As a boy, I would take a volume of the encyclopaedia to bed and read it after my parents thought they had turned out my light –just so much fascinating information inside. What is an encyclopaedia, some of our students are asking? Precisely. Times have changed. I love the internet, as does anyone with a curious bent of mind. Although credulous minds might be at risk, with just a little critical skill you can sift through the useful and the useless on the internet. I take my computer most places. I have a smartphone. I own a Kindle and at the moment have about sixty books on it, most of them finished. I think it is time to get a tablet. I have been slow to get on the tablet bandwagon because I am a fan of the English language, and a tablet keyboard doesn’t promote affectionate relationships with words.  It is coming down to either an iPad, or one of two Android tablets. I am almost resigned to getting an iPad.

Resigned, I say, because I watched the recent announcement by Apple of iBooks2, iTunes University, and iBooks Author. Scorn and condescension dripped from the mouths of Philip Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice-President of Worldwide Marketing and Eddy Cue, Apple’s Senior Vice-President of Internet Software and Services. The announcement is about an hour long, but you can get the gist of it in the first few minutes: find it here.

No one should take the scorn and condescension personally; their shotgun was a bit more of blunderbuss really, targeting the education system, social conditions in America, parents, people who have had the temerity to associate with books, and most teachers in prior history. Of course we were all hapless victims of a time when Apple hadn’t come to the rescue. All that time and effort wasted – perhaps valiantly, but definitely uselessly, according to these executives – are now going to be replaced by apps. Not just individual apps, but a universe of interconnected, networked apps. Of course no one should be concerned that Apple is going to control very strictly the material, format, technology and appropriateness of this universe.

The overall effect was one of a couple of business experts who are amateurs of human nature.

Once you actually have a tablet in your hands, you love it. You realize that the people creating the iPad apps do understand learning and kids and the potential of technology. But what the actual developers also seem to understand which the executives seemed to miss entirely, is the role of teachers in the education process. Almost everyone I have ever spoken to remembers a great teacher or two, or more, who transformed learning. Teachers have always had to adjust to changes, and yes, some adjust better than others. Transforming predictions have been made about television, radio, videotape, the internet, and just about every other advance in technology. The reality is that these advances are simply tools, that students either use well or badly, and it will depend on the teachers in the room how well the technology is used. Nothing can replace the interested, talented, engaged teacher for creating the conditions for student success. Nothing can replace the eye and attention of a teacher who will watch the student’s face, and judge when to prod, or peel something back, or let whatever is germinating there sprout of its own accord. Apps, whether for the iPad or an Andriod tablet, will work because the teachers are the ones eager to engage the students. Make no mistake: teachers are eager for the sake of their students, Apple is eager for the sake of its bottom line.

Doutbless, I and my colleagues will enjoy their tablets, and become experts with them, so that our students enjoy them also. If  you believe that education is about the pursuit of truth and goodness, then these very apps, if they are effective, will allow students even better to learn how to sift the relevant from the irrelevant, how to sift the wicked from the good. The irony is almost palpable: if the iPad is as effective as Apple executives profess, it will help students become the kind of critical thinkers that will leave them shaking their heads at the presumption and lack of insight that packaged their announcement. Is Apple creating the Trojan Horse that will dismantle its pompousness?

On my time off I like to do physical labour – such as hammering nails, or chopping wood. For these pastimes I have a good hammer, and a great axe. But I see them for what they are: as tools, and I am not particularly attached to them. So too the iPad. Let’s keep our perspective.

Visitors to my office often comment on the art hanging on its walls, their eyes widening when they learn that it is student art. A number of years ago I started a bit of a campaign to hang student art in the halls and other spaces around the school, an idea that quickly gathered more momentum than I could sustain personally, and now we have a healthy supply of student art work hanging in all kinds of places on all three campuses. The art that hangs, or stands, or is stuck in its special location does provoke a fresher and more personal image of our students’ selves than we might otherwise acquire. In a school like ours with significant expectations for students to rise to, and a strong sense of identity for students to belong to, a risk is that we might be tempted to lump them all together in a polished, robust, energetic but standardized model whose uniformity was only slightly enriched by differences of hair, height, build and sound of voice. Our students have numerous opportunities to reveal themselves more individually, and one of the more challenging ones is their art work.

A couple of weeks ago, our students had a show in the Eclectic Gallery in Victoria, of both art and poetry. Right now, we have some student art in the Victoria Art Gallery. In a month’s time, a comprehensive collection of stunning Senior Art will be on display at the McPherson Playhouse. Our Junior and Middle Schools will participate later in the year in an Independent Schools art show.

The approachability of art is a frequent topic of discussion. While our student art work (and I should mention that I am referring not just to graphic art but also to sculpture, ceramic, other plastic and electronic art) is actually pretty approachable. It is also a great example of the risk-taking necessary for imaginations that are trying to communicate something individual – at times intense, at times understated – from the inside of one person to the inside of another. In this exercise the viewer can also be expected to make an effort, and to receive the artistic offering in the spirit in which it is intended. Student art is both ambitious and vulnerable; it reaches further than it grasps in most cases, since the artist’s skill may not have acquired the level his or her imagination would like. Nevertheless the art on display is an important and satisfying experience in our effort to see our students as real and whole people, whose entirety we embrace.

Fortunately I am an early riser anyway, so when the forecast suggests snow it is no inconvenience at all to look outside and check the conditions. There’s not much chance I will forget to check; usually the day before students will start asking me what the chances are, or even trying to persuade me that I may as well call it now, since the forecasts seem so certain. My experience is that weather websites are not necessarily accurate, and I do ponder frequently that “chaos theory”, which has been influential in shaping all kinds of thinking about how people and various earthly phenomena behave, emerged from a study of weather. Radio and television presenters are less reliable than websites; they seem compelled to add melodrama to any forecast, under the guise of preparing people for the worst, I suppose. But the reality is that I don’t have a lot of influence on whether it’s a snow day or not. The decision is mainly made by our bus drivers. If the roads are passable, then school is on, and if the buses can’t manage the roads, then it’s a snow day. The buses go out around 6:30 am, so I am usually on the phone before that to our Bus Supervisor, and then the word spreads amazingly quickly.

Looking out now, the snow has almost entirely vanished under the pressure of rain and warmth, and one is tempted to think that all that snow was a hallucination. But I have proof: below is a picture of me leaving Reynolds House to head to my office first thing Thursday morning, after the snow day had been announced. An hour later, with a bit more light, the School was postcard beautiful. Business as usual today, of course.

Heading to the office Thursday morning. Things were pretty quiet!

Last Saturday was my birthday, as students in Senior Chapel will remember, to my embarrassment. My brother called me from Toronto to wish me well.  I told him he had caught me just in time, before my son, Graham (SMUS class of 1999) and I were about to tee off at the Victoria Golf Club. It had slipped my mind that he might have a testily envious response. I honestly try not to rub it in, about the climate in Victoria.

In schools where I taught in the past, winter term was full of academic work, of course, but also two other things: sports and the school musical. These past schools didn’t have the extensive orchestras and full-blown music program we have, nor did they have our comprehensive extra-curricular and leadership programs. When I think about it, neither did SMUS, in the decades I am remembering. What they did have was snow. I think I am happier on all accounts.

The golf game last weekend was on the cold and wet side, but I refrained from looking for sympathy. Last night, we actually had a hard frost, but now the sun is gleaming off the main field – gleaming is the accurate word. I am enjoying it because I am very aware of the hurly burly of winter term, how jam-packed it is with opportunities presented and opportunities taken. Just the way it should be – I do tend to feel that school life should be bursting at the seams.

We talk about passion and compassion in the same breath at our school. When I try to make my point a bit more graphic for students in the Junior School, when I talk about the Mission, I refer to passion and compassion as twins: they are born together and live together and go through life together at our school. More on that in a moment.

We have an array of students in our school to die for, as the saying goes. We have the teaching staff to match. I would never propose that they are perfect, and nor would they. Many who attempt to judge the quality of a teaching staff will often look at the list of their qualifications. As he who does the hiring, I can say that one of the easiest things is to assemble a glossy list of credentials. While our staff does possess commendable credentials – most have Masters degrees, a few have Doctoral degrees – I have found that credentials do not make a good teacher. Interestingly – and although many compensation schemes allocate more money for additional credentials – more scientific research than my own anecdotal observation also indicates that advanced degrees have no correlation with teaching quality. My own view, for our students, is that advanced degrees nevertheless indicate something worthwhile: they indicate a passion for one’s subject and profession that translates into knowledge and commitment that is important for bright students. Passion plays a part in the pursuit of advanced degrees.

That word slipped out, but I will leave it, since it is where I was going next. Passion. What distinguishes our teachers, given their credentials and mastery of their subjects, is passion: for kids and for those kids to pursue excellence. The professional responsibility of a teacher isn’t to his or her subject, but to the students (which is different from simply giving them whatever will make them smile). If one is passionate about kids, then compassion is close behind; the one fits over the other like a glove over a hand, and this is what our staff extends to our students. Two days ago, as we do at the start of every term, our entire staff had a professional development exercise. Once again the occasion emphasised for me among my colleagues their passion for continual improvement. This can be draining – after all, you are compelled to question knowledge or practices that several months or years earlier you thought were the bedrock of professional expertise, and that earned you the approval of both School and students. But students are organized entities, so are schools, and so is one’s professional life. Nothing is more important in our school than excellent teaching.