Serendipities

Ask any high school student right now.  Deadlines seem to be about as certain as death and taxes.  

In a conversation I had with a G11 student this week, he shared how surprised he was that he was struggling with his deadline-management skills.

He was frustrated (perhaps a little angry?) that he was not more ready, even suggesting that school had not helped to prepare him to deal with continuous deadlines. Didn’t we know it was going to be like this?

I did not disagree with him and promised to sleep on it (clearly forgetting what a privilege that might appear to him at the moment)!

A conversation about deadlines

We’ve just completed our annual high school student well-being survey; there’s a section included where students can write free comments on the one thing that we could do to help improve their life at school.  Done well, these surveys are always an uncomfortable read.  Well, it looks like we’ve done it well…

Our students in Grades 9 and 10 are sharing that the constant focus on tests and exams (GCSEs), as well as a competitive culture, is having the biggest impact on their mental health and well-being.*  Likewise, our students in Grades 11 and 12 are sharing that the management of never-ending deadlines (we do the IB Diploma Programme) is the cause of the most stress for them.  

We know that deadline stress is a well-known running sore that all IB schools grapple with (so were not surprised by the student feedback); however, is there more that we can do to help students who might need help developing their time management or organisational skills; who might not know how to advocate for themselves when they need to request extensions; who are heavily committed; or who might not be sleeping or eating as well as they would wish to? (I know that’s a rhetorical question…)

A continuum of approaches 

I find that when talking about student deadlines that there is a continuum of approaches schools take toward student deadlines.

On one end of the spectrum, deadlines are fixed and non-negotiable.  And on the other end of the spectrum, they are flexible and open to negotiation.  Not surprisingly, schools, administrators, teachers, parents, or students rarely find themselves occupying the same part of that continuum.  

If and when students hand them in on time, come what may, all is well (on the surface at least).  Perhaps the student needed support ahead of the deadline, or perhaps not.  However, regardless of whatever approach the school or the teacher thinks they have in place, there will nearly always be a number of students who are unable to meet the stated deadline.  

Different conversations emerge from this reality…especially when deadline extensions are requested.  Here are 7 that have (probably) taken place over the last few weeks in many schools:

1. The “in the real world” conversation.

Please could I have more time to submit my coursework?

I told you at the start of the course that deadlines are deadlines.  They are non-negotiable.

But, other teachers have given me an extension.  

Well, I mean what I say.  This is how deadlines work in the real world.  

But I have other deadlines due at the same time and I want to be able to hand in my best work.

Look, I realise you think I am being hard on you.   But I know that what you give me will be great – you are not going to be happy until you think it is perfect, but sometimes we just have to accept that we have done the best we can in the time given and move on to the next thing.  You got this.

2. The “not this time” conversation.

Please could I have more time to submit my coursework?

Sorry, but this is the final deadline so that’s not possible.

But you let me hand in my last piece of work after the deadline.

Because that wasn’t a real deadline.  I said that because I wanted to spread out our coursework throughout the year.  Otherwise, we just end up having it all to do at the end of the year.  This way, you only have this final piece to concentrate on.

3. The “slippery slope” conversation.

Please could I have a little more time to submit my coursework?

Sorry, I am doing all the marking this weekend.

Please, I really need the weekend to finish it off and give you my best work.

If I let you hand it in later, then others will want to hand it in later too. This means I will end up marking people’s late work for several more weekends when I also have other classes to prepare for.  That’s not fair to anyone, including me.

4. The “fairness” conversation.

Please could I have more time to submit my coursework?

Sorry, but If I give you extra time it would give you an unfair advantage compared to all the others who have managed to keep to the deadline. 

5. The “it’s for your own good” conversation?

6. The “it comes down to respect” conversation!? 

7. The unspoken conversation.  

I feel so lost.  I can’t keep up.  I don’t know where to start, or what to do next.  I have so much to do.  I have so many deadlines due and I just want it all to go away.  I’m so tired. I already know I should have handled this situation differently but here we are and I need help now.

I am sure that there are countless others.  But together they highlight a number of tensions and talking points when we deal with deadlines in schools.

Are we really teaching about real life?

We like to think that we are in the business of preparing young people for “real life”. We tell them this on a daily basis (which must irritate them as much as irritated me when I was at school).  But when we tell them that deadlines are not negotiable in real life, is that really true?  I love this article here, and this recent HBR article too on the subject of real-world deadlines.

Can one size fit all?

Another reality is that no student has the same commitments and priorities as any other student in the school.  Different subject choices, different teachers, different classes, different activities, and any number of different things going on in their lives.  A colleague (really good with big numbers) once shared with me the number of different permutations of student schedules in our school and the fact that we do not have any two identical schedules.  

With that in mind, we want students to take responsibility for managing both their schedule and their own deadlines.  We would want a student who finds themselves with a schedule that has several deadlines due in the same week that they are highly committed to something else outside of the academic programme (sports, production, interviews etc), to advocate for themselves, right? Isn’t negotiating multiple commitments more reflective of real life?   

Is this how we teach?

Deadlines are as certain as death and taxes.  When students struggle with them, we have a choice:

We can apply sanctions to try and teach them this life lesson (zero marks, no feedback etc.) Or we can try and teach them any of the self-management skills that they might need.  

But before trying to decide if either choice (even assuming it is a binary one) is preferable, I would ask this question:

Where else in your school do you employ sanctions to teach essential life lessons?  

Is there room for tough love?

What about those students who are overly preoccupied with achieving perfection?  They don’t want to know about “good enough”.  Some students (so many in our context) have developed a belief that any and all additional time will get them closer to perfection, closer to a higher grade.  So here, the learning that might take place could be different to another student who is struggling with deadlines in a different way.  Perfectionism can be driven by a number of different factors but is obviously heightened when the stakes are so high, or where there is an inordinate amount of pressure to do well to meet their own or parental expectations.  Might there be a place here, a kindness even, in helping these students to accept fixed deadlines?  Maybe “good enough” is more than enough. 

Is it really a deadline?

If you’ve spent any time in The Netherlands, you will soon notice that the Dutch have a different word for almost every type of rain.  The ancient Greeks apparently had six words for “love”, all with different meanings.  And when you go for a “coffee” these days…it’s actually a latte or cappuccino for me.   It’s the same thing with the word “deadline”.  One word: but many different meanings.  It could equally refer to a “milestone”, or a “submission date”, a “first draft deadline”, a “final draft deadline”, a “school deadline”, or even an “IB deadline”.  In the same way, when we talk about deadlines we are unlikely to be using the same word to mean the same thing.  

So when schools, departments, and teachers do not differentiate or clarify their use of the word “deadline” (perhaps because they want students to believe that their own deadline is the most important one) then it should be no surprise that students can feel overwhelmed by them.  After all, when everything is a deadline, nothing is a deadline.

Is bias at play?

Each of those conversations above is an example of students advocating for themselves.  They either have the confidence to ask for more time, they/ve been told to ask if it is needed,  they feel that it is perfectly reasonable to ask, or they have been supported to ask.  However, for every student who might request a deadline extension, there will be many others who do not.  Most of the time I imagine that this is because they have no need to ask. But when you work with children from many different cultural contexts, each with teachers from many different backgrounds too, can we assume that they did not ask for more time because they just didn’t need it, or for some other reason?

Is there a need to question whether we are inadvertently privileging those students who are confident in advocating for themselves, or from cultures and contexts that perceive deadlines and schedules as flexible rather than fixed?  Have we inadvertently built in some cultural bias to the way that we support students?  Erin Meyer, in her book The Culture Map might argue that some of this is being played out in each of the conversations I shared above. So I think It’s something we would want to explore for sure.  

Where next?

I started this article with the promise to sleep on the issue of school deadlines.  But it seems to me that it’s going to take a bit more than that to solve this one…I think I’ll go back to that student and ask for a little extension of my own! 

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* We are currently in the process of phasing out GCSEs here so we are hoping that this will make a difference here as we have now broadened our bespoke concept-based curriculum from K-10.

“It sounds like a big self-licking lollipop”

“What?”

“A self-licking lollipop”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

I was talking to my brother over my Christmas break about my work and the world of international education.  

After patiently listening for some time, his paraphrasing went something like this:

“So…rich folk pay to send their children to international schools because they have a reputation for churning out high exam results and getting kids into the top universities.  The high fees pay for the best teachers, the best facilities, the best curriculum (International Baccalaureate), the best support services and the best opportunities to achieve those desired grades and university placements.  

In turn, their reputation is enhanced and they can then attract more rich folk to pay the high fees needed to secure the best teachers, facilities, support, opportunities….leading to the best results and university placements…leading to more rich folk prepared to pay high fees…

Wow! It sounds like a self-serving system designed to perpetuate the privilege of the elites.  It sounds like one big self-licking lollipop!”

It was not something I had heard before. I looked it up: 

Self-licking ice cream cone n. a process, department, institution, or other thing that offers few benefits and exists primarily to justify or perpetuate its own existence. Also in the form self-licking lollipop. (Double-Tongued Dictionary)

Hmmm…food for thought.  Do international schools just exist to perpetuate privilege?  I could see where he was coming from, and I was uncomfortable with his sentiments about my work.   However, I wasn’t immediately sure how to respond.

Many students who attend international schools do so because they are ex-pats who need to avail a continuity of education in lieu of not being able to attend schools in their home nations.  Paying for children’s education when overseas is therefore an inevitable necessity for these families.  On the other hand, there is also a growing number of national students who wish to attend local international schools and are prepared to pay significant fees to access this perceived privilege and what it might bring them.

That said, not all international schools are the same and there is significant price point variance depending on what you are looking for.  It is true that some are more sought after than others.  It is also true that some international schools are seeking to take steps to avoid being self-serving… no matter what that costs them. But what does that look like?

So what do we do if we find ourselves holding one of these self-licking lollipops?

It seems to me that there are two options:

• Dipping it in glitter
• Consuming it

Dipping it in glitter

What does that mean? It means leaning into the status quo of the current system.  It means doubling down on marketing the school’s glittering exam results.  It means protecting the school’s averages by leveraging special selection techniques.  It means elevating academic rigour at any cost.  It means keeping things just the way that they are. 

If you keep dipping that lollipop in glitter it will continue to look attractive and last longer.  Privilege in: privilege out.

Consuming it

Conversely, schools can accept that they are holding a self-licking lollipop and commit to a future where that lollipop will eventually disappear.  This means taking a view that it is possible to provide high-quality education that does not rely on perpetuating privilege.  For me, it can be distilled down to whether a school is seriously committed to increasing diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice (DEIJ), or not.  

On the surface, this always sounds so easy.  I have not had a conversation with anyone who does not say that they are committed to DEIJ, or make a case for less of it. But is it more important than sustaining the big self-licking lollipop?  For example, if a results-orientated school decides to become less selective and more inclusive to a diverse group of young people, it would stand to reason that their school averages would start to slide.  So how might some parents react to that when they have chosen that school for precisely that school’s reputation and results?  Is it a case that DEIJ is great, as long as it doesn’t adversely impact our own children’s chances of getting ahead?  

The purpose of an education

There is a need at times to remind ourselves what we think the purpose of education is.  Achieving one’s best self is a virtuous pursuit and that may, or may not, lead a child to attend a prestigious university and on to some form of high-income profession.  

However, I am also reminded of a colleague who has the following displayed clearly in his classroom:

Dear Teacher,

I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no man should witness: gas chambers built by learned engineers, children poisoned by educated physicians, infants killed by trained nurses, women and babies shot and burned by high school and college graduates. 

So I am suspicious of education. My request is: help your students become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmans. Reading, writing, arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human. 

Haim Ginot (1972)

For him, the purpose of education is to help his students be human.  

One of my privileges is to work and lead at one of the 18 United World Colleges (UWC) situated around the world.  The mission of the UWC movement is to make education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future. 

We are not selling results (they look after themselves).  We are selling a mission and a particular set of action-orientated values and competencies that we believe will make that mission (more) possible.  This is my purpose for education.  But it is not everyone’s, and I do accept that.  

I also accept that most international schools are (whether they like it or not) self-licking lollipops.  It makes sense that organisations would want to preserve what they have in some form or another (I guess that’s being human too).  But it doesn’t sit comfortably with me at all. It probably doesn’t sit well with them either.

So if I have to be a part of a system that makes me hold a self-licking lollipop, I do not want to be dipping it in glitter. I want to make my way through it as fast as possible, finish it off, and then put it out with the rubbish.

That’s exactly what I wish I had said to my brother. Maybe next time!

Noticeship /ˈnəʊtɪs/ʃɪp/ n.informal. The quality or ability that elevates a person or leader to intentionally see something or someone.

Resolutions

As is my way this time of year, I sat down with my thoughts this morning to contemplate the new year ahead.  For much of my early life this involved me finding somewhere to sit by the seaside with the winter elements, the noise of waves crashing and rolling over the pebble beaches of Brighton.  I have always found it meditative.  

I don’t do the whole resolutions thing.  They’ve never really worked for me and I much prefer just taking stock of what is going on in my life, what I feel I would like to do over the year ahead and then committing to a general theme (or two).  Last year my theme was ‘reconnecting with family’.  No specifics, no metrics and no accountability.  The theme is simply a North Star that helps support any big decision-making.  That’s about it.  

Sitting alone on my bench I found myself watching a little girl taking a walk along the beach with her dad (I presumed).  Every few steps the girls stops, looks around her feet, and then reaches down to pick up a pebble.  If it is a good pebble, she reaches over and puts it in to the bucket that dad is carrying.  If it is not, she tosses it back on the ground.  There are no words exchanged, there is no urgency, they are just in their moment.  Dad, bucket in hand, is lost in his own thoughts; the girl, focused on her pebbles and reveling in her dad’s complicity.  

It’s a wonderful distraction and my own thoughts now turn to all the unpicked pebbles.  They all look the same to me.  So how does this little girl decide what pebbles are worthy of keeping? What is she looking for?  What’s her filter? I have no idea and maybe she doesn’t either.  

In schools, we know that all the pebbles are important.  We know that each pebble needs to be seen and noticed, but we also know that we can not carry all of them at the same time.  The noise, the roars and crashing of the waves, the whooshing and whistling of the wind, makes things even more challenging. Sadly, we might just end up focusing on the few pebbles that stand out, the irregular ones that distract or have the ability to catch our attention.  The others may never make the bucket, will forever remain unnoticed.

I have two themes for this year

1.  Firstly, to work out how to see all those unseen pebbles. Noticeship.
2.  Secondly, to take more walks with my little girl before she no longer wants to.

Happy 2023.

“To be noticed is to be loved.” ― Ali Smith, There but for the

It starts with a belief system

I believe that making children feel noticed is arguably the most important thing that we can do in schools.  

Why?  Because my belief system is this:

• When children feel that they are noticed
• It helps them to feel seen and known,
• which makes them feel loved,
• which makes them feel like they belong.

Noticing is the root of belonging.  And belonging is, I think, the root of happy and healthy children.  

I came across this US school study involving over 66K students.  Only 51% of students shared that they thought their teacher would miss them if they were absent.  And only 46% of students said that they felt valued at school.  That’s truly shocking.  The impact on self-worth, motivation and depression when people feel unnoticed, unseen and unknown has been well documented for some time – and it’s only been amplified through COVID.

For teachers, noticing is the intentional act of seeing a student’s uniqueness and showing an interest in their full life.  So when teachers pay attention to young people and remember them, their hidden brilliance and quirky nuances become known.  

What does that look like in High Schools?  

Well…there’s no one way of setting this up.  For many schools, the front line is assumed to be the relationship between the students and their mentor (or tutor, homeroom teacher, advisor, or coach…).  It’s the one person that they will see every day in school; the person who will take a register and notice who is in or not in before they start school; the person responsible for sharing notices.  And in many schools (like ours), mentors will also support the wider holistic programme through the delivery of structured and unstructured activities.  They are the constant.  There is no one better-positioned person in the school to notice students.  

Except, we know (and the research is often brutal) that even with such structures in place, too many students still feel that they are not seen, not known or loved.

Why is that?  There are likely countless reasons, but I am confident that it will either end up being reduced to a lack of conviction in the belief system in place by the school and its leaders and teachers around noticing and mattering.  I have heard all sorts of reasons over the years- but good schools seem to make it a priority to get it right even if they sometimes fall short (I like to think this is where my school is).

Noticing others is a skill, a practice, and should be a priority for schools, leaders and teachers.

Overlooking others is so easy to do, and I can’t help but think that it’s a trend born out of increasing individualism and decreasing social connectedness.  I don’t know.

What I do know is that I can still recall every student from my first mentor group back in 2000.  I can still see their faces in my mind’s eye.  I could still tell you their strengths, what they need help with, their hobbies and interests, their friendships…their siblings, and a few pet names…I still check in on a few of them.  For a short time, they were my family: I hope that they felt noticed, seen, known and loved.  

This is not extraordinary.  I am not extraordinary.  Nigel, my first mentor, made it clear that this was…just my job.

As a school leader, the question I ask myself most regularly is whether my 80-odd mentors believe in the power of noticing as much as I do?  And if not, what should I be doing about it?  Do they know their students?  Do they know the parents?  Do they know the names of their siblings?  Do they know what’s interesting or bothering them just now?  For many, it’s these tiny lapses of curiosity that can add up to perpetual invisibility.

I’m certainly not immune.  I have not transferred my forensic noticing skills, which I think I had with my students back in the day, into school leadership in the way that I would want to.  I know I am not being curious enough.  I am not asking enough questions and I am certainly not checking in enough on personal details.  

Noticing others is a practice that’s too important to be left to intuition.  

One of the non-negotiables of being a junior officer in the British Army is the requirement to maintain a Platoon Notebook.  Guess what it was used for?  Yep, to capture all the information about the soldiers under that officer’s command – to specifically help make the act noticing systemic.  Senior officers periodically check these notebooks and test junior officers on how well they know their teams. The long and short of it is this – some junior officers would never become senior officers if they fell short on the art of noticing: if they paid lip service to their Platoon Notebook.  

There is a lot to be said for such systematic approaches to noticing.  When I was in uniform, it felt a bit forced and sometimes lacked authenticity when taking out the fabled Notebook in front of soldiers to confirm which football team they supported.  I preferred to use my memory, whilst others would have been lost without it.

“We missed your voice in class today”

A colleague recently shared with me one strategy he recently used to address a student who was skipping his PSE (personal and social education) classes. 

“I wanted to take it personally.  They were in school and had turned up to other lessons that day.  I was about to press send on an email to express my feelings.  I wanted to make them know that I had certainly noted their absence and that my lessons were a compulsory part of the learning programme.  But, on reflection, I changed my email”

Here is what he sent:

“We missed your voice in class today.  Hope you are OK?”

The student immediately sent a positive response back, and without other words being exchanged, they stopped skipping his lessons.

The inference in this sentence is genius:  You were missed.  What you have to say and contribute in classes is noticed.  You matter…you are loved…you belong.  

It’s a belief system. 

Helping children feel noticed is arguably the most important thing that we can do in schools.

_____________

Thanks to Kendall Zoller who led some amazing training this week on public speaking. In one of his asides, he shared that the three most important things that a school should do are make students feel loved, known and safe. It got me thinking.

In preparation for our recent CIS and WASC (joint) preparatory evaluation visitors, I felt our school adopted a “just right” Goldilocks approach to proceedings – a lot of hard work, paced calmly and thoughtfully by a core team who distributed much of the preparatory work in a meaningful and purposeful way with a high degree of trust.

Isn’t it always like that? Experience would suggest not.

Other than war, one of the biggest wastes of time I’ve ever witnessed was watching Junior soldiers painting kerbstones in anticipation of a visiting senior officer to our barracks. And whilst I am sold on the virtues of making a good impression on visitors, and in learning the discipline of excellence, I will never be convinced that spending several days painting perfectly fine kerb stones in different colours (even if they are regimental colours) is time well spent. To be fair, I am almost certain that the visiting officer would wholeheartedly agreed with me – this is meaningless work.

In the 20 years since I first witnessed the art of kerb stone painting, I have been involved in many other acts of inane and frenetic last-minute preparation for “important” visitors. Working in schools l’m now a ninja with a staple gun and laminator, a master of the pop-up wall display, and I’m still atoning for a fair amount of deforestation caused by the filling up of hundreds of ring binders of “evidence”…which on most occasions (would you believe it) was not even looked at.

Hindsight has not been kind – I’ve also been part of leadership teams that have directed teachers to engage in tasks as equally pointless as kerb stone painting in the vain expectation that it would make all the difference. Maybe it did. Maybe it didn’t. Either way, I can’t see how those tasks made teachers feel in any way inspired or motivated about their work. They say that people don’t leave bad jobs…

There will always be a need to prepare well for visitors. But it must always be proportionate. Too little preparation never goes well; too much and we find ourselves straying into pointless and meaningless work.

Like Goldilocks, we need to get it just right. And without a staple gun or laminator in sight, I think we did it right this time…come what may!

I’m convinced that the question of “what can we take away” has been a priority for school leaders since (at least) the Industrial Age.   

It has been a central theme in all my time in education, and I imagine it transcends many other work sectors too. How do we find ourselves constantly in this situation?  Surely, if we are always looking to subtract things we should eventually reach a point where we don’t need to ask that question anymore!

We are in week 4 of our school year and at the point where we are reviewing our orientation programme for new and returning members of our community this year.  Honestly, so much thought went into it.  We looked back to what worked before COVID, reviewed feedback from previous years, and had a plan to respond to our shared desire to focus on relationship and culture building – to start the new year with a renewed sense of vigour and purpose.

But I’ve realised two things this year: school leaders are good at addition; not so good at subtraction.  

We are good at addition

So, we added more ice-breaking, more team-building…more time to renew our cultural norms.  We made room for these “extras” by leveraging some of our new COVID online tools to cover some of our important compliance needs, and then we had some challenging conversations about other sessions that we could live without.  In fact, we did a lot of wrestling in these sessions as we tried to make our decisions to balance the needs of individual teachers (wanting time in their classrooms to get ready to receive new students and deliver the best learning and teaching experience possible from day one…) with the needs of the school (time in groups to build a shared sense of community…) as we emerge from COVID.  Eventually, we made room for all the things we wanted to matter this year.  And at some point we thought, yes, we’ve got this right.  

In hindsight, I think we got a lot of things right.  But we inevitably also got a lot of things wrong.  There’s an old saying that I often have to remind myself – sometimes you are damned if you do, damned if you don’t.  That’s the way it works when you have to make trade-offs between one thing or another.

We are not so good at subtraction

So why are we not good at removing things?  This wonderful experiment involving Lego bricks might give us a few clues.  Participants were given a range of tasks including one to stabilize the top of a Lego structure by either adding (at a cost) or simply removing a single brick.  Despite subtracting a brick being the simplest (and most profitable strategy) the researchers discovered that under control conditions, around 60% of people decide to add rather than take away.

Indeed, there is a fair amount of behavioural research that suggests that humans have a bias toward adding rather than subtracting when considering how to improve objects, ideas or situations.  Researchers show that people systematically default to searching for additive transformations, and consequently overlook subtractive transformations. This default may be one of the reasons why we struggle to mitigate heavy workloads, over-heated calendars, red tape…and even damaging effects on the planet.

What’s the answer?

There are a couple of lessons that I think I will mull over…

Lesson 1:  Do the math.  For everything we took out of the programme this year, we added something else back in.  The net result is that we ended up where we started.  We were trying to be thoughtful, but we also needed to be more disciplined.

Greg McKeown recommends an approach called the reverse pilot.  This is where you test whether removing an initiative or activity will have any negative consequences.  This is a strategy that I have used a couple of times over the last few years with significant success, specifically in relation to scheduled meetings.  It requires us to adopt a subtractive mindset, so it’s no wonder I don’t use it often enough (note to self).

Lesson 2:  Learn to accept that sometimes you will be damned if you do, damned if you don’t.  We have to accept that when we replace tangibles (e.g time preparing classrooms, lesson planning, team meetings etc. ) with intangibles (e.g. culture and relationship-building activities etc.), it will sometimes be difficult to see the intended benefits. We have to be ready for that.

Afternote:

In the interests of science (and love for Lego), I attempted to reconstruct the Lego brick experiment at home this week with my kids. It turned out that the 60% result is fairly accurate: 66% of my participants added more Lego, which might also help explain why we have so much of this plastic gold lying around the house!

It was only when I started my holiday that I realized how much I really needed it.

“Not cool, dad”

Waiting patiently for a ride on the bumper cars with the kids, I noticed a group of young teenagers jumping the queue ahead of us and then being allowed to get away with it by the clearly intimidated young supervisors. It was clear that many ahead of us were equally irked, but no one said anything. So, despite not being able to speak much of the local language, I couldn’t help but raise a protest. I was super irritated and I told the group that they were being unkind by jumping ahead of everyone else who had been waiting their turn.

My kids, clearly embarrassed that I was making an unnecessary scene, tried to pull me back from the edge: ”let it go, dad”.

Let it go? Of course I should have done, but the notion of letting this go just didn’t sit well with me. I had already gone too far…got too emotional…and too irrational to question why or how I found myself arguing the toss with some poor-mannered children. I don’t even like bumper cars!

What did I do? I invited them to reflect upon their behaviour and asked them to join the back of the queue (or some words to that effect…!). I’m not sure what I was expecting really. The group looked at each other in disbelief for about half a second and then burst out laughing. Then they nonchalantly strutted through to enjoy the bumper cars without showing any semblance of remorse at being called out.

We know that wisdom comes in all shapes and sizes. On this day, it came from the youngest of my kids: “Let it be, dad”. I couldn’t let it go earlier, but at that moment I found that perhaps I could just let it be. The red mist lifted.

I was struck by the semantics between “Let it go” and “Let it be”. They sound so similar, but they obviously affected me in different ways (that even the oppressive heat wave couldn’t explain).

As is so often the way, a short search on the internet showed that I was far from the first to notice the difference between telling yourself to “let it go” or “let it be”.

A cool experiment

Can the tiny difference between a single word – “go” versus “be” – produce a differential calming effect on the mind? Apparently so…

In this social experiment, 500 participants were prompted to “think back to a difficult time in the last two years when you felt really stressed.” Immediately after, they were asked about their emotional baseline. They were then told to “sit with the emotion for three minutes, reflecting on how you felt then and how it makes you feel now.”  A third wasn’t given any other instructions (the control condition). Another third were told to “Let it go” and to repeat the mantra for three minutes as they reflected back and sat with their emotions (the Elsa condition). The final third had the same mantra instructions but was told to repeat “Let it be” instead (the McCartney condition). Finally, once the three minutes elapsed, all the participants answered the same emotional questions from before.

The results? The control group (given no mantra to repeat) observed a 4% reduction in stress and anxiety. However, those repeating the ‘Let it go’ mantra observed a more dramatic 24% drop. But the clear winner was “Let it be,” with an incredible 45% drop from before to after.

So what accounts for the differences observed? When told to “let it be,” participants said that they felt that this was relatively easy to do because it involved no effort. In letting things be, they just…let it be. Nothing needs to be done to it or to yourself. It’s a passive mantra. Conversely, when you let things go, there’s something that you have to do: there’s some ‘doing’ involved. It’s an active mantra. It seems, therefore, that this is one of those examples that show how humans are hardwired to follow the path of least resistance. Perhaps that’s all there is to it!

New superpowers?

My new mantra worked wonders throughout the rest of the holidays:

• Seagull stealing my fish and chips – let it be
• Credit card currency conversion charges – let it be
• Kids spending too much time on the Switch – let it be

It was like I had discovered a new superpower. I was now impervious to stress.

However, I do wonder how this mantra might stand up to some of the timeless challenges of school leadership as I return to work this week:

• A member of staff doesn’t turn up for a supervision duty – let it be?
• A colleague makes an inappropriate comment to another colleague – let it be?
• A safeguarding issue comes to my attention – let it be?

Yeah, it’s not quite that easy when we are back in the workplace. There are some things that we simply can not let go, nor let be, when safeguarding or workplace culture is at stake. And what about other things that some schools choose to get very excited about – where rules are broken:

• A student not wearing the right shoes – let it be?
• A student who has not done their homework on time – let it be?
• A member of staff who is a bit scruffy – let it be?

A final thought

Perhaps as we move further into an era where stress, anxiety, and mental health are things that we both need and want to act on, we might do well to identify what we might choose to let be in our schools.

It seems to me that there are some battles that need winning, and some that are just not that important. Let’s start with the purpose of school. I’ll go first – I don’t think the colour of one’s socks is worth stressing over. I’m going to let that be.

Actually, I feel better already…this is going to be the best year ever!

I picked up my son’s (Grade 6) school bag this morning and nearly pulled my arm out of its socket.

I said something along these lines: “Flipping ‘ek.  That’s a heavy bag.  What on earth is in there?” 

He said something along these lines: “Yeah, it’s heavy, but I’ve been training since Grade 1 and I’m used to it now. You are out of shape”

I thought about what he had said. Each year we have been putting more and more in his school bag: more books, bigger books, more PE kit, an iPad, a laptop, more packed lunch (he’s a growing lad, after all), and then all the extras like phones, keys, and wallets (just in case). We keep adding a little bit more, which he then gets used to, and then we add some more. It all adds up. So whatever else we think school might prepare our kids for, we can be reassured that our kids will at least be highly trained bag carriers. Nice one.

However, what actually came to my head after dropping the bag back on the floor was 1. how out of shape I am and 2. The old story of Milo of Croton…

Milo of Croton

Milo of Croton was one of the most famous (perhaps the most) wrestlers in antiquity. He won at the Ancient Olympic games six times in a row as well as countless other wrestling titles, had an illustrious military career, was mentored by none other than Pythagoras, and was reportedly so strong he could carry a fully-grown bull. How did he grow so strong?

The story goes that Milo intentionally set out to grow his strength.  His plan did not start by picking up the bull.  He started by picking up a baby calf.  Milo then woke up each morning and started each new day by picking up that same calf and then carrying it around all day.  Each day the calf grew progressively bigger, and so did Milo’s strength.  People came to watch Milo and they laughed and mocked him, but he persevered and stuck to his task.  Finally, after four long years, Milo was able to lift the fully-grown bull.  The rest is, quite literally, history.

Milo’s Principles

I’ve pulled out 4 basic life principles which resonate with the work I do:

1. Have a clear aim.  Milo wanted to be the strongest athlete in the world.  When we have clear aims in our work, it is so much easier to sustain our focus and motivation.  
2. Start small.  Milo did not achieve success because he went big early.  He started small and made improvements over time.  Committing to such a method is challenging as it is difficult to see what the end result will be.  We have to trust that we will improve if we keep at it.
3. Keep it simple.  Milo’s method was so simple.  Pick up a growing cow each day.  How often do we over-complicate what needs to be done?
4. Believe.  When people saw what Milo was doing, they laughed and mocked him.  It would have been easy to give up, but he believed in himself and stayed the course.  

Do it like Milo?

Firstly, regardless of whether kids will get used to the weight of their school bags, I remain very uncomfortable with the fact that we subject young people’s physiology to such stress, particularly when we are not in the business of producing weight-bearing athletes.  I guess the situation endures because we remember that we went through the same thing at school (cultural reproduction) or because everyone does it (bandwagon effect)…

So what might we do about reducing the weight of school bags?  As with all things, it’s not that simple I guess.  Let me try…

1. Have a clear aim:  Reduce the weight of school bags so that they do not cause physiological stress to children still developing?  
2. Start small:  Can we take steps to substitute an exercise book for each lesson, towards the use of a single exercise book, or to the use of a computer?  To ditching textbooks?  To shift the way that we approach learning and teaching?
3. Keep it simple:  Is there stuff we can leave at school or home?  Can we do more with digital technology?
4. Believe: Do we truly believe that the steps we might take to reduce the stress justify the means?

I am sure that I can apply these principles to so much of my work at school. I need to give it some more thought. Right now though, I need to start getting down to the gym. My son is right, I am way out of shape!

When I graduated from school, there was no graduation ceremony, no wise words to never remember, and no fanfare. We finished our exams and that was that. We parted ways, got merry (some more than others), and then we got on with the summer holidays and waited forlornly for our exam results to come in.

I wonder how much different things would have been had there been a Graduation ceremony for me to mark the end of school, to leave well, and perhaps to hear some last words of wisdom? I was told to “find a job” when I finished my exams, but these days, I hear graduates being told to “find your purpose”. Wow, that’s a big ask isn’t it?

The idea of sending our kids off to find their purpose is something that I wanted to explore when given the privilege of giving the closing address to our graduating class this year. I have met a few people on my travels where their purpose is so clear I haven’t needed to ask…but really…it’s the exception and not the rule.

For many of us, purpose is unicorn we are left to find.

——

Extracted from my Graduation speech to the UWCSEA East Class of 2022:

So, what thoughts to leave you with? I have one story and then some gratuitous advice to offer…

A story is told of a man who visits a building site.

He sees three builders busily working away. Curious as to what they are working on, he approaches the first builder and asks, “What are you doing?”

The first builder looks up and answers, “I am building a wall”.

The visitor nods and moves on. He finds the second builder; a woman toiling at the corner of what looks like a large wall. He asks her the same question. She responds, “I am building a school”.

Finally, he spots the last builder working on a similar-looking section on the same building site and once again asks, “What are you doing?” They respond, “I am building our future”.

Profound.

Three people, same site, working on the exact same building. Fundamentally though, they have three very different comprehensions of the work they are doing. 

The first only sees a literal meaning in his work. He is not contributing to something bigger than himself. He doesn’t see his colleagues working side by side him building something monumental. Where his work stops is where his interest and vision for the project ceases.

A lot of people are like this. 

If I asked you a few months ago, whilst you were preparing for a science test, what your purpose was, what do you think you might have said?

Nailing the exam? Gaining your IB Diploma? Winning your university placement? Preparing for a life of meaning and purpose…?

All of the above? None of the above?

What if I asked you again today?

The ‘building a wall mentality’ is such a limited mentality. 9 to 5. Clock in, clock out. Go home. Whatever role you are doing, your work can matter but it’s up to you see that for yourself.

The first builder failed to see the impact of what his work was doing.

The second builder sees the functional reason for her work; she is building a school. Nice. She understands the bigger picture of things even though she’s only working on a wall. She will be building a place where children learn. Now, will she be building this school alone? No. She has colleagues, other specialists who will be enlisted for the roof, the plumping, the electrics etc. But she recognises the end goal and the crucial part she plays in it.

This is a good mentality to have; to understand the end goal and know what you’re contributing to. It’s understanding the impact of your work and the “why” behind it. It’s knowing what you do, why you started and why it matters.

But the third builder? They blow me out of the water. Their work mindset is incredibly rare but is the kind that is revolutionary. This builder, although they are just working on a wall, see their work as transcending humanity itself.  Now that’s big picture thinking.

Perhaps the aim for our work is just that then — to find work that goes on to influence bigger things, transcends generations and has lasting impact. That kind of work matters. 

But don’t just take my word for it. For many, COVID has triggered billions of people around the planet to ask some existential questions of themselves. What’s important to me? Am I spending time on the things that matter? What’s my purpose?

I’ve been reading about the Great Resignation too. More people are leaving jobs than ever before; perhaps struggling to find meaning or fulfilment in their current work. And without meaning, they can not find satisfaction or sustain their interest in doing what they are doing. So they are moving to jobs where there is more flexibility, more work-life balance and where they feel that their work matters.

And so the first piece of advice I want to share with you today, is that whatever paths you may take from this wonderful arena, make sure that you do work that is meaningful to you – and to do that, you need to find your purpose.  Not mine.  Not your parents.  Not your friends.  Yours.

OK.  So how do you find your purpose?  What does it look like?

The short answer is I don’t know.  

However, John Coleman, writing in the Harvard Business Review, might be able to help us out here.  Coleman suggests that we suffer from a series fundamental misconceptions about purpose and that challenging these misconceptions can help us develop a more well rounded vision of purpose.  

He shares 3 misconceptions, which I would like to share with you:

Misconception 1 – Purpose is only a thing you find. We hear so many inspiring stories of how people can meander through life waiting until fate delivers a higher calling to us.

But I think…and speaking to many of you here…it is more rare than you think.  For the average 18 year old (being told to find your purpose) or a 40/50 year old in an unfulfilling job (sorry folks), searching for the silver bullet to give life meaning is more likely to end in frustration than fulfilment.

In achieving professional purpose, most of use have to focus as much on MAKING our work meaningful as in TAKING meaning from it.  Put differently, purpose is a thing you BUILD, not a thing you FIND.  Almost any work can posses remarkable purpose.  Sure, some jobs more naturally lend themselves to senses of meaning, but many require at least some deliberate effort to invest them with the purpose we seek.

Misconception 2 : Purpose is a single thing

The second misconception I often hear is that purpose can be articulated as a single thing.

Sure, some people genuinely do seem to have an overwhelming purpose in their lives. But most of us will likely have multiple sources of purpose in our lives. For me, I find purpose in my children, my marriage, my work, and my community. For almost everyone, there’s no one thing we can find.

I would argue that It’s not purpose – but purposes – we are looking for: the multiple sources of meaning that help us find value in our work and lives. Acknowledging these multiple sources of purpose takes the pressure off of finding a single thing to give our lives meaning.

Misconception 3: Purpose is stable over time

It’s common now for people to have a number of careers in their lifetimes. I myself started as a teacher, founded two start-up businesses, been an army officer, and then found myself back in school as a headteacher.

This evolution in our sources of purpose isn’t flaky or demonstrative of a lack of commitment, but natural and good. Just as we all find meaning in multiple places, the sources of that meaning can and do change over time. My focus and sense of purpose at 18 was dramatically different in many ways than it is now, and the same could be said of almost anyone you meet.

How do you find your purpose? That’s the wrong question to ask. We should be looking to endow everything we do with purpose, to allow for the multiple sources of meaning that will naturally develop in our lives, and to be comfortable with those changing over time. Unpacking what we mean by “purpose” can allow us to better understand its presence and role in our lives.

So my final piece of advice is this – It’s possible you will be lucky enough to FIND your purpose. But it’s much more likely that you will have to BUILD it.

But if you are looking for something a little bit more straightforward today…Eleanor Roosevelt offers this:

“The purpose of life is live it, to taste experience to the upmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience”.  That’s good enough for me.

So to close, Alumni – adulthood will, over the next few short years, be settling on you.  As you come to terms with this reality, let me summarise by suggesting that adulthood might mean asking the right questions; which are likely to be about your purpose across your lifetime.  The questions may be a little scary, because there is no perfect information, no perfect rationality as you make your choices.  Life demands that we take actions and make commitments even though the future is uncertain.  Anyone who has given their heart in love, brought a child into the world, watched them walk across a stage like this, headed into an uncertain future, knows this to be true.  And now it’s your truth too.

Our UWCSEA goal is to educate individuals to embrace challenge and to take responsibility for shaping a better world. I know I speak for the entire College when I say it has been a pleasure, and a privilege working with you. As well as the great hopes we have for you, we have even greater trust, in you; that you’ll ask the right questions; and build your own purpose.

It really is over to you now.

—————

I’m very grateful to Nick Alchin for allowing me to borrow many of his wise words in pulling this speech together. Thank you, Nick.

This week I overheard an expression I hadn’t heard before…where one lady was talking to another about the ‘strawberry’ generation.

I was at the supermarket so I naturally assumed that something that was afoot in the fruit and vegetable aisle. Alas, no. A diatribe of derogatory comments followed about how soft, selfish, and delicate the kids of today are, compared to their own hardy and steadfast generation. I got the point; the metaphor was obvious, even to me. In fact, rather than a new expression, I had heard the same nonsense before under the guise of the so-called “snowflake” generation. Perhaps it’s something to celebrate when East and West are so united.

In fact, there’s been a long tradition of naming generations based on when people were born:

• Baby boomers – 1946-64
• Gen X – 1965-1980
• Gen Y (Millennials) – 1981-96
• Gen Z (Zoomers) – 1997-2012…

There’s a narrative that history has shaped the cultural traits of each generation and how they might see the world.  I think that’s reasonable on the whole (I welcome evolving values on so many issues) but I really get irritated when people judge other generations (wholesale) based on a date of birth as the basis to confirm whatever nonsense has just crossed their minds.  I just don’t buy it.

But it doesn’t really matter what I think, does it?  We all love to label things, and there’s just no stopping it.  Seth Godin recently published an article advocating for the latest generation to be named Gen C.  He thinks it’s going to stick and I think he’s probably right.

C if for COVID, C is for Carbon, and C is for Climate.  

According to Godin, the combination of years of school spend at home, in a mask, restricted by lockdowns, combined with the significant revolutions of our times (political, economic, social, and technological) means that every decision, investment, and interaction will be filtered by Gen C through the lens of carbon, remediation, and resilience. 

This resonates with me.  It’s both optimistic and pragmatic.  It’s not a label that is trying to posthumously describe a generation; it’s one that recognizes where our kids are, the challenges that we have left them, and the work ahead to protect humanity. 

Generation C didn’t ask for any of this, but this is the hand they have been dealt. Calling them strawberries or snowflakes, or any other disparaging label…it’s just not what I’m seeing in our young people…is not how we should be honouring our future.  

I see young people who connect, who collaborate, and who care.  Of course, there are selfish, lazy, and apathetic young people in our Gen C, but don’t let us kid ourselves that these traits are not alive and kicking across all the ages of time.

But if you really do think that kids these days are lacking, you will at least be in good company:

“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect to their elders. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and are tyrants over their teachers”. Socrates, 2400 years ago.