the power of stupid people in large groups.

This quote is attributed to George Carlin, but I’m sure it’s served as a general axiom for humanity over the past ten thousand years of civilization.

Unfortunately, when tech designers made the Internet easy and accessible to anyone… one of the byproducts is it allowed these groups to form… en masse… globally.

And an even worse byproduct of that is they are no longer gathering digitally, but banding together physically in order to affect things.

I only hope history books don’t write about this era as the one time in history where civilization fell because of mass stupidity.

It’d be a shame, considering how far we’ve come.

I’ve been sitting on a manuscript for quite some time.

It was completed, read through, polished and even had a cover drawn up. But… for some reason… I was too hesitant to release this one.

Call it imposter syndrome or just feeling like a broken record with nothing insightful to say, I kept it in my digital drawer.

I kept asking myself, does the world really need another book about teaching?

Underneath that question was another question that requires an honest reflection:

Am I really the person to talk about good teaching?

I have so far to go and when I think about my beginnings, I still shudder.

I was bad.

But… I was willing to learn. Or rather, I needed to learn and needed to do it in a hurry.
Confession: one of the biggest reasons I’m doing the podcast is to learn from the best. While I care if it serves the listener, I’m selfishly asking questions for me so I can improve.

And yet, despite the many things I had to learn and the long road ahead, I still had students telling me how much they enjoyed my classes.

In the last few years, I’ve been touched by the number of students (and parents) who email me at the end of the year. I’ve kept every one of their positive notes of encouragement in a special notebook to help build my confidence on the days when I’m really feeling low.

Then, last month, I received a pile of notes from my first cohort of students at the end of our first virtual course. This one really struck me:

“Hi sir,

I just wanted to say thank you for this course! It’s the best religion course I’ve taken, even though it was all online.

I also wanted to say thank you so much for looking at my work and seeing potential in it. It is a super huge deal to me.

My last thing is, you’re literally the best and most realest teacher I’ve ever had. Surprisingly, this is the best course and most enjoyable course I’ve ever taken in the last four years and it’s made me the most honest I’ve been about myself and my life in a very long time.

Once again, thank you so much!”

I don’t put it up here to brag, because goodness knows I can be taken down many pegs, but it made me realize that maybe… just maybe… I was on to something in my approach.

That’s when I made the decision to pull the trigger.

I’ve released a new book (and possibly my final non-fiction one for a long time) called “Teaching Outside the Curriculum.”

The digital version has launched, with the hardcopy forthcoming.

However, as a thank you to you, my reader, and to the many mentors I’ve had over the years, I’m posting the PDF for free on my site for a while.

Maybe I’ll keep it on here permanently—I don’t know yet.

What I do know is that I’m ever thankful to the many people who encourage me, support me, mentor me and keep me going.

Check it out!

One of the best practices a magician can commit to is filming themselves as they run through their performance… and the performances themselves.

Filming is important because if there’s one thing you learn about watching yourself—it’s the camera doesn’t lie.

It clearly shows your awkward movements, fumbles, overall body language and stage presence. While tough to witness, it gives you honest feedback to work on for the next performance.

One thing I’ve come to appreciate about the podcast I’m running with my friend Chris is listening to myself speak. Even after the editing that is done, it’s educational to hear:

– How often I ramble
– Excessive use of filler words
– Stories and anecdotes I repeat over multiple episodes

This has been helpful in being mindful about my speech patterns in daily life. It’s been especially useful in the classroom… not to mention on current episodes of the podcast we are recording (you actually hear stark improvements every four to five episodes).

As a self-reflective exercise, recording yourself isn’t a bad idea. You don’t need a podcast, or a career as an entertainer, to ask friends if you can record a conversation one night.

You’ll be amazed at what you might learn.

After all, the camera (or recorder) doesn’t lie.

The real question is, are you ready to hear the truth about yourself?

National Novel Writing Month is just around the corner.

This is the time of year I normally gather a group of students, a few close friends, and we challenge each other to write fifty thousand words of a book while encouraging each other along the way. The challenge is very motivating.

However, after doing this for close to ten years, I’m bowing out.

While I do really well with ridiculous challenges (writing a book in a month, reading the Bible in two, etc.) and they help me accomplish great goals in a short amount of time, I find I burn out at the end of them.

While recognizing my mind works great in sprints, what I really need is the motivation of smaller steps compounded over time. It’s the small, consistent steps that lead to the biggest changes in the end.

After all, for a writer, every month should be novel writing month.

Time to set my sights smaller and for much longer.

Is we often end up on the wrong one. Or worse, we get knocked down from the one we’re on.

I’ve often fell prey to shouting loud and clear on one, only to realize later how my thoughts have changed. It wouldn’t take long for someone digging through my posts to find some of those abandoned boxes over the past five years… never mind the last twenty five.

There are a few I still have a pretty familiar footing on and the combination of my conviction and stubbornness will keep me on there for some time, but I can assure you of my severely bruised ego from coming off some of them.

While some may be important, are they even worthwhile?

One thing to consider is, most often, the contents of the box are usually more valuable than what the person on top has to say.

This year, I opted to step up and teach in an entirely virtual environment.

While my initial thoughts regarding the matter revolved around selfish reasons (the least amount of contact and exposure to others as a means of protecting my family), other ideas percolated:

• I love a challenge
• the merging of digital platforms with education is long overdue and so I might as well jump on the rail line
• it’s an opportunity to learn and prove you can teach an old dog new tricks
• the worst that happens is I pick up some new ideas

However, as I work through this new frontier, some bigger thoughts have been coming my way.

Working in a completely online platform isn’t simply a matter of translating what you do in person to doing it online, it’s rethinking how you approach education in the first place.

I used to think that once we can program AI tools that use adaptive methods of responding to individual student needs, there would be no point in having a human in the room. Technology that can respond to you individually and keep you in the optimal zone of development is a far superior learning mechanism than mass instruction.

However, now I see a weakness of that idea:

It can’t adapt to the holistic person.

People are more than just the “left side” of the brain and while social media has done a tremendous job of manipulating people through their behavioral change algorithms (fancy way of saying, “keeping users addicted”), the reason people flocked to the platforms was for connection.

It occurs to me that what I’m doing right now is trying to merge the best of both worlds. And a scarier thought occurring to me is that what I’m actually doing is creating my own obsolescence as an educator.

If done right, I melt into the background as a support system rather than an active ‘sage.’

And while this idea originally disheartened me, I actually find it motivating. If we can create an education system that actually works in the benefit of each student, providing for their needs… why wouldn’t we rush to do this?

It’ll require an incredible amount of creativity and careful planning, but that’s how all great leaps forward happened. Time for another one.

Looking at a blank screen, figuring out what will go on it, is a practice onto itself.

With nothing on it, the mind begins reeling for something interesting. It craves novelty and hates being bored.

Boredom is the state in which the brain must work overdrive to accept its condition. It is in a vacuum and needs to be filled.

Of course, thanks to our programmed biology, it wants the easiest way out.
One click away…
One swipe away…
One check away…
and the blank screen is replaced with a temporary feeling of satisfaction.

A gambler pulling on a slot machine whose high only lasts as long as the wheels are spinning.

However, boredom is also the state in which we can bring forth our creative self. It’s our greatest state of being because it means all our needs are met and we have an opportunity to elevate ourselves further.

Hence, staring at the blank screen.

It’s an opportunity to say, “Okay, what are we going to do together?”

Some days, there might not be an answer. Other days… it just might provide the answer you need most.

Being a prophet of the future is simple:

Just look at our own history and see where we are in the cycle.

Replace history’s leaders, plagues, issues, trends, wars and moments with the names today and you’ll come across as a master clairvoyant.

But we have a moment right now to finally break the cycle. The world is in disorder—that much is clear. There’s chaos, uncertainty and yet, a tremendous number of strands of hope everywhere.

Let’s pull on those trends of hope… the great things we’ve done… the progress we’ve made… and yank at them until they become our reality.

This could be the time we do something right.

Am I too much of an optimist?

To that, I say, we’ve seen what the world looks like in the hands of realists and pessimists, but we’ve never seen it in the hands of optimists.

Why not start now?

Nora Roberts had some tremendous advice during a Q&A session when someone asked how she manages to juggle her career and her kids.

She explained the key to juggling is to know some balls are plastic and others are glass. The key is to catch the glass ones before they hit the floor.

Considering the climate of today and the endless demands put upon us, both in our personal and our work lives, this is some sound advice to reflect on.

On any given day, balls are going to drop.

I know for myself, when I look at what needs to get done, the first question I always ask is what can be ignored for now. Then I ask what battles am I really willing to fight today because, frankly, some aren’t worth it.

It’s finding out what are the glass balls that will shatter if they hit the floor, and which are the plastic ones that will bounce… maybe even roll away…and can be picked up later.

Not everything is made of glass and it’s a relief to be reminded of that.

The joy of being in a democratic nation is the ability to influence the outcome of the country through a single vote. While you hope your candidate, and the party they represent, will fair the best they can—one should never hold their breath.

My own history of voting was marked under the care of my parents, who openly supported the Liberal party. Who they vote for today is uncertain to me, although in the last election I recall my mother asking the polling station whether “None of the Above” was an option.

Since leaving the home and taking it upon myself to be informed, I have voted widely across the political spectrum in elections. My focus is always on my local candidate and who I feel would best represent the issues of my area, as opposed to the partisan politics many hold onto.

Let’s be clear: politics has, is, and will always, be a game for power.

And power has always been abused.

Lately, however, the game has become more overt… more front and centre… and certainly more manipulative.

The word ‘scandal’ has flooded the media so much, it doesn’t even register a reaction anymore. Parties aren’t even trying to create a vision for the future because they’re so busy pointing fingers at the past.

I can’t tell whether they want me to be jaded with the whole process that I merely give up, or randomly vote for anybody because it really won’t matter at the end of the day.

Right now, I would love to see a vision for the future.

Because all I see are people creating romanticized visions of the past.