Intentional Parent | It's About Learning

Archives For Intentional Parent

Progress Requires Risk

Dwayne Harapnuik — November 25, 2013 — Leave a comment

“Safe is good for sidewalks and swimming pools but life requires risk if we are to get anywhere.”

I have been pondering this Simon Sinek quote for the past couple of days and I agree whole heartedly with the notion of nothing ventured…nothing gained. I also see that there is a significant paradox that we can also incur significant risk to our lives when we shy away from potentially risky activities or endeavours. What I am trying to say is that it can be very risky to try and play it safe. Let me explain with the following example.

A couple of weeks ago my boys and I took a group of their friends up to Squamish mountain to ride the amazing downhill trails. Some of these trails appear in the popular Down Hill mountain biking film Strength in Numbers by Anthill Films as well as several other films and youtube videos. There is a particular series of stunts and jumps that not for the novice rider. The following video doesn’t do the stunt justice because you are not able to really get a sense of the large span of the gap and the extreme height the boys are at but it does provide a context for the fact that there is zero margin for error if one fails to gauge the right speed.

There is a huge physical risk involved in these stunts but the rewards are equally significant. Being able to master these types of stunts means the boys are riding at a professional not just an expert or advanced level. I made this distinction because there is a difference between simply “making” the stunt and “making it with style”…the style is what distinguishes the professional from the amateur. My older son commented that he can now ride at the professional level, he just needs to build up his speed, style and consistency. He also commented that if he wouldn’t have dedicated the past 5 months of committed riding at the many bike parks and shuttle runs throughout BC he would not be at this level.

This confirms that the huge physical risks that my boys take daily in their riding is getting them much closer to their goal of becoming professional extreme athletes. It also confirms that not taking these risks would mean that they are physically safer but they would then risk missing out on their dreams. Fortunately the risk of knowing “what was” even it that involves risking life and limb is a much stronger motivator than the safety of wondering “what could have been”.

It is my hope and belief that the confidence that will come from overcoming fears and risk will positively transfer to other parts of my boys lives and will help them to master even greater challenges. Progress does require risk and facing and mastering that risk means that my boys will always know what was and not have to risk not know what could of been. I am just glad that I have been able to put my boys into the environment that has contributed to their progress.

In Intentional Parent playing it safe, progress, risk, risk taking, safe, safety

Cultivate Your Passion, Don’t Follow It

Dwayne Harapnuik — November 18, 2013 — Leave a comment

This well made video Monopoly of Dreams is a wonderful example of why we need to help our young people learn how to cultivate their passions as opposed to simply trying to follow them. To many of the young people in the video were not able to really identify what they were really passionate about and would be interested in pursuing if money were no object.

In the blog post Follow Your Passion is Crappy Advice Joshua Fields Millburn points to the work and research of Cal Newport, a 30-year-old assistant professor of computer science at Georgetown University, who is exploring why some people lead successful, enjoyable, meaningful lives while so many others do not. Newport points out that while the advice of following your passions which is “regurgitated everywhere” on the internet and in the above video is appealing because it’s both simple and daring it is empty because he has found that most people don’t have preexisting passions.

In contrast Newport recommends that you “cultivate” your passions which implies that you work toward building passion for your something whether it is your job, your studies or other aspect of your life. He also points out that this is a longer process that requires you to approach your work like a craftsman.

Honing your ability, and then leveraging your value, once good, to shape your working life toward the type of lifestyle that resonates with you.

This is where a parent’s and especially a father’s role is so important. Because our children often are not even aware of what their passions are it is our responsibility to create and foster an environment in which it is not only safe but crucial for our children to explore, experiment and experience the fullness and diversity of life so that their passions can develop and grow. Helping our children, especially our teen agers, cultivate their passions is the next step in this process.

This leads me to ponder:
Are we modelling a life of cultivating our own passions?
Does our walk match our talk?
Have we created an environment where the exploration and cultivation of passions is safe and rewarding?

In Intentional Parent Change, cultivate, exploration, passion

Why Student Engagement Plummets in High School

Dwayne Harapnuik — November 5, 2013 — Leave a comment

(Credit: Constantine Pankin via Shutterstock)

I clipped the blog post by Brandon Busteed, Executive Director of Gallup Education The School Cliff: Student Engagement Drops With Each School Year earlier this year and added it to my Evernote “.Write” repository hoping to one day deal with this topic in a significant way. When I read the story I immediately agreed with Busteed’s assertion that a overzealous focus on standardized testing and the lack of experiential and project-based learning as probable causes of this drop in student engagement. But it wasn’t until this fall that I experienced, in a very personal way, how standardized testing and the supporting curriculum negatively impacted my older son’s engagement and attitude toward school. As the following data indicates this breakdown in engagement is rampant.

Source: Gallap.com

The Gallup Student Poll which surveyed nearly 500,000 students in grades five through 12 from more than 1,700 public schools in 37 states in 2012 revealed the sobering fact that the longer students stay in school, the less engaged they become. The survey asked students to indicate their level of agreement with statements such as: “My teachers make me feel my schoolwork is important,” and “At this school, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.”

From my anecdotal experience with my son Levi I would also have to add that standardized tests add a level of frustration and futility to the learning experience. We moved to North Vancouver to enable our boys to pursue their goals of professional downhill mountain bike racing. To ensure that they boys can commit enough time to riding and training and to allow for the flexibility the sport demands both of our boys are being home educated. They are engaged in math and science courses online and since the boy’s mother and I have a background in the humanities we are working with the boys on English, Social and History and are preparing the boys to challenge the Alberta Education departmental exams.

The Social 30 curriculum focus is on understanding the role that ideologies play in shaping identity. When I reviewed the text and supporting material I was excited to be able to explore some very significant life questions and issues with my son. I saw our working through this course as a way to further explore my son’s emerging identity and challenge him to think much deeper and more critically in his daily life. We have read through the first 5 chapters of the material, watched many videos and documentaries, worked through many review questions, discussed many of the historical issues that have emerged from the ideologies of individualism and collectivism and are starting to explore the impact of these fundamental perspectives on our modern society. Everything was going well and it was clear that Levi was not just understanding the material he was able to apply what he learned to an analysis of the world around him.

Since we are going to be challenging the course and Levi’s entire grade will be dependent upon this one exam we started working through some of the practice and sample exams from the previous years and soon realized that all the work on higher order thinking skills of analysis, application, synthesis were for naught because the exams were structured for recognition and regurgitation. Most of the multiple choice questions had at least 3 seemingly correct answers and the right answer was the one that repeated a phrase directly from the text. Even the supposed analysis questions required responses that were worded as close to the text as possible.

All our work at understanding and application didn’t prepare either Levi or I to do well on these exams–I worked through the exams as well and did only slightly better than Levi. We quickly realized that the best way to do well on the exams was to repeatedly go through the practice exams to get used to the way that the questions were structured and to be able to recognize the rightest answers. The exams were testing for information recognition and NOT understanding. I fully understand why teachers have to teach toward the test. Standardized testing forces this unfortunate practice.

Levi and I are still working toward understand but we have now added another component to our studies–test writing practice. Unfortunately that takes almost as much time as learning for understanding so our time on this subject has nearly doubled. For boys who are very serious about their commitment to being extreme athletes time is something that is very valuable and it is so frustrating that we have to WASTE so much of it on preparing for this exam.

My attitude toward teachers who teach to the test has completely changed. I regrettably understand why they have to do this–because I am having to do this. Last year in parent teacher interviews two of Levi’s teachers openly stated that in order to prepare Levi and his peers for the departmental exams and for university they had to teach to the test. The small charter school that Levi attending last year in Alberta boasted some of the highest high school achievement standards in the province and I now better understand how they got this ranking and what they had to do to get it. This is a systemic problem. A problem that we all know could easily be fixed if we moved away from an environment based on standardized testing to an active educational environment of active learning, critical and analytical thinking, collaboration and meaningful projects.

But teachers can’t make that move until the politicians and the ministries of education have the courage to move away from a culture of assessment to a culture of learning–this foolish notion that you can “fatten a pig by continuously weighing it”. Unfortunately, Alberta is moving toward more standardize testing in K-12 so these problems will persist.

I don’t see any significant and immeidate changes on the horizon that will improve the circumstances for my two boys but the results of the Equinox Summit – Learning 2030 indicate that learning in the future will be significantly different. Earlier this year the Waterloo Global Science Initiative hosted the Equinox Summit – Learning 2030 that was directed by Graham Brown-Martin, the founder of Learning Without Frontiers (LWF) a disruptive think tank focused on new ideas for learning and teaching practice, brought together 40 education thought leaders that worked together propose flexible, context and culturally sensitive solutions that would act as a foundation to define the global education systems in 2030. The group developed a Communique that proposes a radically different structure for learning in 2030, one in which traditional concepts of classes, courses, timetables, and grades are replaced by more flexible, creative
and student-directed forms of learning. As one can see from the points below the Summit proposed a system that emphasizes assessment that is nothing like the standardized testing that we are so stymied by today:

Learning focuses on the development of lifelong learning practices and a sense of self, rather than facts and figures.
Students learn through cross-disciplinary and often collaborative projects.
Students connect with each other in fluid groupings that are dictated by their needs at any given moment.
Teachers and other learning professionals serve as guides or curators of learning.
Learning progress is measured through qualitative assessment of a student’s skills and competencies that document the learner’s entire experience, rather than measuring a discrete outcome.
Decisions that affect the learning environment are made by stakeholder groups comprised of earners, teachers, governments, and parents, with learners and teachers playing a central role in decision-making.
Schools empower both students and teachers, encouraging them to experiment with new ideas and fail safely, so that they develop the confidence to take risks.

I am hoping that these fundamentals are realized much sooner than 2030, because we need this type of a learning system TODAY. I am also hoping that there is the political will and academic leadership that will help bring this system about. In the mean time it is the responsibility of all educators to envision this type of a system for the future to work toward making it a reality today.

View the full Communique

In Intentional Parent, Learning 2.0 assessment, Engagement, standardized testing, students, testing

Practice Change by Living It

Dwayne Harapnuik — October 31, 2013 — 2 Comments

I have been reflecting on the positive aspects of change for several months/years now and in my post Catching the Openness to Change I indicated that as a result of our many moves and life in different cultures my boys have become much more adaptable, appreciative, accepting, resilient and open to change. I also reflected on how my boys have expanded their comfort zones, explored new opportunities, developed new relationships, acquired new mentors and learned how to deal with a wide variety of physical challenges. My grand experiment in becoming an Intentional Father and helping my boys grow into positive young men appears to be working and the past five months have confirmed that practicing change is necessary if you expect to your children to continue to grow in the attributes that I listed above and to also learn how to set priorities and discern what is genuinely important and what is not.

This past weekend my family and I moved from Chilliwack to North Vancouver. Since this was the fourth major move we made this year we have a lot of practice so the move was virtually stress free and went off without a hitch. Marilyn and the boys left Edmonton at the end of June and moved into a condo in the Silver Star Resort in Vernon for the month of June. The next move was to Chilliwack to stay with family for just under a month and then the move to Whistler for almost two months and finally this past weekend, after a couple more weeks in Chilliwack, we all moved into a house in the Lynn Valley area of North Vancouver. Everyone is quite excited to finally stay in one place for the next five months. That is right; we only have a five month lease and we are considering several options for the next year so there will be a few more moves to come. I also need to add that while my family has been moving from mountain to mountain, I have also maintained a very small apartment in Burnaby on the edge of the BCIT campus where I am currently employed, so in addition to moving my family I have also had to move. If you haven’t had the chance to follow our story in my previous posts I encourage you to review the post in the Intentional Father category of my blog.

Why all the moves? Levi and Caleb have been involved in DownHill (DH) mountain biking for the past eight to ten years and last year they decided that they would like to race DH and work toward becoming professional racers/riders. Since there aren’t any mountains in Edmonton, and the type of commitment racing and turning pro require, we realized that we would have to move to either the interior of BC, or the North Shore/Whistler area to enable the boys to ride and train year round. This past summer the boys raced in the BC Cup circuit and gained some valuable experience and by the end of the season both had top ten finishes so the dream of riding full time is a not too distant reality. Over the past five months we traveled the province of BC to attend all the races and also explored living in Vernon/Silver Star and Whistler and now we are exploring the North Shore of Vancouver. We have learned that you can’t just vacation or visit a place. You need to have to have an extended stay where you actually live in the location to really understand the culture and the dynamics of the community.

A couple of days into this latest move the boys have their guitars and amps set up, the living room has been set up as a bike shop, because their high-end bikes require extensive daily maintenance, and they have started riding Mount Seymour and Fromme North Shore trails in pursuit of a good place to practice their skills. Can’t forget to mention the fact that the boys are also working daily on their high school studies. The last couple of weeks have been a bit more challenging because of two moves so close together and Levi’s latest results on a Physics exam were a little disappointing but his attitude–that he just has to work harder and be more disciplined means that he is on the right track–this attitude is a result of encouragement from one of Levi’s new mentors. Similarly, Caleb has learned that hard work and discipline is necessary for all things that are important. The life of an extreme athlete and in particular a DH racer is a life of constant travel and change so the boys lives are only going to get more complicated and there will be even more change in the years to come. Learning how to deal with and adapt to all this change now is extremely important.

Learning how to deal with change in a positive way is fundamental to being a productive part of society and is something that my boys will have to master but it is not something that our society promotes or embraces proactively. We (society in general) have been talking about the fact that the world around us is constantly changing and that we need to be able to adapt to all this change ever since Heraclitus a 500BC, greek philosopher argued: “The Only Thing That Is Constant Is Change”. And yet the resistance to change, significant change, is rampant in the world around us. The reason I stressed the point of significant change is to differentiate between the actual change that makes us uncomfortable or forces to to adjust to new circumstances from change that many of use to distract ourselves with when we strive to satisfy our common desires for the latest and greatest technological gadgets, toys, cars, houses or items that we use to make our lives more comfortable. I believe we busy ourselves with the constant pursuit of latest technology as a distraction so that we don’t have to face genuine change.

The resistance to change, or at least dealing with the resistance to change, in the workplace has spawned an entire industry filed with books, workshops, webinars and an endless parade of consultants and experts who offer the 5, 8 or 12 key factors to limit or counter the resistance to change. I have played the role of change agent in several organizations and have worked with several different leadership teams on dealing with this major challenge and in my experience and research I have come to realize that we may all be attempting to deal with the symptoms of the problems as opposed to dealing with the problem itself.

The problem is our society, for the most part, is change averse and we simply do not practice change–we talk about it and research it, but we don’t practice it–at least not nearly enough. Furthermore, rather then embrace change as an opportunity for growth we have tendency to do whatever we can to limit the uncertainty and the discomfort that change demands. We strive to create a safe and secure environment for our children which in and of itself is good but as a result we may be sheltering them from the positive aspects of change. Children are no longer allowed to walk to school or to explore their neighbourhoods and communities for fear that something may happen to them. Our learning institutions which should be the fundamental proponents of change have become mired in tradition, security and stability–see my post Pick Two – Innovation, Change or Stability for details thoughts on this sticking point.

In his book Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the age of the quick fix, Edwin Friedman uses history and the example of the European discovery of the New World as an allegory of the human experience of getting unstuck. Friedman argues:

when any system is imaginatively gridlocked, it cannot get free simply through more thinking about the problem. Conceptually stuck systems cannot become unstuck simply by trying harder. For a fundamental reorientation to occur, the spirit of adventure which optimizes serendipity and which enables new perceptions beyond the control of our thinking process must happen first. This is equally true regarding families, institutions, whole nations and entire civilizations.

But for that type of change to occur, the system in turn must produce leaders who can both take the first step and maintain the stamina to follow through in the face of predictable resistance and sabotage. Any renaissance, anywhere, whether in marriage, or a business, depends primarily not only on new data and techniques but on the capacity of leaders to separate themselves from the surrounding emotional climate so that they can break through the barriers that are keeping everyone from “going the other way”.

The type of leader that Friedman is talking about is one who practices change by living it. They have the adventurous leadership qualities required to breakthrough the imaginative gridlock we are facing in our society today. It is my hope that I am raising young men who have this spirit of adventure who can embrace change and make the most of it. Right now their life of change is self serving and they are pursuing their dreams of racing professionally. The sense of purpose, passion, spirit of adventure that they need to succeed in their personal pursuits can easily be focused on broader pursuits that they will inevitably pursue as they continue to grow and mature.

My boys are practicing change by living. It is my hope that this will help them in all their future endeavours. Time will tell.

In Change, Intentional Parent life, principled life, priorities

What Do People Regret The Most Before They Die?

Dwayne Harapnuik — October 29, 2013 — Leave a comment

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/20-things-people-regret-the-most-before-they-die.html?utm_source=Lifehack&utm_campaign=9677fc889b-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_983e966a3e-9677fc889b-414682309

What Do People Regret The Most Before They Die? via kwout

I have been following the Lifehack site ever since its inception and every once in a while they post an ultimate gem. The following list of regrets that people have before they die really resonates with me because in my pursuit of being an intentional father I am so aware of the notion of modelling the following values, characteristics and priorities in ones life: