Forget April Fool’s day. Create your own day.

April Fool’s day is here. Every year someone publishes some crazy story that we wish were true. For a moment we believe the story. We think, “Wow! Great! I love it!” Then we find out we were duped. We are disappointed. But what if we ignore the disappointment and trade it in for something better. What is better? Create your own story. A real story. A story you thought would never be possible. Create something that you were waiting for someone else to do. Forget April Fool’s day. Create your own day.

A short conversation with...Stephen Brander @stephenbrander

Stephen Brander

Stephen Brander is a good friend of mine. I met Stephen in 1987 at Mount Allison University in Sackville, NB. He was back then, and is now, one of the most creative people I know. He does not work at a school, nor is he involved with education. It’s very important to get perspectives from people who work outside of education so I decided to ask Stephen to participate in this interview series.

Stephen is the co-founder of Razor Creative (razorcreative.com) , a boutique design, branding, advertising and marketing firm located in Moncton, New Brunswick. Stephen, along with co-founder Rich Gould, believe that in today’s cluttered and noisy world, in order to get noticed and connect with the intended eyes, ears, minds and hearts of consumers, you have to Cut through™. That is their mission statement, philosophy, and guiding principle in everything they do.


1. Why did you start your own company?
I had been working at a large agency and felt I had grown about as much as I could within the organization. I was looking for new creative and other challenges in my life. I was tired of the bureaucracy of the organization and felt I could be more creative and do better work out on own own, dealing directly with the customer. The wrong structure can kill creativity.


2. I once described your company as an Ad Agency and you corrected me. You said, “we are in the business of ideas.” Can you expand on that?

Ad agency tends to be a bit of a catch all term that people understand. While we fit the mould somewhat, really clients come to us for the most part for our thinking. You can hire lots of different organizations to design a logo, create a website or write some radio spots, but if you want to truly cut through the media clutter, it requires a deeper understanding and brain power to create something never seen before and that will resonate with the target audience.


3. Can you share a few thoughts on the role creativity should play in public schooling?

I have two young children in the public school system with a third starting in September and I really don’t see much creativity at all. Just the opposite in fact. I think the thing that strikes me is the “good enough” attitude that I see.

That’s “good enough” to pass ... you know the work “good enough” ...the effort put forward is “good enough”. A “good enough” mentality for students and teachers create outcomes that unfortunately are not “good enough”. How does that prepare students for anything?

Students should be encouraged to go beyond expectations and be taught that there is more than one way to solve problems. I think students should be applauded for trying new ways to solve problems... to use more creative thinking. Being able to assess a problem and think of different ways to solve it is way more important a skill than knowing an answer. No one has ever changed the world (or their world) by doing things the way they have always been done.

Creativity in the class room can inspire, motivate and engage students. It seems like young people are wildly creative, but once they go to school it is slowly drained from them. That is sad.

The beauty of creativity is that it does not cost a thing. It can be as simple as thinking about things a little different. Instead of saying “write about the book you just read” ... say: “How would a man from Mars perceive this book”, or “write the review as if you were Justin Bieber, Steve Jobs, Oprah, their mother, a cave man...”

Creativity introduces fun into a process and stretches the mind. There is too much “colouring between” the lines at schools. How about practice your multiplication by talking like a pirate, have students create a code -- and then use that code to answer questions.

Silly? Maybe. Memorable. Absolutely. As a parent I’d love for my children to come home and tell me a creative way they learned something. After all, the best way to learn is not to realize you are being taught.


4. Who has had the biggest influence on you as an “idea man?”

Alfred E. Newman.

I tried it-->>Every blog has a silver lining - Blog Challenge

Inspired by DavidD's blog post Every blog has a silver lining - A mini challenge, I decided to make a word cloud of my recent posts. Very cool idea David!

A few of my favorite Sir Ken Robinson Videos

A short conversation with...Alec Couros @courosa

Alec Couros

How long have you been teaching?

I’ve been teaching since 1993. While I was initially trained to become a high school English & History teacher, I ended up teaching just about every subject there is from grades 6 through 12. Beyond my high school & middle school experience, I spent several years as a teacher/therapist in a youth correctional centre. I’ve also taught in technical institutes, but I’ve spent the majority of my teaching career as a professor and ICT coordinator in a teacher education program.


Has your educational philosophy changed since you began teaching?

There were so many clichés that I bought into in my early years. Myths like ‘be hard on the kids at first, and then gently let go of the reigns’ - that whole classroom management myth. Or, the idea that the teacher is the expert in the classroom, the person with all of the answers - some sort of superhuman. So much of my philosophy has since been replaced with a focus on student engagement, continuous experimentation, and messiness. If you’ve watched me run one of my open courses, while things may seem very ordered and planned, in reality, it is as spontaneous and chaotic as it gets. While I follow the official syllabus in the course calendar, day-to-day planning gives way to student interests, serendipitous connections, and unplanned generosity.


What's the best advice you have received as a teacher (or can give to a new teacher)?

In my first year of teaching, I had one of the most difficult Grade 8 classes imaginable. I co-taught this group of students with another teacher who happened to be a First Nations elder. When students got loud, I got louder. When they became angry, I became angrier. I felt I really hadn’t been prepared for anything like this, and I became emotional and ineffectual as a teacher. My colleague taught me how to listen to students. I cannot describe how she taught me this. It may have been the softness of her voice. Her gentle nature. The way students came to her for advice. The love she showed for them, even when they weren’t on their best behaviour. But I do remember how she listened to our students. How she focused on each, looked at them in the eye, and how she made them realize how important their voice was to her. Since then, this has always been the most important to me - focusing on that relationship. Listening, rather than always telling.


Can you share a few thoughts about your TEDx talk experience?

It was a great experience. What I loved the most was that I got to listen to voices that I would normally not have heard. Often, as educators, we listen to mostly other educators, and I feel that in general, we need to be more diverse in our influences. As for my own presentation, I know it could have been much improved. The format is difficult, and I am sure that I didn’t prepare well enough for it. Additionally, there was a technical glitch with the clock so I actually ended up rushing through part of my presentation when in actuality, I had plenty of time. I wish I had a retry. :-)

Overall though, I think it’s a format that we need to focus on with our students (or perhaps something like a shorter Pecha Kucha format). If students can do this format, and do it well, they would be at a great advantage, not only for such presentations, but a whole range of genre, including literary and multimedia forms.

Alec Blogs here.

What does recess look like at your school?

A George Couros @gcouros inspired post:

What does recess look like at your school? Do you see teachers speaking
respectfully to students, interacting, asking questions about a student's day?
Or are the interactions between teacher and student rigid, bossy, threatening?

Where are the teachers? Are they in the staff room during recess leaving the duty to the ones assigned? Or are they interacting in positive ways with students even if not assigned to duty?

I have presented you with different scenarios. Some build relationships, others sever or hinder them. What do you see in your school? What do you do?

A short conversation with...Dave Meister @phsprincipal

Dave Meister

How long have you been teaching?

I have been an educator for 22 years. I began my career by teaching U.S. History, World History, European History and Psychology at the high school level for nine years. During that time I worked as the Social Studies Department chairperson for three years. After leaving the classroom I served for three years as an elementary principal, eight years as a high school principal and as the director of a high school cooperative the last two years.


Has your educational philosophy changed since you began teaching?

The one constant in my teaching philosophy is that I love being around kids. There is nothing better than a little playful banter between myself and a group of students. At the beginning of my teaching career I was very content oriented. I believed that my mission was to promote citizenship and awareness mankind’s story over time. I was very much the sage on the stage and believed I had to “perform” to engage and teach my students. I taught like my favorite history teachers and simply knew of no other way to do it. As I matured as a teacher I began to realize that most students did not gain much from the way I taught, if fact most just practiced memorizing information and writing back to me using the same words I lectured them with. After this epiphany, I began to use more of a project based approach in my classroom. I let the student be responsible for getting the information and during class time we worked together to construct meaning and create new understanding. In short, when I started I believed classroom activity revolved around the teacher, today I believe everything needs to revolve around the learner.


Has Twitter played a role in your evolution as a teacher? If so, how?

Twitter has become a very important tool for me as an educator. I really have benefited from the constant stream of ideas, resources, and intriguing dialog about teaching and learning. I will state that the use of Twitter has fundamentally changed my practice as an educator in that it is is always there/on, challenging me to think about what I do.


What's the best advice you have received as a teacher (or can give to a new teacher)?

Be able to look in the mirror and say to yourself “I did the right thing(s) for my students today.”

Dave blogs here.