The Importance of Mentorship

Alan Rickman is, or sadly was, my favourite actor and today I was so profoundly saddened to hear that he passed away after a brief battle with cancer. I have never been more impressed by any single performer and each time I watched any of his films, many of which are lesser known than the commonly referenced Potter flicks or Die Hard, Sense and Sensibility and Dogma are two of my personal favourites. I was always left in awe of his talent. And that voice...

In response to Alan Rickman, Daniel Radcliffe posted a lovely tribute on the how much he valued Rickman's mentorship, especially in his formative years in the acting profession. Here's the link... I think the connections are quite self-explanatory and easy to make...

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Catholic Education Week 2020

Tomorrow marks the beginning of Catholic Education Week. It is truly a gift to be able to work in a publicly-funded Catholic school, where we can be free to express our faith so freely and unapologetically. It's a bit sad that we are presently in quarantine and cannot gather in community to celebrate this wonderful gift but my staff and I decided to capitalize on the marvel that is social media to stay connected to our students. We wanted to inspire hope and encourage them from our homes, to theirs. I challenged my staff to select a favourite Scripture passage that they felt evokes a great sense of hope and each day on our school's Twitter feed, I feature a staff member with their quote. I also posted these photos into all of the Google Classrooms that the staff were running for distance learning. In our special community, where relationships are so key to student success, we thought it was important for the kids to see our faces. We called our little project #motivatedbyfaith...

The Need to Be Liked

My grade 8 teacher was the late (and truly great) Classford Johnson. I remember his class like it was yesterday, including something he used to say on a daily basis: "I don't want to be loved, I want to be understood." As a kid, I knew what he was getting at. He wanted us to respect him, his rules and expectations. If we got along, great. If we didn't, it didn't matter to him as long as we respected him, his rules and his expectations. Most of us loved him. He was tough but fair. He appreciated a good joke and laughed with the rest of us when we something was funny. My memory of Mr. Johnson and his infamous phrase came into my head quite a lot in the days after I had bid farewell to the staff and students of the school I have just left. Admittedly, I was confused. As a kid and as a classroom teacher, I never really paid much mind to what people thought of me. I have always abided by the Golden Rule when it came to my relationships at school and hoped for the best....

Leading During a Pandemic

Never thought I'd EVER type a title like that. Pandemics were only events I had taught about during my History classes. The experience thus far can only be described as surreal. It's been a part of our reality for nearly 10 months now and the fear and uncertainty is still not lost on me with the reporting of daily infection and death rates. It has been my single greatest challenge as a leader to date to show up to work everyday imbuing optimism that we're going to be ok, that school is a safe place to be. I have to say that on 98% of those days, I have believed just that. We have be so very fortunate not to have experienced any positive diagnoses of COVID-19 so far. Implementing the new health and safety protocols, while tedious and laborious, has not been all that difficult. Sure, the work up front was a lot - signage, taping arrows and cues on the walls and floors, rearranging classroom furniture to establish social distancing in the classrooms ... as the Principal, ...

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