People are strange when you're a stranger (The Doors)

Photo by Dylan Gillis on Unsplash

Last week the senior school teachers travelled to Palmerston North to meet the students from Hawera, Wellington, Hastings, and PN campuses.

Some random thoughts:

There's nothing like human contact. Interestingly, I heard staff remarking on things like how tall or how short some students (and staff) were. Connections are important. Humans come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Sometimes we forget when that human is just a square on a screen. We can empathise much more if we have that valuable human contact.

Many staff came prepared with games or activities for students to interact with while they were meeting them. Great idea I thought. Takes the awkwardness away from the situation, and adds a fun element.

Sunny PN weather really helped create a good vibe. The PN event was also the third of three so it was able to learn from the previous two.

Size matters - the PN Learning Centre area is massive and well suited to having 400 people visit. Having and inside, outside option really helped.

I was busy - collecting students, talking with staff, doing errands (servant leadership), aiming to do a report of MAP Growth trends off and on, and having restorative chats with some of my students when called upon.

The day went quickly!

Viewing static images rapidly in succession creates an illusion of motion, illusion of life.

Recently, a colleague and I were talking about a thriller she was recommending and we were discussing the requirement for every piece of literature/film to have dramatic tension - otherwise it's a Hallmark card.

As Seth says: 

Awareness without tension is useless.

The tension is like pulling back a rubber band.

And then the third step, so important it’s often ignored, is:

Why would the person who became aware and then experienced the tension and release… tell someone else?

So, to recap: 

Tell 10 people.
Create tension among the 10 so they take action.
The action causes each of them to tell 10 people.

Yesterday my wife and I saw Empire Of Light (btw, we were the only people in the audience - when we left at 9.00pm the only other person in the Civic Theatre in Waipukarau was the manager - a lovely lady who is clearly passionate about film - hurrah!!)

Anyway - the dramatic story underlined Seth's point. It is a dramatic film by Sam Mendes (starring Olivia Coleman) which is all about a community of people, relationships, racism, ageism, and mental health. Chock full of tension.

Go see it, if you can. It's excellent (shot beautifully evoking 1980-1981 Britain brilliantly). 

Tell 10 people!!

Got some good advice to give you, lots of things you oughta know (Ry Cooder)

As you all know, I'm fond of that expression, "Some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you".

An example of each for your edification:

It's been a tough old week, I'm bound to say. Graduation Week for last year's Year 13 class is always manic, stressful, and challenging time wise. 

It's over for another year, thank goodness. Today's ceremony was fine, I felt. Only a couple of stuff ups on my part.

My stuff ups are so public and I've learnt to let them go fairly quickly. I remarked to someone today before the ceremony that when you're on stage it's like you're in quicksand. The harder you struggle over blemishes the worse it gets.

The glare of the lights in your face, the need for total awareness makes my brain jump quickly to decisions - right or wrong. And there's no walking them back.

One parent caught one of the stuff ups which I hadn't noticed at the time. Even if I had noticed I would have had to just swallow hard and keep going.

The bear didn't eat all of me...

This week, I've also completed that 6 week leadership course. Pretty good going given this is week 5 of the course. I really enjoyed it but I won't miss the extra layer of challenge to get all the usual things done.

Here we make sanctity consist in being joyful all the time and in faithfully performing our duties (Saint Dominic Savio)

Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash

The results of a team effectiveness questionnaire that I conducted recently showed that we are a high performing team with three clear strengths: 

• We encourage divergence and innovation (new ideas are welcomed and actively sought out and problems are seen as opportunities. Innovation is not seen as a threat. We all feel able to ask ‘naïve’ questions. At any one time someone in the team is thinking about how we might do something better)
• We celebrate and exploit diversity (different opinions are sought to reach more innovative solutions. We have the skills to reach mutually respectful understanding, while still disagreeing)
• We like to share learning and improve (we are curious, like to experiment and are keen to learn. We share our knowledge and skills willingly)

The two clear things we need to work on:

• Clarify vision, set targets and boundaries (we need more clarity around our purpose, where our individual responsibilities lie and how we are contributing to the overall picture. We need to work on clarifying roles, giving clear direction and creating a sense of purpose)
• Maintain vibrant internal communication (while face-to-face contact is preferable; short, frequent and informal contact should become routine).

This gives some clear direction for me to work on. 

I don't know

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Seth Godin speaks of the power of 'I don't know'.

For him, 'Not knowing is going to happen. Acknowledging it is a sign of confidence and awareness'.

I've not considered this before - the power of acknowledging that you don't know something.

It happens often for me. I get asked questions all day long - by students, by staff, by fellow Campus Principals, by trustees, by parents. I say it a lot at home.

More often than not, maybe 70 per cent of the time, I do know the answer. And when I don't, I aim to find out.

Mostly, I have no problem saying 'I don't know'. To claim otherwise is stoopid.

Time fell away and by chance there I was back in the day (Roy Harper)

Photo by Laura Fuhrman on Unsplash

Memory.

This week, I was asked for a memory of a time when communication became distorted. I responded with an incident that happened about 35 years ago (the incident isn't important any more. It was 35 years ago!)

My memory is pretty vivid for that moment though. Still.

Oh okay. Here it is:

In 1989 while teaching in Nelson, I was on a school camp. A guide and I had taken students up a mountain and while there discovered a student had brought marijuana along. The guide and the student returned to base camp, while I waited and came down off the mountain with the rest of the students. When I got back to base camp some time later I rang my wife who told me she knew everything as a local newspaper had already published a story which contained many inaccuracies. Basically, their angle was blaming the teachers, asking what we were doing while this was going on and basing their story on the testimony of the student and his parents. I was incensed and spoke to the Principal, desperate to get our 'truth' out there. He told me that we couldn't win with a 'he said, she said' battle with the newspaper. So the sense of injustice lingers. He was right btw - no way to win against the press.

But is all that accurate? Although the memory can play tricks, it's certainly as I remember it.