‘Tis the Season for Hope

/ Dave Eberwein / Leave a comment

There’s a certain peacefulness to the holiday season. I love this time of year.

For me, it’s one where I slow my pulse rate enough so I can see and hear the beauty that surrounds us — the twinkling lights that adorn our homes and offices, the peaceful music that fills our main streets, and perhaps even a gentle snowfall that blankets our landscape creating a certain stillness.

I have fond memories of all of these things from my childhood to the present. The holiday season rejuvenates me.

But, this year feels different. Very different.

The sense in our community is one of angst — of heightened anxiety instead of peacefulness. COVID-19 has a way of doing that. It certainly makes sense. We are living in an unpredictable world. Despite all of the prognostications and charts, tomorrow is uncertain and brings a sense of apprehension.

And yet, I continue to believe in our future. I believe in the power of HOPE — the importance of looking towards a brighter tomorrow. Our collective future is built on hope.

It’s what drives us in education — the belief that our efforts will result in a better tomorrow — where our students are taught to be solution finders, creators and innovators. Every meeting we have, every decision we make is focused on building capacity and resilience in our students. What we’re really instilling in them is HOPE. Hope builds belief in oneself and others. It builds character, self-worth and inspiration.

Hope is critical. Hope is essential.

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Social Media and Reality

/ Dave Eberwein / 2 Comments

This blog is about Social Media. But, before I delve into that topic I’d like to start by talking about something else — PERCEPTION and it’s incredible importance in our daily lives and our reality.

Perception overrules Facts every time. Facts represent the truth, but perception represents our actual reality. We remember facts because we process them through our senses (touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing). We filter them through these senses and, by doing so, actually interpret them from our past experiences — every time. And while we may want to believe that we are not being judgmental — that we are always being objective in our thinking and conversation — we are not. Our ‘objectivity’ is actually subjective in nature because we have created meaning out of what we have observed. This meaning is created when we link our present experiences to the previous — our past understandings, emotions and feelings.

Personal lens: The filter that we all use that interprets our environment. It shapes our perception of events through our own experiences, emotions and beliefs.

It is our personal lens that creates our unique reality — our perception of the world around us. It is why two people can ‘see’ the same thing yet come away with two completely different understandings of what they ‘saw’. For example, courts rely less on eye witnesses than they do on things like DNA evidence, because DNA doesn’t require a filter to exist.

People are shaped by their perceptions and are frankly not that reliable in their objectivity.

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Our Personal Super Power

/ Dave Eberwein / Leave a comment

I have three questions to start today’s post:

  1. Is there a set of ‘Super Skills’ that could propel us towards personal success?
  2. Are they something that all of us use?
  3. Can these skills be taught?

I’ve got great news. There IS something like that. And our understanding of it has existed for quite awhile. But, we need to be spending more time building awareness about it.

It’s called EXECUTIVE FUNCTION … and it’s absolutely critical to our personal success. In BC, we’ve been spending a lot of really good time talking about a number of personal competencies like: Communication, Thinking, and Personal/Social/Emotional Development. These are all really important.

It’s time we build a more universal understanding about Executive Function. This post is my way of starting that conversation.

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