Spirits Of A Silent School

Silent_School_01This is the text of my address to the graduating class of 2016.

Every year, I prepare a graduation speech, and every year I face the same challenge.  I want to say something appropriate to the occasion of course, but I want it to be memorable, relevant and ideally strike an emotional chord with the listener.  My greatest hope is that when I have concluded, people might pause for a moment and think: ”That was nice. He spoke some good words there”.

I was looking for inspiration and I found it the other day when I was walking through the empty hallway of the school. The 3:30 bell had rung long before and everyone had gone home for the day.  In fact I may have been alone in the building at the time, as the only sounds to be heard were my steps on the crisp clean tiles.

A silent school is a very unusual thing.  Typically a hub of activity, one of the first things you notice when you are standing there alone, is that a school echoes in a funny way.   Walk down that hallway when classes are in session and you will hear students talking and laughing; you will hear abbreviated choruses of harmony emanating from the music room, the crisp crack of floor hockey sticks off of the gym floor, the squeak of a locker door followed by the deep thud of books being tossed inside – a humming microwave over here, a churning photocopier over there.  Above it all you will hear elevated “teaching voices” which inexplicably rise above everything else as they challenge students to solve an equation or respond to a short story.

And the smell…the smell of a busy school – that is hard to describe.  Imagine a mixture that included scented hair mousse, day old lunches, the sharp smell of washroom deodorizers, and the musty odor of sweaty gym class t-shirts.   At one end of the school, exhaust fumes from idling school busses seep through the cracks in the window casing, while at the other, some delightful cooking project in the home ec room fills the air with the aroma of fresh pizza dough or the sweet scent of cinnamon.

But in an empty school, it all changes.  It is silent.  No sights, sounds or smells compete for your attention.

Standing there in that empty hallway I paused, closed my eyes, and let my imagination re-create all the activity that occurred there.  I pictured the hundreds of people who walked those halls over the 55 years that building has been in existence and I swear that just for a moment, I felt myself standing there amongst every single one of them.

When you think back to your high school days, I suspect that what you immediately recall is not the ceremony, like this one, that marks the end of a your high school education.  I believe that most people think about those times that were largely unremarkable.  I believe they recall the sights and sounds of those busy school days that formed their routine, and where they were surrounded by the people they grew up with in the town they called home.

That is the school experience you carry with you.  But schools and communities evolve and ours are much different than they were 10 or 20 years ago.  They will be at least that much different 10 or 20 years from now.

However, just as I could sense the presence of those who at one time graced that empty hallway over the last 55 years, if you listen, you too can hear their echo.  It will ring in  your head and in your heart, as your experiences during these formative years  are reflected in your values, in your attitudes and in your actions.

I urge you graduates to take a moment at some point during the evening to step back and purposefully survey the people here in the room.  The group here on this stage is not likely to again be together in the same place at the same time.  With that in mind, take in everything you can to fuel fond memories upon which you may someday call when you are sitting in a quiet room and the excitement and emotion associated with high school graduation has faded.

You will soon have your diplomas in hand, and with that, you are leaving your grade school years behind you.  For some of you that might also mean leaving this little town as you move to your next stage in life.

But there is one thing I can tell you for certain:  Your school and your home town will never leave you.

Thank you, John Dewey.

Ripple_HallwayPutting Assessment in Context

It is at the conclusion of the semester that teachers are asked to make some of their most important decisions of the year. After months of creating engaging learning activities and working with students to provide them with opportunities to demonstrate knowledge of the learning outcomes, teachers must determine not only if the student has been successful in that regard, but also identify a grade which represents their level of achievement.

In most cases, it is a matter of identifying an accurate (albeit subjective) number that reflects where students stand relative to their peers. In others it involves a failing grade and accompanying commentary to justify that assessment. The world of assessment is far from black and white, and teachers often engage in an internal dialogue about what counts and what doesn’t, and wrestle with the how their assessment of the students’ abilities truly reflects what that student is able to do.

In some instances, the stakes are higher. A failing grade in a particular course can put a students’ graduation at risk. Rightly or wrongly, entrance into some post-secondary institutions is screened on the basis of high school marks.   The assessments that teachers make and the grades they assign can cause ripples well beyond the classroom.

The Big Question:

Some jurisdictions recognize a final mark must reflect teachers’ informed professional judgement. Where that is the case, there will be those occasions where one faces a dilemma, best captured in this question:

  • Has this student demonstrated a satisfactory understanding of the learning outcomes?

When I pose that question, I prefer to qualify two key elements:

  • Has this student demonstrated a satisfactory understanding of the learning outcomes?

Assessment must be considered on a case by case basis. We need personalize student achievement by looking closely at the student whom we are assessing, and putting the learning outcomes in context.

John_Dewey

Inspiration from the Past

When confronted with such a task, I take my inspiration from a trusted source. In “How We Think”, John Dewey articulated a number of concepts that resonate across the years. These ideals continue to have relevance and certainly have influenced my own responses.

Dewey writes about context: how a poor performing student may, when confronted with a different set of circumstances may achieve quite well. The point is that our assessment of a student is only relevant within the context of that particular learning environment. It is imperative that this reality is reflected in our assessment. We must know “this student” for this to occur.

Dewey also warns us about preoccupation with external standards. It is paramount that we help students learn how to think. Process, not product, should be our focus. In that sense, our evaluation should reflect more upon the journey toward achieving the “learning outcomes” rather than on whether or not the student ultimately reached the destination.

Teachers have the difficult task of determining pass or fail, or identifying a letter or number that somehow reflects a student’s level of achievement. This can only occur when they have a sound knowledge of the student as a learner and can exercise their professional judgement in assessing achievement of outcomes.

The evaluation of student achievement is an imperfect process and the grades we assign have implications well beyond our schools and classrooms.

Our assessments of students must consider these realities.

The Shortcoming of a High School Diploma

Graduation_icon

The following is the text of my Principal’s Address to the High School Graduates of 2015.

To receive a high school diploma in this province, a student must complete a minimum of 30 credits and meet the graduation requirements in one of the four recognized programs. That means the student must have successfully completed a certain number of credits in English, Math, History and so on.

That’s it.  That is the basis on which a high school diploma is awarded.

For various and largely historical reasons, our society has structured the educational system in such a way that one is expected to start school at a certain age, develop abilities to read, to write, to understand Mathematics and have some knowledge of Geography and History and various other subjects. One generally completes the public education program within a prescribed number of years, at the conclusion of which a high school diploma is presented.

So what does it mean to have a high school diploma?  Does it mean that the recipient would be a good employee? No, not necessarily.  Does it mean that the person is likely to be successful in post-secondary study? No, it is no guarantee of that.  Does it mean that he or she is dependable, hard-working, responsible, or possesses the characteristics of a good and compassionate friend? No, it doesn’t directly mean any of those things.

Of course, the habits and personal attributes that help a person successfully navigate through high school may very well transfer over into helping achieve success in whatever the next stage of life might bring. That much is true.

But make no mistake; a high school diploma, by our own Department of Education’s definition, simply represents that the recipient has demonstrated knowledge of particular learning outcomes, and earned the prescribed number of credits.

That’s all.

The reality however is that the educational process is a lot messier, and far richer, than that.

Grad_graphicLater in this event, we will be distributing high school diplomas. That has traditionally been the high point of our graduation event. Like an exclamation point at the end of a sentence, it punctuates the graduation ceremony with a crescendo like ending. Understand however that the diplomas we hand out are really not the focus of this event. I say that because high school graduation is less about the paper and more about the person.

When guests walked into this banquet hall today, they may have noticed the names and pictures of each individual graduate posted on the wall. The name of every student is prominently listed in the graduation program. When the Valedictory address is given later in the program, I suspect it will reference the unique characteristics of each student, and how those people enriched the social fabric of the school.

Therein lies the shortcoming of high school diplomas. They fail to tell the stories of how they were achieved. It is those stories and each person’s experience that brought them to this point that is really the focus of this celebration.

In this province, high school diplomas are created and distributed by the Department of Education, and each school in turn prepares them for their graduates. This gives us a little bit of control over how they look, and I want you to know that I consciously chose to have them prepared so that the item in the largest font – the one thing that stands out above everything else – is not my signature, not the name of the province, and not the name of the school. It is not even the words “high school diploma”.  It is the name of the graduate.

Your name is the most import thing on the diploma, and your individual stories are what we are celebrating here today.  That is what graduation is all about.

It’s not about the paper.

It’s about you.

Failing to fail: Why Youth Need to Face Adversity.

CliffFrom time to time, I hear former students share the observation that the post secondary world is nothing like high school. Frequently they will state that the “real world” is much less forgiving. Perhaps that should come as no surprise, as school systems pride themselves on creating positive, nurturing learning environments.

This real-world shock is more profound as we shift to outcome based education and the corresponding decreased reliance on marks and due dates. Schools are more concerned about a student’s ability to demonstrate knowledge and less concerned about that occurring at a particular time in the school year. As a result, there has been a softening of the demands around due dates and deadlines. On the one hand, that would seem to be a reasonable offshoot of a competency based focus. On the other, this is frequently identified as a factor that contributes to the difficulty of adjusting to a deadline oriented post secondary world.

Can we really trace students’ accountability struggles to a decreasing emphasis on high school due dates?  While that may be a contributing element, it is likely only one piece of a much bigger picture.

To what degree do parents bear responsibility in preparing their children for the post secondary world?  Some parents realize that rebounding from failure builds resiliency. Yet others feel compelled to shield their children from failure by playing a more protective role than they probably should. This is the generation that yielded the term “helicopter parent” to describe those parents that, rightly or wrongly, plan and organize their children’s lives and largely navigate the challenges on their behalf.

This well intended but ultimately misguided approach to parenting does little to build the child’s ability to respond to adversity and instead enables dependency on the parent.  When the post secondary world arrives at the doorstep – whether that be college / university study or entrance into the working world – it should come as no surprise that these young people will learn some hard lessons about what it means to be a responsible adult.

We do no favours for our children when we shield them from adversity. Part of our shared school – community responsibility is to help them learn from this experience. Truly, failure is not something from which we need to protect our children.

Life will always present it’s challenges.  It is how we respond to them that builds character.

Graduation: Not Just a Celebration of Student Achievement.

grad-capThe following is the text of my Principal’s Address to the High School Graduates of 2014.

My mother was the type of person who was cautious about throwing an item away, always thinking that someone might have a use for it someday. So when rummaging through a box of papers some time back, I was not surprised to come across something that I had thought was thrown out long ago.  It was a hand written copy the first graduation speech I ever delivered.  What I mean is that this was the speech I wrote and gave at my own high school graduation.  A speech that I delivered as a very nervous seventeen year old to a crowd much like this one.

I took it out of the dusty brown envelope, sat cross legged on the floor and began to read the words I had written many years ago.  After silently going over nearly all of the speech, I put it down and thought:  how embarrassing!

I could see that I attempted to be witty, and I guess I wrote the best speech I was capable of at that point in my life. Really, I was just glad that the speech was 37 years in the past and delivered in the days before anyone owned a video camera, so I could be certain that no one had any record or memory of those awkward words.

But the last paragraph of that speech was different.  Maybe I felt it would be appropriate for me to end on a serious note.  And as I reflected upon the closing paragraph, I realized that what I wrote then still holds true today.  In fact, it is highly appropriate to share it with you right now, since, I wrote it on the occasion of a high school graduation and I wrote it when I was as old as the people up on this stage today.  Here is what it said:

“Remember that we owe a lot to the people that are with us here today, for they have influenced us, and helped us to become who and what we are.  In a lot of ways, a school is a little world in itself, a world where we learn how to solve problems and adjust to different situations.  Sometimes we mess up, but that is kind of what school is for too.  And when we run into obstacles, we have people around us to help show us the way.”

I did not realize it at the time, but I know now that what I was referring to was a sense of community.  The importance of community is an enduring reality.  The strength that comes from a caring supportive community is as powerful now as it was then.

I look around this room and I see proud parents, grandparents, relatives and friends. I see teachers, educational assistants, secretaries, bus drivers and custodians. You are here because you care and because you want to share in this wonderful community celebration.  You are here, because you are the community.  And while we are here to celebrate the graduation of these students, we also celebrate your contribution in making this happen.

So on behalf of the person you see standing here before you as well as on behalf of my seventeen year old self who is speaking to you from across the years, I wish all the best to these young people, and extend my gratitude to all of you who have provided the support and encouragement that makes their high school graduation a reality.

Graduating? Good. You SHOULD Be Graduating.

The following is the text of my Principal’s Address to the High School Graduates of 2013.

globe_gradIt is a pleasure to address you on this, your graduation day.  You should be proud of an accomplishment that marks a milestone in your life.  The comfortable routine to which you have grown accustomed will now significantly change.  You will observe life becoming different for you now that you are graduating from high school.

When I think about where we live and the riches we enjoy as Canadians, I can’t help but think: you should be graduating.  With the advantages we enjoy,  I fully expect all Canadian youth to earn their high school diploma. That is not to say people do not face their challenges in life.  Of course they do.  It is just that we have been given this wonderful opportunity by virtue of where we live.

One thing is clear however: the reason you are graduating has a lot to do with what you are and what you are not.

Let’s start with what you are:

  • We hear about politically unstable countries all the time.  The last political uprising in Canada took place in 1837 – well before Canada was even a country.  You are a citizen of one of the most politically stable nations in the world.
  • Only 15 percent of countries in this world enjoy full democracy. Canada is one of them.  It is difficult if not impossible to rank countries based on how democratic they are, but Canadians enjoy not only fundamental freedoms, but the right to vote, to live and work where they want, and equal benefit of the law without discrimination. You are a citizen of one of the most democratic countries of the world.
  • According to the International Monetary Fund’s ranking of 187 nations from richest to poorest, Canada ranks number 9.  You are a citizen of a tremendously wealthy nation.
  • The wealthiest nations tend to also be the most educated ones as well. Where does Canada rank on this list?  Number one.  You are a citizen of the most educated nation in the world.

Now, let’s consider what you are not:

  • Half of the children in this world live in poverty.  You are not one of them.
  • In the developing world, 1 in 3 children do not have access to adequate shelter,1 in 5 children to not have access to safe drinking water, and 1 in 7 children have no access to health service.  You are not one of them.
  • There are 121 million children worldwide who are not taking part in a program of basic education.  You are not one of them
  • Approximately half the world’s population now live in cities and towns. In 2005, one out of three urban dwellers, or approximately 1 billion people, was living in slum conditions.  You are not one of them.
  • 1.6 billion people — that is about a quarter of the entire world population — live without electricity.  You are not one of them.
  • Approximatley 790 million people in the developing world are chronically undernourished.  You are not one of them
  • There are nearly a billion people in this world unable to read or even write their own names.  You are not one of them.
  • Right now, children are being recruited to fight as soldiers.  In fact, there are presently an estimated 300,000 child soldiers in at least twenty countries.  You are not one of them.

We live in a world that is very unfair.  Where you were born has a tremendous impact on what life has in store for you.  You are living a life of wealth and opportunity that countless people your age cannot imagine or ever hope to experience.

What are you prepared to do about that?  What role will you play in providing for others the opportunities that you yourselves have enjoyed?

You are graduating from high school – as you should be. But I hope that you realize that this is about more than simply graduating from high school. You see, you are also graduating to a higher level of obligation, a higher level of expectation and a higher level of responsibility to improve our world.

I stated at the beginning of this speech that you will observe life becoming different for you now that you are leaving high school. What will be your contribution in making things different for others?

Sources:

The World’s Most Politically Stable Countries and Most Politically Unstable Countries

International Monetary Fund

Time News Feed: And the World’s Most Educated Country Is…

Global rate of adult literacy: 84 per cent, but 775 million people still can’t read KATE HAMMER EDUCATION REPORTER Globe and Mail

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