Craig Vezina Conversation with George Couros (abridged) May 16, 2020

George Couros: The things I hear all the time in my travels is like we want to provide a world class education. And I always say then you have to look at what the rest of the world is doing. And now that’s what’s happening is people are seeing that. Many of us are going through exactly the same things even though we’re in totally different areas of the world and trying to figure out what can I take from that place that’s going to help our kids and our families right now.

With schools doing emergency remote teaching and that’s what I’ve been calling it because this is not virtual learning. This is not remote learning. It’s something totally different through this time and really the connection that we actually have towards students is more valuable in the work that we’re doing right now because many of them are going through things that we couldn’t even understand in their homes. There are so many barriers that we have with families and what we’re doing. So how we actually center the work in relationships is really crucial that students actually want to join us in this type of learning where they actually have options right now. It’s pretty easy for a student to say oh, my Wi-Fi didn’t work or I didn’t have access to a device and actually check in or check out of class. Right now if they have that connection to the person, and some of those things actually might be true. They might actually have those barriers in reality.

But if you actually build that relationship where not only do the students feel valued, but that their contributions are valued to the time of the work they’re actually doing that’s really what’s going to bring students to these spaces. This is the focus on relationships and the work that we actually do in education is really important on a face-to-face setting and it’s really important in this emergency remote teaching setting. It’s way harder to do, but it doesn’t make it any less valuable. Even in a webinar format, just actually Bill Ferriter, a gentleman from North Carolina, talked about how every single student that enters the virtual room he greets them, makes some personal comment so that they feel welcome right away. Those little things and in the work that we do with education that’s really centering it on how we build those relationships is going to actually really get more out of the work that we’re doing in education as it would for any place of business. I think that if I feel valued in my work I’m going to go a lot further for my bosses than if I feel like I’m just kind of a number. And so really centering it on relationships is really crucial.

Practice. It’s really easy to kind of get in a space where you just do things because you do them. Educators have been working hard forever but this has really been a shock to our system, to our routine and it’s making us learn new things. What I’m hoping that as we focus on these things that really, really matter in education right now – and you’re seeing all over the world standardized tests are being put on hold and educators can focus really on serving the students and serving who they are. As we go through this process my hope is that we take these skills and these abilities we’re developing through this process and we actually become so much better for our kids when we get back to our face-to-face setting.

What is the next big thing? Honestly, I don’t know, you don’t know, nobody knows. We can guess for sure and we can make informed guesses from this, but what we’re really trying to develop in our students and ourselves is really whatever comes our way we’ll be able to figure it out, we’ll be able to thrive from it. When I was a principal we used to do this event called Identity Day. And what it was is it was typically set up almost like a science fair. Students would actually have this opportunity to share something that they’re passionate about. Something that they love .And it was a great way to really get to know the passions of our students and who they were. And we would actually take those passions and we’d create something really valuable through that process. So, for example, one of the students when we did this at my school they were actually a national champion BMX biker and nobody actually even had known that. So one of our other teachers in the school was really into skateboarding, BMX biking and even though they were in different classrooms they built this connection right away because we tapped into this and it really built our school. It really connected us with one another because we saw that every student in that school as one of ours.

And the reason I’m bringing this up right now is because there is a teacher right now and I apologize because I can’t remember her name but she had shared this with me a couple of days ago. She had actually created an Identity Day through a virtual setting where students were actually able to share their passions with their classrooms and to connect with one another. And as we’re going through this I talk about relationships all the time but it’s not just the relationships we have with our students. It’s the relationships our students have with one another. And if I was a student right now during this time and no offense to any educator that’s watching this, I don’t think I would miss my teacher as much as I would miss my friends. And so watching that play out by the teachers setting that up, what she had actually created was an opportunity for students to actually connect with one another and share some really valuable learning as she sat back and watched that process. And then was able to take that information and really empower her students in their learning based on what their passions are. Based on what their strengths were. So it was just a really incredible story to see that unfold.

An advocate of this, my father who was an immigrant to Canada couldn’t read and write, had a grade two education, left Greece to come to Canada after the Greek civil war. And he really saw technology in a way to really bring us together. I remember, for example, videos that he would take of us at Christmas and I can hear his voice even though he’s passed away. The opportunity to like hear his voice, to see my childhood through his eyes, really connect me to him this day. And before he passed away the Christmas before he actually asked for an iPad. And the first thing he wanted to learn was how to use Facetime because all of his kids and his grandkids lived all over the country and he wanted to see them.

And so I’ve always seen the opportunity for how we use this technology to really bring humanity together and how we are doing this. And you’re seeing educators doing this and seeing that value. Many of them aren’t able to see their kids on a regular basis and they’re using things like Zoom or Google Hangouts or whatever to actually build those connections and build those relationships. The thing that I’ve always struggled with is when I see schools using technology to almost dehumanize education where we have a student using a program that’s based on a curricula and the program figures out what the kid knows and then it’s just spewed into computer. There’s no collaboration, there’s no connection. It’s just a kid lost in a computer program. And so I am a huge advocate of using technology in education, but I’m a bigger advocate of people and how we connect those two is really important.

School has to have a bigger purpose than getting to university or getting to college or getting a job. How we actually tell our stories, how do we create opportunities for our students to be successful in ways that are meaningful to them?”

The beautiful thing about creating those portfolios is they should never look alike. They should never look the same. They should be tailored to the students in the way that they want to create them in the areas that they want to go into.

I think in this time we have to realize that there are so many opportunities for kids that we didn’t have when we were younger and we need to embrace that. But a lot of times we’re still trying to push our students into those same spaces that our parents actually pushed us into. But the world has changed and there’s so much more opportunity. So really how do we use that technology to build relationships and connect with one another, but also how do we utilize that so students actually create opportunities beyond school where they’re finding and tapping into those passion and finding ways to success that’s meaningful to them. [

I think if you are brilliant and you know everything about a subject but you don’t have the ability to connect with people I think we lose a ton of wisdom and schools are really focusing on those social and emotional skills that are really valuable and there’s a lot of great ideas in the world that actually no one has ever heard of because they get lost in the lack of ability to connect with one another. So that’s something for me that’s really crucial and how do we do that in this time where we don’t have the ability to, for example, see facial expressions in the same way. Kind of read that room. I think even through the lens of technology there’s a way to actually be able to connect with people every single day.

One of the things I used to do as school principal every single morning as my staff, my community, my students would walk in I would actually greet kids in the hallway or greet kids outside and connect with them. I would play basketball with them. I’d play different sports, joke around, go on the playground which was kind of awkward for a guy my size who’s six foot four who can barely hold up his own weight. But just actually having those interactions with those students and enjoying that time with them made it so much easier when we had to deal with the hard stuff.

And so much easier when there are issues in a class when I had to deal with it because I had built that relationship with them. What better place to actually really have joy than in a school with kids who are excited and laughing and kindergarten, I used to teach kindergarten and every joke I’ve ever said no matter if it was funny or not was funny to them. And we need to build on that because I think it makes it so much easier to do hard work when we bring joy into those spaces.

So when I actually was a first year teacher one of the things I was really passionate about was coaching. And I wanted to be a basketball player as a kid growing up and didn’t necessarily have the ability but I wanted to be connected to the sport. And grew up watching the NBA, Michael Jordan, things like that. And I watched these coaches and then I became a coach myself. And one of the things I had actually seen in the NBA was just coaching how they would yell at referees and really get on them to really try and sway the game in their favor. And because that’s what I grew up watching I actually remember when I first started coaching being that same way. I knew the space where you could actually push and actually get onto a referee to the point where you wouldn’t actually be thrown out of a game. You wouldn’t get like a technical foul. And I would always kind of just really get close to that line but never cross it.

Then when I actually noticed I would actually have to really work my players because they would do the same thing. They would start yelling at referees and get on their case. But they didn’t necessarily know that line and they would get technical fouls and would cause us issues. And I was wondering why they would do that because that’s my job as the coach, not necessarily their job as a player. And I remember doing this and it was probably about ten games into the first year of coaching and a referee that was in this game who was also a teacher at a different school, someone who I connected with. I had called a time out and he came over to me and I remember him saying to me George, I know you love kids and they obviously love you. I’m watching you yell at us because you don’t like some of the things that we’re actually saying and you’re watching your players do the exact same thing. And understand this. Your kids love you and no matter what you do they’re going to want to emulate that. What kind of example do you want to be for your kids?

And in that exact moment I actually never yelled at a referee ever again. Never actually got mad at a referee or anything like that. I totally changed my demeanor because I realized how I was actually connecting in that space and doing something that was teaching my kids a really bad practice even though it was something I learned from the NBA. And I’ll tell you high school basketball is very far from the NBA. But the reason I tell this story and I think it’s really important is this was not my boss. This was not someone who was going to throw me out of the game. This was a colleague. This was someone that could have worked across the hallway from me. And I think the reason why that story is so important is a lot of time we’re looking for someone above us in a hierarchy to initiate the change. We’re looking at someone with great influence on other people to make a change. And what I realized is that someone across the hallway could actually make a significant change in the work that I do.

And so this is so important to what we do as educators because we get upset at politicians because they’ve never been into a school and so how could they really tell us what to do in education. But then we also don’t listen to our colleagues across the hall. And so really how do we ensure that the work that we do we can have a tremendous impact on our colleagues, on our kids and then they can have that same impact on us. I really learned it from that one moment and as I’m talking about this and sharing this I always encourage people to think about what are those trajectory changing moments and why do they happen and what has made you better for that. Because we created many of those trajectory changing moments for our kids. Let’s just make them really positive.