Speaker 1: 0:14

Here we are Cool. Welcome back to another episode of Shift Ed podcast. We're coming out of Laval today actually I'm at the office and I'm reaching across our country to the beautiful West Coast where I have Ainsley Rose coming in to chat with us a little bit today. So thanks, ainsley, for hopping on here and sharing some of your thoughts about education.

Speaker 2: 0:39

My pleasure, Chris. I appreciate the opportunity. It's been a while.

Speaker 1: 0:44

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, you've always been a great presence here in Quebec in our educational Anglo sphere, so I felt that appropriate to include you in this little journey that we're on with talking with educators that help our system move forward. So my first question is always tell me a little bit about how all this started for you. When did education kind of start to really grab you and be like? This is the direction I want to go in in life as to be an educator to support teachers, support students, support administrators. Can you fill in those blanks for us?

Speaker 2: 1:24

Can you fill in those blanks for us? I can try.

Speaker 1: 1:26

I have to say that I had a very inauspicious beginning.

Speaker 2: 1:30

I was graduating out of the University of Western Ontario in London, ontario. At the time, I was in the Faculty of Physical Education and I had just started my master's degree. And lo and behold, at the time as well, I was the assistant varsity basketball coach, working with the head coach, jerry Gonser, and we got a phone call at the office one day and I was just. I literally sat outside his office and it happened to be a phone call about a guy by the name of Bill Bustead who was the department head of physical education at Massey Vanier high school in Townsville.

Speaker 2: 2:09

And they were. They were looking for a kid who had graduated out the university of New Brunswick and was actually the captain of the Western Mustangs basketball team whom I was coaching. And they were looking to hire him because they wanted a basketball coach back at Masseyvania High School. And the young fellow was going on to do his dentistry degree, the faculty of dentistry at Western, and was not available. And so the head coach says well, look, I got a young guy here who's just finishing up, he's graduating, and he's got very much the same kind of credentials you're looking for. You might want to talk to him.

Speaker 2: 2:50

And sure enough, a week or so later I got a phone call from Bill Bustede and a short time after that I was hired to get my first teaching degree at Massey Vanya High School. I was hired sight unseen over the telephone. I didn't have a teacher's degree, I was just, you know, and back then you could do that. And before I knew it, that summer I got married this was back in 1973. And my wife and I got in our Mercury Comet and we drove down the 401, in, uh, cowensville, quebec, uh, literally at a place called the valley blue motel one of those no-tell motels and I started my teaching career.

Speaker 2: 3:35

so you know, that was it nothing fancy. I didn't have these grand, grandiose plans about how I was going to make you know the world a different place, I was going to have impact and all of that, but that's where I got started.

Speaker 1: 3:50

That's so cool. And what made the jump from? Because listeners might not know this, but Ainsley was my principal when I was in high school. How did you make that jump from teacher to to administrator at Massey Venue?

Speaker 2: 4:07

Well it's. It seems to be um consistent throughout my career that I have I have never actually applied for a job in my 52 years in education.

Speaker 2: 4:20

Uh, somebody always came to me and said you know, you might want to think about this and, interestingly enough, some principalship positions became open in the district of Bedford it was the district of Bedford at the time and they said you know, you really should apply because you seem to have some leadership abilities. And so I ended up doing that. I, you know, I did have to apply, obviously, but not because I had chosen to do that. It was other people who seemed to think that I had some skills that might be helpful for for different places, and so I applied, and my first, my first appointment was the vice principal of Butler Clarenceville. My first appointment was the vice principal of Butler Clarenceville, stambridge East and Farnham Elementary Schools, working with a good friend of mine, murray Gunson, who was principal at the time. In fact, your mom worked there as well, interestingly enough.

Speaker 1: 5:17

That's right, small world. Eh, that sure is. Sure is, we were just talking about our relationship, to me going to the school that Ainsley was principal at and my dad was friends with him and colleagues and our families intermingled.

Speaker 1: 5:39

So this is a real cool full circle that we're experiencing today. What did you find was the biggest mindset shift that you had to have from that transfer from teacher to administrator? Was it a dramatic or were you able to still kind of keep your core values and your mindset the same as you were when you were teaching?

Speaker 2: 6:01

Well, that's a great question. You just mentioned the word mindset. Mindset was sort of central to all of this, because every job that I did, right from my first teaching degree on, I technically speaking wasn't qualified for. And so I had to realize, number one, that I needed to be a learner and that I didn't know everything. And so, even though I had to realize, number one, that I needed to be a learner and that I didn't know everything, and so, even though I had this quote, title of principal or whatever, I needed to put myself in a position where I had to be able to learn, and learn quickly If I were, if I were going to have any kind of credibility to be able to lead other people in this business called education. And so I became a voracious reader, and I also realized that the skill set that I had was my ability to build relationships with people. And so the value system yes, the value system was the same.

Speaker 2: 7:01

Whether it was teaching kids in a phys-ec class at Massey Vanier in the phys-ec department, the ability, and then, as a coach of the Vikings basketball team, senior boys basketball team, my ability to build relationships with the students first and then with my teachers that I worked with became foundational to everything that I did, and even to this day. I'm going to be in Quebec next week for 11 days and our leadership institute's continuing, and that's the message that I leave with people is that the connection, like we're in the human potential business and as my mentor who's who's still alive uh used to say that you know, education is about the discovery, the development and the deployment of human talent, and so it's finding out what people can do and then putting them in a place that they can maximize their skills and their talents. So so the value system for me was to be a model for people to bring out their best, and I try to do that to this day, and it seems to have served me well, for sure my family, my friends, my colleagues.

Speaker 2: 8:19

We're in the people business and we have to remember that. And people are fragile.

Speaker 1: 8:24

For sure. Well said, well said. And what were your biggest surprises that you've experienced, or the greatest lessons I guess you have encountered as you go through this More of on the leadership side of things, where you're trying to advance people in their learning and and their interactions and relationship building? What are some of your lessons that that you feel that you've um internalized, that have really supported you on that apart? I mean the, the relationship building, absolutely totally. But are there other other things that surprised you along this journey?

Speaker 2: 9:25

Yeah, the well, I guess I guess, whom I come in touch with that I encounter is that we are so myopic in terms of the potential that we have to do things. And you mentioned the word mindset earlier. You know the mindset that we have about whether kids can learn or not learn and for kids to think whether they're capable or not capable. That's probably the thing that continues to be primordial in my level of thinking that there's so much unrealized potential that we have in school systems. You know, primarily with kids and and teachers, views of what kids can or cannot do, especially coming into kindergarten, for example. And I I'm seeing that now with our, with our grandkids. We've got seven grandkids, the youngest of which are are two, four and six, uh, that my daughter has and they're exceptionally bright little people and I worry that they're going to get into a school system and somehow they're not going to fit the mode or the model and these little guys are going to have to conform rather than perform. You know where we can use what they bring into the world of learning and maximize their talents, their skills, their abilities, their attitudes, their behaviors and so on. So that's the main area that I think.

Speaker 2: 11:01

The other main area is the intransigence of the educational system. It is the most difficult organization, in my humble opinion, of all the occupations that there are out there, to try and change, to try and get out of the mold of how school can. It needs to be run or needs to be organized or needs to it it. You know we're we're repeating behaviors of millennia. I mean, millennia have passed and we're still running schools the same way.

Speaker 2: 11:37

Yes, you know, organizations like learn are trying to get us out of that box, and and and and other people are, but it's it's. It's not been brought to scale. We have not reinvented education, frankly, so that's. Another thing is, you know and universities are notorious for that, you know, there's these rules and regulations and this is how school is done. You have to have seven periods a day. They have to be 60 minutes long, you have to have a recess in the morning and the afternoon. Well, there are other ways of doing this stuff, but we seem to be reluctant to get involved with it. That's a long answer for a short question.

Speaker 1: 12:16

No, totally. I mean I'm driving with you, ainsley, in the sense that you think the education would be at the forefront of innovation and change and best practices and new strategies that come in that tell us that here's more effective ways that we can go about teaching. How did John Hattie and his research and the data that he gathered did that? I mean, obviously it had an effect, because I know that you wrote quite a bit about the influences of that data on teaching and how can we tweak things a little bit? Could you talk to a little bit about John Hattie and his visible learning and what it is that you feel that people should know more about that research?

Speaker 2: 13:08

Boy, I can talk for the rest of the time we have together on this.

Speaker 2: 13:13

I got to know John very well because I worked hand in, not hand in glove. I didn't do any of his research, but I was responsible for bringing his research to a broader audience when his work came to North America. And what's intriguing about spending a quiet time with John over lunch or over dinner or whatever was? The man was always inquisitive about the world of education and learning. In fact, that's what got him started when he was a teacher here in North America. Interestingly enough, he used to go around and ask some of his colleagues you know about this or about that, you know how do I do this or how do I do that? And everybody seemed to have a different answer, and that led him to think well, it can't be that everybody is right. There got to be some things that are more effective and have greater impact than other things. And that's what prompted his doctoral research when he was at the University of Toronto getting his doctorate degree, interestingly enough. So he got his doctorate here in Canada, of all places, and that's what got him thinking about looking at the research.

Speaker 2: 14:33

And one of the drawbacks or one of the criticisms that he gets all the time is that meta-analysis is not bona fide research methodology, and in fact, the American Psychological Association has adopted effect sizes and the calculation of effect sizes as an appropriate measure of impact.

Speaker 2: 14:55

So he started examining things that people talk about all the time in education to try and find out why is it that this seems to have a greater impact than that?

Speaker 2: 15:06

What is it about that that seems to make a difference, and the classic example that we used to use early in the training of this work had to do with class size.

Speaker 2: 15:16

Everybody says, you know, like when teachers go on strike for their new contract, there are two things give us more money and give us smaller class sizes, both reasonable expectations. And so the question comes when his research points out that, you know, lowering class size doesn't seem to have the impact that you think it should have. So the question is why or why not? And and that that's what his research is all about is is questioning what we hold as the schema in our heads about what works and what doesn't work in in schooling and in education and in teaching and learning, and so he's caused us to start to think really deeply about what really is the right way to go about this work, because there are so many, so many permutations and combinations, like it's so complex. Teaching and learning is so complex and we try to make it simple, but it's not simple, it's really well said, try as we might.

Speaker 2: 16:23

it's not a simple, you know. Teachers work inordinately hard, I mean, and so his work is really helpful in terms of trying to understand where we should put our time, effort and energy to have the greatest impact. And, as he puts, it is that we, our purpose is to know whether what we're doing is having impact on student learning at the end of the day, and if it isn't, then why do we do it?

Speaker 2: 16:50

Find a better way, and his research now gives us a body of knowledge that we haven't had, like the medical profession, for example. The medical profession talks about evidence-based practice. This kind of operation is the most effective if you have heart problems, you know you put a stent in if you've got issues with arteriosclerosis, et cetera, et cetera. Well, what are the similar kinds of evidence-based practices in teaching and learning that we need to use, because they are more effective than other things that we have been doing for years, and maybe we've been doing it wrong.

Speaker 1: 17:32

For sure. I love that idea too, that we have information that can put to affect the results or the outcomes as much as we as educators think it might, which is always interesting to kind of like face up to some of these things that we've thought but might not actually hold water. How do you, how do you go about trying to I don't want to say convince, but to show that there are better ways based on the information that we've gathered through research and studies? How do you bring that down to the concreteness for teachers? Is it one teacher at a time, or is there is it possible to do system change at a school or a school board level that that that sticks.

Speaker 2: 18:38

Yeah, this is the next big challenge because you know there are a lot of outstanding programs or strategies out there, for example, reading recovery. Reading recovery is something that I came to learn about and worked with a lady who ended up from the Western Quebec School Board, who ended up being the national director for reading recovery in Canada A really remarkable teacher and a Reading Recovery teacher leader and what we learned from Reading Recovery is that there is a strategy and what tends to happen is there are all kinds of great ideas that that are not well implemented. Implementation is the essence and the key to whether something works or not, and I don't think people have figured it out well enough yet, and I think that's where things bog down. The whole concept of professional learning is. I mean, it's just, it's part and parcel of who we are as educators. We run workshops and so on, but a lot of the time you find that those things don't have the impact that they should, because I don't think we've got a model thought through properly. In my work, particularly when I got to a position at the Western Quebec School Board is what I'm looking for. I'm searching for my words here. I designed some principles around what professional learning should look like in our school board, and I use that as a model for everything that we did. And I use that as a model for everything that we did. And so you know, making it practical for teachers is the essence, the key. They all go to a workshop because they want to be able to put something in their classroom. The next day they go back to their classroom again. So practicality is important.

Speaker 2: 20:47

But I think the mistake that we too often make is that we Michael Fullen used to say you can't mandate what matters. And so when the government or the Department of Education or the school board or whomever decides, you know this is good stuff, we've got to do this. The first mistake we make is thou shalt go forth and multiply. Everybody's got to do this. People aren't ready to do it, so we have to lead people to want to taste, you know, get a little bit of a flavor in a safe, psychologically safe environment where they can try things out, make mistakes, learn from them, go back, make adjustments, et cetera, before we blow this up and say the whole school or the whole school board has to do this. It doesn't work that way. It just doesn't work. That way I can have a great conversation with you and coach you slowly through a particular process, knowing that I'm there beside you to help, support you and guide you and listen to your questions and so forth, tweak it along the way. That's far more effective than coming in and saying you know, here's the new math program, you're all going to teach it this way, and what's?

Speaker 2: 22:04

The first thing that happens is people put up their defenses. They get scared. They're going to have to get rid of stuff that they've always done, that they felt they were being successful in, and it falls apart. Three years later, all that money has been spent. Nothing has changed other than people's temperaments. They get upset and then we start complaining about not enough resources, not enough tools, not enough training, et cetera, et cetera, and so we go looking for the next silver bullet. So the model for me, the basic model for me, is wrong, like my. My rule of thumb was we do no more than three things. So I'm a big believer in triangles and anybody that's ever worked with me knows well. Here's Ainsley talking about his triangles. Again, three things, three things. You get rid of one of those, the model falls apart. So three initiatives, no more than that because most, most school districts can't handle more than three major initiatives at any given time, and even that sometimes is too much would those be inter related, like of the of the three, so one needs the other.

Speaker 2: 23:17

Like you say, take one out the other two don't work anymore, right? Yeah, so, like, for example, the three that I used to work on in western quebec, is that we would do assessment, instruction and design, instruction, assessment, instruction and design. That's and that's what I wanted to have all of our teachers proficient with over time, and we made it. We didn't make it mandatory, we make it voluntary. As soon as you commit, you commit for a long term. You don't commit for one year or for one session. You commit long term because you can't learn anything in a short time. You have to learn because you're asking people to change practices, you're asking them to change behavior. It's asking the change mindset. Three thing the other thing is that you're turning on and like oh, ok, we're ready.

Speaker 2: 24:03

Right, learning, teaching and learning doesn't happen that way. And and then the next thing is that we know that there's all kinds of research, whether it's in education or in the medical profession or elsewhere. We know that it's a lot easier to help people change when they're doing it with somebody else. So the rule of thumb was in Western Quebec is when a principal was going off to a staff development or a teacher wanted to go to staff development, they were never allowed to go by themselves. They had to go with other people. Better still, take a team, right. So now you've got multiple groups of people and no commitment. Just go and hear what it has, what's going on, find out about it, get the information and then we'll come back and we'll sit down and we'll talk about it.

Speaker 2: 24:57

So a principal couldn't go go to a staff development or a professional learning opportunity on their own. They had to go with a team. They had to take teachers with them, because the the my, my, my concept was you know, if it was a lousy workshop, at least getting there and coming back, they're all in the same car. What do they talk about? They talk about school.

Speaker 1: 25:16

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2: 25:17

So you know. So now you've got three people talking about school and they come. Yeah, they get all excited, they're motivated, they want to try something, and now the principal can support and help them that. So the next, the next piece, is that you do it in small pockets of pilots. You try it out. Does this work? What doesn't work? What can we change? What do we get control over? Is it going to take? How long does it take? I mean just there's a million questions that people will come up with and then you invite people to come and see what we're doing.

Speaker 2: 25:50

So it's not like a secret club. Only these people get to do it. You can. That's one of the principles of influence is scarcity. Only a few people can do this. Oh, but I want in, I want in. You build it that way, slowly over time, and you learn along the way. You stay with it, because most good things don't survive the test of time. Yes, if you can't keep doing it over a long time and monitoring, adjusting along the way, making it better as you learn, involving more people who have ideas. You look at any of the great, great uh organizations right now. There are ones that have, have learned along the way, and they've. You know, now, the, now, the uh, the jargon is you have to be agile, you have to be able to move quickly, and so forth. Anyway, I'm just blur blabbering on you?

Speaker 2: 26:48

I'm not sure if I'm answering your questions or not, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 26:51

Absolutely. You know it's making me reflect, too, a little bit Ainsley, on classroom teaching as well. I mean you can take the same kinds of concepts you have and apply them to your class, where you're inviting error, you're inviting iteration, you're inviting thought, you know, and debate and uncomfortableness I mean all of these great things that make us human, need to be more flourishing in our classrooms, I think, where we're getting more of that information from our kids and their experiences and their thoughts and letting them struggle. And we were just talking with Ginny Newman, garfield and he Garfield, um, ginny Newman, uh, garfield, and he, yeah, amazing, um, and he was talking to us about, about critical thinking, um, and it just it starts to.

Speaker 1: 27:41

He has this quote where he says to tweak and fortify. And it really started to ring true in the sense that we do try a lot of different things, but maybe we don't have to change everything all at once, that we focus on things and we start to see them a little bit clearer and then put them into practice, which is the fortification of, and understandings of, professional development, because I do think it's where sometimes we are in the flavor of the month kind of thing, you know, like new terms, new techniques, new strategies. And it can overwhelm a teacher, because let me get established on what you told me a year or two ago that I'm still trying to work with, and then there's a new thing that comes in, so it can be a bit overwhelming, that idea of too much change, where we want a little bit of stability or understanding before that we can actually implement it a little bit more deeper.

Speaker 2: 28:45

You've touched on an important point. You know Doug Reeves talks about the term that he coined for it. He says is that, you know, education is notorious about experiencing initiative fatigue. We just keep getting tired, like the new curriculum that comes out and the new textbook that's put into place, and on and on and on. And so that's why Hattie's work, people start to. People start to say, oh, now we got to do visible learning. No See, the thing about visible learning is it's the, it's the underpinning, the research, underpinning our practice that we need to become familiar with so that we don't start taking on so many different things and so forth. You know, you mentioned Garfield, jenny, jenny Newman. With Tweak and Fortify I've had the opportunity of working with Garfield. In fact he was one of the people that we were able to bring in for the annual LCEQ conference one year and people were really pleased with him and he's since doing more work now in some of the boards in Quebec.

Speaker 2: 29:47

I talk about my triangles again, so I like to use the term affirm, refine and aspire. Those are the three things that I try to build stuff around. We affirm things that you're currently doing, so we're not asking you to throw the baby out with the bath water. But we want to affirm the practices. We know the research Hattie's research says are effective and have impact. But we might want to refine some of those things.

Speaker 2: 30:19

You know, like Bob Marzano used to say that his nine high yield instructional strategies people have completely misunderstood they're not the only nine. And you put a high impact research strategy and give that to a novice teacher, it won't necessarily be high impact because they haven't refined enough the methodology. Like Barry Bennett used to say, how do you form student groups is really critical to whether a jigsaw activity is going to work effectively or not. If you have the wrong mix of kids, it won't work quite as effectively.

Speaker 2: 31:00

Peter Lillidal, the math expert in BC, here talks about the same thing is random selection of groups as opposed to homeostatic selection of groups. And then the aspire is that we always have to have people hope for something better and that's why my mission statement of hope helping other people excel is all built around that concept is that you can be better than what you think you are If you allow us to help support you and guide you and work with you and develop the skill set that you need to be most effective. So we have to remain hopeful in this stuff all the time because my God for some poor little souls in their classrooms now they're coming from places where there is no hope that's it.

Speaker 1: 31:53

That's it. I love that, that, that idea of hope, um, and that we have that embedded within our system, that, because we do want what's best for kids in the end, right, I mean, that's our, our end game, right, there is helping kids succeed.

Speaker 2: 32:09

yeah, they provide us with our jobs. That's right, and we're judged on the basis of how successful those kids are. Because another phrase I like to share with people is that you know, the kids we have today are our parents of tomorrow, and so if we don't do a good job with the kids we have in our classrooms right now're gonna have to deal with them as parents. That's right, and parents would be quite happy to tell you I pay your salary yep, yeah, absolutely I have people say that but I was principal I pay your salary, so you better do what I'm asking you to do.

Speaker 1: 32:46

I'm sorry doesn't work way, I have to work on the greater good for the majority of people. Absolutely Well, ainsley, this has been a real treat. I mean, you're so thoughtful in your reflections and I know that we've benefited from your exposure and your words and thoughts, and this is just an extension of basically what you've been doing with our system for a long time now and we're all the better for it. So thank you.

Speaker 2: 33:16

Well, that's very gracious of you to say, chris, thanks, thanks so much.

Speaker 1: 33:20

Sorry if I blabbed on here, but I get excited about this stuff still, which is great, it's fascinating, and I mean, every time I have a conversation, new things come up no-transcript we can use to inform and and and motivate and really build relationships, kind of coming back to where we started.

Speaker 2: 34:08

Well, the fascination of it is, it is, you know, if you stop and think about it. Um, the prime minister of canada, or sir frederick banting, or great canadians throughout the country, were all students in somebody's classroom. That's right, and and you know they're, they're diamonds in the rough and and maybe, maybe, you have that next diamond sitting in your classroom right now and you know how can we polish them and shine them so that they become the stars that will make a difference in somebody's life down the road. You know, find that cure. That might be a cancer cure. That might be a cancer cure. I mean, I think about some young people that I met in the Eastern townships this past year at the at the AAESQ QESBA conference articulate, bright, I asked them. My favorite question I'm asking people now is what if school were optional? Would they still come?

Speaker 1: 35:09

You know, think about that.

Speaker 2: 35:10

Think about that would they still come? You know, think about that. Think about that. Have you got a school or classrooms where teachers are so good that kids wouldn't want to miss Very good reflection point there, Leah, for sure.

Speaker 1: 35:25

Wow. Well, we'll leave it at that, because I need to think about that now. But again, I really appreciate your time and I mean I hope to have you back. I mean we didn't even touch on so many different aspects that we could have, so we'll be in touch and just thanks so much. This has been really great. I've really enjoyed it.

Speaker 2: 35:47

So thank you, it's been a pleasure for me too. Chris, I wish you all the best, and thank you, it's been a pleasure for me too. Chris, I wish you all the best, and thank you for making a contribution to education in Quebec through your podcast. It's just great Good for you. Thank you so much. Thank you and bye.