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.

At our carol services Reverend Fletcher always makes the observation that while our School has the tradition of celebrating Christmas, we are very conscious, and increasingly so, that our community includes many faiths. It might seem clumsy at times, but we are nevertheless sincere in working to embrace this diversity. We believe it is richness, and a treasure. We want to include everyone who also respects that diversity. A possible task, we believe.

Of the three gifts the wise men brought to the baby Jesus, the one I could never figure out was myrrh. When I was in school we didn’t have Google, so it was the encyclopaedia that revealed that myrrh was a pungent substance applied to the body for medicinal purposes, or burned as incense, or used to embalm and preserve the dead. Such a gift does beg questions in a young mind, as it did increasingly in mine. I was fortunate enough to go to a school, like ours, that encourages such questions. You could say things have come full circle: at one venue or another during this season we always sing the Christmas Carol, We Three Kings. The tradition is that I sing myrrh, the last king. Myrrh “breaths a light of gathering gloom, sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying.” Pretty grim for a birth.

Religion has puzzling moments, regardless of which. Almost all of the great religions and mythical cycles include the story of a god who dies and is reborn. In his poem, Journey of the Magi, T.S Eliot’s wise men ask the question, “were we led all that way for Birth or Death?” And of course without the circumstances of his death and rising again the life of Jesus would not have its meaning. Myrrh is the gift that foreshadows all this, introducing when Jesus is just a baby the poignant note of his destiny, his death, which is paradoxically an uplifting one. It has taken a long time, but I have come to understand that myrrh is the most complex gift, and my favourite.

This is a season I especially love. Many people write about it more poetically than this blog can. May the light of this season be everyone’s.

When I consider “difficult” things, I avoid using that word. Rather such experiences are “challenges” – or if I am feeling particularly euphemistic, “opportunities”. So this entry is a bit of a challenge, mainly because some personal threads are woven among the SMUS threads in its fabric, and I shy away from personal stuff. As you will see, though, my challenge is a comparatively tiny, tiny one.

One of the distractions this week has been to follow the progress of our youngest son, Graham, class of SMUS 1999, as he runs, climbs, walks, treks about 250 kilometres through the Annapurna region of Nepal. He is participating in Racing the Planet: Nepal 2011,  a race over seven days that takes him to the foot of Annapurna I, and three other of the four highest mountains in the world, all of which happen to be within viewing distance in this region of Nepal. My wife, Joan, and I were in this very location two years ago on sabbatical, and I wrote about it in a series of blogs beginning here  . If you want to see these four mountaintops, I took a video of them you can view here .But while Joan and I had a team of porters and guides for our trek, the competitors in this race have to carry all their own food, clothing and sleeping bag (water and tents are supplied at camp each night), and they have to cover the equivalent of a marathon each day. This is up and down the steepest mountains in the world. On the fifth stage of the race, they have to run a double marathon, or in this particular case, 75 km. The average altitude is 8,000 feet, about 2200 metres. I am very happy to know that he will be on his last stage tomorrow, having successfully completed the double marathon section yesterday, almost 18 hours before the cut-off time. Tomorrow he is looking forward to the relatively leisurely 15 km finale.

Like many SMUS students, he is taking this opportunity to raise money, in this instance for students with learning disabilities; in the past he has raised money for leukemia research, cancer research and other worthy causes. Writing about the end of the double-marathon stage yesterday, he says,

The final 20km are a bit of a blur. It is remarkable how hard you can push yourself. I didn’t stop at any of the final 2 checkpoints because I couldn’t afford to stop moving. The fatigue, pain, level of discomfort and frustration of knowing that the incredibly unhealthy meal you are salivating for that would normally help you get through the last part of your run isn’t a possibility for three more days are crushing.

Seriously. For 19km all I could think about was sitting at Vera’s Burgers with a turkey burger in one hand, a lamb burger in the other, and a double order of fries.

One of the great things about training for marathons, or running them, is that you can eat anything, and your body can use it constructively. Those of us who are not marathoners have to be a bit more abstemious.

He finishes off by observing, This has been a learning experience the depth of which I am unlikely to understand for many more months. As opposed to learning more about myself I have discovered how little I actual I know. For this opportunity I am grateful.

I and many of my colleagues at the school continually observe that in working with our students we are kind of like the volunteers at checkpoints in this race: helping them along a path, to a destination that we will marvel at, and which will humble us. We are teachers, after all, and don’t occupy the world stage that many of those we teach will occupy. So we are proud and humbled at the same time. One of life’s most satisfying paradoxes.

Graham on Day 1, trekking poles in hand, suffering from a gastric ailment that ripped through the competitors.

Joan and I with Annapurna 2 in the background. From this same location you can also so Daulighiri 1 and 2, and Annapurna 1, making up four of the highest mountains in the world.