Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to the Adaptive Edge of Education.
Speaker: My name is Miranda Shorty and I'll be your host.
Speaker: Today with me I have a wonderful, fantastic, magnificent guest named Rhonda Campbell, who is another student in my doctoral cohort.
Speaker: And she and I have worked together on a few different publications regarding educational philosophies and organizational theory.
Speaker: And she's here today to talk about a topic she feels is an adaptive challenge in education.
Speaker: She is a retired special education teacher and she is continuing on in her doctoral program because she's just so brilliant.
Speaker: She just went going to school, which is wonderful.
Speaker: So Rhonda, if you would like to take it away and let us know a little bit about what topic you're going to talk about today and your thoughts on that topic to start.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So today we're going to talk about trauma-informed classrooms.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: I'm going to start out by saying that I got involved with trauma as an issue right after my master's program.
Speaker: I was seeing more and more students with difficulties in school due to maladaptive behaviors, and I had really no idea what to do about it.
Speaker: We had no training.
Speaker: At that point in time, the school I was in was starting with inclusion, so all kids were in the classroom.
Speaker: Teachers didn't have any training.
Speaker: So what I did was I attended Antioch University and I went back for the autism spectrum disorder because that was one section where I really didn't have any idea what I was doing.
Speaker: It was a two year program.
Speaker: And when I got out of it, I understood behavior a little bit more.
Speaker: I understood why students, especially on the spectrum, were having difficulties in class.
Speaker: Things just weren't set up to meet their needs.
Speaker: So I went back to school at Antioch for another two years, and I studied applied behavior analysis.
Speaker: And it was a 33-credit program over two years.
Speaker: I had 750 unsupervised, sorry, supervised hours on my way to be a BCBA and started to understand what these behaviors were doing.
Speaker: Behaviors are a way of communication when someone can't say,
Speaker: what they need, how they feel, why they're doing what they're doing.
Speaker: You can kind of tell by their behaviors.
Speaker: I ran an alternative resource room for three years with struggling, students that were struggling with maladaptive behaviors.
Speaker: I've been the only special ed teacher in K through four buildings running PBIS, so running the tier three program.
Speaker: for kids who were really struggling and getting in there and trying to provide interventions.
Speaker: So my background probably for the last 10 to 15 years has really been working with students who have difficulty being in the classroom.
Speaker: So for me, this really holds my heart.
Speaker: I think one of the most, what am I trying to say here?
Speaker: I think one of the most impactful moments as far as trauma goes was
Speaker: is working with a student, she's 11 years old, and she had just transferred from an IEP to a 504.
Speaker: Academically, she was fine, but behaviorally and needing accommodations, this student is on the autism spectrum disorder, autism spectrum,
Speaker: and also holds a diagnosis of anxiety and ADHD.
Speaker: So really those accommodations when they're in place really work for her, but we needed to find a way that her team would understand it.
Speaker: So what we did as adults is we had her run her own 504 meeting.
Speaker: Now this child also has a twin brother.
Speaker: who obviously has been there through the thick and thin.
Speaker: We had him sit in on the 504 meeting.
Speaker: And at first the principal who was the, um, facilitator of the meeting was a little taken back, a back really didn't know what to do.
Speaker: And we just kind of fed this young lady.
Speaker: What is it you need?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What is it that you like?
Speaker: You need to tell your team what it is you don't like.
Speaker: And in her own words, she was able to say, I don't like it when teachers walk around the room and come up behind me and put their hand on my shoulder.
Speaker: It makes it so that I shrug my shoulders up and I shrink in my seat.
Speaker: Now, most teachers will do some sort of physical contact or at least use proximity.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: trying to make a student feel comfortable.
Speaker: And this little girl was able to come out and say, this really bothers me.
Speaker: Now, some of her behaviors in class were actually caused by this.
Speaker: Behaviors that weren't really disturbing, but what they did is they made this little girl look different.
Speaker: Her sensory issues, her ADHD made it so that she didn't
Speaker: she couldn't come out and say, I need my headphones right now because it's too loud in here.
Speaker: So we came up with a plan once we did her wish list.
Speaker: And her wish list was she wished that she could see her headphones so that it would remind her when she needed it.
Speaker: And her teacher was wonderful and took everything that she said.
Speaker: We put it into a 504 plan and you could walk into this class today
Speaker: and would not be able to tell that this little girl is on the spectrum, has ADHD, medication only works so much, she's only 11.
Speaker: And between her and her brother, we're really able to focus this team into what her needs were and how they needed to be a little flexible with her.
Speaker: She chews gum in class.
Speaker: You know the old thing about not being able to chew gum in school?
Speaker: Yep, there's a lot of schools that actually have that as in their handbook.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So if you can put a child into a position where they're comfortable enough and they're able to talk for themselves, they can mitigate some of the behaviors they would have in class.
Speaker: But so many of our kids aren't capable of doing that.
Speaker: Is it that they're not capable or is it that we aren't giving them space or audience or voice enough to do that?
Speaker: I think it's both.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: We need to give them the space.
Speaker: We need to give them that trusting environment.
Speaker: But we also need to be able to have them feel they can voice their opinions.
Speaker: There are kids that just sit there because I don't want to be the only one chewing gum or I don't want to be the one that's wearing headphones, even though they need it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Sometimes kids only have a relationship with one person in school.
Speaker: When they're working with a team, they need to have a trusting relationship with all parties.
Speaker: I think what you did in that particular situation for that student in terms of
Speaker: how we think about special education or how we determine what happens for students who are using special education services or interventions or students that have IEPs or 504s.
Speaker: was a complete restructuring of what is normally the hierarchical structure in that environment.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: We tipped it on its end.
Speaker: Which is really incredible.
Speaker: And I love that story because the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, SAMHSA, they specifically outline
Speaker: how there are six principles to helping students in trauma-informed environments in school.
Speaker: And all of them are represented by that one decision, not only to give her that agency over her own meeting, but also to invite her brother and have that input there.
Speaker: You're covering principle number one, which is safety, the feeling of safety in school for students.
Speaker: You're covering principle number two, which is trustworthiness and transparency because there isn't this external meeting happening without her.
Speaker: You're covering principle number three because you're showing peer support through the inclusion of her brother.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And you're covering principle number four, collaboration and mutuality, which I've told you before, but I see that as pedagogical partnership, which is the use of both the adults, the teachers in the situation and the students or children in the situation to create pedagogical change and system change in education.
Speaker: And to help shape and determine what that will look like.
Speaker: And you're covering principle number five, which is empowerment, voice and choice by giving her the ability to have autonomy.
Speaker: an agency and show efficacy in redesigning what her educational experience will look like.
Speaker: And you're also covering principle number six, which is the cultural proficiency part of SAMHSA's recommendations that we recognize different students come into education with different needs, different traumas, different experiences.
Speaker: And we're sensitive to that and not only sensitive to that, but skilled at accommodating and modifying for that.
Speaker: And I totally love all of those principles.
Speaker: The sixth one, I think, completely has my heart.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: That's the, so I'm not sure if you've ever listened to Meredith Fox, Dr. Meredith Fox.
Speaker: She does this TED Talk about trauma and education.
Speaker: And a lot of what she proposes is radical, but it's kind of funny because I just did an episode on artificial intelligence with Dr. Gavin Henning.
Speaker: And we kind of talked about something similar in terms of the need to like radically modify the mission and vision of education, the symbolic part of education in order to accommodate for the integration of such advanced technology that would be like a system change.
Speaker: But Dr. Meredith Fox talks about the invisible backpack.
Speaker: And she had her own trauma when she was younger.
Speaker: She lost her parent and her sibling, her mother and her sister, very close together.
Speaker: And she talks about how she wore this invisible backpack to school that people couldn't see that was essentially full of this trauma.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: And because people couldn't see it, they didn't recognize it or accommodate or modify for it.
Speaker: And she went back to one of her first classes after her loss.
Speaker: And she was given a really low score in an honors class.
Speaker: And the teacher didn't attempt to understand why or ask what had been going on or anything like no.
Speaker: reaching out or desire to learn about her or what she was going through just, you know, gave her the score and moved on.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: And that she talks about that invisible backpack and how no one was willing to step outside of the role of just instructor or teacher or educator and, you know, accommodate with the role of listener or mentor or, you know, even...
Speaker: oh, the word just left my head, but like someone you look up to or- A role model.
Speaker: A role model, yeah.
Speaker: Somebody who's a positive adult influence in your life.
Speaker: So she talks about that invisible backpack and really what cultural proficiency is, is the willingness to see both visible and invisible backpacks, learn about them, appreciate those differences and then differentiate for them.
Speaker: And I think that comes down to teacher preparedness.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: I totally agree.
Speaker: I think when we have teaching programs that encourage that, then we see teachers that teach more holistically.
Speaker: And when we see teacher programs that teach to, we won't name names, but certain ones in the United States that essentially promise to teach you how to be an educator in like
Speaker: nine weeks flat or whatever and get your certification and really just care about being like this.
Speaker: These are the common core standards.
Speaker: This is how you assess this, whatever, that don't look at whole child or holistic view of children and what they've been through as complex systems.
Speaker: That's how we end up in these environments where education doesn't serve this part of the population.
Speaker: Part of that, too, on top of teacher preparedness is also the climate of your school.
Speaker: I've moved probably five different schools in my career.
Speaker: And each school approached children in a different way.
Speaker: We had PBIS model in one school.
Speaker: I moved.
Speaker: It was too far to get to work.
Speaker: So I obviously changed buildings.
Speaker: And my next school said, well, we don't pay kids to behave.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Okay, so what do you do?
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: How do we approach children?
Speaker: What is the school-wide approach?
Speaker: What language do we all speak?
Speaker: You know, so that when I came in, I could be prepared and none of that was there.
Speaker: And I think it's like that in a lot of schools.
Speaker: You have administrators, you have superintendents who come in and they have a particular vision and we all need to switch over to whatever that vision is.
Speaker: We like
Speaker: being able to get into kids' lives and being those people for kids, or you go to another school and it's all curriculum driven and we need to get this done before the end of the year.
Speaker: And that's what social worker's for.
Speaker: So a lot of it has to do with the climate of your building.
Speaker: Oh, for sure.
Speaker: Would you say...
Speaker: I'm just wondering this as you're talking, but would you say that part of that eudaimonia frame or lens is that climate and that culture?
Speaker: Completely.
Speaker: It's that synergy, right?
Speaker: It's the piece that holds all four pieces together.
Speaker: To what key are we tuning here?
Speaker: I think when we're looking at trauma, we need to look at an entire school of
Speaker: Having the same language, providing predictability, providing flexibility, and having a complete understanding that,
Speaker: I love your invisible backpack and I'm going to use that.
Speaker: Kids come in with an invisible backpack.
Speaker: Dr. Meredith Fox's invisible backpack.
Speaker: I love the invisible backpack.
Speaker: It just makes the symbol of the invisible backpack.
Speaker: I think is really helpful and powerful and understanding.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It's completely, we, um,
Speaker: When I worked in Southern New Hampshire, I ran an alternative resource room for students who had maladaptive behaviors.
Speaker: And my students would come in.
Speaker: I ran the lower end of it.
Speaker: So I did kindergarten through fourth grade and my students would get off the bus.
Speaker: And, you know, obviously it was a check in in the morning.
Speaker: Let's see how you're doing.
Speaker: Because you never knew what was going on.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: I sent him home the day before.
Speaker: There's 12 hours, 16 hours between when I sent you home and you're coming back to me.
Speaker: Do you have an ear infection?
Speaker: Did mommy and daddy have a fight last night?
Speaker: Did something happen that triggered your stress response that I don't know about?
Speaker: So I would do a check in with each kid and not to dig into what happened, but we would kind of follow a protocol of care.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They would either meet with me or one of the people that I work with.
Speaker: And so how are you doing today?
Speaker: How are you feeling today?
Speaker: Did you have breakfast?
Speaker: Are you still hungry?
Speaker: And just someone to sit there and kind of meet their basic needs and create that relationship that they knew that there was someone that cared about them in the morning that they could come back to at any point in the day, because I'm going to send them out into a classroom.
Speaker: And we used to run like a plan A, B, and C. So plan A was you came in and you told me everything was ducky.
Speaker: I saw your body language.
Speaker: I saw how you were moving.
Speaker: I listened to your voice.
Speaker: I checked in and made sure you were fed.
Speaker: I made sure I told you you have a wonderful day and I'm here if you need me.
Speaker: and then send them off to class.
Speaker: Plan B was, I'm not real sure you're going to hang out with us for just a little while.
Speaker: And plan C was, oh God, you're not going to class.
Speaker: Not today.
Speaker: Not today.
Speaker: I don't know what's going on.
Speaker: I don't even need to know what's going on, but you need much more than what's going to trigger you in class.
Speaker: And I think that's so important and critical.
Speaker: I want to share with you a little
Speaker: anecdote about something that's happened recently in a certain district.
Speaker: So this district did some work with a local nonprofit that deals with mental health issues and trauma and social community challenges and
Speaker: And they came into the school and they did a survey of the students and they did a survey of the parents and they did a survey of the teachers.
Speaker: And they just asked a lot of different types of questions about, you know, what are your major concerns in education?
Speaker: What is going well?
Speaker: What is not going well?
Speaker: What would you like to see change, et cetera?
Speaker: They asked some pretty broad questions.
Speaker: And also there was space for people to respond with their own writing open-ended.
Speaker: And then we got to review all of the data as a school.
Speaker: And what was determined was that many students, in fact, far more than half of the students, felt
Speaker: unsafe at school.
Speaker: In fact, they felt they were the least safe when asked about all the locations that they go home, other people's houses, community locations, school.
Speaker: School was the least safe place they felt they ever were.
Speaker: And they also voiced frequently in this data issues regarding mental health,
Speaker: intense feelings of depression, suicidal ideation, hopelessness.
Speaker: And then in the parent data, those concerns were reiterated, that students were feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, that they were emotional, they were struggling with their mental health.
Speaker: And when the teachers were asked,
Speaker: Not just the teachers, it was, you know, the staff school-wide, but when they were asked to make a list of what we had, the teachers had to make a list of three categories.
Speaker: They had to make a list of what the school should stop doing, what the school should keep doing, and what the school should start doing.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And they did that in teams.
Speaker: And then the teachers were then given red dots and they went around and placed their red dot on suggestions in the stop doing, keep doing, start doing lists that they felt would be most impactful and would improve the school the most.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: The things that were selected...
Speaker: do not align in any way with what we were talking about.
Speaker: It was things like, we want to see more consistent punishment.
Speaker: We want to see, I'm trying to remember some of the other things.
Speaker: It was always, it was all very logistical, like point solution based stuff.
Speaker: Like just, we want to see this thing, we want the four by four schedule to change.
Speaker: We want the whatever, right?
Speaker: So we want to make my job easier versus looking at the students.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: No one said, no one put their little red dot by things like we need additional social work support and socio-emotional support.
Speaker: We need more training in socio-emotional learning.
Speaker: We need more time individually and as a group with students for relationship building.
Speaker: We need...
Speaker: We need the reins loosened a little bit so that we can create that space for discussion and voice about something other than content and curriculum.
Speaker: No one put their little red dot by that.
Speaker: No one put their little red dot by we need additional events, programs, activities that encourage and foster a feeling of safety, of trust, of transparency.
Speaker: And I know those things were on there as suggestions, but no one selected that.
Speaker: And that really aligns with something I overheard recently, which was there were two people talking.
Speaker: There was a teacher and an ed tech talking and the ed tech was saying to another teacher from the school,
Speaker: they were talking about a specific student and she had said, the next thing they're going to tell me is due to his trauma, he won't be able to make it to class on time or he won't be able to pass in any work or blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: And it's always trauma this and trauma that.
Speaker: And due to his trauma, apparently he's just allowed to be annoying.
Speaker: So when I heard that my ears perked up and I was like, Oh boy, here we go.
Speaker: And then the, the teacher replied,
Speaker: Well, I even heard the SRO say to him the other day, kid, you don't even know what trauma and anxiety are.
Speaker: And I wanted to yell, exactly, these kids don't even know what it's like to feel trauma or to feel anxious.
Speaker: And I was like, that's the adaptive challenge.
Speaker: It is completely systemic in two ways.
Speaker: Number one, it sounds like wherever you heard that from, or wherever that...
Speaker: survey was done.
Speaker: You have people who are trying to meet their own needs.
Speaker: You always try to meet your own needs before you can meet others.
Speaker: And that's on a hierarchy.
Speaker: You have to take care of yourself.
Speaker: If people are so stressed out
Speaker: about meeting certain goals, meeting certain standards.
Speaker: You have to get this done by here.
Speaker: You have to get that done by here.
Speaker: And by the way, all your prep periods are going to be taken up with meetings.
Speaker: And we have new initiatives and the ones that you just spent all your time on are gone.
Speaker: And we're just going to create new ones.
Speaker: You've created so much within a teacher that there's no room left.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So they're taking care of themselves when in actuality,
Speaker: if as an entire school, you could flip that on its head and have people trained, understand, and maybe even start working with some of these kids, they're going to understand that if you touch that little girl when you're walking by, because you have put your hand on shoulders of kids for the last 30 years, you're going to ruin her for the next hour.
Speaker: She's not going to hear a word you say.
Speaker: She's going to have to have all that adrenaline, all that cortisol, everything get out of her body instead of realizing, oh, made a mistake.
Speaker: Wait, I think I need to send her so she can go run this off for a little while, get a drink of water, come back and repair that damage.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It's two completely different mindsets.
Speaker: And if your whole school is on one mindset, it's so difficult to get people to understand that.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: It comes down to teacher training.
Speaker: It comes down to what your policies in your building are.
Speaker: You can't expect a teacher to do everything they're expecting us to do and also be able to understand what kids are going through because they're just so
Speaker: If you took some of that away and gave teachers a little bit of autonomy, I know I ran a class two years ago.
Speaker: We had kids who were coming back from COVID who never got online.
Speaker: And I'm a special ed teacher.
Speaker: These were special ed kids.
Speaker: They were already behind.
Speaker: We're even more so behind.
Speaker: So I ran an alternative ELA class.
Speaker: I ran an alternative math class.
Speaker: Guess what?
Speaker: They had pretty much the same kids in it.
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And we would start my class because I've had the training.
Speaker: I've worked with kids.
Speaker: All of my kids were affected by COVID.
Speaker: Oh, for sure.
Speaker: Couldn't get on.
Speaker: They couldn't turn their cameras on.
Speaker: They didn't want people to see inside their homes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which I totally understand that.
Speaker: I totally understand that.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Some of these kids were barely making it in the morning, rolling out of bed and getting to their computer, which was a Herculean effort because there was nobody home.
Speaker: Mom and dad are, you know, the people that need to go to work.
Speaker: So they do all these great things by having the kid actually getting out of bed and getting to the computer and then not turning the computer on because, you know, they're seventh and eighth grade.
Speaker: They look like a mess when they get out of bed.
Speaker: Don't turn the cameras on, get yelled at.
Speaker: And I think these like students, especially during COVID, the kids that we have like in high school now,
Speaker: who experienced this sudden and abrupt shift to responsibility, autonomy, agency over their learning when they were home and by themselves and they either logged in or they didn't because mom and dad were at work or whatever, that are now back in school where we're like,
Speaker: never mind, we have the influence, we have the power, we're taking back that autonomy and agency, we make the decisions, and we're not open to the pedagogical partnership or whatever, then that must be so frustrating for them.
Speaker: And I feel like we, at one point when we were going through COVID, we knew that this was coming.
Speaker: We knew that kids were going to struggle and that there was going to be an increase in trauma for our students because mental health crises were going to be happening in the home and mental health challenges happened more frequently during COVID.
Speaker: Substance misuse happened more frequently.
Speaker: Suicidal ideation happened more frequently.
Speaker: And all of that trauma in the home
Speaker: equals more trauma in the classroom.
Speaker: And we knew that this was going to be a compounding complex issue.
Speaker: We talked about it all the time.
Speaker: And now we're just kind of like, we don't want to hear about trauma anymore.
Speaker: No more, no more trauma.
Speaker: Stop using trauma as a crutch.
Speaker: Just kids need to be, they need to be learning.
Speaker: They need to be fixing the, you know, the learning gap.
Speaker: And we don't have any more time or space for that.
Speaker: You remember how much money they threw at SEL during COVID and right after COVID?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Where is it now?
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And these kids are still struggling.
Speaker: When I ran those two classes, we started every class with a five minute of, do you need to go use the bathroom?
Speaker: Do you need to go fill your water bottle?
Speaker: Oh, you don't have electricity on at home?
Speaker: Here, honey, how about we just put your phone charger right here and we'll just leave it?
Speaker: It was a time of five minutes where kids knew if they were coming to my room, not that I am God's gift to anything.
Speaker: But knowing enough about trauma and knowing that the students that I had were reeling from COVID.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And reeling from having to come back.
Speaker: And we all have to be six feet apart when all they wanted to do was get a hug.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And reeling from these sudden and abrupt transformation.
Speaker: transformation in their role in their learning environment during the day, but also the sudden abrupt change in the behaviors and the concerns of the people around them.
Speaker: And we know that the kids that were already vulnerable or most vulnerable during that time were hit the hardest.
Speaker: And I think, so there's this woman, Uchenna Ama, and she talks about, she has a TED talk, but she talks about how we've
Speaker: increased exponentially the amount of SSRIs, SNRIs, or SSNRI, SSNRI, yeah, no, that was right, SNRIs, sorry, SSRIs and SNRIs being prescribed for anxiety and depression and different mental health challenges by four, like times four, like we've quadrupled it since COVID happened.
Speaker: There are a ton of people being prescribed, four times as many people being prescribed those types of medications now.
Speaker: But we've also continued to see the rate of suicidal ideation skyrocket, which you would think, right?
Speaker: Okay, we've accepted that people are going through trauma and they're experiencing anxiety and depression and they're having mental health challenges.
Speaker: So here we are treating it at a higher rate.
Speaker: And so that number should be going down.
Speaker: False, it's going up.
Speaker: And what she posits is the reason for that is you cannot fix, I mean, you can fix anxiety and depression
Speaker: If it's a systemic issue due to a lack of the production of different hormones, dopamine and serotonin in the brain, that certainly does help.
Speaker: But if the true issue is trauma, you can't fix trauma with a pill.
Speaker: And that means the only way to help people that are going through all of that is to look at what are those resiliency factors.
Speaker: And if they aren't getting those resiliency factors at home, like the number one most successful resiliency factor, positive relationship with an adult, if that's what's happening at home right now,
Speaker: There's one other place they spend eight hours a day.
Speaker: So whether or not we like that that's a part of education or that's part of our role as educators, whether or not we like that is kind of insignificant.
Speaker: Completely.
Speaker: And it's important to understand that is our role.
Speaker: We need kids.
Speaker: Everyone understood for the longest time, if a child doesn't have breakfast, they're probably not going to do well in school, which is why schools are turned around and giving kids breakfast in the morning.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: After COVID, everything was free for two years.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's actually in Maine, it's still free.
Speaker: Not free in New Hampshire.
Speaker: Breakfast and lunch are still free, which is kind of nice.
Speaker: But I will tell you there's a downside to that because...
Speaker: The powers that be have decided that if not enough people apply for free or reduced lunch, even though lunch is free for everyone right now, they're going to start pulling Title I funding.
Speaker: That's why New Hampshire went back to...
Speaker: Charging for it because we were losing services.
Speaker: So that's a huge issue in that those numbers are misrepresented because the state is trying to do something that will have a positive effect on students currently, especially during this time where, you know, groceries are out of control expensive and we are, you know, facing recession level issues in the economy.
Speaker: Sometimes kids just don't have time to have breakfast or they're not hungry at six o'clock in the morning.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And sometimes they, yeah, they don't, they don't take the time.
Speaker: They don't make the time.
Speaker: Their executive functioning is not such that time management is really there.
Speaker: Well, I'm 38 and time management is not my strength either.
Speaker: So I, I get it.
Speaker: And, and they get to school.
Speaker: It doesn't matter why.
Speaker: They still can't, they still have to eat.
Speaker: They can't focus, they can't engage if they don't eat, right?
Speaker: They can't focus and they can't engage if they don't sleep.
Speaker: They can't focus and they can't engage if they're worried about, you know, is my mom going to be home when I get home?
Speaker: Or is my dad going to be home when I get home?
Speaker: Or are they going to be fighting?
Speaker: Or someone coming to pick me up and take me away for the night because people aren't getting along?
Speaker: Or are we going to lose our apartment while I'm at school today?
Speaker: Like no one...
Speaker: No one can function like that.
Speaker: We wouldn't function like that.
Speaker: So I don't know why that's the expectation on children.
Speaker: I don't really understand when we just decided to forsake that issue.
Speaker: But I think the fact that we're not willing, and I said that as a generalization, but some educators are not willing to
Speaker: to step into that role and say, we have to do something about this part of, you know, the whole child, the holistic child, not to keep using whole child theory, but I'm just talking about this kind of holistic universal view of a child needing to needing that synergy to be, to be functional.
Speaker: If we're just not willing to accept that, then,
Speaker: were asking for challenges.
Speaker: And I was looking at some of the issues that, I can't remember if it was, I think it was either Dr. Meredith Fox or Carla Carlyle.
Speaker: I can't remember.
Speaker: One of those people I was listening to talk about trauma.
Speaker: And they were talking about the different symptomology of trauma in children.
Speaker: And they were talking about
Speaker: how children who have experienced, you know, a high level of ACEs are very clingy.
Speaker: They're very needy.
Speaker: They've trouble sleeping.
Speaker: They're moody.
Speaker: They have bouts of anger and rage.
Speaker: They have attention issues.
Speaker: They have panic disorder, panic attack issues.
Speaker: They have memory loss or difficult time with working memory.
Speaker: they have self-image issues, and they have impulse control.
Speaker: And I was like, well, at least four of those things are the top-level behavior complaints, classroom management behavior complaints from teachers, right?
Speaker: Like if you have tier three PBIS issues,
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Moodiness.
Speaker: So like mood swings, which is going to be reduced to either disrespect or insubordination, right?
Speaker: Anger and rage, that's probably going to end up being a high level of high level behavior.
Speaker: We're looking at likely some swearing or high level of disrespect, leaving the classroom, leaving the school, throwing something, whatever.
Speaker: attention issues, that's going to look like a lack of engagement, and that's going to look like insubordination,
Speaker: and not being where you're supposed to be, which is low level behavior that teachers are going to complain about and the impulse control.
Speaker: And so, and that's going to look like literally anything on the behavior list.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Tapping your pencil or speaking out or blurting out or any of those.
Speaker: Oh, as a small anecdote, I remember this one time I know I've shared with you, which apparently now I'll share with the podcast.
Speaker: I have a child who, um,
Speaker: is diagnosed with both ADHD and anxiety and who also has ACEs from their childhood.
Speaker: And my child was in class one day.
Speaker: Now, this is a really, this was a tough year for my child.
Speaker: They h ad a
Speaker: been in school, they were in fourth grade, they'd been in school for two months, and all of a sudden my childhood never had a behavioral referral before in their life to the office.
Speaker: Never, not one time.
Speaker: No ODR, nothing, ever.
Speaker: All of a sudden in one month had over 40 behavioral referrals to the office.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And no one was like, sound the alarm.
Speaker: Something's going on.
Speaker: Something's going on there.
Speaker: Until I went into school.
Speaker: And I went into school because my child was at school and a marker rolled off their desk onto the floor.
Speaker: And my child impulsively jumped up, ran to it, grabbed it, and went and sat back down.
Speaker: Well, the teacher had just said everyone needed to stay in their seats because this was a particularly rowdy fourth grade classroom.
Speaker: At nine years old.
Speaker: At nine years old.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: ODR sent to the office.
Speaker: Sent to the office for getting up from the seat and picking up the marker.
Speaker: So obviously I went in and I was like, someone's going to have to break down for me what's going on here.
Speaker: Like my child's never had a behavioral referral and now they've had
Speaker: you know, 40 something in a month, something's wrong.
Speaker: And we finally did work out that my child had finished essentially the entire curriculum for fourth grade, everything his teacher could throw at him by October.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: So we have a very bored child.
Speaker: Very bored.
Speaker: Impulsivity.
Speaker: And a very frustrated ed tech who was constantly in battle with my child who was saying, I've already done this work.
Speaker: I've already done this work.
Speaker: I've already done this work.
Speaker: And was frustrated and was witnessing themselves receive, you know,
Speaker: the same thing over and over again.
Speaker: And so they were frustrated and knew it and knew that they were being given busy work and just could not keep it together.
Speaker: Well, they also have ADHD and anxiety and there's some other compounding factors, but that hadn't yet presented in a way that was detrimental at school until that particular year.
Speaker: And I had to go in and advocate and fight tooth and nail to have my child moved up to fifth grade.
Speaker: Curriculum was done.
Speaker: And have my child given a 504 for anxiety and ADHD, despite the fact that there had been no academic challenges, that there were only behavioral challenges, and there was only a one-month history of behavioral challenges, right?
Speaker: That's the definition of a 504.
Speaker: It's to allow access for a medical reason to the curriculum.
Speaker: And the fight for that's ridiculous.
Speaker: And it was a battle, but we eventually we found a way to make it work.
Speaker: I may have walked into a meeting with an annotated bibliography to my point.
Speaker: But I remember feeling so exhausted.
Speaker: The only reason I knew how to navigate that
Speaker: and determine what was going on and help my child build a connection with someone in the school and find some level of safety, of trust in the school, of support, of voice, was because of the work that I do.
Speaker: And if I had not had that background, I would have had no idea how to navigate my child out of that.
Speaker: And my child probably would have been
Speaker: from that moment on labeled as, you know, someone that teachers have to watch out for or be careful that kids a lot to handle or whatever.
Speaker: I'll put a B on the card that identifies them at the end of the year when they're trying to figure out classes as a behavior kids, low kids and behavior kids.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So as though you cannot be both a high and a behavior kid,
Speaker: right?
Speaker: Or a low in a behavior that all the kids get pegged into certain categories and then that's it.
Speaker: That's who they are.
Speaker: And that is, I feel like how, if we handle trauma, if we continue to handle trauma that way, then we're just going to continue to see the same complaints, which is that there are kids in my class who are disrespectful, insubordinate, they don't pay attention, they're disengaged, they don't care, there's apathy, blah, blah, blah, right?
Speaker: And so I have, I do h ave a question for you, or I'm curious your thoughts on this in thinking about, I know we all go through training on ACEs.
Speaker: Probably every educator has heard ACEs 4 million times.
Speaker: And we talk about the core ACEs, the different types of neglect and abuse, divorce, parental loss, untreated mental health issues in the home,
Speaker: untreated substance misuse in the home, homelessness, witnessing violence.
Speaker: And I know a couple of those they're thinking about, or they're like being added probationarily.
Speaker: They're not really, they're not a hundred percent there yet, but they're like considering those.
Speaker: I think there should be a lot more.
Speaker: Oh, I've totally agree.
Speaker: And I think the more that we do this kind of work, the more that there needs to be, because the more that we learn.
Speaker: Can you tell me a little bit about like what, if you could add like three ACEs that we don't currently include on the ACEs list, but you know, should be like, were we to pre-screen for ACEs in children?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Do some sort of trauma pre-screening to help sort of determine what students are most at risk of trauma-influenced behaviors or trauma-influenced educational experiences.
Speaker: What three would you add?
Speaker: I would definitely add, I don't know how to put it, I would say a really rough year in school.
Speaker: Like bullying?
Speaker: It could be bullying.
Speaker: It could be teacher apathy.
Speaker: It could be having a teacher that you don't gel with.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So one of the things that I've learned about trauma.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: One of the things I've learned about trauma is that it's very scientific.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And when you're exposed to trauma, when you have those repeated triggers, so you're having a really rough year in school, so you have the teacher that
Speaker: You do something typically.
Speaker: You're the pencil tapper.
Speaker: You're the person that blurts out your whatever.
Speaker: And it's this teacher's pet peeve.
Speaker: And you're just going to have a really rough year.
Speaker: Like when you were talking about your child and, you know, being really bored in school and having already done all this.
Speaker: And we have ADHD on the side.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's a really rough year.
Speaker: Yes, it was.
Speaker: It really was.
Speaker: So those are going to become chronic stressors.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So that's part of it.
Speaker: Chronic trauma versus acute trauma.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So his amygdala has been triggered so many times.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That if this happens in another school year,
Speaker: it's gonna have an exaggerated response and it's gonna send these false alarms to the kid's brain.
Speaker: So I think with the ACEs, if we're gonna talk about children in school, we should add one about really having a rough year in school because that's going to trigger for the next year.
Speaker: I know my little guys just got home from school, it's the last day.
Speaker: And I know one of them really wanted this one teacher.
Speaker: And the want is because it's a known entity.
Speaker: A familiarity.
Speaker: Completely.
Speaker: This child had this teacher last year and the teacher skipped up two grades.
Speaker: So this year, not so much, really having to learn a new routine, really having to learn new expectations.
Speaker: And in this little body's heart,
Speaker: They wanted to have that familiarity again because there was such a gel between the teacher.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was that relationship.
Speaker: It's already there.
Speaker: So having to spend the summer being anxious about, am I going to get them?
Speaker: Oh, and if I don't, who's this new teacher?
Speaker: And what are those expectations?
Speaker: My other little one has their first male teacher next year.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: We're going to go process that after we're done talking here.
Speaker: There's a big, I've never had a male teacher before.
Speaker: Yeah, I get that.
Speaker: So I really think that that should be part of the ACEs is we should look at what their school year was like.
Speaker: What's the, what's the educational trauma?
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So, you know, put that in there.
Speaker: Means we have to admit that there's educational trauma, which I know,
Speaker: sort of, uh, threatened, it leaves people feeling a little threatened sometimes.
Speaker: I mean, can't you remember looking back at your teaching history and going, my God, I can't believe I did that.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: I still have not nightmares.
Speaker: I still have bad dreams.
Speaker: about really making some serious little mistakes when I first started teaching because I can also think about my own educational upbringing.
Speaker: I had an actual like a severe acute educational trauma.
Speaker: I don't really tell a lot of people the story, but I guess I'll tell it now.
Speaker: Tell the world.
Speaker: Whatever.
Speaker: Everyone gets to hear it now.
Speaker: So when I was younger, when I was four, there was a trauma in my family.
Speaker: My mother lost her parents two weeks apart.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: And we moved abruptly to a different area, completely different in that it was not urban.
Speaker: It was very rural.
Speaker: And it was in the middle of the woods.
Speaker: And it was far from everything that I knew.
Speaker: And I showed up on my first day to my new rural school.
Speaker: wearing a t-shirt that said city girl and I had stirrup pants on and I had like a side crimp ponytail.
Speaker: It was an unfortunate look.
Speaker: And everyone immediately was like, that's not how we dress here.
Speaker: And it was also, it was the middle of the school year to add to everything else.
Speaker: So, and it was the middle of fourth grade.
Speaker: And these were kids that had gone to school together every year since kindergarten.
Speaker: So they all knew each other very well.
Speaker: They had all played t-ball together.
Speaker: And I'd come from a gigantic district that was very transient where everybody made a new friend every day.
Speaker: It didn't matter.
Speaker: And we dressed differently and we spoke differently.
Speaker: And I stuck out like such a sore thumb.
Speaker: It was crazy.
Speaker: That night I made my mother go to the store and buy jeans and sweatshirts for me because that's what all the kids wore.
Speaker: And I didn't own a single pair of jeans and I didn't own a single hoodie, not one.
Speaker: So I was like, we're going to the store and we're buying these things because I stick out like a sore thumb and I'm never wearing my city girl t-shirt again.
Speaker: So that you remember that back to the fourth grade.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: I remember.
Speaker: And it's cause it gets worse.
Speaker: That was a big part of it.
Speaker: And I remember that was the first time that in a peer setting that I ever felt like I don't have anybody to talk to.
Speaker: I'm going to sit by myself at lunch.
Speaker: In fact, I think I ate lunch in the bathroom.
Speaker: No one here likes me.
Speaker: And I, I am absolutely othered in this moment.
Speaker: And, you know, there were things going on in my personal life and my home life too with my mother having lost her parents so close to each other so abruptly.
Speaker: And there was a lot going on.
Speaker: And in my mind, my infinite wisdom at nine years old, I thought, you know what will fix this?
Speaker: I will tell everyone that I'm a witch.
Speaker: And
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the reason that I chose to do that probably is because I had my own ADHD issues and I lack impulse control myself, but was also because I had watched the movie The Craft, which now I'm dating myself and telling you how old I am too.
Speaker: I like that movie.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I loved it.
Speaker: And these girls were, by the end of the movie, the coolest girls that existed on the planet.
Speaker: So I was like, I'm just going to tell everyone I was a witch.
Speaker: So I told everyone at school, in my new school, that I was a witch and that my family was a coven and that we had just moved to town and that if they weren't nice to me, I could cast spells on them, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: Well, that garnered a tremendous amount of attention for me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I did start to make...
Speaker: make some what I thought were friends, but they were not friends.
Speaker: They were people that were just kind of fixated on the story and, you know, completely captivated by the idea that I had pulled this stunt and also had lived very sheltered lives.
Speaker: And this was really not long after the satanic panic of the 1980s.
Speaker: which I didn't know about because I was nine, but other people knew about.
Speaker: And this tiny little town that I was from now suddenly became obsessed with who I was, who my family was, not just the kids, but the parents too.
Speaker: And as the kids were going home and saying, there's this new girl at school and she says she's a witch.
Speaker: And if I'm mean to her, she can turn me into a frog or whatever it was.
Speaker: I said, my parents,
Speaker: The town, the community of adults became concerned, which is not something that in 2023, when I teach the crucible at school, I don't think that I can draw.
Speaker: I would never have thought I would be able to draw a religious persecution picture.
Speaker: parable from my own life to compare to the crucible.
Speaker: But I did because what happened was I got kicked out of Girl Scouts.
Speaker: Oh no.
Speaker: Because the mothers were concerned about the witch girl.
Speaker: And I got, I went into a big apple and I got spit on.
Speaker: Oh my goodness.
Speaker: By an adult woman.
Speaker: Spit on as she like whispered witch in my ear.
Speaker: And when I went back to school,
Speaker: The next week, on a Monday, my principal came to my classroom.
Speaker: I will remember him for the rest of my life.
Speaker: And he came up to my classroom and he said, could I borrow Miranda for a second?
Speaker: My teacher said, sure.
Speaker: And he took me out in the hallway and he said, listen, there are some people that are concerned about some stories you've been telling about
Speaker: about being a witch and how your family is a coven.
Speaker: And I need you to come tell those people that what you've been saying is not true and that you're not a witch.
Speaker: You don't practice witchcraft and your family's not a coven because they're really worried and they're worried about the safety of their children and they're worried about, you know, the community.
Speaker: And so I was with that at nine.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I don't know how I dealt with it.
Speaker: I blacked out for a good portion of our walk.
Speaker: He told me that we were going to go to the office and I was going to explain a few things.
Speaker: And then he led me down this hallway and,
Speaker: And you know, well, you've worked in primary schools, but you know how the cafeteria also functions as the gym and the theater, right?
Speaker: So he led me through a door that I thought was a door into his office, and it was actually a door onto the stage.
Speaker: And sitting in front of me were like, to be honest, I can't tell you how many people were there because I was tiny and terrified.
Speaker: From my memory, I would say it was at least probably 50, 75 people.
Speaker: Could have been like 100 people, something like that.
Speaker: A lot of rows of people, we'll say rows of people from the town.
Speaker: And he made me explain to them that I was not a witch.
Speaker: My family was not from a coven.
Speaker: And that none of that was true.
Speaker: Oh, my goodness.
Speaker: So that they would calm down and leave him alone, stop calling his office.
Speaker: And I remember I absolutely blacked out.
Speaker: It was the first time I blacked out during a panic attack.
Speaker: That was the first time in my life that I that I visibly remember what it looks like to black out in terms of like my my vision came to a point like the black came from the peripheral of my vision right to the center.
Speaker: And it went black and I was still awake and conscious, but I was like, I couldn't see.
Speaker: And I had no idea.
Speaker: And I remember that I could not catch my breath.
Speaker: There were just tears streaming down my face and I couldn't speak.
Speaker: And so he just started asking me questions and he would say, you know, shake your head.
Speaker: Yes or no.
Speaker: If you're a witch, shake your head.
Speaker: Yes or no.
Speaker: If you're from a coven, shake your head.
Speaker: Yes or no.
Speaker: If you lied.
Speaker: And then he said, which trials.
Speaker: Yeah, it was basically the Salem witch house, but it was 1992 in a rural town in Maine.
Speaker: So I like, I got led back off the stage by the, by it was a lady.
Speaker: It must've been, I think it was like the office secretary.
Speaker: I can't remember who.
Speaker: And I was just crying and crying.
Speaker: And she led me out to the back and she said, you can stand here for a little while and collect yourself.
Speaker: And when you're ready, you can go back to class.
Speaker: Yeah, maybe next year.
Speaker: And that was it.
Speaker: So then I went home that night and I explained to my mother, I said, this happened to me at school today.
Speaker: And she was like, no, it didn't.
Speaker: And I said, yes, it really did.
Speaker: You can call my principal and ask him this happened today.
Speaker: She didn't believe me.
Speaker: And she was like, that can't have happened.
Speaker: That violates a multitude of civil rights protections that didn't happen to you.
Speaker: And your first amendment.
Speaker: And I was like, it did.
Speaker: I never built a single relationship with another educator from that moment forward until, until I was an adult and I went into graduate school, graduate school.
Speaker: In fact, Deborah Nitschke Shaw was the first person outside of, you know, people that I worked with in education that I built, like the first educator I built a relationship with.
Speaker: I didn't trust any of them.
Speaker: And that goes back to that chronic stress where, you know,
Speaker: you just have this exaggerated response to stimulus.
Speaker: So anytime it's science, you were so traumatized by that event that you could not make another connection with another adult in education.
Speaker: And the same thing happened for my child after that, that a couple of months that he spent where he felt he was really under the thumb and being just, you know,
Speaker: I don't know how to say it, like persecuted in his class.
Speaker: And devalued.
Speaker: And devalued.
Speaker: And just he really felt like it was so rigid that he just could not breathe without, you know, being given an ODR or whatever.
Speaker: He really struggled with that.
Speaker: And that was like a constant release of that cortisol.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which, you know, impacted him and impacted his brain development and everything else that they talk about when they talk about, you know, the physical impacts of trauma and stress.
Speaker: Which is why they have ACEs in the first place, because, you know, how much cortisol can you bathe a little brain in?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Before it really starts to hurt, which goes back to what I was saying a while ago.
Speaker: We realize that we can't have children in school who have not eaten.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Teachers get that.
Speaker: And we have so many teachers now that are on that bandwagon and are trained.
Speaker: If you see something a little bit off, the first thing we say is, hey, how are you feeling?
Speaker: Do you need to go see the nurse?
Speaker: Did you have breakfast?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So why can't we turn things around?
Speaker: And look at a child and maybe go through those and you get a note about, you know, they're okay and they've had breakfast.
Speaker: Why can't we get teachers and, you know, people in administration to understand that there's still other things that can be wrong?
Speaker: I know I was doing some reading before this podcast and one of the things that really hit home in, let's see, Alex Venette's book,
Speaker: was a child who every single time they go into class and they're late, they get in trouble and they're embarrassed.
Speaker: And so now they're triggered by walking to the door and being late where I might be the teacher where that's okay.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But they can't.
Speaker: I remember I had a student, this student,
Speaker: when this student probably has 10 out of 10 ACEs in their life, my guess is, and they were experiencing homelessness.
Speaker: In fact, they were found sleeping under playground equipment at the school one time.
Speaker: And this student frequently fell asleep in class, obviously.
Speaker: And I remember on their last day of school, they came to me and said,
Speaker: Every single class that I go to for my entire life, I have sat in like a complete state of panic because I'm afraid I'm going to fall asleep and get yelled at.
Speaker: And your class is the only class that I've ever been to where I wasn't afraid that if I fell asleep, you would change how you felt about me.
Speaker: And that broke my heart because that means like their entire educational experience was one long panic because they were just getting yelled at for falling asleep, which really was not their fault.
Speaker: And it was... Kids do not sit up at night and try to devise ways to drive educators crazy.
Speaker: They have other things to do.
Speaker: So when a child is displaying a behavior that is not typical or one that...
Speaker: is a little off-putting.
Speaker: It's not because they're trying to drive you crazy.
Speaker: It's nothing that you can take personal.
Speaker: And on top of that, you might not ever find out why they're doing it.
Speaker: It's not our job to dig in and discover how many ACEs this child has or what's the trauma of the week.
Speaker: Our job as educators is to develop a relationship where no matter what this child is going through,
Speaker: They feel safe with us.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: I had probably one of my favorite students ever.
Speaker: I knew home life was difficult.
Speaker: I knew mommy and daddy took turns getting in and out of jail.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I knew that he felt very responsible for younger siblings.
Speaker: And that's all I needed to know.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a ton.
Speaker: That's a ton of pressure.
Speaker: Right there.
Speaker: And whatever was going on in home, I didn't need to know who was in jail for the week.
Speaker: I didn't need to know who did something wrong or whatever.
Speaker: It wasn't my job to do that.
Speaker: My job was to understand that if this child came to me and said, can I charge my phone in your room?
Speaker: My job was to say, of course.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Not even yes, it was to say, of course, to give him permission to get what he needs.
Speaker: And the world will continue spinning.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And to make it so that if he wasn't there for a week,
Speaker: to understand it wasn't him doing this.
Speaker: Children want to come to school for the most part.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: If they feel they're in a safe place where they can trust people.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: That's all they're really asking for is, am I in a safe place where I can trust people and I have some level of efficacy and autonomy?
Speaker: And if I do, then I'll like coming here just like adults do.
Speaker: That's how adults feel about their careers.
Speaker: You're far more likely to be...
Speaker: engaged and want to stay where you're working.
Speaker: If you feel you have some level of safety and respect and value and agency and autonomy, kids are the same thing.
Speaker: You know, exactly.
Speaker: And we need to look at it as a way of building relationships with kids without being that person that is in their business.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: We need to respect those boundaries as much as you would with an adult.
Speaker: If, if we are,
Speaker: went to school, we have residency, usually once or twice every class.
Speaker: And if one of us in our cohort shows up and we're just really not talking, the rest of us are understanding enough to turn around and say, is there anything I can do?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And leave it at that.
Speaker: And we need to give that same kind of respect to our kids.
Speaker: Understanding ACEs covers many different areas.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And also understanding that most children are going to come to school with at least one or two, three or four, we're getting up there where it's really going to cause some problems.
Speaker: And then you have kids, you know, who have all of them.
Speaker: We need to create a space for all of these children.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And I think, um,
Speaker: adding bullying and educational trauma to that list is really important.
Speaker: I think I I've thought of some others too, that I wish would be considered for addition.
Speaker: I was thinking about, uh, children, um, that experienced wartime, uh, children who experienced racial genocide and,
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Children who experience sociological or ideological discrimination or violence.
Speaker: And I've been thinking about that because I've been looking a lot at generational trauma and this idea that any kind of trauma or stress prolongs trauma or stress.
Speaker: ends up becoming something that you can see has changed a person's DNA, their DNA sequencing, their brain development, their mood stabilization, their limbic system, their stress response, like all of these things can be seen as having changed in children who had parents who
Speaker: or grandparents that experience those traumas.
Speaker: It's like generational poverty.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's, it's, it literally restructures their DNA.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And we can add marginalized communities to that.
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: I think when I say sociological discrimination or violence, I'm talking about any sociological minority, whether that's, you know, a racial minority, gender minority, sexuality minority,
Speaker: religious minority, any kind of minority disability, students with disabilities, or even a subculture, I would say, could also, you know, equivalently be like, let's say, how much trauma would you expect from a kid who grew up in a non-religious cult?
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So it's not a religious minority, but it's a sociological minority and that they belong to a subculture.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Totally agree.
Speaker: Let's say that that particular cult fostered, you know, a pretty chronic sense of lack of safety, imminent danger, imminent threat.
Speaker: That kid is going to walk into your room and
Speaker: With so much trauma.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And they don't even have to have the other aces.
Speaker: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker: Like, if that's their one thing is that they just grew up in an environment that was fostered by fear propaganda.
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: It doesn't matter.
Speaker: They're still going to have that chronic level of raised cortisol, the overactive amygdala.
Speaker: And even if they didn't, but let's say their parent did or their grandparent did, all of that DNA sequencing changes.
Speaker: And I think that that's really incredible.
Speaker: And I was reading a little bit about the study on the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors.
Speaker: And how their DNA was so heavily impacted and how they changed significantly genetically, even though they weren't alive, they weren't even alive for the event.
Speaker: But that trauma was passed down through their DNA sequencing, which talk about an invisible backpack.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They don't even know they have it.
Speaker: Yeah, they might not even know why they feel that way.
Speaker: And so that's really incredible to me, which is even more, I think, of a reason that when we talk about being trauma skilled or trauma informed, we really have to do it as a whole system.
Speaker: It can't just be a trauma informed group in a school or like a school within a school.
Speaker: It can't just be a trauma informed teachers situation or trauma informed administration.
Speaker: It has to be a trauma informed all of staff.
Speaker: Everybody.
Speaker: And it has to be built into your mission statement, your vision statement.
Speaker: And then you have to keep going back to that every time you make a decision.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And I love that you mentioned the mission and vision statement, because my next question was to be, when we consider Bowman and Deal's framework, their theoretical framework for organizational theory and structure.
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: And there are four lenses, which we've so generously donated a lens to, to make it five lenses.
Speaker: Where do you, so I'm just going to reiterate them again, the structural lens, which is the factory version of an organization.
Speaker: It's how we produce what we produce.
Speaker: And then the human resources lens, which is the family dynamic.
Speaker: This is like
Speaker: the interpersonal relationships and how people within the organization deal with one another and feel about one another.
Speaker: The political lens, which is the jungle symbol for an organization.
Speaker: It's where does, what is the hierarchy?
Speaker: Where does the power and influence fall?
Speaker: And then the symbolic lens, which is that temple symbol of mission and vision within an organization.
Speaker: And then lastly, our eudaimonia lens, the symbol for which is a tuning fork.
Speaker: It's that synergy to which an entire organization is tuned together to work most effectively and efficiently.
Speaker: And I think when you were talking about
Speaker: What you did with that student in terms of bringing that student into their own 504 meeting with their peer support to discuss what would be helpful for them.
Speaker: I think that breaks down.
Speaker: in the same way those six principles from SAMHSA breaks down into those lenses.
Speaker: So when we talk about the safety that a student feels, to me, that's structural.
Speaker: How we implemented the protocols, the practices, the tools that we need to help students feel safe.
Speaker: The trustworthiness and transparency portion of SAMHSA's six principles, that's human resources lens.
Speaker: Peer support, that's human resources lens.
Speaker: The collaboration and mutuality or the pedagogical partnership, which is how I understand that particular principle, that's the political lens.
Speaker: And the empowerment, voice, and choice, the agency, autonomy, efficacy, that's political lens.
Speaker: And then the cultural proficiency is the mission and vision, the symbolic lens or the mission and vision of an organization.
Speaker: And I think...
Speaker: from the eudaimonia lens.
Speaker: Well, you tell me, do you think that this adaptive challenge, because I think these lenses are the best way of understanding adaptive challenges in an organization or how to create system change.
Speaker: So I think that trauma informed schools is an adaptive challenge because leaders can't do it by themselves.
Speaker: They need to have a collective wisdom, so to speak, to be able to get down into your own building and
Speaker: into your own SAU, whatever you're calling your district, and finding out what it is you can do and teaching people.
Speaker: And it has to be an ongoing effort.
Speaker: It's not like the government threw a bunch of money at us for SEL after COVID, and now it's all done.
Speaker: This needs to be this ongoing process, which is why I think it's an adaptive challenge.
Speaker: Oh, for sure.
Speaker: The four frames, I really think it covers all of them.
Speaker: Structurally, we need to set measurable goals.
Speaker: We need to clarify our tasks and responsibilities.
Speaker: That's a great point.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like a smart goal, like specific, measurable, attainable, relevant goals.
Speaker: and everybody is on board and we have assigned the responsibilities.
Speaker: This is going on in my class.
Speaker: I can handle this because I've had this training.
Speaker: This is going on in my class and I can't handle this, which means I contact this person that this child has a relationship with.
Speaker: The responsibilities are there.
Speaker: We know how to handle it.
Speaker: We know how to make the child feel safe.
Speaker: I think it also covers the human resource effort.
Speaker: Because within the human resource part, it's giving employees the opportunity to perform their jobs while at the same time allowing them to be human, allowing them to...
Speaker: have contact with kids, to be able to have personal growth, to be able to give kids agency, for teachers to have agency, for teachers to look at their classroom and say, oh, my God, this lesson is just not going to work today.
Speaker: You know, so-and-so did this or this just happened.
Speaker: I, for the most part, have taught in a middle school area, sixth, seventh, eighth grade.
Speaker: The drama is rampant.
Speaker: And if the drama is going on, there are days when you just have to take your lesson plan and say, this is not going to work.
Speaker: And to have a person with writer, I could possibly agree more.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And there are some schools where you just need to push on.
Speaker: And then there are other places where, you know, the human resource part of this frame works really well.
Speaker: And teachers have that agency to go, this is not going to work.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: We're going to go outside.
Speaker: And we're going to take a break and we're going to read.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Politically, I think the political frame of it, a lot of it is you have a leader and you need to get your people behind it.
Speaker: But the leader has to be able to give enough support to their people where people will get behind it.
Speaker: Does that make sense?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm not going to tell you as an administrator, you need to be more trauma informed.
Speaker: I'm going to have a vision.
Speaker: I'm going to allow other people to be part of my vision, to guide them in a direction.
Speaker: I'm going to give them supports.
Speaker: I'm going to give them training.
Speaker: I'm going to let them know that I'm going to do the work with you.
Speaker: And this is the way it's going to be.
Speaker: And this is why.
Speaker: I have a perfect example of when the political frame becomes an issue when we talk about trauma-informed and trauma-sensitive schools or even socio-emotional learning.
Speaker: Because I have heard a school board member say during a school board meeting, it's in the minutes.
Speaker: I'm so sick of hearing about this SELBS.
Speaker: No more SELBS.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Within what we need as leaders.
Speaker: Within the last few years, Rhonda.
Speaker: I see where I see the political frame coming into this is if we allow those people who, by the way, are not in the classroom.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They are not dealing with students one on one all day.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: They're doing their own little jobs and then coming and telling us what to do.
Speaker: There are entire districts where the school board members for those districts don't have a single student.
Speaker: There's not a single school board member that has a student currently active in that school system anywhere.
Speaker: And so if we say, okay, well, we're going to allow school boards to a hundred percent determine our level of SEL development or our level of trauma informed trauma sensitive, um,
Speaker: work or the amount of time we're devoting to that, since they are able, they have their own, you know, curriculum committees and stuff like that, then that's part of that political frame.
Speaker: It has to be a situation where they also buy in to why we need to do this.
Speaker: And I think it's also the best way to do that is to change the hierarchy of who makes what decisions for students and
Speaker: you know, in a isolated, like in a vacuum, like do we allow adults to make decisions for students in a vacuum?
Speaker: Or do we allow students to partner with adults to make those decisions?
Speaker: I think that's where that political lens comes in.
Speaker: We have to change
Speaker: the hierarchical structure of the power dynamic that's traditional education that's leftover from the industrial era.
Speaker: This idea that you have a boss or a manager and that's who makes decisions and then everyone else just does the work.
Speaker: That structure does not work in school anymore.
Speaker: It does not work for our students.
Speaker: We know that.
Speaker: We've known that for a long time.
Speaker: We've known that since 1993 when the UN said we must give to children.
Speaker: It's children's right to have resources
Speaker: voice, space, influence, and audience.
Speaker: We've known it for over 30 years.
Speaker: We're the only country that was like, man, we're not going to do that.
Speaker: We're not going to sign on for that.
Speaker: We're not interested.
Speaker: We need to give students a seat at that table.
Speaker: Which we're now seeing the repercussions for having not done.
Speaker: We're witnessing it.
Speaker: We are.
Speaker: The repercussions are there's a mistrust in education.
Speaker: There's a disconnect.
Speaker: Often students see education as the adversary rather than the advocate.
Speaker: And that's really dangerous in terms of the future of education and how we continue to lead students in a direction that will empower them.
Speaker: for, you know, for the rest of their lives, through their careers, through their continuing education.
Speaker: Yeah, I think we've really lost sight of what, and I'm using we as an all inclusive, and I don't mean to, but losing sight of what it is we're supposed to do.
Speaker: We're not creating little factory workers anymore, where everyone needed to toe the line, and we needed to make sure that
Speaker: When you grow up, you're able to listen to directions and follow it and you're able to walk in a straight line.
Speaker: And I mean, that's not what we're doing anymore.
Speaker: We're our job is to create people who can think.
Speaker: And if we don't give them a voice, how can they think?
Speaker: How can they independently think?
Speaker: Well,
Speaker: They can't really, but I think as much as we are no longer a part of that industrial era, we're no longer mass producing factory workers.
Speaker: We are creating thinkers and innovators.
Speaker: I think people are really threatened by that because that's not, that's a truly representative democracy.
Speaker: Do you know what I'm saying?
Speaker: Like you, you, you really have to be done.
Speaker: If you have a bunch of people that are at that level of, uh, thinking and autonomy and agency, then they are, then you need a truly democratic system, not just people who have experience and are educated at a level where they would be, you know, powerful, um,
Speaker: in the political sphere or the economic or government sphere, but everyone is working to their max potential.
Speaker: And that's what we're supposed to be doing.
Speaker: But do you think to some extent that's a little threatening?
Speaker: I think to some people that's a little threatening, especially people who completely buy into capitalism and, you know, are the 1% who have all the money.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, when we say take that over.
Speaker: When we say every student succeeds act.
Speaker: Do we really want that?
Speaker: I know that's something I would like.
Speaker: I would too.
Speaker: But do you think the general we, the universal we?
Speaker: The universal we kind of scares me sometimes.
Speaker: Because they don't have the information.
Speaker: And they don't want the information.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: I mean, you know, one of the things that my husband and I joke about all the time is our grandchildren are going to be the people that design my nursing home.
Speaker: I would really like them to be intelligent, okay?
Speaker: I don't want to live in the nursing homes that are out there right now.
Speaker: But if you think about it, the children who are our grandchildren's generation are going to be designing how we're going to be cared for.
Speaker: Do you want a factory worker or do you want somebody that's innovative?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Well, here's what I think.
Speaker: I'll be honest with you.
Speaker: I think the factory worker can also be the innovator, which is the part that we don't like as an ideology, as a country.
Speaker: I don't think we like that people should not be compartmentalized that way, that you have blue collar and white collar.
Speaker: You have innovators and you have followers.
Speaker: You have leaders and you have sheep.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I think that that structure is something we're far more comfortable with, but when everyone has the potential to be given that level of equity, I think that people, especially people in positions of privilege and power get scared.
Speaker: They don't ultimately want to fund that.
Speaker: They don't want that to be their problem.
Speaker: They don't want that to be their responsibility.
Speaker: They, they like where they're at, you know, um,
Speaker: It's on the same line as there's so many educators that look at, we need to get kids ready for college.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What if they don't want to go?
Speaker: What if they want to go and do a trade and be innovative?
Speaker: Because I love that word.
Speaker: Be a contractor, be a carpenter, be a plumber.
Speaker: Please take care of my house because I don't have that skill set.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Nor will I fix my car.
Speaker: My brain just works that way.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: My brain does not work that way.
Speaker: My brain, I don't know how anything works.
Speaker: When people ask me about things that involve small engines, I'm like, I have no idea it's magic.
Speaker: Like I don't know how any of that stuff works.
Speaker: But there are some people for whom, you know, that is their thing and their brain is really powerful in that sense.
Speaker: And so they, but we should foster that so they can maximize on that capacity just as much as anything else.
Speaker: And also we should foster that with the intention of valuing that.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: which is where all children should be able to succeed comes from.
Speaker: They should be able to succeed in an area that makes them happy, that they excel at, which means that we need to offer opportunities to a lot of different children with a lot of different things.
Speaker: With a lot of different needs, a lot of different backgrounds, experiences, traumas, kids that are coming into the educational sphere from
Speaker: 17 different directions.
Speaker: We have to be willing and open to all of that rather than being dismissive and devaluing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know, which then takes us to the symbolic frame because people need to have a purpose.
Speaker: They need to look at their work.
Speaker: They need to look at what they're doing with meaning.
Speaker: So if I have someone in my classroom who is extremely mechanically inclined,
Speaker: I should be offering, even though that scares the daylights out of me as an educator, offering opportunities for that child to use that part of their brain.
Speaker: Oh, for sure.
Speaker: To become more proficient at it, personalizing some of that learning.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that kids can achieve to great heights again.
Speaker: I need somebody to take care of me in my old age.
Speaker: Someone needs to design a nursing home I'm going to be okay in.
Speaker: Somebody needs to fix my car.
Speaker: These are things I'm not good at.
Speaker: I do what I'm good at.
Speaker: I do what I enjoy.
Speaker: There's meaning in my work.
Speaker: And no child, all children should succeed.
Speaker: is that we should be offering all of these different things so that students can find what they're good at, what they're passionate about, and run with it.
Speaker: And feel like they're capable of doing that, that there's someone in their corner who believes that they can do that, regardless of what they've been through or what they're currently going through or what their background is or what their parents did or whatever, that there's someone who is saying, no, no, I actually think you can nail this.
Speaker: I think you can do it.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And it needs to be a group of people.
Speaker: It can't be just one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You can't go back and look at your education like all of us do and go, I had that one teacher.
Speaker: In a great world.
Speaker: It would be really helpful if it was more than one.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: I had this group of teachers who just inspired me too.
Speaker: And were willing to meet me where I was at in terms of what I was going through and what I had to offer.
Speaker: If you look at the general public, we all have at least a couple of aces.
Speaker: Yeah, most people have at least one or two.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And if that's going to be triggered in school, that person deserves just as much as someone who has 10 aces.
Speaker: And I would argue, and I know there are people that would probably challenge me on this, but I would argue post COVID, we all have at least one.
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: But I know that hasn't been discussed extensively yet, but I think the level of disruption, fear, anxiety, worry that COVID caused in our society negates us admitting we all have at least one.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know.
Speaker: Well, you're going to get triggered by that.
Speaker: And, you know, there's a hope as an adult or a child that there's someone in your life
Speaker: that's going to make it a little easier.
Speaker: That's going to be in your corner.
Speaker: That's going to be able to say, we'll get through this.
Speaker: I'm here for you.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: You know, and then you can put our little lens on top of our eudaimonia lens.
Speaker: I love our eudaimonia lens.
Speaker: I really do because it really, for me, it helped make Bowman and Deal's
Speaker: entire little structure make much more sense.
Speaker: Well, it's just like, are all of these things working together towards whatever, like if we're, we're being equity centered, trauma informed centered, are, are all of these things,
Speaker: different aspects of organizational structure working together to the same tune?
Speaker: Are they all on the same frequency?
Speaker: Is there synergy between them where they are helping each other be the most effective or efficient that they can be?
Speaker: Are the structural protocols, policies, tools, resources supporting
Speaker: the human resources perspective, supporting the political perspective, supporting the symbolic lens, like are these things working in congruency or are they at odds?
Speaker: And I think in education, in regards to trauma, even if you have an entirely trauma skilled and informed staff,
Speaker: If your mission and vision isn't also to include trauma-informed educational structures, if your political lens isn't such that the hierarchical structure supports a trauma-informed environment in your school, and if your structural frame isn't there, then what are you even doing?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And they all need to be doing it at the same frequency.
Speaker: At the same time.
Speaker: Let's stay on our music analogy, which I absolutely love.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They all have to be tuned together in a chord.
Speaker: You can't be playing lip service to the structural part and have human resources be way up here along with political and symbolic.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: We all need to be.
Speaker: Things are all supporting at the same time.
Speaker: I totally agree.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Hey, Rhonda, thank you so much for being on today.
Speaker: Thank you for having me.
Speaker: This was wonderful.
Speaker: And for talking about trauma informed education.
Speaker: I think it's so incredibly important.
Speaker: And I know you know that I come from an alternative ed background.
Speaker: That's where I started education.
Speaker: And I have a deep love and passion for those kids.
Speaker: And everything they bring to the table.
Speaker: I love when they are despondent, self-righteous, indignant.
Speaker: I love all of it.
Speaker: And I know that you are so passionate about making sure that children are viewed for everything that they are and everything that they're experiencing.
Speaker: rather than just cogs in the system.
Speaker: So I appreciate you coming on and talking about that today.
Speaker: And I'm excited about our new article about the eudaimonia lens.
Speaker: And I can't wait to see what other work you're doing as well.
Speaker: Perfect.
Speaker: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I will talk to you later.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Bye.
