Grade 5) at the end of the day. I was lucky enough to hear this while out in the parking lot saying good-bye to everyone. Shane and two of his buddies were arranging a play date so they could go to Dimtri's house to build a Rube Goldberg machine. When I was outside on recess duty the next day, I asked Dimitri about it and he said it was fun but really hard and it didn't really work, but that he is going home again today to try again.

First Post!!!

Where to start? I kind of feel like my first blog is like being the new kid at school; what kind of impression do I want to make? Do I want to come across as witty, intelligent, fun, reflective, or a combination of all of the above? I think more than anything, I would want to be the kind of student that fits in easily and makes some good friends.
I hope to share what kinds of things I am thinking about, questions I have, and more importantly, what kinds of things keep me going both at work and at play.