How to Deal with Stress: From the Distance of the Moon

Stress takes its toll upon my body. My neck really aches. You too? My lower back is on the fritz. You too? If it’s Wednesday, it must be a migraine. Thursday? Probably a bad digestion day.

Like Wi-Fi, sometimes stress feels like it is beaming in from everywhere.

We love our jobs; we hate the stress. We love our families; we hate the fighting. Let’s tell the truth: stress is the source of nearly every illness.

Mastering it may be the source of wisdom.

When we discuss the solutions to the problem of stress certain words keep coming up. Balance. Exercise. Meditation. Yoga. Spirit. Letting go.

Stress is killing us. What do we do? I know only the things that work for me. And the only thing that really works takes a lot of practice.

It’s called detachment.

Detachment is not easy. When you do it well, you can compartmentalize your stress, manage it, and even find ways to set it free. Detachment is a tricky practice. Whether you’re trying to achieve a championship putt or trying to put your crying child to bed, detachment can help us manage our stress.

These are the five basic practices of detachment.

1. Detachment of time.
We live in the here and now, but our stress comes from being helplessly stuck in the past or the future. You hear the voices of your childhood tormentors. Or you can’t stop stressing about your next meeting, deadline, or challenge.

To practice detachment from the past and the future, pay attention to now. The best way to do this is to listen to yourself breathing. Breathing is the body’s reminder of the eternal moment. Conscious breathing brings with it incredible stress release. It’s why swimming, jogging, and meditation can be so healing.

2. Detachment of responsibility.
We think we are responsible for everything. We are not. We can only do so much. One person can certainly make a difference, but martyrdom is not the answer. Sometimes, it feels like no matter what we do, it is never enough and we blame ourselves.

Detachment can also come in the form of trust. Trust others to do their part. Trust the sun to come up tomorrow. Trust others to make mistakes. (They will fix them, too, not you.) Trust in the universe. This is the art of letting go. Practice letting go of your sense of responsibility by putting your faith in a positive universe.

3. Detachment of consequence.
We care so much about the outcome, the winning or the losing, that the stress burns up our insides. Victory and defeat can be the same thing. Success and failure are only temporary conditions. The win/lose paradigm is a sure-fire way to stress ourselves out.

Instead of stressing about outcomes, focus your energies instead on performance. Focus on performing through informed practice. Get a coach to help you practice those essentials skills. If you practice and perform well, the consequences will take care of themselves.

4. Detachment of desire.
Attachment causes suffering. The more you want, the more disappointed you can be. What if you tried not wanting? What if you tried seeing that desire is almost always a function of peer or social pressure. We are social animals: it is natural to want what others want.

But what happens if you practice not wanting what others want? You begin to come free. Start with small things. Do things your own way. Worry less about appearance. To master our desires is to master ourselves. The first step in mastering ourselves is to detach ourselves from the desires of others.

5. Detachment of self.
Much of our stress is ego-related. Our egos are pretty darn sensitive. We desire to be loved. When someone says something critical, we cannot separate the criticism from the person who criticized us. Our egos tell us we must win. We must be successful. Our egos tell us we must own the right things at the right age.

The detachment of self is a huge stress buster. Self-mastery comes through the practice of humility. Detachment teaches us to see the ego, to understand its suffering, and to choose whether to obey its cries.

The five practices of detachment tell us to be attentive to all situations. The attached person can sometimes be swayed and easily manipulated by emotions. The detached person knows that all arguments and positions deserve respect.

Even difficult business and family decisions become easier if we find detachment. Do the research; search out the facts. We know that we are highly emotional creatures; by attempting to practice detachment, we experience our emotions as only one perspective.

We are so much more than individual examples of a species. Detachment may reveal our connection to each other and to our spiritual natures.

The collective stress of our planet seen from the moon looks a lot different than the puny individual stress of a traffic tantrum.

We are not alone in our stress. We are not alone in our caring too much, being too self-absorbed, and too worried about what others think.

When viewed from the distance of the moon, stress changes its intensity.

Instead of seeing ourselves as helplessly locked in a complex world of impossible demands, detachment allows us to see our own humanity.

Like you I have a lot of stress right now. I worry about the planet, the state of our communities. I worry about my job, my kids, my mortgage, and trying to be good.

That is why I practice the five detachments. So I can find balance in my life. So I can see myself and others compassionately, forgive myself and others for not doing more, and make the absolute most of right now.

–
First published in the Okanagan Sunday on Feb 19th 2012.

The Bubble Man

Image via Wikipedia

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be” Lao Tsu

It is Sunday morning. We’ve just finished our coffee at the Cornerstone Cafe. An orange cat sits in a window above the street. The cat watches a bubble float by. It floats as large as a children’s party balloon. I watch the fragile bubble soar above street and then disappear.

Another bubble passes over us. It flashes and wobbles in the September wind. The morning light shines across its delicate metallic surface.

Last night I dreamed I was someone else.

For a few moments, we don’t know where these huge bubbles are coming from, but soon we see him standing on the corner. There he is. A man with a white beard, suspenders, jeans, and a yellow wand. He dips the wand into his yellow scabbard.

Terry Wilson, 65, is the bubble man.

An elderly couple walks by and then points to the series of bubbles in the sky. A family pushing a stroller stops. The orange cat in the window watches.

A few more people gather. People start chatting. We are smiling. Bubbles, you can’t resist them. Their shape-shifting delicacy. Their immediacy.

And the fact that they disappear with a sparkle and a poof.

Who is the maker of these delights? Who is this transformer of community, this Sunday morning prophet of spontaneity? Is he an artist? Is he a performer who uses bubbles to tell us of the wonder that is now?

Or is he simply a lonely man who has found a way to give in a way that seems harmless, inconsequential, but is really an act of the heart?

When we look in wonder at the bubbles floating across the sky, I wonder about what I am doing with my life. The bubble man knows what he is doing. Is my own work as meaningful? Is my work inspiring to others? Am I inspired?

And what if I am not?

All I know is that sometimes I feel as if I am in some unnamed and pointless battle. All my money and effort go into a life that appears to have its own trajectory. The oppressive bills, the steep quest for advancement, my inability to become a more loving person–yes, I know what it is that I share with the man with bow and quiver.

I am in a bubble, too.

The bubble of the ego. The bubble that dictates what you think and feel. The bubble that says you are right, and others are wrong. The bubble of certainty. The bubble that separates us.

How to be more loving?

The bubble makes you think that there will be time enough to choose your life, to be who you want, before it all disappears. With a sparkle and a poof.

There can be no change, either personally or socially, if we can’t escape our own bubbles. Our current thinking created the world we live in. Our current thinking got us here in this bubble of ecological disaster and selfish materialism.

The world cannot change unless we break the bubble of our own perceptions and assumptions.

How do we change what is inside us? How do we burst the bubble of ego? How do we let ourselves go? How do we stop ourselves from thinking that says: me first.

My greed first. My need to be right first. My family first. My party first. My country first. And what, I say is wrong with all of this?

Einstein said that we cannot solve problems with the same mindset that created them. Doing the same thing repeatedly will not produce different results. We face overwhelming challenges as a species.

Do we think we can change?

On Sunday, we saw the bubble man, went for a hike, visited an art gallery, and watched television. The bubbles work like art. For me, the bubbles, those delicate, shape-shifting forms, represent a new way of imagining.

The bubbles are like inspiration itself. In the moment, you delight in them, but then you forget. You live in the next moment, and you forget what you have learned. Inspiration seems so fleeting,so slippery. It’s like going to church and falling asleep with your eyes open.

The words flowing over you seem inspiring enough, but you can’t get that feeling back again.

Yesterday I dreamed I was someone else. He was just like me except that he was more inspired. He was just like me except that he remembered the lesson of impermanence, mutability, and fragility.

He refused to live inside the bubble.

It is another late night. I cannot sleep. My wife’s hand is warm inside mine. I get up and walk around the house. The clock flashes two am.

The light of the moon reflects against the kitchen wall. My problem is not with the world but with me. How can I be different? How can I be a better leader, a better father, a better husband, a better member of the community?

What will be my sword and scabbard? How do I transform myself?

The wind moves through the poplar trees outside the window. I want to lose you, I say to myself. A better life does not mean the same life. I am writing this because I want to lose Stan Chung. The bubble floats and disappears. I need to let go of who I am to be the person I want to be. I am losing you.

Let go.

 

–

published Sept 25 2011 in the Okanagan Sunday

Welcome Back Camosun Arts and Science!

Please join us Thursday Sept 1, 2011 at 10am in Young 216 for the Dean’s message, recognition of chairs, and introduction of new faculty and staff.

Join us for a delicious brunch, too.

21 Things That Will be Obsolete by 2020

Image via Wikipedia

http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/03/21-things-that-will-be-obsolete-by-2020/

by Shelly Blake-Plock (written in 2009)

1. DESKS
The 21st century does not fit neatly into rows. Neither should your students. Allow the network-based concepts of flow, collaboration, and dynamism help you rearrange your room for authentic 21st century learning.

2. LANGUAGE LABS
Foreign language acquisition is only a smartphone away. Get rid of those clunky desktops and monitors and do something fun with that room.

3. COMPUTERS
Ok, so this is a trick answer. More precisely this one should read: ‘Our concept of what a computer is’. Because computing is going mobile and over the next decade we’re going to see the full fury of individualized computing via handhelds come to the fore. Can’t wait.

4. HOMEWORK
The 21st century is a 24/7 environment. And the next decade is going to see the traditional temporal boundaries between home and school disappear. And despite whatever Secretary Duncan might say, we don’t need kids to ‘go to school’ more; we need them to ‘learn’ more. And this will be done 24/7 and on the move (see #3).

5. THE ROLE OF STANDARDIZED TESTS IN COLLEGE ADMISSIONS
The AP Exam is on its last legs. The SAT isn’t far behind. Over the next ten years, we will see Digital Portfolios replace test scores as the #1 factor in college admissions.

6. DIFFERENTIATED INSTRUCTION AS A SIGN OF DISTINGUISHED TEACHER
The 21st century is customizable. In ten years, the teacher who hasn’t yet figured out how to use tech to personalize learning will be the teacher out of a job. Differentiation won’t make you ‘distinguished’; it’ll just be a natural part of your work.

7. FEAR OF WIKIPEDIA
Wikipedia is the greatest democratizing force in the world right now. If you are afraid of letting your students peruse it, it’s time you get over yourself.

8. PAPERBACKS
Books were nice. In ten years’ time, all reading will be via digital means. And yes, I know, you like the ‘feel’ of paper. Well, in ten years’ time you’ll hardly tell the difference as ‘paper’ itself becomes digitized.

9. ATTENDANCE OFFICES
Bio scans. ‘Nuff said.

10. LOCKERS
A coat-check, maybe.

11. I.T. DEPARTMENTS
Ok, so this is another trick answer. More subtly put: IT Departments as we currently know them. Cloud computing and a decade’s worth of increased wifi and satellite access will make some of the traditional roles of IT — software, security, and connectivity — a thing of the past. What will IT professionals do with all their free time? Innovate. Look to tech departments to instigate real change in the function of schools over the next twenty years.

12. CENTRALIZED INSTITUTIONS
School buildings are going to become ‘homebases’ of learning, not the institutions where all learning happens. Buildings will get smaller and greener, student and teacher schedules will change to allow less people on campus at any one time, and more teachers and students will be going out into their communities to engage in experiential learning.

13. ORGANIZATION OF EDUCATIONAL SERVICES BY GRADE
Education over the next ten years will become more individualized, leaving the bulk of grade-based learning in the past. Students will form peer groups by interest and these interest groups will petition for specialized learning. The structure of K-12 will be fundamentally altered.

14. EDUCATION SCHOOLS THAT FAIL TO INTEGRATE TECHNOLOGY
This is actually one that could occur over the next five years. Education Schools have to realize that if they are to remain relevant, they are going to have to demand that 21st century tech integration be modeled by the very professors who are supposed to be preparing our teachers.

15. PAID/OUTSOURCED PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
No one knows your school as well as you. With the power of a PLN (professional learing networks) in their back pockets, teachers will rise up to replace peripatetic professional development gurus as the source of schoolwide professional development programs. This is already happening.

16. CURRENT CURRICULAR NORMS
There is no reason why every student needs to take however many credits in the same course of study as every other student. The root of curricular change will be the shift in middle schools to a role as foundational content providers and high schools as places for specialized learning.

17. PARENT-TEACHER CONFERENCE NIGHT
Ongoing parent-teacher relations in virtual reality will make parent-teacher conference nights seem quaint. Over the next ten years, parents and teachers will become closer than ever as a result of virtual communication opportunities. And parents will drive schools to become ever more tech integrated.

18. TYPICAL CAFETERIA FOOD
Nutrition information + handhelds + cost comparison = the end of $3.00 bowls of microwaved mac and cheese. At least, I so hope so.

19. OUTSOURCED GRAPHIC DESIGN AND WEB DESIGN
You need a website/brochure/promo/etc.? Well, for goodness sake just let your kids do it. By the end of the decade — in the best of schools — they will be.

20. HIGH SCHOOL ALGEBRA 1
Within the decade, it will either become the norm to teach this course in middle school or we’ll have finally woken up to the fact that there’s no reason to give algebra weight over statistics and I.T. in high school for non-math majors (and they will have all taken it in middle school anyway).

21. PAPER
In ten years’ time, schools will decrease their paper consumption by no less than 90%. And the printing industry and the copier industry and the paper industry itself will either adjust or perish.

(Perhaps these are not relevant to our situation. Perhaps so?)

Nora Young and Andy Bryce at the Broadcast Educators Conference

Nora Young, CBC journalist and host of the radio program Spark, presented her thoughts on the turbulent landscape of media in her keynote presentation at the BEAC. Thanks to chair of ACP, Andy Bryce for co-hosting and organizing the event.

New Teaching Techniques Earn Top Marks for Boosting Scores

http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/teaching+techniques+earn+marks+boosting+scores/4774063/story.html

New Teaching Techniques Earn Top Marks for Boosting Scores

By Margaret Munro

VANCOUVER — The popular professor was confident he could trump the newfangled teaching techniques being promoted by Nobel Prize winner Carl Wieman and his disciples.

He agreed to pit his traditional physics lectures against their new approach in a “learning competition” involving more than 500 first-year engineering students at the University of B.C.

The results were dramatic. The students learned more than twice as much in the new “interactive” classes than they did in the lectures by the tenured prof with more than 30 years of experience, according to a report on the experiment to be published in the journal Science on Friday.

The study, which has prompted UBC to completely revamp its giant first-year physics classes, suggests that academics have a lot to learn about effective teaching.

Wieman says it is “high time” to abandon long lectures and PowerPoint presentations in favour of more lively, stimulating interactive classes.

“This is clearly more effective learning, everyone should be doing it,” says Wieman, who won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics. In 2007 he moved to UBC as physics professor and director of the $12-million Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative.

Wieman was involved with the study before he took a leave last year to become U.S. President Barack Obama’s associate director of science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

The study involved two large first-year physics classes and measured how much the students learned about electromagnetism in the week-long experiment.

One class of 267 students sat through traditional lectures taught by a charismatic UBC faculty member with more than 30 years of teaching experience.

The professor was “quite a sport to go along with this learning competition,” says Louis Deslauriers, the post-doctoral researcher who led the study. “I remember distinctly that he was actually convinced that his section with traditional teaching would do better.”

The second class of 271 students were taught about electromagnetic waves using more interactive techniques by Deslauriers and graduate student Ellen Schelew, both with limited teaching experience.

The students were asked to do readings and put the new knowledge to work when they got to class, where they brainstormed in small groups and answered questions using “clickers” that reveal which concepts the students grasped and which ones were giving them trouble.

There was no formal lecture in the hour-long classes, but Deslauriers and Schelew provided guidance and answered questions.

After a week in which both classes covered the same physics concepts, the students were given the same test.

Compared to the 267 students who sat through the traditional lectures, the students in the experimental class did much better — their average score was 74 per cent compared to 41 per cent in the other class, which the researchers say means the students did “more than twice as well” since random guessing would score 23 per cent.

Attendance also increased 20 per cent in the interactive class, and the students were more engaged.

Wieman and his colleagues declined, citing “ethical reasons,” to identify the professor whose gave the traditional lectures.

But Doug Bonn, head of UBC physics and astronomy department, says he and his colleagues were “all a little surprised” by the results.

“We all know these techniques work better,” says Bonn. “But the genius was in being able to segment out just a tiny part of a course to do a very quick little study that would convince people. And it came out really well.”

The results are so compelling, Bonn says the professors decided to ditch their first-year physics lectures and “transform” the course taken by more than 800 students each year. Once the results were in, Bonn says, “They all decided, ‘OK, we have to change the course.”

He says not all the faculty is convinced the interactive technique works in more advanced second- and third-year courses, but he says more and more professors are buying in.

“The telling moment for me this year was when we had far more professors asking for help to transform courses than there were people and resources to help them,” says Bonn.

The new techniques, which UBC says are now being adopted in more than 50 courses in seven science departments, are designed so students actively use new reasoning skills and knowledge. They are also crafted to be interesting and personally relevant to help engage and motivate the students.

“Learning really happens only if you have this very active, intense engagement,” Wieman told reporters in a teleconference.

He also said the problem with students not absorbing much from lectures is nothing new.

“It’s probably almost certainly been the case that lectures have been equally ineffective for centuries,” Wieman said. “But now we’ve figured out ways to do it better.”

He says the techniques have a lot in common with those used by good tutors and apprenticeship programs.

“They are doing exactly the same things in terms of giving the person test questions and giving them feedback,” Wieman said. “This is simply an effort to figure out how to do that in a large classroom.”

mmunro@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/margaretmunro

Read more: http://www.canada.com/technology/teaching+techniques+earn+marks+boosting+scores/4774063/story.html#ixzz1MM0jorpo

Do College Professors Use Facebook?

Image via Wikipedia

http://edudemic.com/2011/04/college-professors-facebook/

Ten Ways to Use Facebook

1. Get to know your students better. Create a more personal relationship with students by discovering more about student lives.

2. Poll your students on questions that integrate the classroom with Life. i.e. What did you learn in class today that you can connect to your daily life?

3. Ask your students questions that will draw out a sense of engagement with the classroom as a community. i.e. How do we make sure every single person gets this concept?

4. Email your students assignments and course outlines. Easy to do and it makes the teacher’s job a lot easier when you don’t have to answer 30 individual emails.

5. Allow you and your student to share supplemental study materials. The students often find great (and interesting) material.

6. Make assignments more meaningful by having students share their work and its development so that the teacher is not the sole audience. The performative aspect of “knowledge documentation” cannot be underestimated as an effective learning strategy. Translation: student’s work harder when they know their peers will be appraising their work.

7. Create a forum to encourage students to work and collaborate together in order improve the excellence of their work. This forum can take global proportions with students other places taking part in the conversation.

8. Enhance social contact. Develop alternative ways for students to get to know each other outside the classroom.

9. Depend less upon teacher-centred processes by creating new forms of knowledge construction. Relying less upon knowledge transmission allows more “construction” of knowledge to take place.

10. Encourage a sense of self-directedness in learning by creating a community that shares and learns together.

How do you use Facebook? Do you coordinate events? Do you communicate assignments? Please share your ideas. New to online learning? Here’s a good starter article on online learning. Here’s a great tutorial for those new to Facebook teaching.

Please Join Us on Facebook

Image via CrunchBase

https://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_135615126500250&ap=1

Please check us (all 62 of us) out on Facebook.

Arts+Science@Camosun

The Brave Heart: How to Say Goodbye

Image via Wikipedia “Never can say goodbye.” The Jackson 5

“Breaking up is hard to do.” Neil Sedaka

One of the things I am trying to teach myself is how to say goodbye. I have taught my kids to say goodbye to their friends by escorting them to the door, looking them in the eye, and sincerely thanking them for the visit. But there is a lot more to goodbye, isn’t there?

 

Farewell soirees, funerals, retirement events, reunions—if you don’t like saying goodbye, these events can be uncomfortable.

 

When you are young, you really don’t know how to say goodbye. You mumble some words, shut the door, and turn your back. Then it happens to you. Everybody knows what it feels like when your best friend moves away. You cry in your pillow. You miss them so much. You want to tell them how you feel.

 

You know something is missing. You want to say goodbye properly. But you don’t quite know how.

 

As you get older, you master different ways of saying goodbye. When I left my family to attend school in Toronto, my sister’s way of saying goodbye was awfully simple: she avoided it. I knew she cared a lot.

 

Lots of people avoid saying goodbye. Who can blame you? It’s too painful. You might get emotional. It’s much easier to suppress your feelings. It’s much easier easier to say “forget about it.”

 

I think our significant relationships are marked by what we have learned about saying goodbye. If you don’t say goodbye properly, let’s say you run away, practice avoidance, or lie about your true feelings, one thing is sure: a bad goodbye will follow you.

 

Like the pop song says, breaking up is hard to do. People who cannot break up properly become imprisoned by their inability to be forthright. When you can’t say goodbye, you may not resolve your feelings. Sometimes difficult feelings keep returning to you or you fall into patterns. You wish there were no unfinished business. We all want to move on but sometimes it feels like we’re running in place.

 

Is it wrong to skip goodbye when you no longer want a relationship with someone? For example, a good friend of mine is drifting away. What should I do? Should I let the friendship die a slow death of negligence? Or should I stab the relationship in the heart with a clear and honest goodbye?

 

“I am finding it hard to be friends with you. We have been friends for a long time but right now it’s not working.  It’s not the same anymore. I find it too difficult to be friends with you. If you’re not ready to resolve this, I think it’s time to move on.”

 

Now who the heck can say that?

 

A proper goodbye can change your life for the better. I said goodbye to my parents before each died and although I was enormously afraid, I said the words I needed to say. If you ever have said goodbye properly, you know how right it feels.

 

“I love you. I will always love you. You are my everything. If it’s okay with you I think I can let you go now.”

 

My children are at the stage when they are beginning and ending many relationships. I would like my son and daughter to know how to say goodbye in an honest, respectful, and sincere way. Often there is no way to avoid the pain, but there is a way to recognize and respect each person. Easier said than done, right?

 

Are you like me? Do you have a lot of unfinished business in your life? There are people that I have treated so poorly. I should have been more honest. I should have shown more courage. I should have been braver.

 

Maturity is a funny thing. How you say good bye tells you a lot about where you stand on the road of life. Can you be sensitive and honest with someone or do you bury your emotions and hope they will go away?

 

Sometimes, when we feel we are wronged we really want to practice avoidance and justify our denial. Sometimes we say it’s not worth it.

 

It’s just not worth being your friend, we say. But what we’re really saying is that self-honesty and genuine respect for another person is not worth it.

 

We all realize, sooner or later, that relationships only grow when we are courageous enough to voice our true feelings. We know that relationships deepen when we work through our grievances, when we express our sincere feelings, when we say how hurt we have been.

 

When you say goodbye to someone, whether it’s for eight hours or forever, you try to express your appreciation for your time together. But most of all, I think, you recognize that life is transitory, anything can happen, that this moment might very well be the last honest moment you have together.

 

How do you know you have said goodbye properly? How do you deal with the inevitable mourning period when you miss the person even as you are thankful the relationship is over? How do you avoid that seemingly endless make up and break-up cycle?

 

I don’t know.

 

What I do know is that I still possess wounds from relationships gone by. I still think about my failures, and in this way old wounds sometimes never heal.

 

Your friend leaves you and this hurts. We cry for many reasons but the tears of goodbye seem the most potent. I thought when I was a child that death was merely a vacation.  You could simply pretend that the person was temporarily gone. How wrong I was.

 

I also realize that I have always wanted to avoid the pain of goodbye. I have never wanted to confront my own tears. Death is the toughest goodbye of all. There is so much that should have been said. So much that was unsaid. So much that could have been better.

 

When the tender tears of goodbye flow, if you are strong enough to let them, the tears can heal you.

 

“I just wanted to say goodbye. I wanted just to tell you how I feel. I wanted you to know how close you are.”

 

Whether you’re a young person deciding to break-up with your first sweet heart or a senior who is afraid to go the hospice and say goodbye to a dear friend—every moment is an opportunity to search our hearts for the truth.

 

What is the truth?

 

At the same that we are so easily damaged, so vulnerable to the words and actions of others, we also know that it is our relationships that define us. It is okay to let go of your difficult relationships. It is okay to say goodbye. But how different life would be if we opened our hearts and practiced being brave?

Arts and Science–we need your best ideas!

Share YOUR best idea for Camosun

As you know, we began the process of developing a new Strategic Plan late last year and have been very busy gathering input and starting to draft outlines for the ultimate plan which is due to go to the Board of Governors for approval at their June 2011 meeting.  Thank you to all of you who have participated to date by attending a focus group session or submitting your ideas independently.

More than 300 of you participated in the focus group sessions and we have also received rich input from the external community and our student body.  Key common themes are arising and the draft plan is starting to take shape.  It will be posted to the web site at strategicplan.camosun.ca shortly.

As we now start to turn our attention to the strategies that will enable us to achieve our mission, vision and goals, we would love to hear your best ideas for Camosun under the headings of:

-          On learning

-          On employees

-          On sustainability including financial, environmental and/or triple bottom line

-          On communities and how we can best engage with them

Your input through these sessions will inform this important next step in the process so we hope you will be able to attend one of the four scheduled sessions below.  Light refreshments will be served.

As an extra inducement to participate, a draw will be done from the names of attendees at all sessions for 2 Kobo Readers!

The sessions are scheduled as follows:

Date	Time	Location
Thursday, 17 March	3 – 4:30pm	INT – HH Annex
Friday, 18 March	8:30 – 10am	LANS – Paul  Boardroom
Wednesday, 23 March	noon – 1:30pm	INT – CC321
Thursday, 24 March	11am– 12:30pm	LANS – Paul  Boardroom

Please register by emailing Heather Martin at martinh@camosun.bc.ca, indicating which session you would like to attend.  We hope to see you there!  If you are unable to attend, we still want to hear your best ideas in any or all of the four areas of learning, employees, sustainability and community.  We are in the process of putting a form on the web site but, in the interim, please send your ideas to bestidea@camosun.bc.ca – submissions through  the web once the “Best Idea” form is up or by email are also eligible for the draw prizes.
Thank you!

Stan Chung, Member,
Strategic Planning Development Team