“If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.” Admiral William H. McRaven, delivered during his May 17, 2014, commencement address at the University of Texas at Austin. Make Your Bed It seems I’ve come rather late to the party, as I’ve only just watched Admiral McRaven’s Make Your Bed speech […]
I popped out to my local shopping mall this weekend to buy the latest set of Magic: The Gathering cards. I was all excited until I arrived and was immediately overwhelmed by the mountains of Christmas merch on display. I love the festive season as much as the next person, but I’m not quite ready […]
equiminous, adj./ɪˈkwɪmɪnəs/ Of a representation: giving due proportion or weight to the things represented; avoiding distortion arising from convention or convenience. Hence, of a person: recognising the whole rather than allowing a single characteristic, measure, or judgement to stand for the individual. Mischievously, Damian Bacchoo (2026) Maps have a habit of causing moral outrage, and […]
Why would we choose to be disadvantaged? I was talking to a group of Grade 12 students last week about how they were feeling about AI. More specifically, we were talking about the IB Diploma and the increasingly complicated business of deciding what students should and shouldn’t use gen-AI to do. The question wasn’t whether […]
It was the first day back at school this morning, and we had all the usual restless apprehension in the car on the way in: half of us looking forward to the start of the year, the other half already looking forward to the end of it. Same old. We’ve also been doing the same […]
In the Army, we talked about two kinds of courage: physical and moral. Physical courage is often decided fast. There’s no time to talk yourself out of it. Moral courage is slower. And that’s what makes it harder. A classroom. A boy at a table says something misogynistic. He mutters it quietly enough that the […]
Field Notes from Bari, Italy, 2026 One of my children steadfastly holds that school is “the opposite of holiday.” This is mildly problematic when one happens to be a school principal. Unfortunately, she’s making a compelling case, and sitting by the pool in Italy this week, I’m still mulling that over. There is something rather […]
For over forty years, my favourite colour has been fluorescent pink. Or, to give it its modern marketing name… electric fuchsia. Back then, I rather enjoyed the fact that it wasn’t everyone else’s favourite colour. But judging by this year’s World Cup, that appears to have changed. Which is unfortunate for me, because the thing about […]
We are all collecting immense amounts of data on student wellbeing these days. The proliferation is well-intentioned, and it has been spurred by a $2 trillion global industry, but it has also generated more data than any of us know what to do with. I currently have data sitting across multiple platforms, sheets and tabs. […]
I was determined this year not to tell our graduates to be the best at something. Not the boldest, not the kindest, nor the first. My worry is that if we spend so much time telling young people to be exceptional (which I think we probably do), they might end up believing their education was […]
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