This year has been an interesting one to say the least. When looking back, it’s hard to know where to start as every single month has been filled with adventure, drama, challenges and most of all, problem solving on the run. To say I’ve learnt a lot about leadership, business, politics and education would be somewhat of an understatement. I’ve also learnt very quickly how to cook for eighty people, but the details of that is a story for another time. For now, it was just another day in the life of random problem solving that needed to be done.
 
Sometimes we get so caught up in doing things, such as cooking for eighty people, we can forget just how much we achieve and grow in a year. If I look back at what I’ve done, I’ve actually hit many of the goals I set for myself around this time last year, but also, through the randomness of life, have ended up meeting new people, re-connecting with old friends and achieving so much more than I’d ever imagined. It’s not been an easy year by any stretch of the imagination and I’ve had days where things were almost overwhelming, but through our experiences we grow and I can safely say that I’ve grown a lot over the past twelve months.
 
Looking back on the year that was, I’ve travelled to the other side of the world twice, zigzagged the Australian countryside for work, business, politics and fun, been to New Zealand, Canada, USA and Tasmania - possibly another country… the jury’s still out on this! I’ve read many books and seen and experienced some amazing things. One of the proudest moments though was when I launched the Xperiential Education podcast, which was not only so much fun to do, the response to it was awesome and I can’t thank our listeners enough for tuning in and providing some cool ideas for the next season, which I haven’t had time to record yet. Sorry… It’s been a kind of hectic year!
 
Some goals however, still haven’t been achieved, but rather than be disheartened by that fact, it’s an opportunity to explore why they weren’t achieved and what’s the next steps that need to be put in place so that will bring me one more a step closer to achieving them? Sometimes, big goals take longer than a year to achieve, so it’s a better measure to track progress on these, rather than look at it from a binary success or failure point of view. Often in life, things turn out to be far more complicated than first thought, so we need to be able to adapt and quickly!
 
For me this happened on a number of fronts. The integration of the Xcursion software platform to a number of school databases took longer than I’d expected due to the complexity of the system, but it’s now done, having adapted and problem-solved throughout the year on this project. I found another program I was running needed to essentially be rebuilt from scratch, which always takes far more time to do. Whilst often a single job can be done in a short amount of time, when you find that it’s a repetitive job, it’s better to build a system that works, rather than reinvent the same thing time and time again. However, most people don’t do this, as it initially takes longer to build a system than it does to do a single job. Yet the long-term benefit of creating a system is massive and if you ever want to be truly successful in what you do, then you need to build repeatable and effective systems.
 
Throw in a state pre-selection, overseas travel, some cool expeditions and the premiere of a film I was involved in last year, then you have tens of thousands of kms travelled, lots of late nights, early mornings tons of coffee and a bunch of cool experiences which at the end of the day, all translate into great relatable, teachable moments for students. The more I adventure outside of ‘traditional’ education, the more I find I can use to relate back to effective teaching and learning practices.
 
It has indeed been a crazy year filled with so many challenges and both positive and negative experiences, but when we take stock of everything we’ve done over a year, we often find that despite the craziness, we’ve managed to do and achieve far more than we had ever hoped to. I encourage you to take a look back at your own year that’s just been, to see just how much you’ve been able to do and how you can apply this to those you’re teaching. I think you’ll surprise yourself at how much you’ve been able to achieve in such a short period of time!

​This year has been an amazing transformative one! The more we learn ourselves, the more effective we are as educators. From working out how to hack together a series of audio recordings into a cohesive podcast series to running a long-stay residential outdoor education program, I learnt a lot about problem solving, adaptability and resilience.
 
When faced with problems, which to many might seem insurmountable, I’ve learnt there are always ways around them. It’s just taking the time to be resourceful enough to find a workable solution. This is something that from my own experiences, I’ve been able to model and reflect upon with staff and students. I saw an interesting presentation about healthy habits for the brain. One part really stood out. The presenter commented, when working with students, don’t allow anyone, including yourself to say, ‘I can’t do this’. Instead reframe everything into, ‘How can I do this?’ One blocks the creative process. The other opens your mind to endless possibilities. This simple shift has helped me find the answers to countless challenges this year and is something I’ve worked hard to instill in my students, so no matter what is thrown at them, they can open their minds, adapt and find innovative solutions to anything.

Merry Christmas and thanks for reading throughout the year, it really means lot I hope you've had a wonderful challenging year and all the best for 2019!

I love Christmas decorations! The vibrant magic they bring to this time of the year is so special and something to which I always look forward. Ever since I travelled to Germany for a student exchange and experienced a wonderful snow laden town with its windows lit up with the flickering of candles and shrouded in red and green, I’ve loved it!
 
Having said that, I must also qualify this with the fact that I don’t like the crappy tacky decoration people buy whilst shopping for their groceries and the sort of things people like to adorn themselves with at their work Christmas party. No, this is trash and I don’t like that in the slightest.
 
For me, Christmas decorations have depth and meaning. How does a decoration have depth and meaning I hear you yelling at your device?! Are you insane??? Well, possibly, but the jury’s still out on that one. Anyway, decorations, as with many other things people like to collect, derive meaning through the way in which you come to have them. If you did get all your decorations in aisle 17 next to the chips, dips and some plastic plates, then perhaps not, but if you’ve collected them from around the world, then they take on a whole different meaning.
 
A couple of years ago when I began travelling a lot more than I had ever done before, I started collecting Christmas decorations from all the places I visited. Since I didn’t want to waste money on pointless souvenirs that are great for five minutes, but once you’ve arrived home and shown everyone, it’s then put down and forgotten, often placed in a cupboard to gather dust. I have an entire collection of teaspoons and badges which has suffered this fate and is somewhere lost in the garage. However, unlike most souvenirs which suffer this fate, Christmas decorations appear each year! It might only be for a month, but for that month, all of those wonderful memories of travel and experiences you’ve had around the world, come flooding back.
 
For example, when I was in Japan a few years ago, it was really hard to find Christmas decorations. It’s not something the Japanese celebrate, but being a westerner, I was not deterred by their cultural indifference to this important festival that I thought they should have filling their stores and so was determined to find a Christmas decoration somewhere. I received many strange looks when trying to ask Japanese people without much English where I could buy Christmas decorations. What I thought would be an easy task, turned out not to be. I was told that the only place to find them would be in some western stores in the major cities. However, I wasn’t in a major city. They had snow, they should have Christmas decorations. It was like a pre-High King & Queen Narnia.
 
However, one day I decided to give skiing a break and went for a day trip to the seaside town of O, which is renowned for its seafood and glass blowing. Walking up and down the streets for hours, I finally came across this out of the way place where I had a delicious lunch of tempura prawns. Next to this restaurant, were a series of different glass blowing shops. After buying what I thought was a custard bun, which turned out to be an awful tasting black bean bun, I wandered through the glass shops, which had some astounding pieces of artwork as well as other beautiful and ornate glassware. Casually wandering through, looking at all the cool things I couldn’t afford, I came across a tiny shelf in one of the shops. It had about dozen tiny little glass objects in the shape of reindeer and a tiny Santa! I had finally discovered Christmas decorations in Japan!!!
 
Quickly buying them so no other sneaky westerner would take them before I could, although the chance of that was probably slim, I’d found some really cool decorations for home. For me however, it’s not the decoration itself. It’s the story that goes with it. When I see those little glass decorations, they not only look cool, but more importantly they remind me of my first adventure to Japan, which was planned and booked in about ten minutes whilst sitting on the front deck of a boat at work as we were in the process of reconnoitering a new outdoor trip. Another one I have is a wooden Santa from Breckenridge in Colorado. This was my first trip to the USA, when I was cooking for a snowboarding training school. One of the best days I had there was when Peak 10 opened and I was able to ski down chest-deep double black runs all day... it was awesome!
 
However, back to the decorations. The more I travel or the more experiences I have, the more I collect and when they’re all out each Christmas, they bring back wonderful memories which brings so much more meaning to this time of the year so. Next time you’re travelling or on an adventure, instead of buying a crappy souvenir pen or snow globe that will disappear into the abyss of your garage five minutes after you arrive home, buy a Christmas decoration, which you can put out every year that will bring back all the cool memories of the experiences you had when you first received it.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Wonderful New Year!

Once again, it's that time of the year! Suddenly, which means the day after Fathers’ Day in September, the shops fill up with Christmas decorations, chocolates and all sorts of other things ‘Christmassy’ on which people like to waste money. Whilst it’s always a little bit of shock to see Christmas things in the store so early, it doesn't take long for Christmas to actually creep up on us and we find ourselves wishing a Merry Christmas to just about any random person on the street, which can be both a good and bad thing, depending on how genuine you are about it.
 
I must admit I have mixed feelings about this time of year, as it should be a time of great joy and happiness. On the surface, it’s wonderful to wish people good tidings, treat people with a greater level of respect and say hello to people you ordinarily wouldn’t. However, ask yourself, are you being genuine with what you’re saying and doing, or are you just caught up in a cycle of pointless shallow greetings, parties and a manic argument ridden time with families that all ends on New Year’s Day when everyone breaks all those resolutions that they literally did nothing to achieve?
 
Many people just use this time of the year as an excuse to have parties and get drunk, something which is not really in the spirit of Christmas either. As work winds down, you're suddenly invited to lots of parties and events with people with whom you either don't spend much time, or more to the point, people with whom you don't want to spend time. When you're faced with this sort of  situation, it's worth considering whether or not to go. Are you going because that's what is expected of you? Or are you going because you genuinely want to? If you're going because you're expected to, you’re really wasting your time and should really reconsider going. Instead, spend it with someone you actually care about. Often people can get caught up in the seemingly endless opportunities for Christmas gatherings, however, at the same time they fail to spend quality time with those who really matter.
 
On the positive side of things however, it signifies the end of what we would hope was a good year and a time to catch up with friends and family we haven’t seen in a long time, most likely last Christmas. I’ve caught myself doing the ‘Christmas’ catch up countless times and social media is such a great enabler for something so shallow. It really hit home last year, when I was going through my list of friends and by Facebook standards I don’t have that many, probably around 250 at a guess. (You can see how much I care about this number.) I do know most of my friends in ‘real life’, however, when I clicked on messenger to wish some friends a Merry Christmas, I saw my message from last Christmas glaring at me with distain. ‘Oh... Why has a year gone by and I haven’t even as much as said ‘Hey,’ let alone kept in touch in any meaningful way? One of the problems is that social media enables us to connect and disconnect with people in such a shallow way. We’re friends now, but we don’t need to talk anymore. However, I’m not here to social media bash. Well, not today!
 
Seeing a message that hadn’t been followed up on for a year started me thinking. Why wasn’t I staying in touch and should I be reconnecting? In some ways, it’s easy to say, no, the friendship isn’t that great and obviously everyone’s moved on, but I would suggest another answer. If I messaged everyone of my Facebook friends I would actually be being disingenuous as quite a few of them I don’t know at all, but that’s another matter and I don’t care much, because I’m never on there and I think Facebook is a toxic waste dump increasingly reliant on battering its users with a relentless number of pointless ads, rather than a platform that is helping humanity in a meaningful way. However, I digress.
 
Sending a Christmas message isn’t just a pointless waste of time. Even if you haven’t been close with one of your friends for some time, it’s a good excuse to reach out and say hello again. Our lives have become so manic, that often we don’t take the time just to say hello and focus on what’s really important in life and just as a hint, it’s not emptying your inbox.
 
This year, instead of just an online message that says something like, “Hi [insert name here], How have you been? Hope you have a wonderful Christmas! Best wishes for the new year!” write an actual Christmas card  to each of those old friends with whom you want to reconnect. To this card however, add in an action plan, with an invite for coffee or dinner and be specific about it too, as vague plans of ‘sometime’ usually result in never! Think about it. What would you rather do? Would you rather go to a series of pointless Christmas functions with people you really don’t care about and watch them get drunk and embarrass themselves, or would you rather say no to all of that and use this precious and important time of the year to reconnect with someone in a meaningful way you should have taken the time to message a long time ago?

​For some time, I’d been wanting to go to the Bay of Islands. It’s a subtropical region at the northern end of the North Island of New Zealand. There are over 100 islands within the Bay of Islands and it’s a wonderful, tranquil environment that’s been well-protected by New Zealand’s Department of Conservation.
 
In addition to being a place of great beauty, it was also the first port of call for Lieutenant Cook who was apparently on his way to discover the ‘Great Southern Land,’ after a massively unsuccessful attempt at observing the transect of Venus in Tahiti. Cook was in need of some good luck, although he really needed it later in life when visiting Hawaii for his comeback tour! Like most come-back tours, it did not end well, as Cook was part of a tasty farewell feast on his final night.
 
As with a number of Cook’s voyagers, he managed run his ship, The Endeavour, around on a rock, which is called Whale Rock, as Cook first thought he’d run into a whale. He only worked out that it was actually a rock, when he hit it again on the way out!
 
Most of the islands are protected areas and a significant effort has been put into the eradication of introduced predators and pests. Many islands have had their natural beauty restored having eradicated feral cats, rats, foxes, dogs and possums. Yes… possums. Despite them being cute and protected in Australia, they’re horrible, rabid and evil in New Zealand and make nice warm blankets.

The boat headed out to the Hole In The Rock, which is an amazing hole in a rock that’s been eroded by the sea over time. The vaulting cliffs above the wall are dressed with a beautiful light canopy of greenery and passing through the hole in the rock on the boat is a wonderful experience. On the other side, you can see the old lighthouse, once kerosene, then diesel, now replaced by an automated solar powered beacon. The lighthouse keeper’s house also remains and I was informed it’s listed as $15 per night to stay, although it’s a six hour walk to get there and possibly haunted! Still… $15 for one of the most spectacular views imaginable!

​It’s quite ironic that this area of first contact with Europeans in New Zealand and the start of introduced species, is at the forefront of removing introduced species. The exception is the “introduced” tourist who help fund the conservation work being done.

​Once off the boat, I managed to go for a hike to the top of some amazing cliffs. Looking down with slight trepidation, I could see the clear azure water and slight swell splashing into one of the tiny bays. Heading to the highest point on the island, I could see 360 degrees of amazing rugged coast line, open ocean and islands dotted all over the place. A truly spectacular area of natural beauty and one in which ground dwelling birds such as the native Kiwi are being protected and their numbers rebuilt having previously been decimated by the possum. Not quite, but it sounds more dramatic than foxes and dogs which get blamed for many things.
 
Going somewhere like this helps you to appreciate the importance of protecting our natural environment. Humans and natural wonders can live hand in hand, but it requires us to think about how we’re impacting on an ecosystem and what we need to do to effectively care for and manage our surroundings. As the world decreases the number of mindless jobs with automation, perhaps this will allow that with more time, energy and resources, these can be spent on protecting the environment we have.
 
Due to the efforts of NZ Department of Conservation, numerous endangered species of birds, plants and animals have been given a second chance to live in a balanced and natural environment, once shattered by the inevitable colonisation and modernisation of the world and now restored. Let’s just hope that the New Zealanders don’t release the Kiwi on our shores as revenge for the possum. Apparently, they’re very territorial and have a long pointy beak which could wreak havoc on our nation!