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Supporting brain cell stained green

The major goal of faculty members studying perception is to understand how the brain creates our perception of the world around us. Questions addressed by our investigators include:

  • How do we interpret and perceive sensory stimuli (for example, images, sounds, and touch)?
  • How does the activity of neurons relate to what we perceive?
  • How do we parse a sensory environment with many objects, how are neurons responsible for this, and how does attention influence what we perceive?
  • How do we perceive objects that share common properties as belonging to the same category? For example, how can we tell that a large picture of an orange cat and a small picture of a black cat taken from different angles both represent a cat?
  • What are the principles guiding how we perceive and categorize sensory stimuli, and how are neurons responsible for this?
  • When what we perceive differs from what is physically in the world, like during an illusion, how does this relate to principles of perception and neuronal activity?
  • How do we integrate information from multiple senses, and how does the perception of one sense affect the perception of another sense?
  • How do we perceive information from multiple senses when they are mismatched?

Faculty studying perception


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In this weeks special report / long-read article Hasret Cetinkaya writes about the Repeal the 8th campaign in Ireland, seeking to amend the Irish constitution in order to facilitate the legislation for abortion. Hasret argues that central to these campaigns are deeper questions of patriarchy, kinship and anti-colonial struggle. What is at stake, she argues, is a matter of how we value the lives of others.

On Friday the 25thof May 2018, Ireland goes to the polls in a referendum to repeal the 8th amendment to the Irish constitution, and at stake is a constitutional change, removing article 40.3.3, which asserts that the life of the unborn is equal to the life of the mother. What is increasingly apparent, however, is the extent to which this referendum has been fought out in a space beyond that of constitutional change, and in actuality is a rich symbolic expression of the curse uttered against women throughout Irish – as well as world – history in the name of the “father” – the pater (patriarchy) premised upon a central logic of kinship and power.

Ireland, as a postcolonial state, has utilised the body of the women to create a unique Irish identity, which is respectable, pure and radically different from those of their former British colonizers. Anti-colonial struggle is a very present element in the debate on the 8th amendment, and captured clearly through the great number of NO posters referring to 97 % of abortions being carried out in England being on healthy babies. The body of women has once again become a symbol of a newly established motherland, which is in protection of the father state to ensure the reproduction of Irish babies indicating the barely concealed ethno-nationalism seen in the debates thus far. Women are thus represented as being incapable of protecting babies, which has the consequence that the patriarchy, ironically, becomes both a protector and a violator at one and the same time.

Pro-life poster from

It is thus possible that a parallel between the father state and the sperm cells can be drawn. Just like the father state is created by conquest or through battle, by one solider planting the flag of victory, and all the soldiers building together with their bodies a fence around this newly colonized territory, so too is the body of the women colonized. Thousands of sperm cells also vie for a single egg cell, and once conception has taken place, the flag planted, the body now belongs to the pater familia. The female body is both the site of plantation and reproduction whilst simultaneously constituting the borders of what constitutes Irish-ness, and because it does the latter, the decision of reproduction can never truly be upon “the thing” that brings children into-being. The soldier can thus enter this female body/land, but this female land can never enter another land/body, not to talk about entering a soldier or the emperor.

Biological qua cultural reproduction is crucial for any culture which seeks the “authority of the father” to be sustained. This understanding of womanhood premised upon the female body as prior to culture, however, fails to acknowledge how the female body is a doing, and never outside of cultural constructions. Repealing the 8th thus challenges such understandings and their force and power, since power is implicit in claims about what is considered respectable, cultural and natural.

The colours of the flag of the 25th supposedly carries death. Whether you vote no or yes, you will kill – either the mother or the foetus;  the foetus before birth, before life begins, and the women you curse, once again, to ‘a life in living death’ (Butler, 2000).The vote, in reality, is a vote of who matters most, who counts as a more sacred human in this hierarchal organisation of lives. So far this year, not least with the Belfast rape trial, we have witnessed that the life of women has been de-valued, placed at the lowest end of the hierarchy, and as an object and vessel it can enable the production of subjects, but the female body itself, however, cannot be grieved. Women’s lives, once again, have no place next to the life found within the ‘legitimate community’, and yet by being outside this legitimacy the maternal bodies are already inside of it as its very condition of reproducibility. There is a multiplicity and plurality of women’s voices and experiences, and hence no single solution can be sought – only a space which allows for choice can meet all womens demands and needs. Yet, the discussion so far has not been focused politically on women’s decision-making but instead has become a debate between two moral systems, in which one condemns the other, and this has had the consequence of furthering the violence inflicted upon women’s bodies in the name of ethics – “so-called” Catholic ethics, arguably – by the no campaign.

“All life is sacred” poster in South Co. Dublin

The no-campaign’s discourse regarding women has shown their insignificant importance, constituting only a piece of land upon which to build whilst also functioning as the fences of this land. Hence, they have to be fertile and even if “God’s plan doesn’t work” and getting children is a complicated matter, mankind has found a way to ensure that the fence is even, coherent and without any cracks all the way around. It is the lack of children, the lack of sovereignty in this terrain, that is experienced as the real threat to the patriarchal ordering of life. An ordering carried out by both women and men alike.

Repealing the 8th would thus constitute a rethinking of how we approach kinship, a reconfiguration of the family, which no longer guarantees the position of “the father” and his flag. The Irish identity built upon a specific societal understanding is thus being rethought, and arguably it is in risk of no longer being premised upon the protection of the father state, but rather the will and choice of the individual body. As in any process of redefinition of norms, the end result cannot be known, but something new will emerge, and whilst that might bring with it new anxieties, such a task of redefining who the Irish are as a nation must be embraced.

In Ireland, women arguably have all the thinkable and desirable liberal freedoms, and yet large parts of the Irish society and Ireland’s recent history indicates an understanding of the ideal women’s body as “pure”. The sexed female body is just as the land that needs to be kept clean of weed and moss to ensure that anything harvested will not be poisonous for the humankind fed by it. I am referring to the Magdalene Laundries and Mother and Baby Homes – the known unknowns in Irish history, where deviant and unmarried women were hidden away when they could bring shame upon their kin. The figure of the woman is thus always already cursed and to this present day obliged to conform to such norms of purity and piety to avoid bringing shame to the door of the pater. The female body in Ireland, previously, had to be hidden away, and arguably still does albeit in a different form, when conventional norms of when pregnancy can take place has been breached. The question is to what extent the lack of access to abortion is a form of punishment uttered by the “father” for a “self-inflicted criminality”? A punishment, which functions as form of normative violence, that shapes the limits of what a respectable life is.

Local activists getting creative, “Vote Yes” on the beach in Salthill, Galway

Women’s present sense of bodily integrity, which challenges what no patriarchy could have foreseen, is now being challenged at its limits with this referendum. In many ways the referendum can be seen as another loss for the forces of patriarchy after the #MeToo and #Ibelieveher  (a tag trending on social media following a Belfast rape trial which acquitted all four defendants) movements successes. Now, as a result of such developments, the patriarchy is even louder, because giving women more power and control is a threat to the current structures of distributed power. That said, it would be an extreme generalisation to see the referendum as the curse of gender and the gender struggle, and yet it is also through this lens we come to see how the patriarchy functions by claiming a certain hierarchy and superiority in which women’s freedom so far has met its limits, since choice is made on her behalf. In this regard it is important to mention that a woman choosing to abort a foetus, never does so because of her lack of love towards what would become a baby, but rather because of difficult circumstances. As Mary Lou McDonald TD and Uachtarán Shinn Féin said on RTÉ the other evening, ‘we say very often that hard cases make bad laws; but in these circumstances what we are witnessing is bad law creating very difficult and hard cases’.

The superiority of the patriarch supposedly comes with hiding away the bodies of  women. For how much are women actually worth if they decide not to be a bridge between the divine and mankind? Such a discourse’s underlying message is that woman must be chaste and adhere to standards that benefits the notion of the family – despite women’s newly owned bodily integrity – and if she fails with her promiscuous behaviour and gets pregnant she has to live with her female body under all circumstances, the female body has been condemned to ‘a life in living death’. Yet, the buried and lesser human is now returning with the support of many of those considered “superior” humans, following years of campaigning and the latest staging of a claim.

Hasret Cetinkaya is a doctoral candidate at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland – Galway. Her research interests are postcolonial and feminist theory, gender, kinship and the sociology of human rights.

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Russian hacking group may be targeting sub-Saharan African banks, Kaspersky warns

Kaspersky, a cybersecurity company, has warned that its security researchers have reported notifications of attacks on major banks in sub-Saharan Africa.

In a statement released on Monday, Kaspersky said the malware used indicates that the action could be from a Silence hacking group.

The Silence group is reported to be one of the most active persistent threat actors that have carried out attacks on banks and financial institutions across the world.

“The typical scenario of the attack begins with a social engineering scheme, as attackers send a phishing e-mail that contains malware to a bank employee,” it said.

“From there the malware gets inside the banks’ security perimeter and lays low for a while, gathering information on the victim organisation by capturing screenshots and making video recordings of the day to day activity on the infected device, learning how things work in the targeted banks.

“Once attackers are ready to take action, they activate all capabilities of the malware and cash out using, for example, ATMs. The score sometimes reaches millions of dollars.

“The attacks detected began in the first week of January 2020 and indicated that the threat actors are about to begin the final stage of their operation and cash out the funds. To the date, the attacks are ongoing and persist in targeting large banks in several SSA countries.

“Kaspersky researchers attribute the attacks to the Russian speaking Silence group based on the malware used in the attacks, which was previously used solely in the group’s operations. In addition, the language of the malware is Russian: threat actors attempted to slightly cover this fact by typing Russian words using the English keyboard layout.”

Commenting on the pattern of attacks, Sergey Golovanov, a security researcher at Kaspersky, said: “Silence group has been quite productive in the past years, as they live up to their name; their operations require an extensive period of silent monitoring, with rapid and coordinated thefts.

“We noticed a growing interest of this actor group in banking organisations in 2017 and since that time the group would constantly develop, expanding to new regions and updating their social engineering scheme.

“We urge all banks to stay vigilant, as apart from the large sums Silence group also steal sensitive information while monitoring the Banks activity as they video record screen activity. This is a serious privacy abuse that might cost more than money can buy.”

According to Kaspersky, the malware used in the operation is HEUR:Trojan.Win32.Generic,PDM:Exploit.Win32.Generic.

As a precautionary measure, banks were advised to ensure employees have basic security awareness training, monitor activity in enterprise information systems and prepare an incident response plan in case of eventual attacks.

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The Missionary Spirit of St. Francis and his Seraphic Order

Much has been beautifully written on St. Francis, the lover of nature, his childlike simplicity, his ardent love of Christ Crucified, of his espousal of Poverty, of his filial obedience to the Vicar of Christ and the Catholic Hierarchy. These and many other virtues have gained for the Patriarch of Assisi, numerous friends and admirers in and out of the Church. Still there is one trait in the character of this sweet Saint which stands out in bold relief among his many other attractive characteristics, and that is his ardent desire for the glory of God and the salvation of God through the spread of God’s Kingdom among those “that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.”

When St. Francis saw, like the Patriarch Jacob of Old, that he would grow to be, a great people, that his sons, his followers, would be as numerous as the stars in the firmament, he wished that they should spread to the 4 regions of the world and that the splendid tree of his Order should stretch its branches to the extreme confines of the earth.

St. Francis was the founder of an Apostolic Order. The gospel was to be the model for himself and his followers. Ever and anon he puts special stress upon the evangelical mode of life.

The words of the gospel: “Go ye therefore into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature,” he made his own. When he met Cardinal Hugh, later Pope Gregory, at Florence, he said to him: “I am very uneasy for having sent my Brethren to distant countries to remain there.”

The Cardinal answered him: “And why did you send your Brethren as far away that they suffer so many hardships and die of hunger'( But St. Francis answered him in the spirit of prophecy and full of zeal: “Do you think the Lord has sent the Brethren only to these provinces ? In truth I say to you that the Lord has chosen and sent the Brethren for the salvation of the whole world; and they shall be received not only in the lands of the faithful, but also in the lands of the heathen; and if they keep what they have promised to the Lord, the Lord will grant them the things necessary not only in the lands of the faithful, but also in the lands of the heathen.”

St. Francis could not have expressed the vocation of his Order for the Missions more clearly.

He intended to reproduce the life of our Saviour and His Apostles within himself and his disciples.

His foundation was not to be a contemplative Order only; its members should devote themselves to the salvation of their fellowmen.

His followers were not to remain just at one place; in the midst of the tumult of the people and in public places they were to carry their cells, the solitude, within their hearts. This was a new idea which we do not find expressed in any Order founded up to that time. Following the example of Christ and his Apostles in living among and with the people, in sharing their joys and sorrows, to work and labor for them, but never to abandon the spirit of prayer and solitude.

Without a permanent abode, without property and riches and treasures, free from the care for their daily bread, since they had thrown all their care upon the Lord and were not solicitous about the following day; full of ardent zeal for the salvation of souls, without fear of perils and sufferings, inflamed by the desire to obtain the martyr’s crown, full of cheerfulness amid privations and sacrifices, they offered the Church the spectacle of a courageous troop, ever ready to hasten north and south and east and west to the confines of the earth.

Only a few years after he founded his Order, in 1212, St. Francis felt himself drawn towards heathen lands. He boarded a ship to go among the Saracens, but a storm forced the ship to the border of Slavonia, and he had to return to Italy.

Not in the least discouraged by this mishap, he hastened the following year to Spain, intending to visit Morocco; but sickness prevented him from doing so.

But all this did not impair his conviction that his Brethren were called by God to the Missions among the heathen.

For years he nourished the desire to preach the Gospel to the heathen and to obtain the crown of martyrdom among them. When the number of his adherents had become sufficiently large, he, like a valiant general, who proceeds to conquer the whole world, divided the countries of the earth among them and sent them, two and two, in every direction.

Only the founder of an Order who was convinced that his Order was called for the Missions in heathen lands could do this, placing the success of his venture in the hands of God and confiding upon his assistance.

In spite of the fact that his endeavors to go among the heathens himself had been frustrated, he decided again, in the year 1218 by his own example to give encouragement to the Friars in their arduous missionary vocation.

He manifested his resolve by saying: “Beloved Brethren: It is my duty to be a living example to all Brethren. Now if I send my brethren to distant countries to hardships and ignominy, to hunger and thirst and all kinds of sufferings, it seems proper that I also should go to a distant country, especially that the brethren may bear their sorrow with greater patience, proving that I am suffering the same hardships.”

Thus nothing could prevent him from going to the lands of the Saracens the same year in which he had sent his brethren into Asia and Africa.

He landed in Egypt, appeared among the Crusaders before Damiette, and could not be dissuaded from going before the Sultan himself to preach the Gospel to him.

But he did not obtain the martyr’s crown he so ardently desired. He was brought back by force to the army of the Crusaders. Thence he went to Syria where he remained till he was forced to return to Italy.

The heroic example of the founder of the Order did not fail to influence his sons.

Whilst he was going to Egypt, blessed Aegidius, one of his most beloved disciples, hastened to Tunis, St. Berard and his companions went to Morocco, others to Hungary and into various countries to the North. Yes, it was the expressed wish of St. Francis that some of his disciples should, if it were necessary, die the death of martyrs for their Holy’ Faith.

His desire was to be fulfilled sooner, perhaps, than he had anticipated. Only a year later, St. Berard and his 4 companions, the protomartyrs of the Order fell under the swords of the Saracens in Morocco. Upon hearing of their martyrdom, St. Francis exclaimed full of joy: “Now I may say in very truth that I have live Brothers.”

We must admire the individualism of St. Francis in venturing to place the example of the Apostles before his followers, telling them that they could and would be what the Apostles were. But this was his intention: not only to exemplify the evangelical life within himself, but also to carry it through the members of his Order into all the lands and to perpetuate it. To make it possible for his sons to go among the heathens in future times, and to make it certain that his intentions would be carried out as long as the Order would exist, he devoted a special chapter of his rule to the missionary endeavors of his brethren.

There he grants permission to all his brethren who deem themselves called to missionary labors, to go, with the consent of their superiors, to the Saracens. Under this term “Saracens” all heathens were included. The Saracens were those who were causing so much trouble to the Church and to whole Europe in those days, against whom the Crusades were organized, and to whom some of the brethren had been sent already.

By sending out these his first disciples as missionaries, the great Patriarch of the poor had inaugurated the extensive missionary activity of his Order; and during the 700 years of its existence there is no epoch in which it ceased to flourish. With unusual vigor and the courage of youth the missionary work was begun during the times of St. Francis, and even the first century of the Order produced missionaries who were by no means inferior to the great missionaries of other Orders.

Even according to the testimony of such scientists, as are not friendly towards our church, they displayed an epoch-making activity in geography, in ethnology, in church history and in profane history. Thus the success, the result has proven that the foundation of St. Francis considered the conversion of heathen people its own vocation.

A new impulse was given to the missionary activity of the Church, which assumed an extensiveness recalling the activity of the Apostles, against which neither the distant lands of the Tartars and Mongolians, nor foreign languages formed an effective barrier.

And this missionary activity is still in evidence today; the tree planted by St. Francis in missionary fields still bears fruit. Distance, difficulties, persecution even death offers no effectual barrier to the followers of St. Francis in the missionary field. The annals recording the work of their missionary activity is one glorious monument to the splendid “planting and watering” of the “Poor Man of Assisi,” to which God evidently has given increase. Today there are about 2500 Franciscans employed in mission fields in China, Japan and other Asiatic countries, in Africa, in South and North America.

35 periodicals, published in 10 different languages by Franciscans, aim to arouse and keep alive the missionary spirit enkindled by St. Francis. Our own Southwest numbers 23 Franciscan Fathers and 8 Lay Brothers laboring in the spirit of St. Francis to spread God’s Kingdom and knowledge among the aboriginal Indians and the descendants of the Indians and the early Spaniards, the Mexicans. Indians and Mexicans, with a mixed population of several nationalities offer difficulties, it is true, but also a fruitful field for missionary zeal. To record, foster and encourage this activity and assist in arousing a wider interest therein, is a part of the mission of this periodical. Should it succeed in this, it will have entered into the very spirit of our Holy Founder whose first care was directed toward one of the essential features of his Order, the missions among the heathen and the poor.

Source: The Franciscan Missions of the Southwest, Published annually by the Franciscan Fathers at Saint Michaels, Arizona, 1917.

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Alexion Global Headquarters Earns Highest LEED® Green Building Certification

Thursday, May 11, 2017 6:30 am EDT

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NEW HAVEN, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: ALXN) and The Connecticut Green Building Council (CTGBC) today announced that Alexion’s global headquarters at 100 College Street in New Haven has achieved LEED Platinum certification for Commercial Interiors. LEED Platinum is the highest level of green building certification through the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and Alexion is one of less than 15 buildings in Connecticut to earn this prestigious certification.

“In addition to supporting vital economic and social efforts in the New Haven community, we are also committed to protecting our environment through responsible and innovative business practices,” said Julie O'Neill, Executive Vice President and Head of Global Operations at Alexion. “Alexion’s global headquarters represents best-in-class design, construction, maintenance and operation of a green building and we are very proud to be certified as LEED Platinum.”

Alexion achieved LEED Platinum certification for implementing measurable strategies and solutions aimed at achieving high performance in various areas of building. The Company’s 14-story global headquarters features a green roof top, renewable energy sources, high-performance fixtures designed to save water, and materials such as paints and adhesives that provide increased air quality for building occupants. More specifically, the building will save approximately 778,000 gallons of water per year, 50 percent of electricity will be drawn from renewable energy sources, and 90 percent of occupied areas will have access to natural light, among other benefits.

“The work of innovative building projects, such as Alexion’s, is fundamental in transforming the way buildings are designed, built and operated,” said Judy Swann, Executive Director, CT Green Building Council. “Buildings that achieve LEED certification are lowering carbon emissions, creating a healthier environment and reducing operating costs while prioritizing sustainable practices. We congratulate Alexion on this significant achievement.”

About Alexion

Alexion is a global biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and delivering life-transforming therapies for patients with devastating and rare disorders. Alexion is the global leader in complement inhibition and has developed and commercializes the first and only approved complement inhibitor to treat patients with paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH) and atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome (aHUS), two life-threatening ultra-rare disorders. In addition, Alexion’s metabolic franchise includes two highly innovative enzyme replacement therapies for patients with life-threatening and ultra-rare disorders, hypophosphatasia (HPP) and lysosomal acid lipase deficiency (LAL-D). Alexion is advancing its rare disease pipeline with highly innovative product candidates in multiple therapeutic areas. More information about Alexion can be found at: www.alexion.com.

About the U.S. Green Building Council and the CT Green Building Council

The U.S. Green Building Council is a non-profit trade organization that promotes sustainability in how buildings are designed, built and operated. The LEED certification program was developed to provide property owners and operators with strategies for improving the performance of buildings through energy savings, water efficiency, indoor environmental quality, stewardship of resources and other measures. By using less energy, LEED-certified buildings save money, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and contribute to a healthier environment for residents, workers and the larger community. More information about the U.S. Green Building Council is available at www.usgbc.org.

The Connecticut Green Building Council (CTGBC) is a chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council. CTGBC seeks to improve the quality of life in Connecticut through the promotion of intelligently designed and constructed high performance energy efficient buildings. More information about the Connecticut Green Building Council can be found at http://ctgbc.org.

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Kim Diamond, 475-230-3775
Executive Director, Corporate Communications
CT Green Building Council
Judy Swann, 203-943-5711
Executive Director


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Jazz Musician of the Day: Enrico Rava

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All About Jazz is celebrating Enrico Rava's birthday today!

Enrico Rava, born in Trieste in 1939, is undoubtedly the most internationally acknowledged Italian jazzman. In forty years of his career as trumpet player, and composer, he has produced more than ninety recordings, tweny-five of which as a leader. Being a great admirer of Miles Davis and Chet Baker, his career started at an early age, when he played in clubs in Turin. In 1962, he meets Gato Barbieri with whom... Read more.

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Since Horizons’ early beginnings at Colorado Academy in 1998, we have worked primarily with one Denver Public School, Knapp Elementary. Both institutions promulgate the joy of learning and community-building as core tenets. Knapp Principal Shane Knight often talks about the many ways both CA and Knapp have benefited tremendously through this partnership as the collaboration has blossomed over the years.

I am proud to share the news that Knapp Elementary has been recognized by the state of Colorado with the Governor’s Distinguished Improvement Award 2019 as a result of having some of the highest academic growth in the state!

This is an incredible achievement, especially considering the daily struggles due to income disparity that Knapp students face. A recent Chalkbeat article describes the award and how far Knapp has come in the past few years. Knight views our Horizons at CA partnership like this:

“While our teachers at Knapp are working incredibly hard to provide the education necessary to change the trajectory of our students’ lives, I would be remiss to not give credit to Horizons at CA for your support in our mission. By providing the summer tutoring and Super Saturdays you all are helping our students develop and maintain the skills that will be transformative in their lives.”

How the CA Horizons Club helps

Aside from the Horizons at CA summer program, our CA Horizons Club students volunteer throughout the school year for our Knapp check-ins which take place once a month. We have recently implemented a tutoring program during these Knapp check-ins with very positive feedback. Our CA Horizons Club students, most of whom are Juniors and Seniors, bring a wealth of experience and knowledge. They also act as positive role models for our Horizons students, showing them what is possible if they continue to work hard at their studies. Together, the CA Horizons Club students and the Knapp students spend time reading, writing, doing math worksheets, and working on homework assignments. Along the way, they build solid, long-lasting relationships with one another.

All around, this Knapp & CA partnership is one that works well and continues to bear fruit. From my vantage point, this strong bond will continue to flourish in the coming months and years.


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04:27 PM

In Love with Curaçao

Henrik & Anders, Passport Please

On a very cold and snowy morning, we went to the airport for our flight to paradise island Curacao. And paradise we found!

Curacao, a small island nation is the epitome of a Caribbean island. Curacao is found in the southern Caribbean Sea only 40 miles off the Venezuelan coast. A former Dutch colony where Caribbean, African, Latin and European culture mixes together in a gaudy carpet. Curacao is one of the best kept secrets in the Caribbean. In 2012 voted the best Caribbean destination by the readers of about.com

Strolling through Willemstad, the capital of Curacao, you might think that you are in a Dutch city.

More than 750 historic buildings flank the streets of Willemstad and the old city has been designated a Unesco world heritage site.

Willemstad is a colourful and very dynamic city. You will feel the cultural diversity where ever you go. The colourful colonial houses, the Caribbean music floating out of a ghetto blaster, the people’s smiling faces, morning greetings, the relaxed mood, the smells and of course the ongoing sun combined with a gentle sea breeze makes you fall in love with Willemstad in an instant.

There are so many things to do and see in Willemstad. We loved strolling through the district of Pietermaii taking in the authenticity of this charming neighborhood, sitting at the waterfront having a colorful drink or one of the very delicious fruit shakes watching daily life on Saint Ann’s bay, taking a day cruise with the majestic ship ” Insulinde ” or admiring the absolutely magnificent museum Kura Hulanda, an anthropological museum, telling the horrific story of forced relocation of Africans to the Americas and the Caribbean.

Read the full story, originally published on January 7, 2017, on Passport Please.


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07:18 AM

Dunlop adds a splash of Popbangcolour to race weekends to celebrate BTCC 60th Anniversary

Dunlop has partnered with contemporary British automotive artist Ian Cook of Popbangcolour to produce a special series of BTCC paintings, celebrating 60 years of touring cars, in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support.

Since 2008, Ian has combined his passion for cars into a career as an artist, creating artwork by painting with radio-controlled cars, toy car wheels and Dunlop tyres - instead of traditional paintbrushes. This has resulted in over 400 artworks being created over 10 years including breaking a Guinness World Record whilst painting with a full-sized car. His artwork has also appeared across numerous television shows including Top Gear’s art special.

Popbangcolour will be creating artwork with Dunlop tyres within the trade area at six rounds of the Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship. A special 60th anniversary painting will then be produced to coincide with the BTCC’s official Diamond Jubilee celebrations in Norfolk at Snetterton.

The 60th anniversary artwork will be signed by 2018 BTCC drivers and those past and present and auctioned with monies raised going to Dunlop’s corporate charity, Macmillan Cancer Support.

Prior to each round, BTCC images will be selected to be created as an artwork, via voting across Dunlop social media platforms. Popbangcolour will then create the most popular image, as an artwork at the circuit.

Andy Marfleet, Marketing Director at Dunlop explained “We are delighted to be partnering with Popbangcolour in 2018 to bring a collection of special paintings celebrating 60 years of BTCC. In a year in which Dunlop celebrates 130 years, and 15 years as title sponsor, it’s great to use our BTCC platform to raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Support, which is a very worthy charity and one close to our hearts.”

Cook said “I’m really excited to be partnering with Dunlop tyres to create contemporary and classic BTCC themed artworks in the series’ 60th anniversary year. It will also be great to create artwork with the Dunlop BTCC tyres, that have been used to put a fast lap around the circuit too.”

You can follow Popbangcolour on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram #PaintwithCars


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CST: 17/01/2020 10:09:12

Sprouts Farmers Market Sets Date for First Quarter 2019 Earnings Release and Conference Call

287 Days ago

PHOENIX, April 04, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --

Sprouts Farmers Market, Inc. (Nasdaq: SFM) today announced it will issue financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2019 before the market opens on Thursday, May 2, 2019. Following the release, Sprouts management will conduct a conference call at 7:00 a.m. PDT (10:00 a.m. EDT) to discuss the results for the quarter.

A webcast of the conference call will be available at investors.sprouts.com. Participants should register on the website approximately 10 minutes prior to the start of the webcast.
The conference call will be available via the following dial-in numbers:

  • U.S. Participants: 877-398-9481
  • International Participants: Dial +1-408-337-0130
  • Conference ID: 9849759

The audio replay will remain available for 72 hours and can be accessed by dialing 855-859-2056 (toll-free) or 404-537-3406 (international) and entering the confirmation code: 9849759.

About Sprouts Farmers Market

Sprouts Farmers Market, Inc. specializes in fresh, natural and organic products at prices that appeal to everyday grocery shoppers. Based on the belief that healthy food should be affordable, Sprouts’ welcoming environment and knowledgeable team members continue to drive its growth. Sprouts offers a complete shopping experience that includes an array of fresh produce in the heart of the store, a deli with prepared entrees and side dishes, The Butcher Shop and The Fish Market at Sprouts, an expansive vitamins and supplements department and more. Headquartered in Phoenix, Ariz., Sprouts employs more than 30,000 team members and operates more than 300 stores in 19 states from coast to coast. Visit about.sprouts.com for more information.

Investor Contact:Media Contact:
Susannah Livingston Diego Romero
(602) 682-1584 (602) 682-3173
susannahlivingston@sprouts.com media@sprouts.com

Is your business listed correctly on America’s largest city directory network of 1,000 portals?


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By Uwe Reinhardt, PhD

Uwe Reinhardt, PhD (Image: Jon Roemer/Princeton University)

Uwe Reinhardt, PhD (Image: Jon Roemer/Princeton University)

The report last week that Aetna, one of the major US health insurance companies, would leave most of the health insurance exchanges established under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 follows similar accounts the media that Anthem,  Aetna, and other large private health insurers are contemplating withdrawing from the so-called ACA marketplace. The companies say the reason behind these actions is they are losing hundreds of millions of dollars on the business coming to them from these exchanges. To make up for the losses, some insurers, though by no means all, have quoted premium increases in excess of 25% for 2017.

This development seems puzzling, as it comes in an era of historically low growth in total national health spending. The latest estimates published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which provides estimates of current and projected national health spending, indicate that spending growth at only 4.8% in 2016 and project health care spending growth to be only 5.8% per year for the decade 2015-2025.

Furthermore, as a report published by the Urban Institute notes, even in 2010, the year the ACA became law, its impact on total national health spending was estimated to be an increase in annual spending of only 2.5% above what would have been spent anyway. In addition, the report also notes that the CMS now projects that total US national health spending during 2014-2019 will be $2.5 trillion lower than projections made in 2010.

Why, then, in the face of these historically low growth rates, have premiums on the ACA health-insurance exchanges for 2017 increased at such high rates?

The core of the answer to this question can be read in the chart below, showing the highly skewed distribution of per capita health spending across the US population. The phenomenon is known as the “80-20 rule,” indicating that 20% of any large insured populations tends to account for 80% of all health care spending on that population.

Health spending is highly concentrated among the highest spenders.

Health spending is highly concentrated among the highest spenders.

Individuals in the high spending categories typically have multiple health problems requiring expensive treatments. A question that has troubled US health policy for decades has been what kind of health care these individuals with multiple conditions should receive and who should pay for it, assuming that only few very well-to-do US residents could afford to purchase their health care with their own resources. Here, it is helpful to remember that the US median disposable family income is only about $54 000, not even enough to cover the annual cost of some effective specialty drugs.

The contributions individuals make out of their paychecks toward employer-sponsored health insurance are community rated, which means that they are the same for all employees of the firm, regardless of their health status and even age. So healthy employees are forced to subsidize less healthy colleagues through the premiums they pay. With the ACA, the Obama administration sought to provide the same deal for US individuals purchasing health insurance in the individual market.

For health insurers, however, this approach can be called an unnatural act, because it forces them knowingly to issue policies to very ill people at premiums evidently far below these individuals’ likely claims on the insurer’s overall risk pool. Actuaries and health policy analysts understand that this approach can work only if all individuals, healthy and ill, are mandated to purchase coverage for a defined, basic package of benefits, at the community-rated premium—thereby forcing young and healthy individuals to subsidize with their premiums the health care of individuals with medical conditions in the insurer’s risk pool.

However, for purely political reasons, the ACA mandate for all person in the United States to be insured was rather weak, leading many younger or healthier individuals simply to forgo purchasing health insurance and paying the relatively low fines for doing so. Over time, this practice naturally will drive up the community-rated premiums, inducing even greater numbers of young and healthy individuals to forgo insurance coverage, leaving private insurers with ever-more expensive risk pools.

The result of this adverse risk selection (the scenario in which sicker-than-average people purchase insurance while young and healthy people do not) has been that some private health insurers underpriced their policies on the ACA exchanges, perhaps to gain market share early on or because they simply did not anticipate quite the adverse risk selection that occurred.

It is hard to see a way out of this dilemma, given the current political climate. The task is doubly difficult in the United States, because the health care system is structured to yield prices for health care products and services that are twice as high or higher than the prices of identical items in other countries, driving US per capita health spending also to be twice as high as in many other developed countries. Thus, it is much more expensive in the United States than in other countries to provide health care to all residents, especially those who are ill and poor.

If health care costs in the United States were lower, most people would probably agree that ill, low-income citizens should receive the needed health care that is available to better-off individuals. The problem is that our health system is in danger of pricing kindness out of our souls.

About the author: Uwe E. Reinhardt, PhD, is the James Madison professor of political economy and of economics at Princeton University, where he teaches health economics, comparative health systems, general microeconomics, and financial management. Dr Reinhardt is also the codirector of the Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies at Princeton University. The bulk of his research has been focused on health economics and policy, both in the United States and abroad. He is a member of the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine) and served on its Governing Council in the 1980s. He is past president of AcademyHealth, the Foundation for Health Services Research, and the International Health Economics Association. He is also a member of JAMA‘s editorial board.

About The JAMA Forum: JAMA has assembled a team of leading scholars, including health economists, health policy experts, and legal scholars, to provide expert commentary and insight into news that involves the intersection of health policy and politics, economics, and the law. Each JAMA Forum entry expresses the opinions of the author but does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of JAMA, the editorial staff, or the American Medical Association. More information is available here and here.

Categories: Caring for the Uninsured and Underinsured, Health Policy, The JAMA Forum

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General Biz News

Puerto Rican builders looking to LatAm for growth

The construction sector is one of Puerto Rico's key economic indicators.  (Credit: © Mauricio Pascual) The construction sector is one of Puerto Rico’s key economic indicators. (Credit: © Mauricio Pascual)

Large scale exports of local building services to Latin America may soon be a reality for hundreds of Puerto Rican entrepreneurs, as countries such as Peru and Colombia are interested in developing infrastructure projects and public-private partnerships worth billions that could be served from the island.

To help move things along, the Puerto Rico State Department and the Inter-American Development Bank are organizing a gathering of developers, engineers and related companies to offer first-hand insight on international building requirements, during the Conference for Opportunities in Latin America for the Construction Industry to be held Nov. 12-13 at the Puerto Rico Convention Center.

“Few countries in Latin America have built more per square footage over the past 20 years than Puerto Rico. This accumulated knowledge is a very valuable asset in the emerging markets in Latin America,” said Puerto Rico Secretary of State David Bernier.

“The ability and expertise of our construction professionals is unquestionable. Achieving a combined platform between local private and public sector to facilitate the approach to emerging markets in the region will open up many opportunities. This first event is an important step in that direction, “said Bernier.

Present at the event will be officials from the ministries of infrastructure of Colombia and Peru who will present their projects and plans for public works investment for years to come. Peru, for example, expects high economic activity after successfully securing the venue to celebrate the 2019 Pan American Games. Colombia, meanwhile, is to bring to auction some 40 infrastructure projects, representing a combined investment of $25 billion.

“In addition, the Development Bank of Latin America indicates that to make possible their aspirations, the region must invest $250 billion in infrastructure. There are undoubtedly many opportunities opening up around us and we have to be part of them,” Bernier said.

These opportunities come just as the construction industry in Puerto Rico has been decreasing due to the current economic crisis, with a 32 percent drop in new home sales. The export of construction services is one of the options to strengthen the industry, executives have said.

Edgar Rodríguez, president of the Puerto Rico College of Engineers and Surveyors stressed the importance of the event to guide those wishing to export services and make the process simpler and more attainable.

“This is a unique and necessary door that’s opening for us, but since one must know how to operate and connect in each of these countries, the IDB is a valuable tool that can facilitate the process,” Rodriguez said.

The two-day conference will offer give entrepreneurs interested in exporting services to Latin America a chance to participate in one-on-one meetings with key to facilitators in the negotiations.

Author Details
Business reporter with 25 years of experience writing for weekly and daily newspapers, as well as trade publications in Puerto Rico. My list of former employers includes Caribbean Business, The San Juan Star, and the Puerto Rico Daily Sun, among others. My areas of expertise include telecommunications, technology, retail, agriculture, tourism, banking and most other areas of the economy.

Comment here


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According to a report in The Billings Gazette, Department of Transportation Director Mike Tooley announced the department would scrap plans to build a roundabout at the intersection of State Highway 200 and U.S. Highway 87 North at Grass Range.  Bob Sivertsen, a former state legislator from Havre, led a group opposed to the project.  Republican Montana State Rep. Dan Bartel of Lewistown, also said he’d received correspondence that the project was canceled, but declined to say which state officials wrote the letter or to provide a copy to The Gazette.

MDT has not publicly announced a decision to cancel the project.  Grass Range is a tiny town of 108 residents, sitting on the primary route between the eastern half of the Hi-Line and Billings.  Opponents say Central Montana notched a win against an “arrogant” state agency on Thursday.


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What WWE is Missing: Then vs. Now

I’ll be honest: I rarely even bother watching wrestling anymore. When I was younger, I would eat, sleep, and breathe wrestling. I would get upset if I missed a show, whether televised or on pay-per-view. These days, I’ll follow the news, skim recaps, and sometimes watch a YouTube clip, but that’s about it. The last time I was legitimately excited for wrestling was CM Punk’s now infamous pipe bomb promo and the build up to that year’s Money in the Bank.

The other day, Scott Keith posted on his blog this video.  The Rock and Steve Austin stealing each other’s microphone in mid-sentence, followed by serenading to each other, then the usual bit of wrestling and run-ins.  And you know what? For a decade-old clip that I hadn’t seen in probably a decade, I was excited. I’d forgotten all about this promo and I was getting excited right along with the then-live crowd. So excited, in fact, that I was actually interested in the PPV they were promoting (Survivor Series 2001).

It got me thinking, aside from Money in the Bank 2011, when was I last this excited for any of WWE’s product? I draw a blank. I’m still drawing a blank.  It got me wondering: if WWE treated yesterday’s Superstars like they treat today’s, how would they be treated?

Let’s look at Stone Cold Steve Austin. When he first debuted in 1995 as the Ringmaster, I doubt many thought he’d make it far. A gimmick change and a very infamous promo at King of the Ring – which debuted “Austin 3:16 – and suddenly, he was on fire. Many have gone on record that Austin took the ball and ran with it, giving himself the Stone Cold moniker and improvising his KotR promo where the Austin 3:16 thing just naturally came out. After that, the crowds were filled with Austin 3:16 signs.

For one, that kind of opportunity doesn’t even exist anymore. No wrestler in WWE today is allowed to change things up because they feel it’s not working. They’re told by management to go out there and do what they’re told. Worse, there is very little room or allowance for improvisation today. If someone begins to get over on their own, without the WWE’s backing, they are shot down the card in order to teach them their place. Just ask Zack Ryder about doing something to sell yourself. Is he or was he the same level of talent as Austin? Unlikely, but now, he’s such a non-issue in WWE that we’ll never know where he could have gone. If Austin were to start getting over today, he’d likely have a small, token push and a run at a mid-card title, maybe a Money in the Bank win and brief cash-in, then jobbed out in a few short months because he got over on his own.

Imagine if The Rock never changed from this image.

The Rock’s big rise started when WWE changed gear entirely for him because the fans hated him so much as to chant “Rocky sucks” and carry signs that said “Die, Rocky, Die.” Rather than turning him heel and giving him several months, if not longer, to develop his heel persona The Rock, WWE would have continued to shove him down our throats as a babyface, regardless of the crowd’s reaction. Or worse, they’d turn him heel in a good, memorable way, give him the IC or US title, only to job him out week after week to other main eventers and making him look like a joke.  Then, worst of all, WWE would blame The Rock himself for not getting himself over, even though all he was doing was following orders.

My point is that the two biggest stars featured in the above clip were both given not only the freedom to develop their characters over the course of a long period, but also enough wiggle room by the creative team to improvise either their promos or the ring product.

Today’s superstars are given little to no freedom by the creative team in order to develop their own style. You can see it in their weekly performances as they droll out their promos, rarely even stopping for the audience or turning their head to recognize the crowd. Admittedly, the above promo was done when Rock and Austin were not only at their peak, but nearing the end of their respective wrestling careers. But they were still given the time and freedom to develop those careers, rather than being forced down a certain path by a creative team who clearly doesn’t have an ear to their audience anymore.

Just compare how thunderously loud that crowd is to one today Compare the number of signs in the audience to today. Compare how Rock and Austin interact with the crowd, constantly acknowledging their presence with how the superstars of today do. As much as I love both CM Punk and Daniel Bryan, not even they rarely acknowledge the fans in their promos or especially their matches. It’s one thing to lead the crowd on a rousing “YES!” chant and turning your head to acknowledge them or to “check in with them” in how they feel about that certain situation. These days, almost no one on the roster stops to recognize the audience, like they’re in a stage play that doesn’t allow interactivity. They’re so hamstrung by what WWE creative deems because WWE’s creative rarely cares about what the audience wants anymore.

About Nick C. Piers

Writer and creator of the Armadillo Mysteries, I've had a passion for the creative arts all his life. I'm an avid comic book fan, a DDP yoga practitioner , and urban cyclist.
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Empowering v Delegation #2

Following on from my previous reflections, I continue to inquire into the art of delegation.

My second stop was to read a book called Big Potential – Five Secrets of Reaching Higher by Powering Those Around You. I just stumbled across this book quite by accident and found it a good read with a few “ah ha” moments with strong links to my inquiry. I found the quote below particularly great and shared with it my Board. It provides a big hint to what you can expect to get out of the book – empowering those around you will not only lead to their potential being realised but also to your own.

This reinforces what I already know about the delegation, that empowering those around provides more opportunity for creativity and innovation.Effective delegation leads to empowerment.

“The more you expand your power to those around you, the more powerful you become.”

This book takes it further though than the previous text I read which is maybe a bit clinical. The foundation of Big Potential is well grounded in research right from events taking place in the natural world through to brain development, examples from business, and what is great to see, from education.

The author describes, and so accurately, how as a society we look at individual skills, attributes and knowledge throughout our schooling and education. We are assessed individually, reported on individually, apply for jobs individually. This is all contrary to all the research presented which shows that you will never reach your full potential by acting/learning/working individually. As we reflect on how schools operate we also embrace the individual in so many circumstances. Prizes at prizegivings, MVPs for sports teams, individual tests, head boys/girls, individual reports. We reinforce the notion of the individual and their success but the research shows you will be more successful based on how you contribute to and benefit from, the people around you.

This takes me back nicely to the whole purpose of reading this text, to Explore systems & mechanisms to support effective delegation & ‘working through others’.

This book is rich in research, advice, and practical strategies to power those around us. While the word ‘delegation’ only appears once in the whole book, all of the advice in the book supports that goal but it does it in a way that is justified by research and in a way that honours the wellbeing of others e.g. just by changing the way we praise. Even if you put everything to do with empowerment/delegation to the side this book has a whole lot of good it in to support your leadership development.

I shared some of this thinking at our school’s leadership team PLG. We were updating each other on progress towards our goals. After sharing some thoughts, the rest of the team posed some questions, mostly in regards to my slightly provocative theory statement of delegation being an old school approach deeply rooted in a hierarchal leadership framework, and empowerment being the modern day equivalent and more aligned to a leading alongside approach or a networked framework.

Their questions…

  1. How do you know you have empowered someone?
  2. How is this theory going to help you with your feelings of workload and being overwhelmed?
  3. Where are you now on the scale of: Overloaded<————————>Sweet as?
  4. What systems and attitudes might our staff need to develop?
  5. What ideal character qualities will you need to drive a networked leadership framework?
  6. I wonder how this theory is going to help you manage your workload?
  7. What might empowerment look like? How do you monitor it?

Some good meat in there for me to ponder as I continue on this personal learning stream of inquiry.

#delegation #empowering

Empowering v. Delegating

I have a developing theory about the roles that delegation and empowerment play in school and educational leadership. Actually, rather than just in the context of education in my mind it is transferable into all aspects of leadership.

In short here’s my initial thinking… delegation is an old school solution to leading that reinforced the traditional hierarchal leadership structure. On the other side of the coin, empowerment is a leadership approach that looks for and builds on strength in others, gives them the space, trust and permission to innovate, aligning itself to networked leadership structure.

Hierarchal = Delegation?
Networked = Empowered?

I need to delve a little deeper into that thinking but before I do, some background… the why. The thinking here starts back in my move from a principal at a school with a roll around 160 to my current role as principal at a school with a roll around 360. I found the workload a big set up and felt that it was impacting on life at home and the whole work/life/family balance. I don’t really know why this was though, especially with a hugely capable and already leaderful staff at my new school. Was it to do with a change from a rural school to an urban school? Was it the pace and expectations of leading a historically high performing school? Was it me not understanding how to effectively work alongside the new and extensive leadership team? I wasn’t sure but what I did know was that I was finding it a challenge.

Contributing to this was a style of leadership that I wanted to embrace and on reflection I was more than likely putting pressure on myself to make sure I started off how I meant to finish. Reading a whole lot of books continued to reinforce the leadership approach that I wanted to adopt. For example, The Innovator’s Mindset by George Couros, Empower by Spencer & Juliani, and Disobedient Teaching by Welby Ings…

None of them are specifically about leadership (except maybe the heroic v. post heroic leaders in Disobedient Teaching) but all of them describe approaches that can easily be embraced as a philosophy to drive a leadership style. More often, just changing the context (wording) e.g. from Empower: What Happens When Students Own Their Learning to Empower: What Happens When Teachers Own Their Learning makes one think differently and put the thinking within your own context of leading a school.

So I have this issue of an increased workload after a move to a new school, the added desire of wanting to be a transformative leader, but with a sense of ensuring a need to manage my own well being.

This led to a conversation with my appraiser as we pulled together my annual appraisal plan. End result, a development goal providing the context for my professional inquiry: Explore systems & mechanisms to support effective delegation & ‘working through others’. I recall my appraiser, who I have immense respect for, indicated that there were already a number of documented approaches to delegation which outlined a very structured sequential process that one could use. That’s just the ticket I thought, and launched my inquiry.

My first stop was to read and what better than a text entitled Delegating Effectively – A Leader’s Guide to Getting Things Done. There is plenty of good stuff in this short 30 page ‘ideas into action guidebook’. For example;

  • delegation is essentially the ability to relate to people in productive ways
  • its starts with creating an environment of trust
  • it is not simply assigning tasks – it is giving someone the authority to do something
  • it contributes to teamwork, trust, shared authority, and group participation
  • and for the individual – enhanced value, confidence and self-image, & opportunities to use their initiative and problem solve.

In turn this allows the leader more time for;

  • creativity and innovation
  • working on more complex issues
  • developing more leaderful staff
  • creating an autonomous environment for staff
  • increasing innovation, communication and creativity.

So there is some really positive messages in this publication, and some that align themselves directly with what I want to be as a leader and to our school vision. It also shows that my thinking re delegation/hierarchal leadership v. empowerment/networked leadership does not really have a lot of substance behind it!

From this source anyway it is clear that when a leader has a desire or vision to empower staff, and they have established effective trusting relationships, then delegation (as described above) is empowerment.

More inquiring/scanning to do to gain a different perspective and broaden my thinking. Final words for now though from the book Delegating Effectively:

Progress re ‘Pick Your Own’ Appraisals

Our pick your own pathway approach to staff appraisals is all up and running now after having the complete process put under the ERO review microscope last term. The outcome is an approach that embraces our school vision and additionally ticks off the compliance aspects of teacher appraisal.

For me the first outcome was the most important, that our appraisal reinforces our school vision empowering agency, innovation and leadership. The second of being compliant i.e. a vehicle for teachers to renew and/or become a fully certified teacher, is actually pretty important for the teachers too! However, I am conscious of any compliance conflicting with opportunities for empowerment and I often want to go for the pureness of empowerment without compromise! Check the graphic below or this great clip for more in this strand of thinking. Maybe a hint of disobedience here too.

Empower: What Happens When Students Own Their Learning by John Spencer & A.J. Juliani

So what are the additional processes that took place before the system went live? Beyond those outlined in the last post, here are the highlights:

First was the underpinning/official Teacher Appraisal Procedure. The purpose of this document is to clearly outline the beliefs that drive the approach and the full process. This provides all stakeholders and interested parties i.e. appraisee, appraiser, BOT, ERO, with a robust transparent framework where they can be assured that their co-constructed views have been incorporated, as well as the compliance aspects.

This procedure is unique to our schools as as far as I know, we are alone in using an approach like this, and also because the beliefs that guided it and are incorporated throughout were co-constructed with staff. Here is an example of how we went about clarifying our drivers and other elements of the process – two simple questions which were then prioritised = ownership, buy in, voice, valued…

Secondly, reference in the appraisal procedure is made to an Appraisal Plan and Summary template. This document combines both of these steps. Initially it is to be completed by the appraisee and a member of the leadership team to set the appraisal up, and then by the appraisee and appraiser to guide how the personalised process rolls out over the year, and to provide a summary report at the end of the year, the later an important compliance step.

Update number three relates to the starting point for the appraisal, the pick your own pathway doc. This has gone to version #3 now and has incorporated teacher inquiry (don’t know why that was ever left off my previous versions especially considering my older posts like this one…) into the process as well as a reshuffle of the order to prioritise our school’s vision and values over the standards for the teaching profession. Maybe TAI and the standards may do a swap in future versions.

Staff were asked to make a copy of the doc and complete it by ticking on those areas that they would like to be included in your appraisal, or at least part of the set-up discussion. These would normally be areas that they need to work on, or have a particular professional interest in. They had to tick at least one in each column but could tick more than one in any column as required. Staff were also encouraged to also add in any aspect that is not already there.

Finally, rather than having a meeting to outline and discuss the appraisal  ‘system’, the leadership team suggested a video/screencast of the process was the way to go. This attempt was well received – I am not going to be a YouTube sensation but it did allow staff to understanding the approach and do so in their own time and follow up face to face with any questions.

Learnings to date? Several…

  1. Staff were released to complete the set-up and appraisal plan. Very appreciated and worthwhile – gives it the value it requires. If it’s important – fund it!
  2. When discussing the pick-your-own pathway, don’t discuss and confirm the last three columns (who, how, when) until you have confirmed the goals. The goals will often direct these aspects, especially the who (thanks for this great tip Nic).
  3. Video/screencast approach is a winner and we will look to grow this semi flipped  approach more especially in light of being a no staff meeting school.
  4. Need to reinforce more the working smart approach. Teachers are busy people and as such learning that they are already doing (i.e. ongoing TAIs in the classroom, professional learning) should be the basis of the appraisal goals. The goals shouldn’t be anything extra and should enhance these areas of growth. This is not inherently clear in the pick-a-path process, yet.
  5. Future thinking re the pick-your-own pathway is somehow linking/initiating it through a probing reflective questionnaire (based on the column headings & content) that then magically spits out the priority areas/work ons, kind of like an e-asTTle dashboard i.e. an interactive online smart tool that helps you to pick-your-own pathway, or an app for your device.

#empowering #voice #pathway #choice #appraisal

Time to decide: Personalised PLD

Now the the 2018 school year is underway it is time to put the theory into practice and get the personalised PLD up and running.

Step 1 was to invite staff to present their ideas about what our inquiry streams would be. This took place at our staff retreat prior to the school year starting up. Ideas were presented in a ‘smackdown’ style (those of you who have attended an Educamp will be pretty familiar with this approach). If not, it is all outlined further in the slide show embedded below.

There were guidelines that presenters had to follow and some key reminders for their inquiry stream concept;

  1. Your inquiry stream concept needs to relate directly back to the school vision and values.
  2. It is an active inquiry, inquiring into an area of need that will result in improved outcomes for our learners.
  3. You don’t need to have all the answers! If you share an idea it is not expected that you are the leader/member of the stream.
  4. A little hunch could be all that is required for some great professional learning…

Staff embraced the opportunity to share their thoughts on what the professional learning context/s could be with 20 slides created and shared.

The next phase of the process took the next couple of days of the retreat to process and ended at the last session where staff had to make an indiction of which stream they wanted to be part of.  This length of time was crucially important where everyone took the opportunity to consider the themes presented and reflect on which one they would like to be a part of. There were further conversations between the presenters and interested staff as they probed, questions and clarified the idea further and where it may potentially head.

Perhaps the biggest voice over this time were the comments related to;

  1. how hard it was going to be to choose between the streams;
  2. the similarities between some of the streams and the potential for some of them to be blended into one; e.g. the ones related to agency;
  3. that some of the streams would happen anyway as part of the charter/annual plan goals and outcomes e.g. reviewing the reporting to parents approach so didn’t need to be there.

As such when it came to the last session, where everyone had to choose an option the list had gone from 20 to ???.

My observations/reflections so far…

  • Asking staff a question a simple as “What would you like to learn?” provides such a richness to the potential learning and an extra level of engagement. Effective teachers are always learning and embrace the opportunity for any PLD but I think that when they are in the driver’s seat, the engagement steps up another level. Maybe kind of related to this this…
Empower: What Happens When Students Own Their Learning by John Spencer & A.J. Juliani
  • The more I think about it the more pleased I am of how this approach is so in tune with out vision of Empowering Agency, Innovation and Leadership. I really do think it ticks them all.
  • As I consider the next step, I am wondering how prescribed it needs to be. Do I let the reigns go or do I put in place some guidelines. Firstly I know that whatever the next step looks like, it will be differentiated for different streams, just like a classroom. As i ponder this I refer back to a post by Katie Martin:

When professional learning is too standardized:

  1. Learning is designed for one size to fit all
  2. Focus on fidelity to programs, not learners
  3. Designed for the “average”, meets the needs of few
  4. Externally designed path and pace
  5. Lack opportunities to for voice and choice of the learners

When professional learning is too open-ended:

  1. Lack of clear learning goals
  2. Passion runs high for some and others become paralysed by too many choices
  3. No one is really sure what is expected of them
  4. Many left to figure it out on their own
  5. Little follow through and lack of cohesion on a team or staff.

My professional curiosity is running high. I am so interested to see where this approach goes and how;

  1. staff react to/embrace etc the process once it’s underway;
  2. the impact on learning
  3. how each stream manage their own PLD and use theri resourcing
  4. ahhh so much to look forward to!

#empowering #smackdown #agency #personalised #innovation #learneragency #leadership

Working Towards Personalised PLD – Part 1

One of my goals for next year is to promote teacher agency through the implementation of a personalised approach to professional learning and development. This is an area that I have increasingly felt strongly about as I have read and reflected and had my thinking prompted by some key people.

When the goal was set we outlined the following expected outcomes.

  1. PLD is personalised & involves teacher choice and voice
  2. Teachers have more ownership over their own learning
  3. Teachers ability to coach & facilitate conversations with each other is enhanced
  4. Teacher collaboration is enhanced
  5. The opportunities for teacher creativity and innovation are increased
  6. Teachers articulate that their professionalism has been valued & that high trust exists
  7. Outcomes from inquiry contexts will inform the focus for 2019

And while these have been set relatively recently, I am already wanting to add in another to acknowledge the relationship between classroom learning and professional learning. Something like:

  • PLD mirrors our beliefs about learning and teaching in our school.

This one is perhaps more of an underpinning philosophy, where the beliefs that drive what learning looks like for our student learners should be the same beliefs that drive learning for our adult learners.

Right let’s move on… the purpose of this post is to outline all of the influences that currently guide my thinking.

  1. The school’s vision
  2. Learner agency
  3. Personalised learning
  4. Conditions for innovation & creativity
  5. Personalised pathways
  6. Whole staff → Group→ 1-1
  7. Play based

The School Vision

Our school vision is;

Empowering agency, innovation and leadership.

This is the starting point for all that we do; reviewing, decision making, strategic direction, resourcing, budgeting, appointing staff… and as such must be a driver for and be reflected in our approach to professional learning. Thus empowered teachers, the conditions for innovation and the opportunities for for staff to lead their own learning must be present in any approach to professional learning.

Learner Agency

Our school was privileged to recently lead a Teacher Led Innovation Fund (TLIF) project  which focused on developing learner agency. One of the outcomes was the development of a learner agency self-assessment tool, derived from a matrix, which outlined the skills and dispositions of agency.

As we discussed how we could use this tool to capture data about our learners  to show progress of groups or individuals, and also review how we were providing the conditions for agency to flourish; (after all, this is critical, it is one of the key strands in our vision), I kept asking myself and then later my colleagues a question. Could this tool also be used for teachers to measure their own agency? If we change the RSS Kids in the middle to RSS Learners, would the characteristics of agency be the same for both students and adult learners?

Personalised Learning

I have found Make Learning Personal: The What, Who, WOW, Where and Why a great read. Particularly useful has been the table on the inside cover that outlines the differences between Personalisation, Differentiation and Individualisation which looks a little like this:

As a principal I don’t have a class of learners but I do have a staff of learners. So rather than looking at this through a teacher’s lens, I am looking at it through the lens of a principal. That changes it up a bit and puts me in a position where I ask myself a range of reflective questions.

For example, with a desire to personalise learning for my staff, am I providing the conditions where:

  1. Teachers are driving their own learning?
  2. Teachers are connecting learning with their interests, talents, passions and aspirations?
  3. Teachers actively participate in the design of their learning? etc

Conditions for Innovation & Creativity

Another book I am constantly going back to is George Couros’s The Innovator’s Mindset; Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity. There is a whole lot of material in here that is influencing my thinking and personal learning. Let’s take this graphic for instance that outlines the 8 things to look for in today’s classrooms.

Once again I don my principal’s hat and ask myself a similar range of questions related to what I should be looking for in our school for my teachers;

  1. Do they have voice and choice?
  2. Are there opportunities for them to be innovative?
  3. Do I give value to and provide time for reflection? etc.

Also, recently George posted about the 4 Questions for Administrators to Promote a Culture of Innovation. The first question struck me as it is almost a carbon copy of my own underpinning philosophy recorded above.

Are your professional learning opportunities mirroring what you want to see in the classroom?

Often we ask teachers to do something different in the classroom, while we continue to do the same thing in professional learning. The best way for teaching practice to change in the classroom is for professional learning to look different as well. We create what we experience. If teachers are not excited about the learning opportunities that are offered, why would we expect them to create engaging and empowering environments for students?
Model what you seek.

Personalised Pathways

A recently new discovery of mine has been the work and thinking of Katie Martin who has a wealth of work been writing about a personalised professional learning approach. There is some great stuff on her blog that I encourage you to check out such as her 5 part series on the 10 Characteristics of Professional Learning that Shifts Practice. In Part 5 she outlines where professional learning has clear goals and allows for personal pathways:

  1. Develops skills and knowledge based on the needs of the learner
  2. Builds on strengths and interests
  3. Allows for creativity and passion to drive diverse learning experiences
  4. Honours individuals and allows them to progress from where they are
  5. Models desired teaching and learning

If you have taken note of everything else above then you can see how easily the points here dovetail with the other influences on my thinking re professional learning. Additionally when you do look at the full 10 characteristics there are many other ideas that align with my thinking including; inquiry based, collaborative, personalised and purposeful. Also I am really interested in investigating further the Create Your Own Adventure approach – that appears to have great potential and value.

Whole staff → Group→ 1-1

My thinking in this area has been influenced strongly by my own involvement in smaller more intimate professional learning groups supported by 1-1 coaching. I know that this has a much greater impact on my personal development than attending a large group professional learning opportunity. Based on this premise then my belief is that staff will also greatly benefit from small group professional learning supported by 1-1 coaching.

Play Based

I have previously reflected on my thoughts in this area as it also compliments my current thinking in personalising PLD. Again, looking at the approach from a principal’s perspective as I attempt to create an environment where the professional learning is personalised for teachers.

Adapted from the thinking of https://longwortheducation.co.nz/

So what now?

OK so that is a quick overview of what is influencing my thinking. I have a plan forming in my mind about what shape it might make which I will describe soon after I have talked it through with a couple of key people.

#empowering #Personalisation #11 #play #innovation #leadership

Student Agency

Our writing PLD for this year is based on the underlying principal of student agency driving an improvement in student achievement. At the beginning of this development when Brian Annan was discussing the approach I was familiar with the term but not conversant nor had a deep understanding. So I needed to connect some of the dots and clarify what it was all about.

Isn’t it funny too that when an idea is emphasised like student agency, that it seems to appear everywhere now that your awareness of it is heightened. e.g.

  1. Last month listening to Mark Osbourne at the L@S Roadshow, Personalising Learning in Future-Focused Schools where agency was a key theme.
  2. The Term 2 edition of School News, where Russell Burt discusses agency as part of an article named ReTooling School [a Maniakalani story].

So what is student agency? Some quick definitions:

Russell Burt:

Agency – the power to act – informed/empowered/enabled learners

Mark Osbourne refers to the Quality Teaching for Diverse Students in Schooling: Best Evidence Synthesis Iteration (BES):

In summary, sustained higher achievement is possible when teachers use pedagogical approaches that enable students to take charge of their own learning. Such approaches do not leave the students ‘to discover’ in an unstructured environment. Rather, they are highly structured in supporting student agency and sustained and thoughtful engagement. For example, they foster students’ abilities to define their own learning goals, ask questions, anticipate the structure of curriculum experiences, use metacognitive strategies when engaging with curriculum, and self-monitor. Pedagogies that emphasise, embed and enable metacognitive strategy-use throughout curriculum engagement for class groupings, are associated with much higher achievement and enable marked improvements for low achievers.

Raikes Foundation:

Student agency is a cluster of academic mindsets and learning strategies that have been demonstrated to advance learning and achievement. Academic mindsets are more evident in students who feel a sense of belonging in a certain subject, class or school; believe that they have the capacity to learn, and see value in their participation. Learning strategies include study skills, meta-cognition and goal-setting, competencies that help individuals persist when learning becomes challenging.

Values Centered Schools:

Student agency refers to empowering students through curriculum approaches that; engage them, are respectful of and seek their opinions, give them opportunities to feel connected to school life, promote positive and caring relationships between all members of the school community, promote wellbeing and focus on the whole student, relate to real-life experiences, are safe and supportive.

These definitions illustrate to me that agency is about student learning and teacher teaching. It is about the teacher providing the right environment, support and approaches to learning that enable learners to develop the skills and attitudes for agency to occur, and about the student being engaged in, and empowered by assuming responsibility of their learning through reflection, goal setting and a range of other self-monitoring behaviours.

Some of the key words that describe student agency for me are therefore; enabling, empowering, self-monitoring, goals, feedback, meta-cognition, active, responsive, self-directed and meaningful.

A further look at some student agency research unpacked the following Approaches to Learning Model. You can clearly see the relationship between the approaches and agency. These are further supported by additional definitions of student agency:

  1. the satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices
  2. since meaning-based tasks fail to proscribe the use of particular structures, learners have to take an active role in sorting out exactly what they are learning

Student Agency and Language-Learning Processes and Outcomes in International Online Environments Olga Basharina University of New Mexico

What strikes me about this model though is that it does not take in the role of the teacher in to the equation (or maybe it does… I would need to read the full explanation from Entwistle himself). As I have stated above student agency isn’t just the responsibility of the student, the teacher and school must provide the conditions and support/model/teach in an way that provides all students with the ability to learn and demonstrate agency.

So bringing it back to where this post started, with our writing PLD. Our facilitator Rita Plamer has introduced us to Ralph Fletcher’s work and she dug out this reference to agency from the text  A Writer’s Notebook – Unlocking the Writer Within You. Being in control of their own development, i.e. their own learning – great! This surely is the core of what student agency is.

 So what does all this mean? A couple of reflective wonderings…

  1. Deliberate vs accidental… A few of you may be saying that this is what happens in your classroom all the time. Yes my students set goals, yes they are reflective. But how much of that agency is a deliberate approach i.e. If I looked at your planning and a see how you have deliberately structured your teaching to ensure the conditions and strategies are student agency productive?
  2. If student agency is a way of empowering our students, then teacher agency is just as important (through the principal leading and providing the support/conditions/opportunities) which makes principal agency equally as important (with the Board providing the support/conditions/opportunities). Is this being overly simplistic? Seems to make sense to me.
  3. One aspect that has surprised me was that there was little to no reference to student voice in the information read to date. I would have thought they go hand in hand.
  4. Most of the definitions/examples are about the individual learners, but like the excerpt above from Ralph Fletcher’s book, the social learning aspect is really important. Meaningful action could just as well be the outcome of collaboration and teamwork. If the action is a result of feedback, then that is a partnership in learning too, or does agency count when the thinking and action is done as an individual – not the process leading up to it?

Much to ponder… and more reading required.

#empowering #metacognition #Goal #meaningful #feedback #selfmonitoring #responsive #studentagency #enabling #goals #active


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CANTO: Knotfest, Full of Hell, Currents, and More

I hope gluttony treated everyone well last week.

  • Let’s begin with a tour. Those are always fun and easy. Exist have announced that they will be joining Monotheist and Replacire for a brief tour this coming February. Mostly east coast dates, which is good news for me.
  • In a huge development from this past weekend, Knotfest Mexico didn’t go so well. Slipknot had to cancel their headlining appearance because fans had broken the barricade directly in front of the stage. In response? Said fans lit stuff on fire. Yay! (And by yay I mean boooo.)
  • Bummer news. Full of Hell had their van stolen. And with it tons of gear and clothing, obviously. The good news is that they received a ton of support, financial and otherwise. Hopefully 2020 brings these guys good things, because they rule.
  • Currents dropped a new music video for “Poverty of Self” a couple days ago. Their second studio album will be out sometime next spring, but you can catch them on a few more European dates through the 7th. Anyway, enjoy the vid.

“Ein Bier… bitte.”
– cmb

CANTO: Black Tusk, Behemoth, Four Stroke Baron, and More

Hey! I’m finally done editing Fire In The Mountains photos! Now what do I do?

“Ein Bier… bitte.”
– cmb

CANTO: Tool, Slipknot, Hyaena, and More

It’s hawt out.

  • Hey look, we have the title of the next Tool album. It’s going be called Fear Inoculum. August 30th is the release date, and that graphic is super trippy. Moving on.
  • So for those unaware, the Knotfest Roadshow is officially underway. Slipknot always bring out the adrenaline in their audiences, and the show in San Bernardino last Saturday was no exception. In fact, Corey Taylor stopped midway through a song because the pits were getting particularly dangerous.
  • If you are in the UK, you might be interested the first wave of bands announced for the Chaos Theory Festival. The event takes place February 29th, 2020 and so far we know Vodun, Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard, and Gold will be there.
  • Would you like to djent away the rest of the day? If so, here’s a new video from Hyaena for a track called “Stolen Hero”. They have a new album called Poison Pen dropping later this fall.

“Ein Bier… bitte.”
– cmb

CANTO: I Prevail, Slipknot, Neckbeard Deathcamp, and More

Amazing! I have somehow emerged more tired from the weekend than when I entered it!

  • Neckbeard Deathcamp is hitting the road in May and June for “The Free Speech In America Tour” with Theories, Convictions, Wvrm, and Dryad on select dates.
  • Saw this coming. ICYMI last week, Chris Fehn brought some financial claims up against the rest of Slipknot. Today, it was announced that he is no longer a member of the band. Again, saw that coming.
  • Yesterday was St. Paddys’ Day. And what better way to celebrate the reinforcin’ o’ the stereotypes than with shed blood at a Dropkick Murphys’ show in Boston. It’s all just so… predictable.
  • We’ll close today with a new song and video from Detroit’s I Prevail. The title is “Paranoid”, and the track will be featured on their upcoming sophomore full length Trauma, which drops on March 29th through Fearless Records.

“Ein Bier… bitte.”
– cmb

CANTO: Knotfest Roadshow, Hellyeah, At The Gates, and More

Sunday concerts make for tired Mondays.

“Ein Bier… bitte.”
– cmb


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