Show #51 You Are Not a Bad Parent

Show #51 You Are Not a Bad Parent

Today our host Lori Boll speaks with Dr. Elizabeth Henry, affectionately known as Dr. Liz. She is a nationally renowned, board-certified pediatrician, speaker, author, parent coach, and youth advocate. She is a trusted advisor to parents and youth and the founder of Dr. Liz Consulting, a company created to empower parents and uplift youth.

After graduating from Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, and Georgetown ‘s Pediatric Residency Program, Dr. Liz has spent over twenty years as a pediatrician and youth consultant.

Dr. Liz has written a book entitled You are NOT a bad parent.A Pediatrician’s Guide To Reducing Conflict And Connecting With Your Teens

We discuss her approach to communicating with the pre teens and teenagers in your life, whether you are a parent, teacher, aunt, uncle- we all  can benefit from learning more about teenagers and the best way to communicate with them. And as Dr. Liz will tell you, communication is key. 

Bio

Kevin Schaefer is currently the Director of Inclusive Practices/Supporting Inclusive Practices (SIP) project through the El Dorado County Office of Education Sacramento, California.  In this role, Kevin works to improve educational outcomes for students with disabilities through the provision of high-quality leadership and support to the County and throughout the state. Additionally, he provides organizational support by promoting continuous improvement processes and alignment of initiatives that focus on creating environments of belonging that honor the diversity of learners. His varied background as a special education teacher, administrator, and national/state technical assistance provider has led to expertise in the area of systems change

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Resources from Today’s Show

Transcript

Transcribed by Kanako Suwa

[ Introduction music plays ]

Welcome to the SENIA Happy Hour with your host, Lori Boll. We know you ‘re busy so we bring you 1 hour of content in under thirty minutes, leaving you with time for a true happy hour. 

Lori: Hello everyone, today I speak with Doctor Elizabeth Henry, affectionately known as Doctor Liz. Doctor Liz is a nationally renowned, board certified pediatrician, speaker, author, parent, coach and youth advocate. She is a trusted advisor to parents and youth and the founder of Doctor Liz Consulting, a company created to empower parents and uplift youth. After graduating from Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and Georgetown Pediatric Residency Program. Doctor Liz has spent over 20 years as a pediatrician and youth consultant. Doctor Liz has written a book entitled “You Are Not a Bad Parent. A Pediatrician’s Guide To Reducing Conflict and Connecting with Your Teens”. We discuss her approach to communicating with the preteens and teenagers in your life, whether you’re a parent, teacher and uncle, what have you all of us can benefit from learning more about teenagers and the best way to communicate with them and as Doctor Liz will tell you, communication is key. So let’s dive right in. And now onto the show. 

Hi Doctor Liz and welcome, welcome to the podcast. 

Dr.Liz: Well, thank you for having me Lori. 

Lori: I’m really excited to talk to you today. Uhm, you are a pediatrician, a speaker and author, parent, coach and youth advocate. So tell me how you became interested in writing a book about parenting, teenagers, named “You are not a bad parent”.

Dr.Liz: Well, that’s an interesting story. When I was in practice, many parents would ask questions like why doesn’t my teen listen to me? Or why does everything have to be an argument? Or some parents would say why are they closing the doors and shutting me out?  So what am I doing? Boy, am I a bad parent? 

So I would always end up reassuring parents, most parents, that they weren’t bad parents, because I often refer to adolescence as the Jekyll and Hyde phase of life. Like teens are hot and cold they’re on and off. They have these unpredictable moods and knowitall attitudes, and it’s, and it’s really hard for parents to communicate with them. And I know from first-hand experience, because I remember those years they were so frustrating. I have a 23 year old daughter now, but those teenage years were rough. If I said if I said the sky was blue and you probably can relate to this, Lori, that the sky was blue, she would say what are you talking about? It’s not blue, it’s gray”¦ so I wrote this book to break this stormy cycle for parents. It’s really about breaking the cycle for anyone who has a team in their lives you could be a grandparent and aunt, and uncle or mentor or teacher. It’s about bridging the gap, so you can finally connect and communicate with your teens from a place of love, compassion and understanding, so for all of you out there, all of your listeners who have ever questioned your parenting skills? I just want to tell you that you are definitely not a bad parent. 

Lori: Love it, yeah I I used to get why are you so mad and I would always be like, well I just you know was coming down to ask if you wanted you know rice for dinner or so you know fried rice for dinner like, but my facial expression, she would read it incorrectly and you know, we all know that based on that teenage brain and and those myelin sheaths not being quite”¦ all built up to that executive, sorry, it would be the CEO of the brain less prefrontal cortex so. Yeah, teenagers are are just so fun. 

Dr.Liz: They’re fun at some sometimes, but a large amount of times. It’s it’s just so frustrating and you just wanna you know, rip out your hair. 

Lori: Yeah, well and you talk about parents or sorry teens closing their door and you know so often you’ll go to a friend’s house when they’ve got their teenagers and their teenagers are always locked in their room, they come out they might grunt, uh, when you say hello, so it’s it’s always interesting watching that process of this vibrant young child who’s full of life turn into a teenager who might grunt at you when you say hello. 

Dr.Liz: I know it’s like where did that cute where did my sweet little boy or little girl go? It’s like. 

What what happened to them? Who took over their body? 

Lori: Invasion of the body snatchers. Why does parenting become exponentially more difficult for so many parents during these teenage years? 

Dr.Liz: Well, I mean this is because we have to understand that as teens become more independent, which inevitably they will be, and preteens it really starts in your preteen years, right? They need and want to step out of your shadow as a parent and that can be very scary for them, but painful for for us as parents. Fear, uncertainty. You have the hormonal changes. The changes in the brain they’re all experiencing this and it’s it’s a source of a lot of the turmoil and this has nothing to do with you as parents. They start acting out, testing boundaries, slamming doors, arguing. And they’re just trying to find their way and as you mentioned earlier, Lori, the teenage brain is continuing to develop. It develops way into the young adulthood. But you know the connections are are continuing to form the areas for executive functioning and judgment and and insight and abstract thinking. They’re they’re continuing to to mature and grow. 

Lori: So you have a breakthrough approach that you’ve written about in your book. What process did you go through to create that? 

Dr.Liz: Well, as a pediatrician for over 20 years I’ve had a window seat, an inside view to the chaotic world of parents and teens. So I had the opportunity of witnessing first-hand the breakdown that occurs in the parent teen connection. I studied the language and the dynamics of the relationships and I watched the body language. You know those those side glances and those eye rolls. 

Lori: I love the eye rolls. 

Dr.Liz: Oh yeah, the eye rolls. And I also got the here in in in the office visit the size and and the frustration and the resignation in in the voice of the parents. And so these were the same kids that used to come into my office holding their parents hands and willingly giving them hugs and kisses. And now in their teen years, they’re sitting at the farthest most corner of the room, like with their hands crossed, contradicting everything their parents are saying. 

Lori: Of course.

Dr.Liz: So I began to see a pattern that was consistent across the board. It didn’t matter who the parent was, it didn’t matter who the teen was. There was conflict during the adolescent years, no matter what. But I also knew that despite this conflict, it was possible from my first hand experience to have a strong parenting connection. So I had a really strong connection with my mom. My mother was she was strong. She was determined, she was the first in her family to go to college and she got her masters in social work from Columbia University. So she was trained how to listen and she listened to me powerfully and I told her everything like she, she was my best friend growing up. I I she raised me with my grandma and I got that I developed that same relationship. I use that model so I have that same type of relationship with my daughter, so I know that close relationships are possible. But communication is the key. So over the years I’ve developed a mastery in bridging the communication gap between parents and teens so that they can connect and communicate powerfully and transform their relationship. 

Lori: That sounds magical. I imagine there’s a lot of parents out there going, yeah, right? 

Dr.Liz: Yeah, right, right? Now I’m sure so so. It’s like in what world, right? Yeah, yeah. 

Lori: So could you give us an example, an example or two of how this approach does make a difference for your families that you’ve worked with or that have read the book? 

Dr.Liz: Sure, sure sure. Uh, so I. When I was practicing, I started sharing it with parents and I started sharing my techniques and my tips and all of a sudden I started getting all of this positive feedback so parents were coming over to me and saying things like I can’t believe that my daughter is actually coming to me for my advice or another parent said I got through a whole day without an argument like this is movable so and then I want to share with you of this story that one day I was in the supermarket, minding my own business, getting my groceries when a parent of one of my patients came up to me and and she and she says, like I don’t need to bother you out of the office, but I just want to thank you for how you helped me with my son. And she said, remember, when I came to your office, and I was so worried that something was seriously wrong with him, like he was locked in his room all the time. He wouldn’t talk to me about anything that was going on and you took him aside by himself. And when you talked to him, he shared with you that the reason he stopped talking to me was because I never listened. 

And she told me. Well, I want to tell you that the strategies that you gave me to connect with him really worked. He talks to me now. And I mean every parent needs to know about this. Did you ever think of writing a book so as soon as like, so as soon as she said that, like a light bulb went off in my head because I had always thought about writing a book, but I never was certain what I would write about and so now like when she said that you know the light bulb went off and it all made sense. So in that moment in the produce aisle of the grocery store, I decided to write a book that would give parents everything they want and everything they need to authentically connect and communicate to their teams and transform their relationship. 

Lori: Nice, and I bet you’ve never looked at a vegetable the same way again. 

Dr.Liz: And I know I wanna add because so this is not like uh, like it. It’s not like you’re going to be perfect, right? Like like tips and all of a sudden, Uh, so amazing relationship? Because I, you know, my daughter and I can go at it, right? So it’s not like like perfect, and, you know, we can like, you know we can have our arguments and we’ve fuss and we hang up on each other and and all of that. But the point is that you argue when you disagree and you have all that conflict, but it doesn’t last. Right? You continue, your connection is still there. You you know how to communicate with each other in a way that you know love is still present and you you don’t have that distance. You don’t take it personally. 

Lori: Yeah, I love how you mentioned, you know, listening listening is such a key aspect of it. 

SENIA has had Dr. Ross Greene as a speaker quite often and he talks about talking to the student. You know, when there’s a problem when there’s a behavior so often we as adults try to solve the problem without actually speaking with the student to understand what’s going on in their lives and and their perception of things. And so once we we talk and we or we listen to them quite often they come up with the solutions themselves, or we come up with them together. 

Dr.Liz: Exactly, and that’s one of the that’s one of the tips I I give. It’s is like listening not to respond right but but listen for the sake of listening and as you said, for teachers as parents, it’s it’s natural to want to jump in and try to fix things right and make things better and fix it and figure it. But as you said, uhm, sometimes our teens and pre teens and young adults, they don’t want us to fix things, they just want to vent and they want to use us as sounding boards and often as they talk it out, and if you give them the space to talk, they can figure it out for themselves. 

So one technique I I use with my daughter is when she talks or when she’s when she’s talking, I’ll say OK, so how do you want me to listen? Do you do you just want to vent or do you want me to give my opinion? So which way? And sometimes she’s like, I just want to vent. I I you know I don’t want your opinion at all. And and you know, and that’s fine. And then so I know, you know how to listen and and and so if I I stopped myself, I I have my opinion in my head and I form it. 

Right? And and it takes me so much not to say it. But but but I honor that. And you know, let her vent and then and then we move on. 

Lori: Well, it sounds like this would be a good book for spouses to read as well, so, just throwing that out there. 

Dr.Liz: Yes, yes it can apply to many different situations. 

Lori: Well, I’m thinking some of the challenges that our teams faced today that maybe we didn’t face as teenagers, I imagine technology might play a big role as well as worries of you know, violence in schools, mass shootings as things they see on the news or social media. Yeah, these things didn’t exist when we were teenagers, right? 

Dr.Liz: Exactly these are totally different times. 

Lori: Right can you can you name a few more? 

Dr.Liz: Uh, a few more of”¦?

Lori: The challenges that our teams face now. 

Dr.Liz: Well, yeah, you listed a lot that we have”¦ We’re in the midst of the pandemic, right? Like you got the COVID-19, which it was unimaginable, unimaginable when we were growing up up the, you know, threat of terrorists. You know terrorist attacks was an existent when we were growing up. It didn’t loom over our heads. Just the the. With the technology, the cyber bullying like now they, they can be bullied within the confines of their own bedroom right. And you know before it’s like you can, you know you go to school and you have to deal with a bully but they can be silently bullied in in, in in their home and it’s what should be a safe place and parents may not even know it and it’s really with the social media trying to keep up with people and and and and thinking that everyone life is rosy as they present themselves on social media. And so there’s a constant battle to compare yourselves with other people or not to compare themselves with other people. And you know we’re seeing in Pediatrics a rise in anxiety in in the Gen Z population. 

Lori: Yeah, it’s it’s quite sad to to watch actually. I I think about you know my daughter is also 23 and I’m I’m thankful that she didn’t have technology until she was about in, I don’t know, I want to say middle school where they got their phones and things like that, but now our our kids are getting technology from birth basically so, you know? I think that could really play a role in in that anxiety piece as well. 

Dr.Liz: Yeah, it it definitely. It definitely does, and so that the the the kids now who really that that the iPad they’re born with it basically right, you see these little like 2 year olds? You know they know how to navigate the iPad or or or electronics better than I do and”¦ And so it’s hard.  They’re in like a totally different world than than we grew up with, and so and a pitfall a parenting pitfall is to say, well, when I was a child, this happened and I don’t see why they can’t do this. You know, because I did it, but it’s like comparing like apples to to eggs. 

Lori: Ha ha ha. 

Dr.Liz: Not even, not even fruit, another piece of. I mean it. I mean you can’t”¦ You cannot compare the two and can you imagine just growing up with, you know, technology at your fingertips? You can look up anything. You can connect with somebody in in Europe or on the other side of the world and chat with them. I mean so, so that’s one reason why I wrote my book, “You are not a bad parent”, it’s because to really have parents see the differences. 

First of all, how how they’re different? How growing up differently impacts, you know, how you connect with your teens and you know, put them kind of on the same page so that they can connect and communicate, they can understand each other. 

Lori: Right, right. Well before we sign off for today, can you give us a few strategies to help parents deal with the challenges that their teens face? 

Dr.Liz: Yes, well I gave you one, which we talked about was listening”¦

Lori: Yes, yes, so I did listen. Yes, I get. 

Dr.Liz: I gave one, so I’ll give three more. Or at three more, I call the Do ‘s and Don ‘ts so the second one is if if if your teen is feeling bad about something, don’t quickly try to make them feel better, but give them permission to feel OK. So what do I mean by that? It’s difficult seeing our kids. 

When they’re sad and disappointed, I know it’s awful to see mine when when they’re upset, but when you brush off their feelings, it’ll only make them not want to share them and shut down. 

So if they say I’m sad. 

Don’t say like oh don’t worry about it or or you’ll you’ll get over it or you’ll feel better tomorrow because you know, that’s our natural tendency just to want to want to make them feel better. 

But what you want to do is continue the conversation by asking them. 

Like why are? 

You sad like what’s what’s going on? 

What’s happening? 

Because we all have emotions and what we resist persists. 

So it’s important to validate. 

Allow them to process their emotions, validate their emotions and have these open, honest conversations with them and it’s important now more than ever, as we’re kind of coming out of this pandemic slowly and it’s really important to give them space and grace so. 

That they can. 

They can readjust and and and re acclimate as we’re kind of re engaging and and and the world is slowly opening up. 

And number my my third UM? 

A tip is to share your stories as a lecture. 

Not as a lecture, so share your stories not as a lecture, but as an open, honest dialogue. 

So often as parents, we don’t. 

We try not to show, you know what’s really going on and, but it’s important to be vulnerable in an age appropriate way and and share your struggles. 

As well as your successes. 

Because your teens then learn that failing is a part of life and that they can rise from it. 

It makes you as a parent also more relatable when you’re vulnerable, and it gives your team permission to to be vulnerable, and in doing so they feel comfortable they’ll start to feel comfortable opening up to you and learning that there is a strength and vulnerability. 

And my first tip last but not least, is it’s important that when you feel angry about something they said or did and notice I said when because. 

If there’s no if ands or butts, they they will do or say something that you that upsets you now. 

You may not like it and you can let them know that, but it’s important. 

That at the end of the day that. 

You say 3 words and those three. 

Words are I love you. 

And and that’s because your words become their inner inner voice and your inner voice. 

That inner voice will get them through when you’re not there, so knowing that they’re loved is key to unlocking the relationship. 

And it’s important that they know that you accept them. 

For who they are and that you love. 

Them unconditionally, no matter what. 

So those are my 4 strategies. 

Now you can get a lot more in the book. 

That’s an and my book is called. 

You’re not a bad parent. A pediatrician’s guide to reducing conflict and connecting with your teens, and it’s available on Amazon or you go to. 

You are not a bad parent com. 

Cool and I’ll add those all to the show notes. 

You also offer a course, right? 

I do I do so you can implement like the strategies in the book. 

It’s great to read the strategies, but then you’re like OK, this sounds great, but how do I put it into action? 

So I have a a 21 day boost. Your connection with your teen email challenge course and what that does. It gives you daily exercises that will bring you closer to your teens. So if you’re interested, all of that can be found on my website. Doctor Liz. 

Consulting.com, but what I what I also want to mention to your to your readers, that I often forget to mention, is that when you go to my book website, which is, you are not a bad parent.com. There is a link to get a free bonus audio. 

Called my extraterrestrial approach to listening, which is a 10 minute audio. 

It’s really quick, but it will really be helpful in starting to strengthen that connection and to. 

Uhm, shift your listening. 

Wow, this is great I I’m past the teenage years myself with my family, but I know there’s a lot of people out there in the thick of this. 

Ha ha. 

And we’ll really love your material, so thank you. 

Yeah, you’re welcome, and but it’s it’s not just you don’t have to be a parent as as you said before, you could be a teacher you, I mean it. 

It’s anybody who interacts with teens and and communicates, so it’s really for, you know, teachers and mentors and and. 

Anyone else who who is really passionate about working with teens, which is a difficult task. 

So it is and and you’re right. 

Ha ha. 

And I I used to teach middle school, so this would have been really handy back in the day, so. 

Thank you so much, Doctor Liz for your time today. 

Oh well, thank you Lori for. 

Having me, it’s a pleasure. 

Thank you for joining us for today’s show. For more information, including how to subscribe and show notes, please head to our website, thatssegnainternational.org/podcasts until next time. Cheers. 

Thanks for stopping in to SENIA Happy Hour, don ‘t forget to head over to SENIAinternational.org/podcasts and check out our show notes from the discussion today. We at SENIA hope you ‘re enjoying these podcasts. There ‘s so much to explore and we ‘re at the very beginning. So feel free to drop us a note and let us know what you ‘d like to hear more about during your next SENIA Happy Hour. Until then”¦ Cheers! 

Show #52 Youth Advocate, World Changer

Show #52 Youth Advocate, World Changer

On today ‘s show, Lori speaks with our most recent recipient of SENIA ‘s World Changer award; Courtney Wong. Courtney is a high school student in California and is the founder and president of Tutors4Stars, a youth organization that provides free learning opportunities for neurodiverse students through online private and group lessons. Courtney gained experience as a volunteer by teaching art and music classes locally as well as operating the San Diego chapter for the non-profit organization SN Inclusion. So she ‘s a busy high school student, and she hopes to continue supporting the neurodiverse community in their academic and personal growth as she gets older. Courtney is here today to tell us about her advocacy work and her inspiration behind starting this magnificent program. 

Bio

Courtney attends Torrey Pines High School and will graduate with the class of 2023. She is the founder and president of Tutors4Stars, a youth organization that provides free learning opportunities for neurodiverse students through online private and group lessons. Courtney gained experience as a volunteer by teaching art and music classes locally as well as operating the San Diego chapter for the non-profit organization SN Inclusion. She hopes to continue supporting the neurodiverse community in their academic and personal growth. In her free time, Courtney likes to figure skate and watch figure skating competitions in-person and remotely. She also enjoys listening to music and learning new things. 

Connect

Resources from Today’s Show

SENIA Youth

SENIA Certification Coursework

Transcript

Transcribed by Kanako Suwa

[ Introduction music plays ]

Welcome to the SENIA Happy Hour with your host, Lori Boll. We know you ‘re busy so we bring you 1 hour of content in under thirty minutes, leaving you time for a true happy hour. 

Lori: Well, hello everyone. Just a note to say welcome to 2022.  It ‘s been a while, we took a little break but we are back. All of us at SENIA are so excited for this upcoming year. We have tons of new initiatives for you and one we’re working on at the moment is our SENIA certification program. This is a perfect program for beginning to intermediate level learning support teachers, general education teachers who wish to learn more about supporting all students, parents, or teaching assistants. Educators, you would take six courses and then become SENIA certified. Please visit our SENIA International website for more information or find the link in our show notes. Courses can be taken at any time and in any order so it’s a rolling enrollment, so be really excited! We hope you join us. 

Now, moving on to the podcast”¦ I am super excited to introduce today’s podcast guest, Courtney Wong. Courtney is a high school student in California and a recent winner of our SENIA World Changer Award and with good reason. Courtney is the founder and president of Tutors4Stars, which is a youth organisation that provides free learning opportunities for neurodiverse students through online private and group lessons. Courtney gained experience as a volunteer by teaching art and music classes locally as well as operating the San Diego chapter for the nonprofit organisation, SN Inclusion, which I recommend you check out and again that link is in our show notes. So Courtney is a busy high school student and she hopes to continue supporting the neurodiverse community in their academic and personal growth as she gets older. Courtney is here today to tell us about her advocacy work and her inspiration behind starting this magnificent program. Courtney is a youth Advocate who makes me very hopeful for the future. 

and now onto the show. Hi Courtney and welcome to the podcast! 

Courtney: Hello

Lori: Well, you are one incredible person and I ‘m excited to have the opportunity to chat with you today about your advocacy.

Courtney: Thank you, thank you so much.

Lori:  So you started an organisation called Tutors4Stars with the number 4, and we’ll have that website address in our show notes, but first of all, what inspired you to start Tutors4Stars? 

Courtney:  So I started my organisation in the summer of 2020 and that’s when the pandemic was kicking off and everyone thought that we would be able to go back in person to do in person activities by the end of 2020″¦ but now it ‘s still ongoing, we don’t know like when it’ll end. Some people say that it will end in 5 years, which is like an enormous estimate. So what inspired me to start my organisation was when we went into the pandemic, I saw like how the neurodiverse community was struggling to be able to find some outside help on their academics and I also noticed that through my siblings who are both diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder so I decided to create like a group, where we all met together and we like focused on academic subjects and also played online games. 

Lori: Aww, I love that! 

Courtney: So yeah, ah, thank you! And my mom, actually supported me a lot with this organization as well as my dad so like my whole family was really happy that I was doing this sort of initiative and that’s when I decided to create a website and here I am. 

Lori: Wow!  So how many people do you think your website reaches now? 

Courtney: So my website creator actually has an analytics, a set of analytics that I can look at any time, so right now I could see that over 500 people visited from the past 12 months.

Lori: Wow. And it ‘s only going to grow from here, I ‘m sure. That’s fantastic and how old are your brothers? 

Courtney:  I have a brother and sister so my brother is 14 so he’s a freshman and my sister is in 6th grade so she’s 11.

Lori: And do they benefit from the program as well yet? 

Courtney: Yeah, they get lots of help from the tutors and they’re really happy to be able to hang out with someone online. 

Lori: Okay so how old are the students that you tutor? Any age or”¦? 

Courtney: So it’s mostly Elementary, but there ‘s actually like some students who are in middle and high school so the range is around K-12″¦ 

Lori: Wow, that ‘s a big range!  That’s impressive and I’m just really curious”¦ you said that you played online games with everyone. What types of games did you play?

Courtney:  What’s really popular among the students is hangman so like everyone starts laughing whenever we like get the letter wrong and it’s really hilarious and it’s a really great experience and atmosphere. 

Lori: I bet! It’s really nice that you’ve made those connections with the neurodiverse community. I’m curious how they’re interacting with you through”¦ do you do it through Zoom? How is that going for them? 

Courtney: So for Zoom, sometimes the students do not always like to sit in front of the screen”¦ sometimes they like to just get up and run around so usually what we do is like have the parents help them throughout the lesson. But sometimes the students can also learn independently. So what we do in order to accommodate the students is to create like frequent breaks. We also tell the tutors to give the students frequent breaks so they can be able to get up and stretch before continuing on with the session.

Lori: That ‘s definitely best practice, indeed, so well done. And how did you naturally know how to support those students? 

Courtney: So when I was in middle school, my sister and brother were enrolled in this program called AMASE so it’s short for Academy of Music and Art for special education. And the volunteer requirements required that you had to be in high school in order to volunteer, so I was too young at the time. But I went and I also saw the high schoolers helping with that organisation. And when it was my time to go to high school, I also applied to be a volunteer and was accepted so I got the experience of working with children with special needs. And also my brother and sister also have their speech therapy going on, so sometimes I accompany my parents to pick them up and also see how the environment is and so I also got a bunch of exposure from that. 

Lori:  Amazing”¦ so tell me what your favourite part of running a youth-led organisation is. 

Courtney: So when I was getting volunteers to help me and also tutor students in the organisation, I met a bunch of people who are also interested in the same thing and I was and I find that really cool because I was able to relate to them and connect with them that way. And I also have a bunch of new friends because of this.

Lori: Oh, that ‘s great! That ‘s great! And so, these are people from your high school or from surroudning area or? 

Courtney: Yeah, so most of the volunteers are from San Diego, understandably most of them were from my high school because I talked to them and they were like okay let’s do it. But we also have volunteers from the San Francisco area as well.

Lori: Oh, cool. And did you put the volunteers through any kind of training programme? 

Courtney: Yeah, so actually when tutors sign up and they find like a student that they could be able to tutor, I share, I go into Google Drive and share a folder that is specifically made for the tutors. So there ‘s a bunch of resources and subjects where you can find links for resources that they can use to teach the students as well as games that they can play when it ‘s break time and the students feel like it. And there ‘s also like a slide that gives information about how you can support students with special needs through Zoom, so we specifically cater the content so they can have all the resources they need to have the best experience. 

Lori: Oh jeez, that ‘s just really impressive, it really is. 

Courtney: Thank you.

Lori: So you ‘ve talked about matching the students. How does that pairing work? 

Courtney: So some of the things we ask, the stuff we ask, is how, what time, what are the availabilities of the students and the tutors and what subjects the students want to learn, and the tutors want to teach, and so we look at what the student and the tutor would have in common. And so I would pair the tutor and the student based on their needs, and I also have an additional section for the students where they can put the things they like and dislike and any accommodations they need during the lesson so I also send that information to the tutors so they know what to expect.

Lori: Wow. And would you say any relationships have developed between the tutors and the students being tutored as in some friendships?  

Courtney: Yeah, so my mom calls it an “online friendship” and sometimes the tutor and the student will meet in person if they were able to, so what one of the tutors and the student is doing right now is doing like a sport, a sport hangout, so like they would go to a park and play some sports. So we ‘re kind of adjusting to the in-person things but we ‘re sticking to the online sessions because of what is happening in the world right now. 

Lori: Yeah, exactly. But I love that you know, it seems like the tutors are kind of branchin out and meeting on their own with their students and just joining them in their interests. That ‘s great! What are some of your best moments during your time with your organisation? 

Courtney: So definitely last summer in 2021, I decided to hold like a summer group. It ‘s called summer camp in my organisation so I sent out forms for tutors who were interested in earning additional hours for tutoring during the summer. Because some people decided to take a break for the summer because school ended so why not take a break? But some tutors who are really dedicated to tutoring, they would sign up and the students who would like to join the group was set up. So what the camp consisted of was only group classes so we would have a different schedule every day. So one day we would do some reading, the other day we would play BrainPOP videos for science and we would also share some fun facts with the students and do arts crafts, and we also play some fun videos so we tried to make the camp fun and everyone enjoyed it. 

Lori: That ‘s exciting! How old were the students in the camp? 

Courtney: So the students were also, it was probably more of a range, probably around 4th grade to high school. 

Lori: So what should the tutors at your organisation expect when they sign up to be a tutor? 

Courtney: So they already know that they ‘ll be tutoring a student given the information on the website and also on the social media accounts, so they should expect like an email from me, so I send them who they ‘re going to be tutoring and how to contact them. And the email would state that they would have to reach out to the parent of the student to schedule the initial session to see what the students interests are and figure out how they would format their session in order to accommodate the student. And I would share with them the folder that I mentioned earlier.

Lori: Have you had any parent feedback of the students that are being tutored?

Courtney: Yeah so my mom is close to many of the students ‘ parents so they would sometimes, when I meet them in person, they would say “wow I ‘m so proud of you Courtney, this is really cool!” and I ‘d be like.. “Thank you!” 

Lori: That ‘s nice. That ‘s great. Well, do you have any tips for anyone who is looking to start their own organisation as a student? 

Courtney: Yeah, so for the students out there who want to start an organisation or initiative, if you ‘re really interested in something and you want to extend on that, it would be really cool to start an organisation. And when you start an organisation, building a website would be really good for promoting and explaining and getting across your mission statement for your organisation. Because the clearer your statement, your mission statement is, the more people will be interested and it would be more well known. And also, social media is really good for marketing and exposure, so yeah. Try to use some social media. And also get some people in your team, to form a team that is interested in the same interests you have and so they ‘ll be able to”¦ when you create a team, you ‘ll be stronger and you ‘ll have a really successful initative. 

Lori: Right, yeah! I love that you ‘re in 11th grade and youre talking about marketing and things that, when I was in 11th grade, I didn ‘t know about! 

Courtney: Yeah, I ‘m in a business class right now and we just read a textbook on marketing. 

Lori: Oh okay, cool! That ‘s great! Well, you are truly awesome, you ‘re an inspiration, and you do so much. But can I ask you”¦What do you do to take care of yourself? 

Courtney: So what I do to take care of myself”¦ so my mom tells me to keep a journal so I record my thoughts, and so when I’m not feeling okay, I’ll look at my journal and see how I can address that. So keeping a journal is really effective, I learned, and thanks to my mom, now I have a journal that I ‘ve had for quite a while. 

Lori: Yeah, wow, that ‘s great. I know high school students that are so driven to advocate or to help others oftentimes forget about themselves so I ‘m glad to hear you ‘re taking a little time for yourself. What do you hope to accomplish in 2022? 

Courtney: So, it ‘s already been about a month into 2022 and so I hope to have accomplish to find more people who are interested in my organisation, and also do some outreach to other organisations to see if we can collab, and some goals is to definitely have a better balance in my life so that means getting more sleep. I ‘m not a big sleeper, even though I absolutely love to sleep, so yeah, getting more sleep definitely, expanding my organisation, and just like, getting involved in my interests and always doing something more productive. 

Lori: Yeah, that ‘s great. And I ‘m not sure if you know this, or the audience knows this, but SENIA has a youth organisation as well, so we have a branch of SENIA youth and the youth-led organisation is very strong and a powerful group so I ‘ll introduce you so you can connect.

Courtney: Thank you! 

Lori: Do you have any, and this is not pressure to answer, but I ‘m just curious, but do you have an idea of what your future holds in advocacy? 

Courtney: So in the future, if I were to.. I ‘ll probably lean towards psychology, since it ‘s probably the most interesting subject so far, and so I ‘m definitely going to work on applying, doing college applications for senior year”¦ I know it ‘s going to be tough according to what my senior friends tell me but I ‘ll just have to go through it and persevere and in the future, I also want to help more students and children like my brother and sister. I ‘m hoping that i can also do some outreach on that. 

Lori: That ‘s great! Well, Courtney, I think that ‘s all we have time for today. So first off, thank you for being you. Thank you for advocating for our children with neurodiverse needs, thank you for building your Tutors4Stars. It ‘s absolutely fabulous. 

Courtney: Thank you! 

Thank you for joining us for today ‘s show. For more information including how to subscribe and show notes, please head to our website. That ‘s SENIAinternational.org/podcast. Until next time, cheers.

Show #53 With Understanding Comes Calm; supporting our 2E Learners

Show #53 With Understanding Comes Calm; supporting our 2E Learners

In today’s show, host Lori Boll speaks with Julie Skolnick. Julie  is a thought leader and expert in the field of twice exceptionality a.k.a. 2e or gifted with a learning difference. As Founder of With Understanding Comes Calm, Julie passionately guides parent, mentors 2e adults and trains teachers on how to bring out the best and raise self confidence in 2e learners. Lori and Julie discuss what it means to be 2E and how it is essential for educators to understand the needs of these learners so they can be successful both in and out of school.

Bio

Founder of With Understanding Comes Calm, LLC, passionately guides parents of gifted and distractible children, mentors 2e adults, trains educators and advises professionals on how to bring out the best and raise self-confidence in their 2e students and clients.

Julie serves as Secretary to the Maryland Superintendent’s Gifted and Talented Advisory Council, is an advisor for the Masters of Education Program for the Bridges Graduate School of Cognitive Diversity, is the Maryland liaison for Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted (SENG), is a Committee member for the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) and serves as an advisor to “The G Word” feature documentary currently in production.

Julie produces Let’s Talk 2e! virtual conferences, hosts the Let’s Talk 2e! Parent Empowerment Series, maintains the free listing service, 2eResources.com, and publishes “Gifted & Distractible,” a free monthly newsletter.

A frequent speaker and prolific writer, Julie is also the mother of three twice exceptional children who keep her on her toes and uproariously laughing.

Subscribe to “Gifted & Distractible” monthly newsletter at www.WithUnderstandingComesCalm.com, find resources at www.2eResources.com and learn more about our conferences and parent series at www.LetsTalk2e.com. Follow Julie on social media: Facebook: WithUnderstandingComesCalm, Let’s Talk 2e – Parents, Let’s Talk 2e – Teachers’ Lounge, Instagram: @LetsTalk2e, Twitter: @JulieSkolnick, LinkedIn: Julie Rosenbaum Skolnick, and YouTube: Let’s Talk 2e.

Connect

Resources from Today’s Show

Transcript

Transcribed by Kanako Suwa

[ Introduction music plays ]

Welcome to the SENIA Happy Hour with your host, Lori Boll. We know you’re busy so we bring you 1 hour’s worth of content in under thirty minutes, leaving you with time for a true happy hour. 

Lori: Hello everyone Lori Boll here and in today’s show, I get to speak with Julie Skolnick. Julie is a thought leader and expert in the field of twice exceptionality, AKA 2E or gifted with a learning difference. As founder of With Understanding Comes Calm, Julie passionately guides parents,  mentors, 2E adults and trains teachers on how to bring out the very best and self confidence in 2E learners. Today, we discuss what it means to be 2E and how it is essential for educators to understand the needs of these learners so they can be successful both in and out of school. And now… onto the show. Hi, Julie and welcome to the podcast!

Julie: Hey, thanks for having me.  

Lori: You bet! So today, we’re going to talk about twice exceptional which is otherwise known as 2E. So just to start, can I just ask the basics? What is twice exceptional? And then please tell us how you came to be interested in this field of study.

Julie:  Thank you so much for the great beginning question. So 2E, twice exceptional, sometimes school districts refer to it as GTLD, which means gifted, talented, and learning differences or learning disabled-  they’re all synonyms. So it’s somebody identified or diagnosed as gifted, with a learning difference. Differences can be anything from ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, high functioning autism, auditory processing… I’m not going to be able to give you an exhausted list because that would take the rest of the time. But it definitely includes and often includes working memory challenges, processing speed challenges, anxiety and when you add that onto the gifted profile, what we see is an asynchrony, or the ability, the superpower to do some really awesome stuff, coupled with challenges.

And so there’s so much to say to this question, but you know what I’ll say is this. People understand the learning difference part much better than the gifted part, so even wrapped up in this answer, there are so many layers because there are so many assumptions about this profile. But the bottom line that is really important to know is that these two ways of coming to the world can exist simultaneously and that they cause a lot of confusion and challenge for the person, because you don’t outgrow your 2E-ness, and for people around that because expectations are skewed because wow you can do some of this amazing stuff but you’re challenging this other way and how could that possibly be! And so there’s a lot of confusion that happens and the outcrop ends up being you know a lot of challenges. 

Lori: Sure. Yeah it makes sense. I’m, I’m curious because you said it “can occur” – and I’m wondering, do you think it “mostly occurs”?  I mean what is the prevalence do you believe for gifted students?

Julie: Oh so that is a really interesting question. What I can tell you is this – we have a statistic, it comes from Karen Rogers, and we know it’s a low statistic, but she found that 14% of gifted people identified as intellectually gifted have a learning disability. Now you’re like 14%, wow that’s nothing, well but guess what, that’s compared to 4% of the general population so it’s actually… and we know it’s a low.. And frankly, okay I’m just gonna say even though I don’t always say this to everybody… but I’m going to say it. If asynchronous development is a characteristic, the defining characteristics of gifted, which it is, then isn’t every gifted person 2E? Right? Because… 

Lori: hmmm yeah…Yeah! That’s kind of where I was going with that question. It’s fascinating, really. Well, what are some characteristics of a twice exceptional learner? Or maybe, because so many of our members are educators, what might our educators see in our classrooms? 

Julie: Okay so there’s the kid jumping up and down. There’s that kid who wants to answer questions all the time, maybe raising their hand, maybe just shouting out… It seems like they want to take over the classroom and seem like they want to be the center of attention. There’s that kid who seems like they’re lazy because they’re just not engaging, and you know that they could but they’re not. Or oh my gosh, look at that kid poking, the kid sitting next to… look at the kid with the hands over his ears, oh my gosh what about the kid who just seems to walk in the classroom, we haven’t even started the day and already he’s so obviously not ready to learn or not able to engage the curriculum so that is that glass half empty piece. 

Let’s look at the glass half full piece. Wow that kid is asking so many questions, they have unrivaled curiosity. They’re so fascinated by everything I said! Look at that kid who’s got all that energy, he just might need to move in order to learn! Or that kid who’s doodling! Wow they need to doodle in order to allow that part of the brain to access what I’m talking about. That kid really wants to connect but doesn’t know how… Do you see how we can just completely flip it and have a positive reframe on all the stuff that I said in the first place. 

So, in your classroom, the kid, it’s, it’s the same kid who seems lazy, who’s having a hard time connecting, who knows that they can do some things really well and other things not so well, that kid who suffers from executive functioning challenges, and hard time initiating and planning and totally time-blind… that’s the same kid who just delivers such comprehensive information verbally that has a hard time outputting in written expression. 

Lori: Mmhmm. Mmhmm. 

Julie: So I just gave you, like, 20 different types. 

Lori: No, you did, and I’m thinking back to all of my students in the past, you know the the incredibly bright and gifted student who really struggled with writing, so he had a learning disability, or now it’s called specific learning disability in written also students who had high functioning autism so bright so bright but would sit outside the group and not understand why he wasn’t being included in the classroom… Or why everybody thought he was mad all the time because his face, facial expression showed that he was angry but he was like no this is just my face…!  Yeah

Julie: Yea, it’s just my face! Yeah you know I have a very robust social media posting and sharing and so I think this week we’re actually going to be sharing why PE is so hard for 2Es which is really an interesting subject in and of itself.  

Lori: why… what did you say? Why…? 

Julie: Why PE, which in the United States…

Lori: Oh, PE! Yes. 

Julie: Physical education or gym class, right? Is hard for 2Es, you know, it’s kind of a joke… or It’s an and sometimes not just because there isn’t athleticism. Sometimes, it’s because they have uber-athleticism, which leads to uber-competitiveness… 

Lori: Ahhh right, yeah. How did you get into this field? 

Julie: So, another awesome question… how I got into this field is is an interesting story in that I raised three twice exceptional kids, and so you know, the specific answer to that is that my middle guy when he was 5 was diagnosed gifted and ADHD, and I said, gifted, of course. He was actually answering the questions to the psychologist in Hebrew because he thought he would make it more interesting for her or something, but ADHD? To me, Way back then was like oh my God what is it that was 15 years ago, you know, like… attention deficit hyperactivity disorder? DIS-order, your child has a disorder. Wow, let me just tell you, as a side note, that I’ve re-named ADHD into Hyper Attention/Activity Deficit, because there’s so much attention and need to move, so… anyway, that was really the beginning, and then, realizing when I spent three years eyeball deep in everything ADHD and how very glass half empty and sort of negatively framed it was, when I landed in the gifted world, I realized you know what, there’s a way to positively reframe this strength based, talent focused and I really wanted to speed it up for other parents and that’s how I started. 

Lori: I love it, I love it. So many of us in this field get in because of our children, right? So, some people might find this surprising but being twice exceptional is considered a special need… Why is it? 

Julie: Well, guess what’s more surprising. Gifted, is a special need, 

Lori: Right, yes. 

Julie: Gifted is a special need. So You know it’s really fascinating human psychology and general but the all of these labels right you think well if you was around the United States there’s all this craziness happening around gifted right now, it’s like, oh my god, it’s racist, oh my god, it’s elitist, and you know, it… it’s such a bummer for the gifted kid and the gifted grown up who are completely misunderstood. 

Yes, do we need better assessment tools? Yes. Do we need cultural norms? Yes. But the truth is, there is no “one definition” of gifted in the United States, let alone in the world. And when I worked with and consulted with parents and teachers and 2E adults around the world, what I hear from them that’s going on in Europe, Asia, wherever, is they think it’s so behind what’s happening in the United States, and the truth is the United States have not cracked this nut. We do not, we have a federal definition of gifted in the United States but there’s no mandate. Every state has different definitions and 4 states don’t even have definitions, right? So it’s very confusing. The definition I like to use is made by the Columbus Group – you can Google the Columbus Group definition and it really just talks about the synchrony and asynchronous development of a gifted person, they talk about the need to really change the way you parent, the need to change the way you teach, change the way you counsel gifted people. THey talk about how, with a stronger intellectual profile, the more asynchrony, the further you are from the norm on the intellectual bell curve… 

So I like to use that definition and it’s a springboard for my trademarked chocolate cake definition of gifted, which is that frosting is the ability piece, the assumption that everyone makes about gifted, the smart, bright, potential. Which had led you to ask that question, why is that even a special need? Then we have the 3 layers, asynchronous development, perfectionism, the other side of which can be anxiety, and intensity, or what’s known in the gifted universe as overexcitability. So I use gifted as a special need, because you cannot teach them the same way. The kid sitting there asking 50,000 questions is not doing that to be obnoxious or to be the centre of the attention. He’s doing that because he has an organic piece of him that literally, neurologically, cannot let go of the curiosity until he finds out the answers, until the end of his questioning. So when the child is misunderstood, that leads to a whole host of issues, the least of which, not the least of which, is anxiety. 

So a theory that I have, Lori, about this profile, which has never been researched or proven but I bring it up every time at a talk I do… and also people come up to me and say, can we do that research or whatever, who has time… So the idea is this. The high percentage of depression and suicide in gifted children, I believe, the seeds are planted by their overexcitabilities or those intensities not only being not understood but being misunderstood. So, I mean, I just gave you a whole bunch of information and it’s of course layered and complex, but overexcitability, which is a term used to describe the heart of the gifted experience, is a very important thing to understand. They come in 5 areas, it’s a term coined by Kazimierz Dąbrowski, researcher and the psychologist who came up with the term “overexcitabilities”, and it comes in 5 areas – intellectual, emotional, imaginational, sensual or sensory, and psychomotor. And these are neurological – we have proof that this is how the brains are wired. 

Lori: ah, you did give me a lot, and I think what I’m getting from it, is how heartbreaking, this is really just heartbreaking for gifted kids. So, in just a side note, I will be putting all these resources you’re mentioning in our show notes so that people can access them. But um, this is a big question and I don’t think you can answer it in the timing of the podcast, but what, what can we do in our classrooms to help support that strength based learning of these kids? 

Julie: That is the most important question, that is the only important question. To me, the “Now What” is the most important question. Right? 

Lori: Right.

Julie: So, I talk about the cycle for success – it’s a talk I give, it’s where I live, it’s how I inform my consulting, everything. It starts with understanding. With understanding comes calm. You gotta start with understanding – you don’t know what overexcitabilities are and you’re teaching gifted kids, you gotta know what overexcitabilities are so get informed. Okay, so that’s the first step, with understanding comes calm, understanding. That leads then to strategies that are specific and impactful, and durable for the gifted and 2E kids, and then there’s advocacy. So teachers, when I train teachers, I frequently say, guess what guys, you might be the advocate of the kids, to their parents because they don’t know what 2E is. This is something that not, the people who know it know it but there’s a lot of people who don’t know. So there is, first of all, understanding that kid. Remember when you asked, Lori, what’s the kid look like, and I said well it’s the kid who comes to your door and is already fried? Why is that? What’s wrong? Well, I’ll tell you what’s awesome about this kid. That kid is probably emotionally overexcitable, which means that he picks up on everyone’s emotions, not just noticing how people are feeling but actually feeling their feelings in their bodies. So if mom and dad had a fight that morning or on the bus or carpool there was some issue, or even walking into your classroom, somebody was unhappy. He might’ve picked up, it’s like a huge antenna! He’s picked up all those feelings. 

We have to, the most important thing for you, if I have to say, and I’d love to do this when I talk, if there’s one thing you remember, one thing only, it’s that “behaviour is communication”. Don’t react to the behaviour. Become a detective and find out why – this kid does not want to be doing it and he knows that he’s doing it, it’s some sort of impulsivity or just, just having that ability, especially right now, with everything that’s happening in the world, maybe that kid saw an article of what’s going on in the world and he just can’t deal because he can’t do anything about it. And he’s so empathetic, right, so it’s really kind of noticing the behaviour, giving the benefit of the doubt, ghuge, and taking some time to find out what’s going on for this kid, I know this is really hard because you’ve got a bunch of kids in your class but one of the things i like to say to training teachers is “find the hardest kid to love and love them the hardest because that’s who’s gonna respond abd be so fulfilling for you, we can’t just let it all rest on the gifted coattails and what gifted means, that brilliant part of the brain, you gotta understand how complex it is. 

So the other, there’s only one thing, thing is making a personal connection. That’s so important with these kids. Find out what makes them tick, find out what ticks them off. They need to know so you can be connected to them and they feel responsible to you. So you can find out what’s going on for them. 

Lori: Fantastic. These are… this is amazing stuff. I… keep coming back to your empath student that just described me in a nutshell growing up, and still in a way, that feeling, what everyone is feeling in a room, and I can tell you from experience, sometimes, that is not a good thing. 

Julie: yeah, you gotta learn what to do with that and teachers can help kids, by just being aware, what superpower they have. So I talked about my middle guy, but my littlest guy, who’s now 13, since he was teeny tiny, I knew what an empath he was. Oh boy oh boy. I have messaged to him the superpower he has and when he doesn’t feel like, and this is really interesting, typically for girls I find this happening or they relate to it, all that you’re able to give, I bet you can relate to this, Lori, all that you’re able to give, you’re not gonna get back, You’re just not. Because most people just don’t have that superpower, right? So it’s like, recognising, oh, I’m starting to feel this way. It is legitimate what I’m feeling. But I need to not beat myself up – there’s a lot of self-deprecation for gifted people because they think something’s wrong with them, they said something wrong, they did something wrong. Something’s wrong. And fixers, doers, often feel this way. And so you have to recognize for your little people in your classroom, and I mean little as in 18 years old because it still applies, that this is really, honestly, a lot of people are talking about, um, being able to work with gifted people from a trauma-informed place. THere’s a lot of trauma in not feeling accepted, feeling different, not knowing why or what to do about it, so. Now that I went down that road, can I give you another strategy? 

Lori: Yes, please! 

Julie: You cannot just allow these kids to pick their groups. If you want them to work in a group, it is super hard, if the kids want to a) take over and b) probably want to take over for a really good reason, they probably see from A to Z much quicker and they need help figuring that out so they need to be with kind people and they need some oversight. They need to learn how to listen and even if their way was the best way and eventually it was the best way, there is such important learning in the process and they need to know that. So group work is really hard for gifted and 2E kids. And they need some hand holding, for sure. 

Lori: That’s a great strategy. So, tell me, you explained, with understanding comes calm… but tell me about your business or your consulting. 

Julie: Thank you for asking that, yeah, so I call it a service. 

Lori: Service, thank you, service. Tell me about your service! 

Julie: So, With Understanding Comes Calm is my umbrella, right, it’s a mantra, I believe in it, whenever I say it, people who need it go “awww, I want some of that”. So that started in 2014, and it started with me. My tagline, I think, was “supporting parents of gifted and distractible kids”. That’s what it was. It was a mouthful. So now, not only do I guide parents but i also mentor 2E adults, again, we don’t outgrow our 2Eness and I work with people all over the world, everyday via Zoom, and I also train teachers. I also do a lot of trainings, half day trainings, I train teachers in groups, actually even have parent clients who pay for me to sit down and do teacher meetings with teacher groups to really learn about 2E, learn about the kid in front of them, the client’s kid, and then to really strategize really specific strategies for in the classroom. 

So With Understanding Comes Calm is all that consulting plus my writing – I’ve been writing blog a month since 2014 so Renaming ADHD, that’s the blog that you can link, and my free newsletter is called Gifted and Distractible. So aside from that, I started in 2018 way before the pandemic – I started producing virtual conferences that were originally called 2 Days of 2E and then became Let’s Talk 2E and I do, I produce them for all sorts of stakeholders. For educators and they’re accredited, for parents, for clinicians, and most recently, for 2E adults which is a really really awesome conference that was just launched. And then we also have a community parent empowerment group, we have all these attendant based Facebook pages, so Guess What, Let’s Talk 2E Teacher’s Lounge is a great Facebook community for teachers all around the world, and last but not least, I host 2E resources.com which is organised by categories – education, clinicians, consultants, association, and enrichment. So lots of great resources for teachers there, especially under enrichment and a really fun place to find stuff that is specific for gifted and 2E. That’s in a nutshell.

Lori: So what I hear you saying is you have a lot of free time.

Julie: Yes! So when people ask me for an elevator speech, I say “yes, let me give you my elevator speech but it’s a very tall building”. 

Lori: Well, that’s great. I think the service you provide is so needed and I’m excited for our members to hear this because I’m sure they’re working with twice exceptional individuals in their classrooms and around the world and can benefit from your knowledge. So I’ll definitely be posting all those resources on our page. 

Julie: Thank you, thank you. Yeah, parents, people most professionals like to, let’s put it this way, dont like to work with parents, I looooove working with parents. My theory, Lori, is that you have to circle the wagon to the grown ups because the kids don’t have the power. So I need my grownups to understand first so they can help the kids understand. 

Lori: I’m with you. I am with you. I am at, that’s the book that I’m currently writing with the coauthor right now, so to be continued on that one… Well, I think that’s all we have time for today, Julie. So thank you so much for your time and energy on this topic! It’s amazing.

Julie: Thanks for having me, Lori. It was really great and I’m really happy to answer questions and I’ll just put out there that I do offer a free 20 minute phone conversation to anyone that can be scheduled at julieskolnick.youcanbook.me which I’m sure you’ll put in the show notes. 

Lori: I will, for sure. You bet!

Julie: Great! 

Thank you for joining us for today’s show. For more information including how to subscribe and show notes, please head to our website. That’s SENIAinternational.org/podcast. Until next time, cheers.

 

Show #54 1% Better

Show #54 1% Better

Today host Lori Boll speaks with Chris Nikic and his father, Nic. Chris set a new world record by being the first person with Down Syndrome to complete a 140.6-mile Ironman. He is also the first person with Down Syndrome to be sponsored by Adidas. His mission is to inspire others like him to pursue their dreams and goals.

His greatest achievement is showing others how shifting your focus from your disabilities to your abilities and pursuing your dreams with an unwavering tenacity, a positive attitude and a no-quit grit can help anyone achieve their goals and dreams.

Bio

Chris Nikic set a new world record by being the first person with Down Syndrome to complete a 140.6-mile Ironman. His mission is to inspire others like him to pursue their dreams and goals.

His greatest achievement is showing others how shifting your focus from your disabilities to your abilities and pursuing your dreams with an unwavering tenacity, a positive attitude and a no-quit grit can help anyone achieve their goals and dreams.

Connect

Resources from Today’s Show

Transcript

Transcribed by Kanako Suwa & Lori Boll

[ Introduction music plays ]

Welcome to the SENIA Happy Hour with your host, Lori Boll. We know you’re busy so we bring you 1 hours worth of content in under thirty minutes, leaving you with time for a true happy hour. 

Lori: Hello everyone, this is Lori Boll and today I had the most amazing opportunity to speak with Chris Nikic and his dad, Nick. So Chris set a new world record by being the first person with Down Syndrome to a 140.6 mile Iron Man. His mission is to inspire others like him to pursue their dreams and goals. Chris’s greatest achievement is showing others how shifting your focus, from your disabilities to your abilities and pursuing your dreams with unwavering tenacity, a positive attitude, and a no-quit-grit can help anyone achieve their goals and dreams. My challenge for you today is to learn more about Chris’s 1% Better Campaign and start thinking about how you might find someone in the community to help pursue their dreams of getting 1% better in something physically active. And if you do find that partner, let us know. We would love to feature you on an upcoming podcast. Okay, and now… on to the show. 

Hi Chris and Nick and welcome to the podcast! 

Chris & Nick: Thank you! 

Lori: So in getting ready for today’s podcast, Chris, I’ve been reading a lot about you. I’m sure you’re told quite often that you’re an inspiration. 

Chris: You know, I was going to say, you know, throughout this, I was told that I can do anything.

Lori: Yeah! 

Chris: That I could be the first person with Down Syndrome to actually try to do the Iron Man. And it’s really fortunate because yesterday was World Down Syndrome Day and it’s really impactful that, you know… 

Lori: Yeah, oh yeah! I rocked my socks yesterday! 

Chris: Because, you know, I was on the commercial

Lori: You were on a commercial? 

Chris: Yeah. 

Lori: Get out! What was it for? 

Chris: Adidas, it was an Adidas commercial.

Lori: Adidas?! 

Chris: Yeah.

Lori: Wow! 

Chris: For the Boston Marathon on April 18th. They are, they are making an ID category, Runner 321. 

Nick: Yeah, so yesterday, Adidas and the Boston Marathon announced a programme called Runner 321 on National Down Syndrome day, so they’re gonna dedicate a category for intellectual disabilities forever, going forward. And they’re gonna call it Runner 321.

Lori: That is so cool, Chris. 

Nick: I’m not gonna cry… 

Chris: you’re crying. 

Nick: I’m not crying! Stop! 

Chris: Will you tell them you’re crying. 

Lori: He’s a super proud dad, right? I’d be crying if I were your dad or mom, for sure. Okay, Chris, so can you tell us about your schooling and what you believe about inclusion? 

Chris: The school system want me to be rare. My belief is that I could do so much and there  are no limits or exceptions. [unclear audio]…if a child…anything is possible. Because you know, Adrienne (Chris’ friend) was part of the commercial too. And maybe after you and I talk we do a follow up weekly podcast with just her and I and not Dad or Bob in the picture. It’s gonna be me, you, her and maybe her mom.

Lori: Cool! I love that idea. Awesome, thanks Chris. Hey, so you are the first individual with Down Syndrome to participate in a full IRONMAN event. And that’s…that’s what the commercial’s about and everything like that, right?

Chris: Yeah.

Lori:  That’s so cool. Um. I read that a long time ago you came in last place at your first Special Olympics event which is a Sprint Triathlon. And then you went on to complete an Olympic Tri, a half marathon and a full marathon. Can you tell us what happened in your first event that sparked your interest to keep doing these more difficult runs?

Chris: Oh my gosh, so…think back to the story when Chris Nikic decided to do a Sprint and you know I came in dead last and I knew that I needed to do more because God has a plan for me in the future from a Sprint to an Olympic. I completed that and then from a Sprint to Olympic to a Half, a Marathon, and then uh, I did a Half IRONMAN in Claremont. It took me 8 hours and 25 minutes. Uh, from there I’ve been training hard [unclear audio] and I did an IRONMAN with a group of friends to realize that to need and to realize that [unclear audio] so it took me 2 ½ years ago from being called average to a Sprint, to Olympic, to a Half IRONMAN and then an IRONMAN and I couldn’t be able to do a single push up. I couldn’t be able to do a pull-up or swim or bike or run and in that moment I knew that you know, God, would say to me, uh, if you’re ready to work hard, you got to have a life [unclear audio] she has a husband. And now the whole story [unclear audio] to hear average to a Sprint and to Olympic and then Half IRONMAN and then a Full IRONMAN after I did 200 push ups and squats and then now here’s where I’m at not. I’ve got a home now. I’ve got a car and then now I have the most amazing woman.

Lori: Wow.

Chris: And I received two ESPY’s (Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly) and I didn’t know that I was going to get first ESPY and when I was in New York all I remember was Tim Tebow was …he’s like…basically he said “Ladies and gentlemen please welcome the ESPY winner for perseverance…Chris Nikic.”

Lori: Wow, congratulations on your ESPY. And let me just say that an ESPY is short for Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly Award so that’s pretty amazing, Chris. 

You have a campaign and book called 1% Better. Can you tell us about that?

Chris: So this 1% program is you’re willing to commit to 1% Better because you’re willing to work hard and then you have to help someone else.

Lori: I see, so you commit to being 1% better and then you help someone else?

Chris: Yes

Lori: I see. Okay. And who is it that we’re helping become 1% better?

Chris: I think we’re gonna help my girlfriend.

Lori: You’re gonna help your girlfriend 

Chris: Yes

Lori: Cool. That’s nice

Chris: The more that I help her the more we can do weekly podcasts with her.

Lori: Yeah, that’s neat. Um, Nic, can you help explain the 1% Better Campaign?

Nic: Sure, so the 1% Better Campaign really is a replication of what happened with Chris which was we focused on him getting 1% better before we did it through a partnership where we had others doing with with him and it made for a much better environment of inclusion and able-bodied individuals helping those who had disabilities and so the whole program, as Chris said, is for someone to commit to getting 1% better themselves so that they understand the program and the power of it and then to find someone with special needs and be willing to help them in their journey because it does take a commitment of one person helping another so that they can both benefit from the journey and if we can get 1,000 or 10,000 people to do that they’ll influence a lot of and impact a lot of uh people out there who have disabilities and who could use some help, but who are very capable um with the right guidance and the right support system and the right help and so that’s what the 1% Better program is all about. 

Lori: Yeah I lo…absolutely love that idea, Chris and Nic. I think it’s so simple and yet can affect so much change in our community. So we at SENIA, we are going to promote your campaign and hopefully get a bunch of people interested in doing this so I’ve been thinking for my own son that um…my own son has um a disability as well, so I was thinking hmmm…what can we do for him so you’ve really got me thinking about his goal you know and talking with him and trying to figure out what he wants to do and then finding a buddy or someone to help him get that 1% better.

Nic: Yeah, so in the state of Florida, the Special Olympics triathlon program since Chris started with 3 other individuals has grown to well over 50 people and each one has a guide. So it’s one person helping another and it’s growing exponentially in Florida. And if you imagine the same kind of thing across every Special Olympic sport, not just triathlon.

Lori: Yeah

Nic: If it grows at that rate, we’re talking about 10’s of thousands of individuals getting help to get physically better and intellectually better and so if we can spread that message and that kind of awareness around the country, around the world, um I believe we can help 10’s of thousands of individuals with disabilities to become much more active, um physically fitter, um much more involved and included in the community and that’s probably the greatest joy that we’ve gotten out of this whole thing; Chris’ level of involvement and inclusion in the community. 

Lori: Yeah. It’s amazing. And Chris, you have book called 1% Better, right?

Chris: Yea.

Lori: I love it. I looked at the pictures and it’s a great book

Chris: Thanks

Lori: It looks just like you.

Chris: Well, I am that guy.

Lori. Yeah. (laughs). So we’re going to post the link to your book on our website as well so hopefully people will buy it and learn from you. So I want to go back to your IRONMAN in Hawaii and may Nic, you can um help us find out how we can support Chris as he’s heading to Hawaii.

Nic: Sure, so there’s a few ways. Um certainly it’s a pretty expensive journey with a team of people. So if people want to help, one way is the 1% Better Challenge. If um let’s say we get 1,000 people decide to take the challenge. And they buy 2 t-shirts, uh 1% Better t-shirts, one for them and one for their partner. And they promote the challenge on social media and they tell other friends and neighbors, um, the proceeds from those t-shirts go to support Chis and his journey so it’s a way to promote both the program of 1% better and the challenge as well as support Chris a little bit at a time toward his journey towards IRONMAN Hawaii. Um and of course people can always contribute to the foundation which really is designed to help so we’re gonna be sponsoring a lot of programs around the country on physical fitness and helping promote this um the 1% better foundation or people can certainly make a donation through our GoFundMe page that’s on Chris’ website chrisnickic.com. Uh but honestly, probably the best way that we feel best about is the 1% Better Challenge because uh that’s more of the mission and you know, in terms of funding if um, I’d rather have 10,000 people do the 1% Better program than people actually making a donation. 

Lori: That’s…that’s very kind and I love that it just all goes back to that mission. Um, Chris, before we go today, what um, what are some workouts you do to get ready for your run? Or your IRONMAN

Chris: Fun sprints.

Lori: Sprints?

Nic: Give her an idea. You’re preparing for the Boston Marathon. Give her an idea. What was your long run last week? What are you gonna do today? What’s gonna be your long run this Saturday? Just give her an idea, a little bit about your training program. 

Chris: So last week I did 15 miles. Saturday I go on 18.

Nic: Saturday, 18. And today he’s gonna do a couple hours of sprints and a couple hours of bike

Chris: Really?

Nic: Yeah, that’s it. Easy. With your friends. 

Lori: Easy peasy.(Laughs)  That’s a joke.

Nic: And his friends that are doing a triathlon are joining him.

Lori: Cool. That’s amazing, Chris. 

Chris: Thanks

Lori: Yeah. Well, hey, I don’t want to take up too much more of your time because I know that you’ve got a great breakfast or lunch waiting for you. So I just want to thank you for your time today and wish you the very best of luck on your 1% Better campaign and on your trip to Kona. 

Chris & Nic: Thanks. Thanks you too, bye.

Thank you for joining us for today’s show. For more information including how to subscribe and show notes, please head to our website. That’s SENIAinternational.org/podcast. Until next time, cheers.

Show #55 Processing Speed & Executive Functioning

Show #55 Processing Speed & Executive Functioning

On today’s podcast, host Lori Boll speaks with long time SENIA friend and Executive Functioning expert, Sarah Ward. Sarah and Lori discuss Processing Speed, and how having either slow or fast processing speed can impact our everyday lives, what teachers or families may recognize in the classroom or home, and how we can best support these challenges. This is a must-listen for all of us. Enjoy!

Bio

Sarah Ward, M.S., CCC/SLP has over 25 years of experience in the treatment of executive dysfunction. Sarah is an internationally recognized expert on executive function and presents seminars on the programs and strategies she has developed with her Co-Director Kristen Jacobsen. Their 360 Thinking Executive Function Program received the Innovative Promising Practices Award from the National Organization CHADD. She has presented to over 1400 public and private schools in the United States, Canada and Europe.

Connect

Resources from Today’s Show

Transcript

Transcribed by Kanako Suwa

[ Introduction music plays ]

Welcome to the SENIA Happy Hour with your host, Lori Boll. We know you’re busy so we bring you 1 hour of content in under thirty minutes, leaving you with time for a true happy hour. 

Lori: Hello, SENIA Happy Hour listeners, this is Lori Boll, your host, and today I speak with someone you all know and love, Sara Ward. Sara is no stranger to you all as she was a speaker at our virtual conference in 2020 and is our go-to expert on Executive Functioning. But just in case this is the first time you’re hearing from Sarah, allow me to share a few words about her.  Sarah Ward is a speech language pathologist and has over 25 years of experience in the field and in the treatment of executive dysfunction. She and her co-director Kristen Jacobson of the 360 Thinking Executive Function Program received the Innovation, Innovative Promising Practices Award from the National Organization Chad. Sarah has presented to over 1,400 public schools and private schools in the United States, Canada, and Europe. So today, Sarah and I speak about processing speed and the complexities of taking in information, organizing it in your brain, and then taking action. Who knew it was so complicated? But you know, Sarah explains it so much better than I ever could so I’m done talking and now on to the show. 

Hello Sarah and welcome back to our podcast! 

Sarah: Thank you so much! I’m so excited for the invitation to come back and really look forward to connecting today. 

Lori: Well, you know you’re well loved in the SENIA community *laughs* and everyone wants to hear more from Sarah Ward. 

Sarah: *laughs* well, let’s dive in. 

Lori: Yes, let’s. So today we’re going to be discussing processing speed, and how that relates to executive functioning. 

Sarah: One of my favourite topics, actually… 

Lori: Cool.

Sarah: Since it’s a huge problem we see for kids. 

Lori: Good, Please explain it to us so define processing speed what’s it even mean?

Sarah: So I think the processing speed can be kind of confusing because typically people think of processing speed and they think well if you have slow processing speed, you must be slow. And that’s really not the case. Processing speed is just how quickly students can react to information –  that could be things they see, things they hear, things they touch, that sensory piece, how quickly they understand in their mind and think about that information, then formulate and execute a response to that information. So it’s basically information comes in, how quickly can you think about it and then what do you do with it with your output and it’s really important to understand that information processing is absolutely not the same as intelligent as it’s possible to be extremely bright and yet process information very slowly. I’ve seen that it is also possible for students to have extremely fast processing and that actually can impact your performance in ability to execute tasks as well. And it is not correlated to physical abilities. So for example, I have students with really slow processing speed that are also incredible athletes so I can get out there on the field and they can run faster than anything you’ve ever seen.  so it’s just at the very basic level, input, how fast you do something with it, and output. 

Lori: Hmm. That’s so interesting. And so it, you’re, having difficulties with processing speed challenges, those impact most areas of executive functioning… is that so? 

Sarah: It does. It’s not always but generally yes because of course in order to execute a task, you need to be able to engage your visual working memory and processing speed can be highly correlated to visual processing. So you have to be able to take in information in your mind,  formulate your own plan of action, and rehearse what it is that you’re going to do. and then execute that plan. So we find that there are students where it can take them, for example if a teacher gives a directive in a class, a long time to process that direction, formulate their response, and then execute that direction so they can be behind when they’re sitting there and they’re are formulating a response to maybe what they’re going to write on an essay or they’re formulating a response of how they’re going to get themselves dressed, choose an outfit or to go upstairs and gather the materials they need to get out the door to soccer… all of that requires formulation of a response and therefore your executive functioning. 

Lori: Right okay doing some research for this podcast and I came across an old presentation that you had done and on one of those presentations you had a quote from Dr. Ellen Rodden? 

Sarah: Yes. She’s amazing. She’s out of Mass General Hospital and is one of the only authors of a book on processing speed I think it’s called Fast Kids, Slow Thinkers, or something like that…  that but it’s definitely a book worth reading.  

Lori: okay cool I’ll put that in the show notes.  So she says “if executive functioning is the car, processing speed is the engine. The more powerful the engine, the faster the car, and good executive functioning depends on the quality of the engine. More efficient engines allow the car to function at a higher level of efficiency”.  

Sarah: I love that quote. 

Lori: Yes, so  break that down for us, would you? 

Sarah: Absolutely. So  if it’s really simplistic when you think about it. So if you think about executive function as… you have a goal – I want to get dressed and get out the door, I want to write a paper, I want to prepare for and produce a podcast, whatever that may be… you have to get from where you are now in this moment in time to your goal. So the executive function is the car. It’s what allows you to get from here to there –  executive function is your ability to identify that goal, break down the steps of what it is that you’re going to do in order to achieve that goal, and how you’re going to get from point A to point B to achieve that. So it’s a car, and how do you just get from here to there. 

Now, processing speed is the engine. So if you imagine that we lift up the hood of a car, if you look inside an engine. We want to see how efficiently that car is running. So if we lift up that executive, the hood of the executive function car, it’s how efficiently is the person organizing and breaking down information in order to execute a plan. So for example, I can have the plan to be dressed and out the door on time for school. That’s my goal. Executive function allows me to get there – to be able to know that I need to get dressed and brush my teeth and put on my shoes and have my backpack and be out the door. But remember, processing speed is how quickly you take information in, do something with it, and then execute that plan. So if I look at underneath the hood of that, in the efficiency, how quickly can that student make the decision of what to wear how quickly can that student make the decision of the start of even just the brushing of the teeth proces – am I going to floss this morning, am I gonna use this toothpaste, am I gonna do it in this bathroom or in the other bathroom.. I mean, it’s all those kinds of pieces. 

And you know, there’s something that I think there’s two other things that are very helpful to me and thinking about processing speed. So one is that when we actually give tests to the kids and we measure their processing speed and we determine whether they have low or really fast processing speed, quite honestly, those IQ tests to measure processing speed are really much more like a doctor’s thermometer or a blood pressure cuff. It just tells you you have a temperature and you have to do a little more investigation to say why you have a temperature or you have high blood pressure, let’s investigate the root cause. Processing speed index is  just the same –  they simply are telling you you got slow processing and then you have to go a little, a little deeper and say well what is the contributor to that… is it that you’re having trouble breaking down visual information? Is it that you’re having trouble breaking down the auditory information? 

And the second part about it, it’s kind of confusing is the processing speed index on intelligence tests actually don’t measure your ability to process information. And it’s not like, right so, you know if I give you the intelligence test and you have a low processing speed, that is not at all indicative of how effectively you process information sitting in a lecture hall while the professor is providing you with a lecture. It doesn’t measure that. The processing test actually measures the accuracy of identifying visual information, making decisions, and acting on those decisions. Again it’s the ability to take it in, formulate a response and act. *phone rings* *ringtone stops* So point number one is, The phone interruption…  divided attention… *laughs*

Point number one  is that processing speed IQ tests don’t necessarily measure your ability to process linguistic information so that’s point number one. Now here’s the second thing, that has been incredibly helpful to me, is that  there’s been a lot of articles that talked about the fact that when we look at processing speed, is that every single thing that you and I do as a routine and a complex component. I find this belief fascinating because it’s helpful to think about it in order to support students with processing speed challenges. 

So let me give you an example. There is a routine to getting dressed every morning. You get dressed – routine is you put on undergarments, you put on pants and a shirt or a dress, whatever you will, and you add a footwear, and you may or may not add accessories. Now the complex decision is what is the context of where I’m going today or what is the weather like. So if the weather is really going to be cold then I’ll choose to wear long sleeves. If it’s raining, I’ll choose to wear boots. If I’m going somewhere today and I have an interview then I may choose to dress in more of business attire than my casual at home Zoom loungewear. 

Lori: Right, yeah.

Sarah: Which, I’m kind of fond of these days… *laughs* 

Lori: Me too. *laughs*

Sarah: You know, so let me give you another example. When children are in school, we teach them the routine components, if you will, of a textbook. So a textbook has a title, it has subtitles, it has heading, there are pop out boxes and visuals and captions and bolded words. And that just becomes a routine that we know – that’s how text books are, where we can use that organization to guide our processing and planning. The complex decision is what is this textbook topic about and what is the information I’m looking for. So if I’m reading a history textbook and I know the purpose is to determine the cause of these particular Civil War battles, then I’m going to use that core organization of titles and heading and subtitles to guide me and quickly processing where to find that information. 

So even… for example we talked a lot about this with written expressions. If I’m going to write something, so many times in schools, we teach kids patterns of organized thoughts like contrast comparison, cause and effect, descriptive, persuasive organizational patterns… you know that’s not just one and fluffy stuff to teach in school, it said that core organizational pattern becomes the routine so that I can then make the complex decision of how am I going to convey my argument, whatever the essay prompt is. You know, why why do we think we should wear uniforms in school or not, you know. I didn’t have to choose oh okay here’s the routine organization of information and now let me add my complex ideas on top of that. 

So truly everything that we do has a routine and even you know a shower has a routine of you’re going to wash your hair and your face and your body and the whole thing. The complex decision is how much time do I have, where am I going today, what are the set of circumstances if I don’t have very much time and I need to just quickly hop in the shower I may choose not to shampoo and wash my hair because I can go with the messy bun to join the Zoom loungewear… *laughs*  do you see where I’m going with this? 

Lori: I do! Yes. *laughs* So I’m kind of picturing it in my head as a bunch of kind of puzzle pieces and then it’s kind of a matter of how fast you can put that puzzle together and then go from there.  That’s how I’m seeing it.

Sarah: Right, because  yeah if the teacher says to you, okay class it’s time for whatever, math, you need your math manipulatives and your whiteboard and your dry erase marker… well again, kids with really good information processing speed already locked the routine of the classroom in mind. They know its core organizational structure, they know where everything is and so the minute the teacher gives them that, they don’t have to say… hold up, okay, where are the math manipulatives… okay, where are the whiteboards… okay so if manipulatives were over there, and then what are the math manipulatives, there are circle ones and cube ones and I’ll grab the circles… there’s the material zone, I’m going to go get that… and so again it’s not an inability, it’s just that it takes a little longer. 

And I have a really favorite example in my mind of how to describe this difference between routine and complex and processing speed. So I use this all the time for my teletherapy sessions with students and typically when I am lecturing and presenting… once in a while someone has the audacity to send a Google Meet… 

Lori: I know I understand that trauma! 

Sarah: It’s traumatic! And again, the thing about it is, I’m not, you know, I don’t have low intelligence, I don’t have low inability, but the routine of Google Meet is not routine to me. It’s not like it’s not automatic. I know that there’s a chat box, I know there’s a place to share my screen, I know there’s an option to change my background, but it’s not automatic for me so it takes me a bit to observe that information, formulate a response, take it in, and respond. And so I am slower at my… sort of efficiency with which I can present so that’s a really good example. It’s not an inability, it’s not a lack of intellect, it’s merely that you gotta kinda pull that cord of familiarity out. And truly I think the other thing that’s just so important to understand is if you think about that example of using Google Meet, at the end of my meeting, I’m exhausted because I’m doing twice the work. I’m not only presenting but I’m also having to navigate the software in the whole program. Plus our children’s hearts… Kids with slow processing speed, they are working twice as hard as everybody else and they come home exhausted. I mean just totally spent. It is a lot of work and so many of my students, they really can’t do two things at the same time and this impacts them at school significantly. 

So to give you an example, they really can’t eat a snack and socialize at the same time –  they will either socialize or they will eat their snack because they just can’t, it’s too much processing to sort of navigate that. So we have a lot of kids where parents will say he’s coming home hangry because he just… didn’t, he couldn’t even… he had to give that up. Or another good example if students are in my office and they need to pack up at the end of the day, or they’re in the classroom, that transition between the time class is ending and the next classes starting is a really fantastic social moment for kids, it’s where they get to connect and socialize and catch up and plan as they walk down the hall. My students, they can either pack their bags or they can socialize but they can’t do both. So what I find is, if you talk to them while they pack their bag, they come to a grinding halt and they stop packing, and you socialize. And everyone leaves the classroom and you can sort of see them go “oh no” and they then put materials in their bag, again, that routine, of a packed bag may not be routine for them. See, for you and I, if you’re driving, do you ever notice when you’re driving and you’re like “oh I need chapstick” and you reach over and you can drive and get chapstick at the same time? IT’s because you just know organisationally, the front pocket always has chapstick, the middle pocket always has my phone and keys and the back pocket has my money and wallet. You just can visualize and do that.

Again, it’s not that they don’t know it, it’s just not routine to pull it up. So for that reason, one of the very best ways to improve processing speed is really build strong schemas for routines. Give kids just stock visuals of you know a photograph, what does, what are the features of being dressed… you have a top, bottom, of your foot wear, a backpack, accessories… have that photograph so that you can just say to them okay it’s going to be freezing cold today, how will this look different? I’ll need a hat, I’ll need mittens, for footwear I’ll need boots. Show them those core features of how textbooks are organised, introduce them to those patterns of organised thoughts. Call the routine out, even for things like, you know, being prepared for soccer or setting the table. Any opportunities you have to give the routine so if the core routine of setting the table is a placemat and a plate and a utensil, remind that. And then you talk about, well, tonight, we’re having soup. How would it be the same or different instead of just saying “oh we’re having soup tonight, set the table”. You know it sounds different but you gotta start with the core and scaffold the novelty on top of it. 

Lori: Right now these are all great strategies. And I think what I’m hearing i… even so one of my questions was going to be what strategies can teachers and family members use but for students who are struggling in this area but I think that all of these strategies are good for every student in the classroom. And that’s pretty powerful, when teachers can understand that when they’re teaching, maybe to, the students with higher needs in that area, they’re really benefiting every student in their classroom. 

Sarah: So true because to be honest with you some of the kids that I find that have the most significant struggle with executive function planning are not only my kids with slow processing speed, but the opposite of my kids with fast processing speed.  So kids was really fast processing speed what happens is they are processing information so quickly there are often 2 or 3 steps ahead of you. You’re talking about something, they’ve gone quick and they’ve got the information and they’ve moved on and what happens is that often results in extensive mind-wandering so their minds are wandering so quickly to other things and other topics and information. It was triggered by the ideas of what you talked about, but there’s tension often hard for them to re-engage to where they were and what it was that they need to do. 

So for example, you give them the directive of get your math manipulatives and your whiteboard, and all of a sudden they hear math and they think of fractions which made them think of pie day and they thought about the pie that they were going to bake and they are often running, and sometimes you will see these kids literally standing still and they’re just thinking. *laughs* And then they don’t really engage. And so I find it the exact same thing. Even routines for those kids are really helpful because it anchors that distractibility in where they need to go and what they need to do. And I find that to be incredibly powerful and useful to our students. 

Lori: Definitely. So you’ve alluded to this, you’ve actually answered this several times, but just to narrow it down to our listeners… how can we as educators or family members recognise if a child may be having difficulties in this area?

Sarah: Uh, yeah, so again, it is on a little bit of a trickier side because processing speed can be a culprit of many other sorts of things. Like I said, that being said… kids with slow processing speed, let me go for what it’s more like… they have a harder time integrating and including information. So this may be the student that in math, hears something and learns it but by the time they get home, they haven’t sort of put together what it is that they need to do. They need a lot of spiralling back of content so it may take them.. They may hear all those facts in a lecture and it may take them significantly longer to integrate all of that and go “oh, right, we were talking about the… reasons and the problems of why the colonists struggled establish communities along the coast” or I mean… they’re hearing all of that, it just takes them much longer and integrate the core purpose of the content that is. So they’re ability to acquire new material can be tougher. We also see that slow processing can present as kids who sit down to do homework and they truly take twice as long as their peers. 

And it’s very frustrating for the student and it’s very frustrating for the parent. So as they’re sitting down to do the math or the reading, it’s not that they’re distracted, per se… it’s just taking them… if that reading assignment was supposed to take your average students 20 minutes, they may spend 40 minutes on it. And it’s not because they’re distracted or they’re rolling around on the floor or playing with the dog or all these things. They’re truly working through it, it’s just taking longer. So that’s a good sign. If you’re seeing those things happen a lot, that can be hard. Absolutely following instructions and transitioning between tasks is hard. Some of my students with processing speed, the parents will say, they’ll complain, we’re headed out the door, running out the door, grab your sweatshirt… don’t forget that gift card because we’re going to stop by Target… these kids will go “you’re telling me too many things!” and I mean.. They’ll literally say “I can’t do all of that”. So following directions and multistep directions is tough. 

Routines can take forever, and it is just sometimes, it can present as being physically slower, but it’s not that they’re physically slow, it’s just they’re taking a long time to process. So many parents would say, “oh my goodness, it’s taking us. Our routine. He goes in the bathroom for 45 minutes and I don’t even know what’s going on. It’s taking him forever to get out of the bathroom. It’s taking him forever to eat breakfast.” And you think, “we have got to go” and you can’t sort of just move them along. And I guess the other thing I would say is making decisions and reasoning under time demands can be very challenging. It just takes longer to think about, make a decision, and reason. 

Lori: Well, you’ve given us a lot to chew on today, Sarah. Thank you so much. And I think we’re out of time – we may have even gone over time… but it’s just such important information for all of us. So thank you, thank you for your time! 

Sarah: You’re welcome. You know, I would just like to say, you know, the good news is you can fix it, not always solve the problem and there’s so many compensatory things and if there’s one little tip is, really highlight the core organisation and routine of tasks and scaffold the new on top of it and that really improves things. 

Lori: Perfect. Thank you so much, Sarah. Have a great day.

Sarah: Thank you. Have a good one. 

Thank you for joining us for today’s show. For more information including how to subscribe and show notes, please head to our website. That’s SENIAinternational.org/podcast. Until next time, cheers.

Show #56 Get Involved with Special Olympics

Show #56 Get Involved with Special Olympics

Today, host Lori Boll speaks with the Chief Global Education Officer for the Special Olympics, responsible for global education and youth leadership. Jacqueline Jodl, PhD.  Lori and Jackie discuss the history of the Special Olympics, the evidence that backs up these programs that lessens bullying and bias, and how we, in our international schools, can get more involved. With a program like Unified Sports, we can create inclusive opportunities. 

Bio

Jacqueline Jodl, PhD, is the Chief Global Education Officer for the Special Olympics,  responsible for global education and youth leadership. Previously, Dr. Jodl was an Associate Professor at the University of Virginia’s School of Education and Executive Director at the Aspen Institute leading the National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development. Dr. Jodl’s life is dedicated to helping organizations like Special Olympics that help children and young people who advocate for a more inclusive world where differences are celebrated, not feared.

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Resources from Today’s Show

Transcript

Transcribed by Kanako Suwa

[ Introduction music plays ]

Welcome to the SENIA Happy Hour podcast with your host, Lori Boll. We know you’re busy so we bring you 1 hour of content in under thirty minutes, leaving you with time for a true happy hour. 

Lori: Hello everyone, today I speak with Dr.Jacqueline Jodl who is Chief Global Education officer at The Special Olympics and she’s responsible for global education and youth leadership. Previously, Dr.Jodl was an associate professor at the University of Virginia, School of Education, and an executive director at the Aspen institute, leading the national commission on social, emotional, and academic development. Dr.Jodl’s life is dedicated to helping ogranisations like Special Olympics that help children and young people who advocate for a more inclusive world where differences are celebrated and not feared, kind of like SENIA. So today we talk about this amazing organisation, Special Olympics, the evidence behind it, and how to get more involved. I know you’ll be excited to start a unified sports programme in your school and our call to action for you is to get involved somehow. It just takes one person to start something. So, I’ll stop talking so you can hear from Jacqueline herself. So now, on to the show. 

Hi Jacqui, and welcome to the podcast! 

Jacqueline: Thank you so much, it’s a pleasure to be here. 

Lori: Well, we are delighted. A few weeks ago, I had the great pleasure of speaking with Chris Nikic on our podcast – as a quick reminder for our audience, Chris is the first individual with Down Syndrome to complete a full Iron Man. And as we were chatting, his father reminded us that Chris was an athlete with the Special Olympics, which is amazing.

Jacqueline: Absolutely! Arguably our most famous athlete. 

Lori: I myself had the opportunity to go to the Special Olympics when it was in Shanghai, China, back in the early 2000’s, and it was truly one of my favourite experiences ever to see the athletes there all cheering each other on to the spirit of the games. It was just… it’s something I’ll never forget. So, what does… can you help us understand what the Special Olympics do? Is it a sports organisation only or do you do more? 

Jacqueline: Well, that’s absolutely the most foundational question – you know, what is Special Olympics? So we are known for being a sports organisation and as you described, our global events, the global games, are just transformative events not only for our athletes but for spectators who come to watch their loved ones or friends, or family members participate in the athletics competitions. And it  can be absolutely in organising events in one’s life, as you see in those individuals with disabilities come together and compete and learn about differences and learn about how to bridge those differences. So that’s really our flagship, our flagship event, is the games. But Special Olympics really has taken the platform of sports and become so much more. So we really operate in 3 different categories beyond sports – the first one is health. As those who work with disabilities, often the health needs are a little bit more challenging than those without, so we understand that we deliver health programming around the world, not only programming that attempts to focus on early identification but also just programming that addresses basic things like hearing and eyesight, as well as just… basic fitness because often, those with intellectual disabilities don’t get the type of exercise that they probably, they probably, that many others do. 

The second area that we operate in is what we’ll call the education or schools work, and we are in about 30 countries around the world I in schools and we deliver Unified School. We call it Unified Sports Programming along with Unified Schools within a Unified Schools model and that really is an incredible opportunity to bring people with and without intellectual disabilities, that’s the model, which is key because we know is that one of the most important barriers to wellbeing among those with intellectual disabilities is being included in ways that overcome the bias of those without intellectual disabilities. So the only way to kind of build that bridge to, kind of, get through that bias, is to bring together those with and without intellectual disabilities and just have them learn from one another. So that’s really the core of the sports, I mean, the education programme.

And then the final area that we operate in is, we call, Leadership. And this includes both youth leadership where we work both in and out of schools, building youth voice to advocate for more inclusive world, and then we also work in a range of leadership contexts with adults including coaches, including those without intellectual disabilities… again, this model bringing those with and without intellectual disabilities together to build leadership skills in communities. 

So as you can see, Special Olympics does a lot of things. 190 countries around the world and it’s a big operation and, if I was sitting next to the chairman, Dr. Timothy Shriver, he would, what he would say is, we are the largest grassroots community organization around the world. 

Lori: So, we spoke with, well, first of all, amazing. And then we spoke with Best Buddies a few, probably about a year ago, and they were also started by the Shriver family. 

Jacqueline: Yes, yes! So Special Olympics has this wonderful history of being founded by the Shriver family, so Eunice Shriver, for our listeners, was JFK’s, President John F. Kennedy’s sister, she had a sister, they had a sister who had intellectual disabilities and in those days, there were just tremendous bias. And so the way that her sister was treated, um, just caused her to really rethink her life, her own life and how she could contribute to the inclusion of those with intellectual disabilities. So in 1962, I think it was, someone reached out to her and expressed… “we need to have some type of a summer events or something for these children with intellectual disabilities” and that started her thinking and before you knew it, in 1968, something that started out in her backyard in her pool, you know, there are some famous pictures of her on the internet with children with intellectual disabilities in her backyard pool. But in 1968, was the first Special Olympics games and they were in Chicago at Soldier Field, so that was started by Eunice Kennedy-Shriver, and her son, Dr.Tim Shriver took over as chairman, probably about 20 years ago. He was initially CEO and became chairman several years ago so he was very involved in the Special Olympics and they’re a key external face of the organization and also really drives the education of side of our work because he’s a global education expert, you know, being trained initially as a teacher and later to go on to do Doctoral work in Education.

The other organisation you mentioned, Best Buddies, was founded by his brother and it is also just a real transformative organisation bringing together those with and without intellectual disabilities, you know, as… the notion of Best Buddies. One of the most important things we can do to create young people and adults who are health, and im talking about physical and emotional health, is to make sure that we foster good relationships because we’re social beings and everyone needs a healthy relationships in their lives. 

Lori: That is certainly true. I want to circle back with you about the Unified Sports Programme that you mentioned earlier – so as our listeners know, I have a 22 year old son with profound autism and when I was living overseas, I would see my friends on social media from the States who also had children with intellectual disabilities and they were sharing about something called, this magical something called “Unified Sports” and their kids were on the basketball field, or the basketball courts playing with other children and it was a team of individuals with special needs and those without. They were playing soccer, they were playing all these sports together, and it just looked truly, as I said before, magical. And I always found that I was quite jealous because I was overseas and we didn’t have that opportunity. So I wondered if I could somehow make it possible our own international schools… So can you just tell us more about….

Jacqueline: Yes, certainly. So Unified Sports is one of, it’s one of our most important programmes because what we know is that when we bring together young people in athletic environments, all of a sudden, the differences melt away. And what happens is the focus is on the game. The focus is on the win, the focus is on the experience of competition or in the case of Special Olympics, it’s not about performing better than one another, it’s just performing at your very best. That’s really the focus of competition at the Special Olympics. So we’re actually in communities around the world where we deliver Unified Sports Programming. We also deliver Unified Sports Programming in 100,000 schools around the world and it is absolutely our most important programme because what it does is it creates these inclusive mindsets and inclusive behaviours amongst young people as they experience sports together and then learn that you can have friends that you think may have more differences than similarities, but once you start to compete and share your love of sports and competition, those differences disappear. And commonalities emerge. 

Lori: Yeah, I love it. I was wondering, so you’re in all these countries, which is amazing. And if our listeners are thinking, I’d love to do this. What can they do? 

Jacqueline: Yes. Absolutely. So we have an incredible footprint around the world. So we have Special Olympic regions, we have 7 regions around the world. And within each of those regions, we have programmes, national programmes, across these 190 countries. It’s very likely that your listeners are in a country that has a Special Olympics programme. And all the programmes are listed on our website just to Google Special Olympics and your country and it’ll be easy to track down whether or not your country has a programme. Chances are, they do. And if not, they’re absolutely opportunities to become a new programme in a new country and go through the process to become that. But chances are, you’re in a country that has a Special Olympics programme and just to reach out to them, I think, every 20 minutes, before COVID, one of the metrics that came up was there was a special olympics programme or event happening around the world. So it’s not only Unified Sports Programmes that happen around the world but there’s a range – as I mentioned, there’s health programmes going on, as well as leadership programming that’s going on. And other types of programming to really support the families and siblings and the caregivers so there’s a whole portfolio of programming that we offer across the world. 

Lori: That’s great! And so if people wanted to say, get more involved in coaching or all of the different opportunities you mentioned, they just hop on Google on their country…

Jacqueline: They can hop on Google and once you start to get to your local programme, there are opportunities to become a coach and we have a very extensive coach training both in person and a lot of it is increasingly online and our coaching training is just superb because it really starts to move beyond just the competence of the sports, which, of course, is important, whether you’re teaching basketball or whether you’re coaching soccer or football, absolutely to understand how to teach and coach that sport. But also to work with diverse athletic population so you have athletes that are participants some with intellectual disability, some without, at a range of different abilities levels. We have recreational levels and then we have some very competitive teams. And you know, Chris, as you mentioned, is an example of someone who competes at the highest levels globally. And so we have a wide, wide range of abilities and our coaching staff reflects that. 

There’s also opportunities to volunteer at the local level and our volunteer force around the world is so essential – Special Olympics would not exist, would not be able to deliver the extent of its programming without our volunteer force. And many of our volunteers are family members of those with intellectual disabilities who really understand what, the daily challenges, and also really understand the daily opportunities and joy that you can have when you start to open up your hearts and minds to the idea that everyone has something to give in this world. 

Lori: Yes. I was curious… I know the majority of our listeners are all about inclusion – in fact, SENIA’s 20th year and our theme for the year is inclusion revolution. Tell me about the studies or the evidence based practices that you have to know that inclusion is what’s right. 

Jacqueline: Yes – that’s right. So we have a whole evidence based studies that go back many years and, let me give you some of those highlights. Many of those studies have been fielded in the US because in the US, we have Special Olympics and Unified Champion Schools in nearly 10,000 schools. And that’s really where our footprint started, which is in the US, and that’s of course why the research really stems from there. But we also expanded some of our research work in the last couple of years and did a really critical study for global sites and what we found is that you really start to see dramatic drops in bullying in schools. You know, 9 out of 10 of young people believe that bullying is a really pervasive problem so if you can start to really address those types of issues, it can really change both the school experience for students. Or if they’re outside of schools, because most children globally are not in integrated settings – they’re mostly in segregated settings, but if you can start to reduce the bullying and build tolerance and accept differences and really empathy for those with intellectual disabilities, you can really change the lives of those with ID. and that’s exactly what you’d find with our programming, and in these studies across these 4 countries, you saw reduced bullying reported by administrators so we’re not just talking about low levels. 94% of administrators reported that they saw decreased and reduced bullying and exclusion in school environments. 

The other thing is that, as I talked about, you really need to address stereotypes amongst those without ID for those with ID. And what you saw also in this study is that it really overturns those negative stereotypes and attitudes about disability. And you saw 9 out of 10 students without ID in some of these countries reporting that their behaviour changed. Now think about that. You know, you’re not just talking about changes in attitudes, you’re talking about these changes in attitudes translating to changes in behaviour for those with ID, and any mother, parent, caregiver of someone with IDD, that’s… it just warms your heart because that’s really what we want as parents for our children, whether our children have ID or they don’t have ID. We want them to be accepted and embraced by others. 

The other area we saw improvements based on the Special Olympics is the life skills. And this is the ability to get along with others, the ability to resolve conflict in a way that’s constructive, and the ability to really support those with differences. So all of those social emotional skills that when you hear people talk about life skills or work force skills, we saw these dramatic increases in those skills among again, those students with ID and those students without ID. 

And the final piece is that we really saw changes in school climate, and you saw it in some of these countries, 4 out of 5 actual educators, teachers, were reporting that there was an improved sense of community and what we know in education research is that when you have a sense of community, which is students’ connections to schools, students’ sense of belonging in schools, that you have better learning environment for all students. So the research on Special Olympics is quite compelling and we’re continuing, there’s always more research to do and we’re continuing to do that research. 

Lori: Sure. Well, I really hope today is kind of the start of our conversation between the Special Olympics and all of our international schools. I think this lights a little spark for our listeners to maybe start something or volunteer or take part somehow in Special Olympics in their countries. So, thank you. 

Jacqueline: Absolutely. And I encourage everyone who has you know, who has children in your schools to reach out to local Special Olympics programmes and tell them that you want to be an Unified school, you want to be a Special Olympics Unified school and how do we make that happen? And we provide grants to all those countries to continue to expand the schools they reach. 

Lori: Yeah, I love that. And just, if I can make a shoutout to our listeners to reach out to your PE teachers as well because PE teachers at the schools, they’re involved so much in the athletics department and starting up these programmes together, could be really powerful for everyone, whether you have an intensive needs or a higher needs programme at your school or not, I believe that these international schools can start these programmes at their schools and they have the resources. And they can just do it. 

Jacqueline: Yeah, and again, just to reinforce, we have… we also have resources or programming for more intensive needs students as well as those who have a less intensive needs, and we have a range of programming and the local Special Olympics programmes would be able to help with that. And you know, often, it just takes a single person. It takes a volunteer in the community just to say “alright, I’m going to make this happen”. There are countless examples of that around the world in the history of the Olympics.

Lori: Well, it just takes one. I think that’s a great place to end for today. So, thank you so much! 

Jacqueline: Thank you so much! 

Thank you for joining us for today’s show. For more information including how to subscribe and show notes, please head to our website. That’s SENIAinternational.org/podcast. Until next time, cheers.

Show #57 Circle of Friends

Show #57 Circle of Friends

Today host Lori Boll speaks with Robyn Reagan who is the Executive Director for Circle of Friends. Circle of Friends is a school inclusion program for students who experience social isolation due to disability or other challenges.  Through weekly lunches and meaningful activities students develop compassion and the understanding that they are more alike than different.

CoF promotes a culture of acceptance and genuine friendship. In our show today, Robyn shares about this fantastic program and the research behind it. By the end you’ll know how you can become a Circle of Friends advisor in your school. And you’ll have HOPE. and that HOPE is for our future and also an acronym which you’ll hear more about later.

Bio

Robyn has been improving systems and supports for children, youth and families for over three decades. Her first role model was Annie Sullivan, “Teacher” and friend to Helen Keller. Robyn is a lifelong advocate for children who struggle to make their gifts and needs known.

Connect

Transcript

Transcribed by Kanako Suwa

[ Introduction music plays ]

Welcome to the SENIA Happy Hour Podcast with your host, Lori Boll. We know you’re busy so we bring you 1 hour’s worth of content in under thirty minutes, leaving you with time for a true happy hour. 

Lori: Hello, SENIA listeners. Today I speak with Robyn Reagon who’s the executive director of Circle of Friends, the path to inclusion. So Circle of Friends is a school inclusion program for students who experience social isolation due to a disability or other challenges through weekly lunches and meaningful activities. These students and their peers develop compassion and the understanding that they are more alike than different. Circle of Friends promotes a culture of acceptance and genuine friendship. In our show today Robyn shares about this fantastic program and the research behind it. By the end you’ll know how to be an advisor to Circle of Friends at your school and you’ll have hope- hope for our future and also HOPE is an acronym which you’ll get to hear more about later. So let’s get to it! And now, onto the show. Hello Robyn and welcome to the podcast! 

Robyn:  thank you, I’m excited!

Lori: Well, you are the executive director of Circle of Friends – the path to inclusion. I was first introduced to this model when my son was in kindergarten and I thought it was absolutely brilliant. Can you give us some background on Circle of Friends and how it came to be? And then later we’ll get into what the basic model is. 

Robyn:  Well I think it’s a great story so I’m happy to share it. In 1999 in Santa Monica, California,  a speech language pathologist named Barbara Palilis was brought into an education meeting where a young man, named Alec with Down Syndrome, and his mom was at the meeting and she requested that one of his behaviour goals be to make a friend. And in 1999, this stumped the IEP team. But Barb was one of his therapist and she had a good reputation with the parents, and so she asked her if she would figure out how to make that happen. She reached out to some neurotypical peers that she knew were great kids and she said “Alec needs some practice talking about spending time and he needs friends, would you commit to having lunch with him one day a week for the rest of the school year?” And they said yes. And so that was the beginning of the adventure. These youth leaders, so they started off and became Alex’s friends, they took it upon themselves to create ability awareness presentations and they gave them to the 9th grade science classes and within 3 years, it was the most popular club that they saw on campus. And CBS came out and did a news story. A few years later when Barbara retired, the parents of those first students said “this cannot retire with you, you need this in every school”, and in 2005, we became a non-profit. 

Lori: Oh that is a good story. Yes, that’s beautiful. How would a decision be made in a school or anywhere to create a Circle of Friends around an individual? 

Robyn: Well, we’ve actually been invited or requested at schools from lots of different sources – we have heard from teachers and principals, and in many cases, parent who learn about the programme. We’ve heard from students who are, in many cases, siblings of students with special needs who learn about us and want us at their sibling’s school. Sometimes, it becomes a part of an IEP as I mentioned, or it could be a service learning project. In some cases, it may be a result of bullying or a problem on campus that administration has been requested to address and Circle of Friends is suggested as that strategy. As you know, bullying is an issue. Research shows in 2019, 33% of students reported bullying and there probably were many that didn’t report. We know the students with disabilities are 2-3 more times likely to experience bullying and research shows that 57% of bullying stops when a peer intervenes. It shows how powerful a peer interaction is. 

Lori: Very. Very powerful. So how does this basic model work? What’s it look like? 

Robyn: Well, what it looks like is, after I’m connected with an administrator, I meet with them to assess their programme needs, whether they’re an elementary or high school, for example. In many cases, they might, if they’re addressing a need like bullying prevention or youth leadership, then we align how Circle of Friends looks to what’s going on with them. We then provide some orientation at the school level, and I work with teams of volunteers on site, multidisciplinary, they could be gen-ed teachers, special ed teachers, speech pathologists, counselors, assistant principals, we work with 3-4 volunteers at each site that I provide training for. And they become our Circle of Friends advisors. And they provide the implementation. They implement the programme, those advisors select and connect the students that are seen as being in need of this programme, and do orientation and recruit neurotypical peers, and the programme is usually realised as a lunch outing one day a week. As leadership grows, they want to plan other things, activities, parties, things in the community, and most of that is student-driven with the advisor providing the additional support. 

Lori: So, one thing I noticed when my son went through this programme was that the teachers showed… or no, we came in, now that I think about it, we as parents came in with pictures of our son snowsking or swimming in the pool showing these kindergarten students what our son had in common with them, that kind of made him “the same” as them, rather than…. So they were noticing his similarities rather than his differences. Although we acknowledge the differences as well and shared those were. So, is that part of the official Circle of Friends? 

Robyn: Yes. That’s part of the orientation, that peer friends receive. We don’t go a lot into technical detail or confidential information about the students. What we do is identify strengths and commonalities and identify challenges and needs, framed as “we all have stuff we’re working on, and your new friend is working on speaking more slowly when they’re excited, or your new friend is working on tone of voice” or whatever. And the rest of it really just grows organically from them spending time in spontaneous social environments, like lunch. There are a lot of social programmes that may incorporate lunch but they’re more scripted, like “now we’re going to chew two times and make eye contact!”. Circle of Friends is about the opportunity of bringing students together and finding out what they have in common and appreciate how unique. 

Lori: That’s amazing. I did a modified version of this with some of my students in the past, and one of the most powerful statements I heard from a classmate, one of the peers, was “you know, I liked, let’s call him Joe, I liked Joe and wanted to get to know him because of his differences, but after learning about him, we have so much in common that I like him even more”. 

Robyn: And that’s what we hear from our neurotypical students, which we refer to in our programme as our “peer friends”. 

Lori: Peer friends. Got it. I love it. So let’s talk about the pandemic. How has Circle of Friends evolved throughout this time? 

Robyn: Well, like so many non-profits and so many education based organisations and families across the globe, we’ve had to make a lot of adjustments. When schools shut down in March of 2020, and school either wasn’t happening or happening online, all of our advisors and administrators were completely overwhelmed. So Circle of Friends actually kind of went dark. We had to shut down! I kind of went on furlough but I was committed to our chapters and I, throughout the pandemic, continued to send them resources and strategies for online learning and engagements, social emotional learning, and self care, because I knew the amount of stress they were going through to try to meet student’s needs. And during that time, I tried to keep abreast of changes and what was going on, I attended a lot of seminars and meetings online, and realised the potential of  the online forum. And so I spent my time at home adapting our in-person workshop model so that they could be provided online. And something I hadn’t thought about but we certainly realised as we came back on board, was one of the challenges for new schools that want our programme was the cost. And the amount of additional costs, finding a meeting space, getting substitute coverage, advisors to come to 3 workshops a year… and when we went virtual, we could shorten the amount of training, we record it so if someone gets called out, they can revisit the materials and the trainings on their own time, and its brought down the cost to about a third of what we were charging in person. And we can do it anywhere, one of our newest chapter is in Bentonville, Arkansas, and it’s one of the 6 districts that we started working with in the 2021 school year. 

Lori: And I imagine you could do international schools as well, right? With the virtual model…

Robyn: Yes! We had an inquiry from Australia but it hasn’t come to fruition yet, but yes, we can. Absolutely. We can only do it in English, we don’t have the ability… but with close captioning and translation, we’d be excited. We know how valuable this programme is. 

Lori: Fantastic. So, how can people access your virtual model> 

Robyn: So what they do is they contact Circle of Friends and we explain how we work with them, and they enter into what we now call an annual membership. So right now, for example, in the spring, I’m currently meeting with the administrators to say “how has the year been, how would you prepare for the fall, how might you tweak your model?” We have schools in their second year who might add grades, they might add English Language Learners, or other marginalised groups. 

As part of our annual membership, we provide 3 – 90minute workshops online and recorded, so they can revisit it, and we schedule a follow up for a few weeks after the workshops so the advisors who now have questions that they didn’t have during the workshops because now they’re using it. We provide a guide, everyone has a Google folder with all of the information, it includes forms and strategies and supports that we’ve gained over the last 20 years of practice. I also send out monthly resources to our chapters including links to videos, activities, and campaigns. For example, in October, bullying prevention is on everyone’s minds, and for this month, autism awareness, for April. So I send them out great tips and guides to increase awareness for their students. And lastly, we have, on going, even between the workshops, they can reach out to me by email or phone and I continue to work iwth them as a coach. 

Lori: I see. So a school might decide to have 3 advisors or whatever. I see. That makes a lot of sense. And we should probably just mention again that you are non-profit organisation. So your goal is not to make money from these trainings, but it’s more the mission. Right. Perfect. 

So when I was chatting with you earlier, you mentioned there was recent research of the impact of Circle of Friends on the gen-ed population. Can you speak to this? 

Robyn: Yes. Now we knew, over 20 years, we knew through anecdotal evidence and stories that students with disabilities clearly benefitted from our model. In 2014 and 2018, two educators used the Circle of Friends model to show our impact on neurotpical students. In 1 case, they went over 10 years of training and reached out to educators, neurotypical students, family members, and community members to talk about what, how Circle of Friends had changed them and changed the school environment. The other young man, Dr.Delouchi, he actually looked at emotional intelligence and spoke to peer friends that were now in their 20’s who had finished college and were now in their first jobs, to have them reflect back on what they learnt and what they thought the impact was on their lives as adults and as workers. 

And it was quite profound to hear what they’ve learned that those young people are now bringing to more inclusive spaces and communities. 

Lori: That’s great! So I imagine that this Circle of Friends could work in a workplace community as well, for our older students or older population.

Robyn: Yes, and at several high schools in Santa Monica, we actually had something called Circle Summer in which students that were now transition age were paired with speech language majors or psychology or education majors from Cal State Northridge and they got together for 3 weeks over the summer and did various things in the community. So they went to the beach, they had lunch, they, we brought in service activities like cleaning up a park or donating something to a local pet shelter, to show that we all have something to offer. And that was very powerful to the college students as well as the young adults with disabilities.

Lori: Yep. So powerful. This year, SENIA is 20 years old, and our theme for the year is the Inclusion Revolution. And this just seems like such a great tie-in to that. And I guess my call to action for our listeners is to well, first, research more on Circle of Friends, and then get involved! You know, bring it to your school, it’s it can be one of the most powerful thing out there, for our kids. Well, I have good news for our listeners. You are going to be one of our presenters at our next SENIA virtual conference. So, you’ll be… I’m sure you’ll mention Circle of Friends in your presentation but your main focus is going to be on ACEs and HOPE. So can you give us a brief introduction, without of course, ruining the whole presentation, giving it all away, in 2 minutes…! 

Robyn: Of course! I’m very very excited about the opportunity, thank you again, and excited about this work. My background, before I came to Circle of Friends, I worked in residential treatment, and in urban schools. And saw the level of need and what students were being impacted by, and I was always fascinated by the resilience that they could show. And how they could come back even stronger. So as you mentioned, it was a 1998 study by the Kaiser Foundation in Southern California, that found a correlation between ACEs, which are Adverse Childhood Experiences – examples are domestic violence, poverty, parental separation, so they found a connection between those and increased health problems in adulthood like heart disease, diabetes, and mental illness. 

More recent research went beyond the households to include different domains like community, things like substandard housing, lack of access to parks, structural racism, and the environment, drought, fires, extreme heat… the research shows that 4 or more adverse childhood experiences can have a negative effect. Both children and adults have experienced between 15 – 20 ACEs in the past 2 years of COVID, racial unrest, and climate change. And that can leave us feeling very overwhelmed and hopeless. I was excited to learn about the work at Tufts University – they’ve been studying what families, teachers, healthcare providers, and community members can do to help our young people overcome this global trauma that we’ve experienced. And they call their acronym “HOPE”, which stands for Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences and the 4 building blocks for HOPE are healthy relationships, creating safe environments for living and learning, social engagement to help develop a sense of belonging and connectedness, and opportunities for emotional growth. And those 4 building blocks are what Circle of Friends is actually doing. So, I’m excited to share more about that. I recently became a trained facilitator in the HOPE model and I’m excited to be a part of your conference! 

Lori: Oh, wow, we are so excited. And HOPE, I think that’s such a great way to end our discussion today. We can think about HOPE for all of our students and all of our teachers and families who might be struggling at this time. Thank you so much! 

Robyn: Thank you!

Thank you for joining us for today’s show. For more information including how to subscribe and show notes, please head to our website. That’s SENIAinternational.org/podcast. Until next time, cheers.

#58 The Importance of Disability Education for Teachers and Students- The Nora Project

Show #58 The Importance of Disability Education for Teachers and Students- The Nora Project

On today’s podcast, host Lori Boll speaks with Kevin Schaefer who is currently the Director of Inclusive Practices/Supporting Inclusive Practices (SIP) project through the El Dorado County Office of Education Sacramento, California. In this role, Kevin works to improve educational outcomes for students with disabilities through the provision of high-quality leadership and support to the County and throughout the state. Lori and Kevin discuss barriers to inclusion for students with disabilities, and how his organization works with schools to shift culture and mindsets to support meaningful inclusion. 

Bio

Katy Fattaleh is a former elementary school teacher and K-8 instructional coach who now serves as the Chief Program Officer for The Nora Project. In her work at TNP, Katy is always searching for ways to bring essential curriculum and training to schools so that they can create environments where all students feel a strong sense of belonging.

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Resources from Today’s Show

Transcript

Transcribed by Kanako Suwa

[ Introduction music plays ]

Welcome to the SENIA Happy Hour with your host, Lori Boll. We know you’re busy so we bring you 1 hour of content in under thirty minutes, leaving you with time for a true happy hour. 

Lori: I couldn’t be more excited to bring you today’s podcast. I get to speak with Katy Fattaleh, who is the chief program officer for the Nora project. You guys, seriously, the Nora project is what we’ve all been looking for in our international schools or in our local communities. The Nora Project gives us a way to bring disability education into our schools, training students and teachers. Have a listen and I’m sure you’re going to be inspired, just as inspired as I am to bring the Nora Project to your own school. I could go on and on but it’s better if you hear it from Katie herself. So now, onto the show. 

Hi, Katy and welcome to the podcast! 

Katy: Thanks so much for having me. 

Lori: It’s a pleasure. Once upon a time, I was a programme leader of a small school educating expatriate children in Shanghai, China. And one of my students from that programme moved back to the United States and had a really difficult time fitting into the general education setting there. She was basically ostracized and not treated well by her peers. Then her mother discovered the Nora Project, the organization where you serve as the Chief Programme Officer. And the work your organization did, well, it was life changing for her daughter. The mission of your project, The Nora Project, is to promote disability inclusion by empowering educators and engaging students and communities, which… what a great mission. Reminds us of SENIA, really. How does the Nora Project empower educators by engaging students and communities? 

Katy:  First I want to say I’m so excited to hear the feedback from your friend. That thrills us, that we are reaching students and creating a more positive experience for them. You know our work for educators really starts with training and it’s comprehensive training that we believe that most educators don’t have access to in a lot of cases. 

So I am a teacher by training, I was an instructional coach for a number of years, and I never received any formal training in disability studies much less how to support all students in my classroom. I was a fourth and fifth grade teacher I worked with students with disabilities, I worked with students who had IEPs and 504 plans, And I never had more than a I think to our Workshop in college how to support students with disabilities.

Lori: Yeah! Isn’t that crazy? I was just doing research on this yesterday for a book I’m writing with a co-author, and a 2007 study said that the average teacher receives 1.5 courses in special education or disabilities, and I was thinking “well, I didn’t receive any… I received a 1 hour workshop on classroom management…” and nothing on disabilities. Now this was back, a long time ago… but still. What don’t they know?! 

Katy: Yeah! Things haven’t changed much! And I’ve had conversations with professors, current professors, who are, you know, a little bit more conscious of this, but they themselves also have not received the kind of training that would be able to inform a really strong programme that would support new teachers coming into the field, or teachers who have been in the field a long time doing graduate work, for example. I did my graduate degree and I also didn’t receive any education in disability studies or how to support students with disabilities. So this is a huge challenge and I think that in general, teachers who work in the general education space feel a lot of anxiety and a lot of fear around supporting kids with disabilities because they don’t’ feel like they know how. They don’t feel like they have the skills. 

And we’ve set up this system in education where folks who have special education degrees, you know, the name “Special Education” has its own set of issues and challenges around it, right? But folks that are specialists in this area are the keepers of the skills and the information on how to support kids with disabilities, and that’s just not true, necessarily. They may have more education, but they aren’t the only people in the school that have the ability to support all kids, right? So this puts the burden on special education teachers who probably have big case loads of students, who may not have sufficient time to work with colleagues to provide them with information they need to really support all students in the classroom in an inclusive and accessible way, and so we, at the Nora Project, have this mission of empowering teachers by providing them with a strong foundation in disability studies, led by disabled people. 

We really are trying to center the disabled perspective, so we bring in a lot of folks with disabilities and lived experience of disability to train our teachers every year. We are working really hard to make sure folks with disabilities are represented on our staff, and so we want to make sure that the education we’re providing to teachers are informed by the lived experience of disability so that teachers have the language, the tools, the skills, and the understanding that they need to create an environment where all students feel a strong sense of belonging. We also want to empower them by helping them to recognise ableism when they see it and to know what to do about it, to know how to dismantle it. And, by creating classroom spaces that feel good to them and feel good to all of their students, and you know, be able to challenge these structures that exist in these education systems and beyond their communities and families and beyond, to improve that environment so that it truly feels inclusive, so that it’s got you know, universal design approach. We really want folks to feel like they know how to take on this challenge of ableist thinking and ableist practices. 

Lori: Can you please explain ableism and ableist practices for our listeners who may, this may be a new term for? 

Katy: Just in general, ableism is a belief that people who are non-disabled are somehow have.. Their lives have more value than people who are disabled. And it is, you know, ableism occurs when we perpetuate stereotypes about disabilities, when we use language that is painting disability in a negative light, when we create or sort of sustain barriers to folks with disabilities to physical spaces to, thought spaces, etc. So when we talk about dismantling ableism, we’re talking about, first of all, helping people be able to recognise when it is occurring and when barriers exist, and then offering suggestions to them for how to eliminate those barriers or at least minimise those barriers. 

So when we’re doing our trainings in schools, in corporate settings and such, a lot of the times we’ll start with something simple like microaggressions. Which, even though they are sort of, small every day slights, they’re doing a lot of harm. WOrds matter and the language we chose to use is really important. The way we react to disability, the way we paint disability as something tragic or unfortunate, rather than something neutral because it’s a part of the human condition, like, any other identity part, those are… that’s where we start. Because that’s a simple thing. And then we can sort of get into the larger systemic barriers that are tied to ableism. 

Lori: Gotcha. So you have disability studies and is it a curriculum that you’re providing for schools? 

Katy: Yeah, so we have programmes for students in preschool through high school so we’re serving students at all levels. And we have a set of year-long curricular programmes that are social emotional learning based – they focus on friendship skills, empathy skills, and disability studies. Some of our programmes go deeper into disability studies and disability rights movements in the United States, disability history in the United States, but all of our programmes address disability as diversity. So we have our year-long programmes, we call those our life-cycle programmes and then we also have a set of shorter units called our Jumpstart units which are a great way for folks to incorporate the content we provide in a smaller and more flexible package. 

We recognise that it’s a really challenging time in schools right now and teachers are feeling, they’re feeling tired, they’re feeling overburdened and so we wanted to make it very accessible for folks to bring this content to their schools and be able to incorporate it in a meaningful way but one that’s a little bit more flexible than our year-long programmes.

Lori: Right. And would you recommend that schools take this on as a full curriculum rather than the classrooms of someone who might be supporting an individual with a disability? 

Katy: Yes, so actually, our problems are written for all students. That is the idea. That they’re taught in inclusive settings where students with and without disabilities are in a room together. And if we think about it, we know that in every classroom, there are students with and without disabilities, right? And so it’s important to us that folks recognise that this is not content for students with disabilities or for students without disabilities. It’s content for all students. Every kid needs to learn about disability because disability is a part of a lot of people’s identity. So we need to be able to understand it, just like we would any other identity part. 

Lori: Yeah. When I was teaching at an international school, I went into a high school classroom, their Theory of Knowledge classroom and spoke to them about autism spectrum disorder. And it was really interesting with 1 in 44 people being diagnosed on the spectrum how many of the students did not know anyone with disabilities, or they thought they didn’t know anyone on the Spectrum. And and one of the students in the class, she raised her hand afterwards and she said “this is ridiculous” so I said, “what’s that?” and she said “why do we not know anything about this? why am I 18 years old, I’m about ready to graduate high school, and this is the first time learning about individuals with disabilities because our school doesn’t have anyone with a disability in it?” And it was just fascinating to hear her perspective and she was mad, and I was mad with her, because international schools are kind of known for individuals with disabilities in the school. This is changing and it’s been changing slowly throughout the years, which is a really positive thing for all of us. So I guess my question here is, can our international school population take part in the Nora Project curriculum? 

Katy: Absolutely. Absolutely. We are currently serving schools in the Untied States and in Canada and we are working on expanding to the UK but we’re really excited about reaching folks all over the world. This content is important for everybody as I’ve said and so there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be disseminated into the international schools around the world as well. And I’ll just, you know, that story, it hits me. Because we’re mad a lot, at the Nora Project too. The state of education is disappointing in a lot of ways, based on that story where we’ve created this segregated system where students with disabilities are removed from their peers and that is unacceptable. And so what we hope is that by educating folks about disability as diversity and raising people’s consciousness about that, that we can start to change hearts and minds and get school staff to question who isn’t in the room, you know? What can we do about it? How can we push the system and adjust the system so that all people, not just students, because you don’t see or hear about very many adults teachers with disabilities either. Schools are not very accessible places, and we have this stigma around disabilities so that people don’t feel comfortable disclosing if they have a non-apparent disability because there is so much ableism, sort of baked into our society. 

And so what we hope is that we can open the conversation around disability and take away that fear so that people don’t have to feel… some people even feel nervous using the word, disability. That’s why we have euphemisms like special needs and differently abled that the disability community really does not prefer. And we encourage teachers to say disability – just say it. There’s nothing wrong with it. There’s no reason not to. So you know, we’re really just trying to help people overcome and unlearn that. So that they can push on those systems and get that education into their schools. And actually, in the States, Illinois included which is where many of us at the Nora Project are based, we’re. There’s a law. That disability be something the kids learn about at school. And it’s an unfunded mandate in Illionois and in other states, and it’s something that is clearly important to include in school curriculum and yet we don’t have a lot of folks fighting and pushing to make sure that that’s happening. And to make sure that that’s happening inaa way that’s not doing harm to disabled kids. 

So a lot of the programems that we see that sort of check that box, which… that’s it’s own problem, are simulation based. And that simulation focused curriculum can really be harmful and help develop in non-disabled children’s minds this sense that I, for example, a lot of the time are doing common simulation activities like I’m going to wear a blindfold so that I can know what it’s like to be blind. Well, wearing a blindfold for 5 minutes certainly isn’t going to teach them what it’s like to be blind but it may make you think that you know what it’s like. It may make you think, like, oh thank goodness I’m not blind. What a tragic terrible way to live. That is not the thing we want kids to walk away with when they’re learning about disabilities.

We want them to learn that disability is identity, that a lot of poeple are really proud of that identity, that people with disabilities do the same stuff as people without disabilities, that anyone could become disabled at any time in their life, it’s the only thing that’s intersectional with every other identity part, so we want kisd to walk away with those, that perspective of disability and not one where they are saying “phew, thank god I’m not disabled”. Really really don’t want to perpetuate that kind of thinking. 

Lori: Wonderful. I was curious as well, so as you were talking, I was thinking about the diversity and inclusion movement happening everywhere in the world right now and how sometimes there is a focus on individuals with disabilities within this movement and sometimes not. Does the Nora Project have any sort of intersectionality with that curriculum? 

Katy: Yeah, so we have… we’ve noticed that too, that disability is very frequently left off the table, and we actually worked with an organisation to help us look at all of our curriculum through the DEI lens to ensure that all the students that are working with our curriculum see themselves in the curriculum. So we made some pretty big adjustments to the programme materials in 2020 and we also worked with one of our Nora Project teachers, Alex Parker, actually, who helped us create a tool called our “Pivot Points Companion Guide”, and that tool is designed to help teachers pivot conversations about disability to other aspects of diversity. Because we think that disability is a really great jumping off point to talk about other aspects of diversity, race, gender expression, ethnicity, etc. So lots of opportunities for rich conversations and you can use disability as the starting point. So we do have that tool available for schools to use, to sort of generate those larger conversations in the DEIJ space. 

Lori: That’s great. Very encouraging as well. Tell me about the video projects that you’ve done with some of your students. 

Katy: Yeah, so our flagship programme is called the Storyteller Project, and that programme culminates in the creation of… it’s a student created documentary. So the whole idea of that programme is for kids to use storytelling as a mechanism to better understand themselves, their own identities, and with their peers. So they are learning about one another through structured activities, lessons that… you know, they learn about disabilities, they learn about disability history, empathy… friendship. Best practices for inclusion. They learn all of this through direct instruction. But then they also are working in groups all year long. So teachers create groups within their classrooms and they have the opportunity to get to know each other better. Even if these students have been… typically these storyteller projects happen in 4th or 5th grade, but we’ve seen it all done in 4th through 8th grade and also have a high school version of the programme, and so even if these students have been working, learning together for many many years, we know that kids don’t get to know each of their peers in that group equally, right? It’s so, we create these groups so that students can intentionally get to know folks that they might otherwise not have spent a lot of time getting to know. 

And they do these activity days throughout the school year where the kids, based on what they learned about each other in the group, come up with ideas on what they want to do in unstructured time that is enjoyable and accessible for every member of the group. And so during those activity days, they’re collecting footage of those experiences and that footage is what ends up in the documentary films. They also interview one another, sometimes they interview a trusted adult, every child has the opportunity to name a trusted adult, that they can be interviewed about them, and the documentary sort of can spotlight each member of the group and share a little about them, and then students also reflect on the 3 essential questions of the programme, which are 

1 – what does it mean to be a good friend? 

2 – why is there no such thing as normal? 

3 – why do we share our stories with others? 

So the documentaries are a culmination of all of that. And we encourage schools to create a special event around those, whether that’s virtual or in-person, whether that’s a big after school event where the whole communities come together, or during the day with students in the school attending, but folks, you know, we provide decoration materials so that they can create a special event around the screening of these documentaries and make sure that every child gets the chance to walk the red carpet and share what they learned with their community. 

Lori: Wow, that sounds phenomenal. And I can just imagine the excitement at the school when these events happen. 

Katy: Yeah, I was just at an event on Friday and it was the kids just love, they just love sharing what they’ve learned and the process of reflection, what we hear from the teachers, is they take such ownership of the learning and they really go deep and reflect deeply on what they’ve learned on it. It’s transformative. We ask the kids to tell how has the Nora Project changed you in general and it’s so wonderful to hear kids say things like, I’m kinder to everyone, or I look for someone who’s not being included and try to figure out how I can include them. Or you know, other really important lessons about friendships that will apply for the rest of their lives. 

Lori: Right, it’s amazing! And earlier in the podcast you mentioned that teachers are not fearful of the students or the disability, they’re fearful, really, about their own ability, I guess, to be able to work with these individuals and say the right thing or do the right thing, and I imagine our students feel the same way. So by having this opportunity, it takes away that fear. 

Katy: Yea, yeah, what we want to do is normalise and demystify disability. 

Lori: Mmhmm. Yeah. So everything you all do there at the Nora Project, wow. Very commendable and amazing and I could go on and on… tell me how, how did you begin? Where did this all start? 

Katy: We had a really interesting journey over the years – we were founded in 2016 and our CEO is actually mother of her daughter Nora, who’s the namesake of the project. So Nora was the inspiration for the project but what’s interesting about our organization is it has evolved so much from the beginning. We have learned so much about the kind of work that needs to be done and the kind of work that we want to be a part of in terms of elevating disability as diversity and making sure that we are projecting that message to students and teachers. 

So the program came about because you know Lauren when Nora was born, Lauren realized she did not know really anything about disability as an adult. And reflecting on her experience growing up and thinking about how she never learned about disability in school, as you had mentioned, and she was looking around and wondering… Has that changed? and it really hasn’t, we’re still not teaching about disability in schools. So Lauren worked with her her cousin, our co-founder and they came up with the first iteration of the Nora Project, a program to teach about disability in school and since then we’ve grown from one program in one school to full suite of programs in well this year we worked with over 60 schools across the country and in Canada. And we’re really hoping to expand that. And so that was in 2016 when we started and here we are in 2022, trying to continue to grow not only our programme base but our training opportunities and trying to think about how can we make the most impact in the education space and beyond so we also offer corporate training and we have a disability inclusion 101 corporate trainig – it’s a great workshop that has been really impactful for a lot of companies that we’ve worked with so far, and we’re working on providing parent focused content to make sure parents also get disability education and disability studies and we’re always looking for ways to continue to serve our stakeholders to make sure everyone has the information that they need to be a part of that mission. 

Lori: Wow, that sounds wonderful. Well, thank you for coming today. 

Katy: Thank you so much! 

Thank you for joining us for today’s show. For more information including how to subscribe and show notes, please head to our website. That’s SENIAinternational.org/podcast. Until next time, cheers.

 

Show #59 The Problem with Traditional IQ Tests

Show #59 The Problem with Traditional IQ Tests

Today, host Lori Boll speaks with Dr. Jack Naglieri. Some of you may recognize that last name. Yes, he is the creator of the Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test. Jack and Lori speak about how traditional IQ tests do not measure how students think. Rather, they measure what they know- which is an inherently biased and unfair practice. Today’s conversation is eye-opening and hopefully gets us all thinking about changing the traditional system and the benefits of doing so. 

Bio

Dr. Jack A. Naglieri, Ph.D. Emeritus Professor at George Mason University and Senior Research Scientist at the Devereux Center for Resilient Children. His main interest is the development of psychological and educational tests and the implications these approaches have for accurate and equitable assessment. He has published about 25 books, 50 tests and rating scales, and approximately 300 research papers. Jack is the author of tests used for identification of gifted students including the Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test, the Naglieri Tests of General Ability Verbal, Quantitative and Nonverbal with coauthors Dina Brulles and Kim Lansdowne and the forthcoming Kaufman Multidimensional Assessment of Creativity with James Kaufman and Cecil Reynolds. He is also well known for his neurocognitive theory of intelligence referred to as PASS and measured with the Cognitive Assessment System-2nd Edition and the related book Helping Children Learn-Second Edition; the Autism Spectrum Rating Scale (2010); Comprehensive Executive Function Inventory (2013); the Devereux Elementary Student Strengths Assessment (DESSA); and the DESSA-mini for universal screening of SEL behaviors.

Connect

Transcript

Transcribed by Kanako Suwa

[ Introduction music plays ]

Welcome to the SENIA Happy Hour with your host, Lori Boll. We know you’re busy so we bring you 1 hour’s worth of content in under thirty minutes, leaving you with time for a true happy hour. 

Lori: Hello everyone. Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Jack Naglieri. So some of you may recognise that last name. Yes. He is the creator of the Naglieri Non-Verbal Ability Test, which many of us have probably given in our experiences. So Jack and I speak about how traditional IQ tests do not actually measure how students think. Rather, they measure what they know which is inherently biased and an unfair practice. Today’s conversation is really eye-opening and hopefully gets us all thinking about changing the traditional system and the benefits of doing so. And now, onto the show. 

Hello Jack and welcome to the podcast. 

Dr. Jack: Hi Lori, nice to be here. Thank you for inviting me. 

Lori: Yeah, you bet! So I wanna start by framing the conversation around one of the problems you’ve set out to solve. And that is intelligence testing that evaluates students fairly and equitably. Tell us how you became interested in fair assessment of intelligence. 

Dr. Jack: This is really an important question and has a lot of parts. So I’ll start from the beginning. I actually first noticed that the intelligence test that I was taught to give was very similar to the achievement test I was taught to give when I worked as a school psychologist in 1975. And I was only a beginning 25 year old in the field but something didn’t feel right. And I remember thinking, these two tests are supposed to be measuring something different but I have a vocabulary test on the intelligence test and there’s vocabulary on the achievement test. There’s math word problems on the intelligence test and there’s math word problems on the achievement test and so on. When I went on for my PhD at the University of Georgia, there was some discussion about whether or not the so-called Verbal Intelligence Scale, or the WISC, was really measuring knowledge or measuring intelligence. But what really struck me was when I began working in Northern Arizona as a professor at Northern Arizona University and we started doing some work with Native American students. And I actually worked in the Supai village which is located inside the Grand Canyon. 

Lori: Oh wow. 

Dr. Jack: Working with students there who lived in a community, a tiny little community where there were no cars, where they were really isolated, really from the rest of the people in the state, and I was doing what I was taught to do. Giving a WISC to a student who hardly spoke English and mostly Supai language, she got a score on the verbal part of the WISC that was like, a 2nd percentile score. But her score on the performance, now what we would call non-verbal skill, was pretty average. And I wrote in my report that that score should not count as a measure of intelligence and I got a lot of grief from my colleagues who said “no, that measures intelligence. It’s verbal intelligence!” and these Native American people who, you know, live out in the desert, they have to have good spatial skills so their right brain is developed and left brain isn’t, and… they went on and on with these, kind of, explanations to which I responded, “that’s completely absurd”. You know, it’s just not right. 

So I published my first paper on equity in 1982, and my first test that I published, which eventually became the Naglieri Non-Verbal Ability Test, I published that in 1985. And I explicitly stated that measuring general intelligence with these kinds of tests is more valid and more fair because it’s not confounded by what a student knows. It measures how well a student can think, and a vocabulary test can measure how well a student can think, if they’ve been exposed to the content. But if they haven’t, then the basic assumption that the vocabulary is a good way to measure intelligence is violated. 

Lori: Very true. 

Dr. Jack: So that’s why, to me, critically important to always separate out when we’re trying to measure intelligence, to separate out how well a student can think from how well a student can solve problems based on knowledge that they should’ve or typically have been able to acquire in schools or in other contexts where advantage makes a difference. 

Lori: Right – and interestingly, much of our audience comes from the international field. Many of us are international school teachers or professionals or parents in the international circuit and you know, many of us have given your assessment to our students just for that reason. Because their language is different than what we’re assessing their intelligence test in, and it just made no sense to keep assessing them and having them score so dismally when we all knew that wasn’t their true score. 

Dr. Jack: That’s right. I would argue even more that even a student who knows the language that the intelligence test may be given in… let’s say, a WISC that’s been translated into some other language, and that language is used in a country where that language is spoken and the student knows the language, I would argue that still inappropriate. Because we should not be measuring intelligence in ways that depend on what people know. Because that’s two influence or variables that… you know, to be really honest and historically accurate, using those kinds of tests to evaluate people was pretty much the first approach in 1900’s, a hundred years ago and it was completely atheoretical and it was all based upon predicting achievement, which is a circular argument in the first place.

Lori: Right. So your whole position is that intelligence should measure how well a person can think to answer the questions on the test but they don’t do that very well so the majority of our intelligence tests that we’re giving students are basing it on what they know and not how they think. 

Dr. Jack: Yes. That’s true of all the tests. So the WISC, the Stanford-Binet, the Differential Ability Scales, the Woodcock Johnson, any of these kinds of tests that have been developed really in the last 100 years that demand knowledge. All these tests, in my opinion, are inaccurate. And think about this, for a second. We’ve experienced COVID. We know that students have not benefited from education the way they did before COVID. That renders all of those tests inaccurate. Because now you’re comparing students who are two years older but didn’t really get two years of education to students who didn’t have a gap like that. So this, this problem of the impact of knowledge on the intelligence scores is really serious and in fact, I have a research project that is almost finished, pre-post COVID project, where we show that in fact, if we measure intelligence in a way that is not influenced by what as student has learned in school, there is not that much difference pre- and post- COVID. But of course, when you look at achievement scores pre- and post- COVID, there are big differences. 

Lori: Ohhh I see. So that’s the impact that you were discussing. Okay. Got it. So when it comes to equitable identification of all students, it seems, that we keep doing the same thing and getting the same results, which as you were saying, are not great. So, we haven’t seen widespread change. So what are the obstacles causing that and how are you going about dismantling those? 

Dr. Jack: Yeah, so it’s a really fascinating and frustrating at the same time for me. Fascinating because it’s unfortunate, the extent to which people are unwilling to embrace new ideas about intelligence. People often say to me, well, we know what intelligence is, it’s what intelligence tests measure. And I ask, why would you assume that to be true? And the implications are so profound, especially as it relates to equity. So, fr example, I like to read old books about intelligence and I have a whole stack of them here in my office. Because it’s time travel, right? I have one book that I particularly love, it’s called “Intelligence Testing of Children at Ellis Island”. 

Lori: Oh. Wow.

Dr. Jack: Yeah, yeah. It’s great. And when I read it, I’m looking at the, what they said back then vis a vis perspective they had back then. So for example, if you look at all the early books, they were right from the very beginning comparing people. So Turnman is a good example – the author of Stanford Binet. What he knows and it was clearly racist and eugenics like many people were at that time period. And what do they do? They actually categorized people by backgrounds. Florence Goodenough, who I talk about a lot because I use the work in another context but I didn’t realize until recently that she did a lot of work on comparing racial and ethnic groups and one of her papers, she literally has a table of.. Average scores by white people, by Hispacnic people, by Native American people, by Irish people, by Polish people, Italian people, and so on. And you know what you’ve got.

Lori: Of course…

Dr. Jack: You got exactly what people expected. Well, of course these groups aren’t as smart as us. 

Lori: Right… rather than thinking of the test itself and what it means.

Dr. Jack: Right, exactly. What they did was they used the results of these new tests that they just created and they assumed that the tests were reflecting differences in people when the test was really reflecting the content of those tests, which are inappropriate for those people. But they arrogantly thought they were measuring intelligence and that’s why they said, these Italian people are stupid, you know, etc, etc, etc. Right? And it comes back to what they, what method they used to measure intelligence. Which is what basically what Binet and Army Alpha and Army Beta were all about. And this is somehow, it got solidified by Wechsler. Wechsler was a military examiner, he worked for the US military and the US military developed the Army Alpha and the Army Beta and what Wechsler did was take that test and make that into tests that clinicians can use. That was his original contribution when he worked at the Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan.

Lori: Wow. That is fascinating. 

Dr. Jack: And so Wechsler’s grip on this concept of intelligence, verbal and non-verbal, with some quantitative stuff, wasn’t his original idea. It came from the US military in 1917. And you know, people still think Wechsler is the gold standard. And I say, not even close. Because if you understand the history and you understand the lack of theoretical perspective that drove these tests, and in the way in which they were validating the predetermined views of the people of the time, it all starts to fit together. And why haven’t we been able to change? Because people think, “this is the way it is” and I took some sense of historical perspective when I read the book, “Guns, Germs, and Steel” and the author talked about automobiles and cars, horses and automobiles were on the same roads for 50 years before they managed to change it, you know. 

But a 100 years of intelligence testing and we’re still doing the same thing. It’s inexcusable and even given the evidence, there’s so much evidence about the damage that this approach creates. It’s still hard to get people to change. What I have done, is to help people understand the historical problem but then show all the evidence that I’ve accumulated with all my non-verbal work and also with my work on cognitive assessment system, which is a theoretically developed intelligence test based on brain function, not based upon what Wechsler did or what Binet did, and I’ve been able to show with decades of research, that when you change your conceptualization and your thinking in a way that is not confounded by knowledge, not only do you get equity but you get much more sensitivity from children with ADHD, children with dyslexia, children with autism and so on and so forth. 

So it’s frustrating, as I said frustrating and fascinating at the same time, but if you look at the data, if you look at it objectively, it’s really clear that we need to be thinking of intelligence from a) a theoretical perspective and b) a theoretical perspective based upon the brain and we need to have an instrument that is developed specifically across that, according to that perspective and we need to have the research that shows the validity of the different perspective. And that’s always been my approach. I don’t, I don’t advocate in the advancement of science. For example, CHC is a very popular approach these days in advocating for the advancement of science. Even if you read Carl Jones book, as some people call it bible now for cognitive abilities, in the last chapter first paragraph, he says of course we haven’t looked at the validity of these facts. Minor detail…

Lori: Very minor… 

Dr. Jack: Yeah, so that’s my perspective. And you know, I’ve taken, really decades of research to get to this point where I’m completely comfortable saying to people, you know what, what we’ve been doing is not the way it should be done, look at the evidence that I’ve developed with my Naglieri Non-Verbal and my cognitive assessment system, which clearly show benefits changing what we’ve done to measure thinking in a way that’s not confounded by knowing. 

Lori: Great, I mean… so you’ve created tests now that were carefully designed to measure thinking. 

Dr. Jack: Yes.

Lori: versus the knowing. So the test were designed to significantly decrease the amount of formal knowledge required so tests measure how well a student thinks. I think most people listening to this interview will really be excited to hear more about this. So let’s start by talking more about how you went about designing this intelligence test this way. 

Dr. Jack: Okay. I’m going to talk about the, really, the 3 groups of tasks that I’ve developed. The initial Naglieri Non-Verbal, which has been around since, actually 1985, it was originally called the Matrix Analogy test, that was the first version. In that first version, we measure general ability, this concept is a vague concept really but it has a lot of empirical support, we measure general ability using diagrams and figures. More recently, I’ve taken that approach and just actually just this month, we’ll publish 3 new non-verbal tests of general ability that are similar to my Naglieri Non-Verbal, we have a non-verbal version but we also have a verbal and a quantitative version. The thing is, the verbal and the quantitative can be solved regardless of the language the person speaks. The directions are given with an animated video instead of oral instructions. And none of the content in that quantitative or the verbal involves a specific language. And we’ve shown with research studies that these 3 tests don’t yield gender differences, race differences, ethnic differences, or parental education level differences. And that’s the study, that’s actually 3 studies with about 7000 students, K-12, who were carefully selected to match the US population for generalisability to the US. 

Lori: Wow, that’s really fascinating. 

Dr. Jack: So you can create traditional general ability tests that are more equitable – I’ve done it. But here’s the thing. If you want to understand why a student can read, if you want to understand why is a student impulsive and disorganized and seem incapable of getting things done, if you want to understand if it’s a cognitive component to that student who can focus really really well but can’t shift from one thing to the other, when you want to understand why students who can read just fine but can’t comprehend what they’re reading, you have to use a different approach. And that’s where my cognitive assessment system comes in. Because with that, my colleague and I, in the mid 80’s, we conceptualized intelligence on the basis of brain function. 

So what does that mean? It sounds kind of… almost scary. But it’s really simple. Because Lorea’s work and a lot of the work thereafter show that basically 4 main regions of our brains. The first is the brain stem, which of course is important for cortical arousal and focus of attention. The back part of the brain, occipital and parietal is what we use when we understand how things go together. In other words, you can understand it as visual and spatial but that doesn’t have to be visual, it could be words that describe relationships. 

Lori: Like concepts.

Dr. Jack: The temporal part of our brain is all about sequencing. Sequencing of anything – words, numbers, speech articulation, reading decoding, phonological tests. The front part of the brain is how you do what you decide to do. That’s this concept of executive function. So what we did was we said intelligence has 4 components and we met and we developed tasks, which are now in the second edition, to measure those 4 components which is called the Cognitive Assessment System, Second Edition. And we measure these 4 abilities and we find that students with dyslexia, students who can’t decode the words, they have trouble on all sequencing tasks. Temporal part. Students who have trouble with reading comprehension, they have trouble with the simultaneous tasks, which is the back part of the brain. Students with ADHD, hyper-active impulsive types, they have trouble with the planning portion of the test, which is the front part of the brain. But the inattentive type of students, they have trouble with the attention scale on our test. 

Lori: That is fascinating. That is really interesting. 

Dr. Jack: Different profiles for different students based upon really their learning profiles. Because that’s really what these four brain concepts are all about. That’s what intelligence should be about. How well you can learn. 

Lori: Well, I think what it also tells me is something we can… when we know what area it is, we can do something about it. So often we get these scores that really tell us nothing. So… what an important component. 

Dr. Jack: Yeah, that’s correct. And I’ve published a book of interventions that go along with the theory and the task. Interventions that are designed explicitly for teachers and parents, and even for students themselves, to use their strengths to manage their weaknesses. So a student who has trouble with decoding of words because they have trouble with sequencing, we would first help them understand the nature of that problem and say, okay, now when you get stuck, think smart and use a plan. A plan could be chunking the information into smaller segments. 

Lori: Yep. Perfect. Let me ask you a question. For someone, let’s say, has been identified as you know, this is kind of old terminology, but profound autism or severe autism, can your test work for someone on that scale to measure? 

Dr. Jack: Yeah, we’ve used the diagnostic assessments for decades for a full range, very low ability to a very high ability. 

Lori: Hm. Fascinating. So what’s the benefit? Well, I think the benefit is, I think I can answer this, is that by having the assessment that you’ve now created, we can use their strengths to support them and use the strategies you’ve come up with to support them – the interventions. Is that correct? 

Dr. Jack: Yes. We can see the students for who they are and we can communicate to the students what we found in ordinary language – I mean, think about it. Isn’t that the most important person to tell? When you’ve done an evaluation of a student? And when that student says to you, Oh yeah, that’s right, I just can’t concentrate… that’s an important step for that student to understand here’s the problem and let’s talk about what we’re gonna do about it. 

Lori: I love it. So is there a book or a film or any other resources that you have that have had an influence on you either personally or professionally that you’d recommend to us? 

Dr. Jack: The books that I’ve read, you mean? 

Lori: Yeah, that you recommend! 

Dr. Jack: Well, I think that Luria’s book on language and cognition is one of my favorites and I think it’s, for a lot of reasons. It talks a lot about what I call past for planning, attention simultaneous, and success to processing. I think going back and reading some of the older books on non-verbal assessment, that was a really important one for me. I’ll tell you something interesting, I found out that Rudolph Pitner was a professor at Ohio State University as I was, in the same building that I was in, about 40 years before me. So I thought that was kind of interesting! 

Lori: Wow! 

Dr. Jack: Yeah, but anyway, I think that… that says all. 

Lori: Yeah, I think that’s cool! We’ll add those resources to the show notes so people can grab them. 

Dr. Jack: And I would encourage people to go to my two websites – www.Dr. Jacknaglieri.com – that website has a lot of information about my work on the cognitive assessment system and other things. I work on autism spectrum rating scale, my executive functioning rating scale, I work with a social emotional test and so on. And for more specifically for gifted, look at www.naglierigiftedtests.com and people can also get in touch with me via those websites. 

Lori: Okay, great! We’ll put those on our resource list as well. So, Jack. You are going to be a speaker at our upcoming virtual conference. 

Dr. Jack: That’s right, I’m looking forward to that.

Lori: Yeah, we’re really excited and I think it’s going to help so many of us. So can you just allude to what you will be speaking about? 

Dr. Jack: Yeah. What I would really like to talk about is this concept of measuring thinking rather than knowing and as it relates to trying to understand the strengths and struggles of students, we really need to talk about posterior intelligence, which is what the Cognitive Assessment System was designed to measure, and where it came from, how well it can be used to really help us do a better job of helping students learn. 

Lori: That’s great. I think that all of us would benefit and hopefully create some positive change after a 100 years of not changing so positive change to work with the students’ strength. Okay, well, that’s a great way to end so thank you so much for your time and knowledge! 

Dr. Jack: You’re quite welcome and I’m really glad we had the chance to chat today. 

Lori: Yeah, me too! Thanks. 

Dr. Jack: Bye. 

Thank you for joining us for today’s show. For more information including how to subscribe and show notes, please head to our website. That’s SENIAinternational.org/podcast. Until next time, cheers.

Show #60 Identity Centered Education- Let’s Change Systems, Not Students! Identity Centered Education- Let’s Change Systems, Not Students!

Show #60 Identity Centered Education- Let’s Change Systems, Not Students! Identity Centered Education- Let’s Change Systems, Not Students!

On today’s show, host Lori Boll speaks with Daniel Wickner the founder of Identity-Centered Learning, a framework for supporting students’ identity development in schools. This work builds on culturally-relevant, responsive, and sustaining pedagogies and is informed by his own biracial, multicultural, and multilingual identity, along with his thirteen years in international education. Daniel discusses his own background in schools and the impact that had on him as well as what he means by identity centered education. Lori and Daniel also discuss changing systems rather than students and how we, as educators need to become “Identity Experts” for our students as they go through their own identity journeys.

Bio

Daniel Wickner (he/him/his) is the founder of Identity-Centered Learning (www.identity centered.com), a framework for supporting students’ identity development in schools. This work builds on culturally-relevant, responsive, and sustaining pedagogies and is informed by his own biracial, multicultural, and multilingual identity, along with his thirteen years in international education. He currently teaches third grade at Hong Kong International School and supports schools as a consultant in the areas of identity and DEIJ.

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Resources from Today’s Show

Transcript

Transcribed by Kanako Suwa

[ Introduction music plays ]

Welcome to the SENIA Happy Hour with your host, Lori Boll. We know you’re busy so we bring you 1 hour’s of content in under thirty minutes, leaving you with time for a true happy hour. 

Lori: Hello everyone. Today I got to speak with Daniel Wickner and Daniel (he/him/his) is the founder of Identity Centered Learning. It is a framework for supporting students’ identity development in schools. This work builds on culturally relevant, responsive, and sustaining pedagogies and is informed by his own biracial, multicultural, and multilingual identity along with his 13 years in international education. He currently teaches third grade at Hong Kong International School and supports schools as a consultant in the areas of identity and DEIJ. In today’s conversation, we discussed his own background in schools and the impact that had on him as well as what he means by identity centered education. This was new learning for me and incredibly impactful. It really caused me to reflect on my past teaching practices and how I could have done better to honor all identities in my room. I hope you’ll take away as much as I did from today’s conversation. 

There are just a few moments in the show where there are some sound issues due to our poor connection, but it’s really not a problem, so I just wanted to let you know about that in advance. And now, onto the show. 

Hi Daniel and welcome to the podcast! 

Daniel: Hi thanks for having me. 

Lori: It’s great having you. So as I mentioned in your introduction, you are the founder of Identity Centered Learning and that’s identitycentered.com, correct? 

Daniel: Yep. 

Lori: And it’s a framework for supporting students’ identity development in schools. Why does this topic of identity matter to you? 

Daniel: Well, I think it should matter to all of us but I know it matters to me because it’s been a struggle. I think that of all the things that have been challenging for us in life, in many ways, define us and define our journeys and where we are in our journeys, and for me, identity has been… my identity has been one that’s challenged me and I’ve grappled with and continue to struggle with throughout the years, both as a child and also as an adult and as an educator. And then also just sort of noticing how that identity changes throughout my life and noticing the identities of my students and how they change and what affects them. And how does this impact happen and whether they’re intentional or unintentional. Both from my perspective, having had certain things impact my identity and having control over certain aspects of my identity and sort of, trying to break that down, and look at my work as an educator through that lens, of… what am I doing as an educator inside the classroom in my relationships with students and in systems that I create, and how is that impacting who students become and when they become it. 

Lori: Thanks. So I read an incredible article that you wrote for TIE Online, it was called “Focus on Identity” and in this article, you… part that really stood out to me, and we’ll be posting this in our show note, was when you said “Like other BIPOC individuals, I have needed to grapple with my racial and cultural identities for my whole life, starting from the day my kindergarten classmates laughed at my onigiri lunch. I have needed to explain my mix of races and cultures to thousands of people in four different languages, listening as they ask, “what are you” and “where are you really from?” but always hearing “explain how you’re not one of us”.” So, this is a really powerful piece, Daniel, and I think of that little kindergarten Daniel being laughed at because of his lunch and it’s truly heartbreaking. Can you just tell us a little bit more about what that experience was for you and how we can kind of put ourselves into the shoes of our students? 

Daniel: Yeah, and I think that now reflecting on that sentence, that experience still continues to be powerful for me, not because it was just the lunches, just the little rice balls, you know, the Japanese rice balls, it’s not… I think it was a symbol, a lot more. That as a child, maybe I didn’t understand symbolism, but that symbolism impacted me. And it impacted me throughout, it continues to impact me. That symbolism and because that food represented more than just my lunch. It represented my family, it represented my culture, it represented my history. But in many ways, it also represented being made to feel inherently or intrinsically less than. I think that that’s sort of a common thread throughout a lot of marginalized… experiences of marginalization. Is this feeling of, because of who you are, you are less than. And I think the experience of growing up as an Asian American, I’m noticing that certain parts of me were laughed at and joked about and put down, whereas other parts of me weren’t. And so I think those experiences made me, sort of instinctively, as a sort of… protection to move myself towards the parts of me, the Americanness, the whiteness, the maleness, the aspects of me that were empowered within the systems that I habited, specifically within education and within society. 

And centering those parts of myself and really highlighting those parts of myself and hiding the parts of myself that didn’t experience that kind of affirmation. And I think reflecting on that has made me think about, you know, what are the experiences that my students go through systematically – not just, you know, this day and that day but rather what messages are we sending through the educational systems that we provide for them? The environment, the practices… and what messages are those sending? What’s the symbolism behind those messages, kind of like the symbols that I sort of soaked in? And what actions are the children taking based on that? What are they doing when they internalize that message? Which, unfortunately, they do. But I guess on the flip side, thinking about, what are the outcomes if we shift systems, or what systems we do already have that are affirming students’ identities completely? And demarginalizing students – what messages are those systems sending and how are students taking action based on those? So my reflection has made me think about what are the systems we have, how are schools actually run, and what messages are those sending and what actions do students take in both a very positive and a very negative reaction. 

Lori: Yeah, absolutely. And as you were speaking, I was reflecting on TV shows that we watch and movies where there are bullying due to race or disability or gender, sexuality, and so often in my head, I think “does that really happen? Is that really true?” and I think that many of us teachers feel that because we are not thinking that way, that our students are not thinking that way. Does that make sense? 

Daniel: Absolutely. Yeah.

Lori: So thank you for kind of bringing this to light. In your article, you encouraged teachers to be identity experts. You say, “this constant exercise of identity, self-reflection, and growth can help us all become finer teachers – identity experts for our students as they go through their own identity journeys. Recognising, understanding, and confronting our privilege, biases, blind spots, and complicity and where they exist. It allows us and our students to truly see systemic inequity and injustice wherever they exist”. So… that’s a lot. Can you share more about this, about how identity connects to education? 

Daniel: Yeah, I’m sorry, that was probably a run-on sentence when I look at that…

Lori: No, no, again, it’s very powerful! I encourage everyone to read this. 

Daniel: Yeah, well, one of the biggest lessons I feel like I learned as an educator, from the teacher mentors that I was very fortunate to have, was the idea of modeling, and realizing that growing up, that wasn’t something I had noticed in the teachers I had. Maybe because, I don’t know why, it didn’t seem like the teachers were really acting like they wanted me to act. They weren’t putting themselves out there and saying “hey I’m going to set myself up as a role model for you”. And maybe it was because I didn’t see my teachers as role models, but that idea of modeling is really powerful and I’v noticed throughout my teaching career that the actions, the attitudes, the behaviors, the language, the words that I use, it impacts students more than what I just tell them. And I think that, to every veteran teacher, that’s pretty standard, like you just notice that, right? 

Lori: Right.

Daniel: And so applying that to identity centered learning and the idea of, well, we are as human beings, especially as adult human beings, we have experiences in our lives going through our identity journeys. But a lot of us, hopefully all of us have reflected on our identities and had identity crises and challenges and identity complexity, which I think that we all have if we take a moment to look at it. None of us is simple. And so thinking about well, students are going through this, students of all ages are putting together pieces of who they are and sort of rearranging pieces and swapping and discovering new pieces and tracing parts of themselves… they’re going through this just like we had. And so thinking about my role as a teacher of children, not just as a transmitter of content and skill but rather somebody who can model the practices around identity development – so not necessarily telling students “you need to be this, you need to be that,” but rather “this is how I chose to become this, maybe you can give it a try, or you can find a different way, and this is a challenge that I had and this is how I confronted that challenge, here are things that I grappled with, here are things that confused me, here are things that still confuse me about myself. Here’s a time when I was made to feel xy or z, because of who I am, and here’s how I responded to it. Maybe I should’ve responded this way, or maybe not”. And really positioning myself as that model and noticing that when I would share those experiences with the students, when I would put myself out there as that model, then that’s when, like popcorn, all this sharing would come out. And all of this connection would come out. Really genuine stuff where students would bring forth stuff that they wouldn’t do if I had just said, “tell me about a time when…”

Lori: Right. Sharing those personal stories that really brought it out of them. Wow. 

Daniel: Absolutely. 

Lori: So, how do you define identity centered learning? 

Daniel: yea, well, I think it’s in the name. It’s centering identity. I feel like, it’s kind of a play on student centered learning. To be honest, student centered learning gets thrown around too much, I think anything that involves students suddenly becomes student centered learning. And I think that that’s… I think it’s incomplete, student centered learning, the discourse around it. And so I wanted to get deeper into that and say, yes, we are talking about students but we’re talking about centering how students develop understandings, deep understandings about who they are and who they will become. And putting that at the center of the education process. And I would claim that it’s already at the center of the education process, we just don’t recognise it that way because we’re so occupied with standards, skills, proficiency, grades, etc. But the biggest thing you emerge with at the end of the educational process is a greater understanding of who you are, hopefully. But I think that we also often emerge from our school experience with really toxic messages about who we are, and those messages which we also apply to others’ identities. And so, if we look at education as a process of identity development, which is how I would define it, then that really, to me, was a big paradigm shift where we look at what I was doing inside the classroom and thinking about what are my priorities? If I’m placing my students’ identity development at the center, then how am I… is this thing that I do, is this empowering them? To realize, to become who they are? Is this empowering them in terms of becoming? Or is this mandating or denying or dismissing parts of who they are? And it’s made me shift a lot of my practices which I realized were problematic. And I continue to notice things and I go back and so that’s been sort of the core, that students’ identity development is at the center and it’s empowerment. It’s putting them in the drivers’ seat of their own development. So it’s not talking about identity every day, it’s not talking about who we are every single day, but it’s always having that in mind. Always having our identity in the room while we’re doing our schooling. And then noticing when is that identity being empowered and uplifted and when is it not. 

Lori: Yeah, well, I think about our own backgrounds and where we’re all coming from so this may be a convoluted question so I’m going to talk it through. So I think about myself, I’m a cisgender, white female. But I do have a background because my son has a disability. So I look at a lot of things through that lens, the disability lens. So I’m wondering how, as teachers, if we don’t have the background of particular identities, how we can support our students without having that background. 

Daniel: That’s a massive question. Um. And I can… thinking about it from the perspective of special education and different abilities as well, it helps me, it really helps me to reflect on not only my privilege as being abled body but also on the systems that have benefitted me. And I think that it’s, you’re absolutely right. When we have a blind spot which comes from our privilege, which comes from something that’s an advantage to us, it’s very easy to overlook something that’s incredibly damaging and incredibly toxic. 

I’m reminded of, you know, when I was in second grade and I was, for whatever reason, I was very very good at second grade math. And second grade math, as defined by the curriculum and the teacher at the time, which really back then was a memorisation of the times tables and so I remember just playing a game called “Around the World” where… 

Lori: Oh my god. Yes! 

Daniel: I don’t know how many times this has come up but you know. I, because I had started on practicing my multiplication facts, that game, which was very often played inside the classroom which was just, you know, like, can you remember this quicker, do you have quicker recall than the person next to you, and I was made to feel incredibly intelligent at the expense of everyone else inside the classroom. And being privileged in that way, and feeling “wow!”, that was an identity message for me. It was a toxic identity message for me because it gave me a very very incomplete view of what intelligences are and the essence of learning. It gave me so many toxic messages but it still impacted my identity. And I wouldn’t say it was in a positive way and it also affected the identities of everyone else in the classroom with some very powerful signals of who they are, who I am… so reflecting on that experience, which I remember thinking about so fondly, because of how great it made me feel, and then realizing that oh my gosh, this benefitted me in such.. This rearrangement of resources of power, that system was inequitable and I benefitted from that. And so thinking back on that and many others that benefitted me, has made me incredibly passionate about the idea of how, sort of, the centering of ability within classrooms. I mean, let’s admit it, school as we see it is centered around the idea of ability. And I think that that makes it really challenging for those with differing abilities, people who are neurodivergent, people who don’t fit this very narrow idea of which abilities are “developmental” or “developmentally appropriate” for a particular number of years on the planet. 

And you know, thinking about standards as well, and thinking about what is considered standard, what is considered excellence and proficiency, let’s really question that. And realizing that just because somebody is proficient in those particular things, to question the system as opposed to questioning the child when they don’t match the pretty arbitrary set of very narrow band of abilities that are valued. And I think that, it comes back to valuing. 

I was reading the transcript from your previous podcast in talking about value and how we associate ability with value. I mean, this is, I don’t wanna get too much into the capitalist underpinnings of education but…

Lori: *laughs* yeah… 

Daniel: but we do, it’s connected to this valuing of ability and so questioning that and really pulling that back and thinking about, what are the messages that the systems are sending to students of all abilities, even those who are “excellent students”. It’s sending them toxic messages as well. 

Lori: Yeah. You’re absolutely right and it’s… as basic as this is, it reminds me of these memes that keep coming out on Facebook right now as students are going through graduation, they’re saying yes, there’s all these kids that are being celebrated for their intelligence or their music abilities or whatever but make sure you also celebrate the student who were the quiet ones that, you know, slipped through under the radar or that just don’t have any accolades to their names in this completely arbitrary system that’s been created for them. And yes they’ve made it and they’d accomplished just as much as everyone else that’s going through it. So yeah, and your whole story about Around the World, I taught third grade for… I don’t know how many years and yeah, I have a lot of reflections to do because I don’t know how many times we’ve played that game, and of course the same student always won. Right, always! And it just… it’s made me think. But that’s what we do as teachers, right? We reflect. So thank you. 

So, tell me more about how identity centered learning can have an impact on learners. 

Daniel: Well, my hope is that.. I mean, I think that there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that goes to show that education has an impact on identity. Education impacts… I mean, we talk about “education is for the future!” and like, yeah. Exactly. Education impacts who we are and how we carry ourselves through life. I mean, of course family and society do as well but education, we spend 7 hours a day in a school. And so thinking about, really super duper long-term, in terms of, as opposed to really short term… because I think a lot of aspects of what we do traditionally and unfortunately still is very very short term, very much in-the-door, out-the-door, you know. We have to, this checkbox, that checkbox… and so thinking about you know, for me as an educator, when I look at students in my class, I actually focus a lot on math. Partly because I feel like math is a subject that has a, gets a very strong  reactions out of people. And there’s very strong identity messages that students develop and you hear adults saying it – “oh I’m not a math person” or “they’re a math whiz” or “I’m not a numbers guy”. There are a number of.. Sort of, identity messages and questioning how do these… You know, nobody really says like, “oh you know, I’m not…” and I feel like math really gets that out of people. And it’s one of those subjects that are highly and heavily steeped in the centering of ability and so thinking back about… at what point in a person’s life is this messaging ingrained in their head that I’m not a math guy or I am a math guy and I’m a math nerd and… I would claim that it has to do with connection. 

So this idea of connection to particular type of thinking or particular topic and just the simple idea that someone’s ability at a particular area should dictate their connection to it, I think is a fallacy. And I think it’s wrong! And I know this from both sides. I know this from the side of feeling a strong connection to something because I was good at it but realizing that I didn’t have a really deep intrinsic connection to it, and also the other side of not being… not being confident enough or feeling like I didn’t have any business building a connection with that. And this all comes back to identity, right? There’s a reason why we feel out of place when we’re doing something – it’s because we don’t fit. Something about us doesn’t fit there. And so how can we create environments that have a very very low entry to get into the arena and to actually try things out? Or are we putting up a barrier at the very beginning? 

I’m reminded of the pre-assessment, the pre-test, which to me, just symbolizes everything that’s so identity damaging. We haven’t even started this unit, nobody taught you anything, and I’m testing you on it. 

Lori: Mmhmm. Yeah. Yep. 

Daniel: And so it’s the gateway – you know, the.. The drawbridge is already pulled up and you don’t even have the chance to get inside the castle and you don’t… and so I think that so much of education is summed up that way, not to make a math pun… and so I think that any focus on inclusion, i think that speaks to the simple things we do without thinking. And how can we create an environment in which yes, we’re all learning, we’re all growing, we’re all growing our skills, we’re not going to act like school is not about growing our skills. But if our focus is growth, why do we need to have a gateway to that growth? The gateway should be open so that growth can happen and how can we create an environment where… where we are in our particular journeys isn’t… that’s not the center of what we do. Yes, of course, we’re going to be at different places but is that the defining aspect of who we are as learners? Or can we design learning environments and promote attitudes and practices and relationships at the foundation of things that that don’t center that ability so that students don’t see that as the defining aspect of their connection to that particular content? And it takes a lot of creativity, it continues to take creativity from me because I notice it every single day where I’m like…  “oop, no, that sent the wrong message, nope, not doing that again”. And I think just like you mentioned with your reflections, we have to think. We have to do better. 

Lori: We have to do better. And I think what I heard you say loud and clear is we need to question the system more so, or we need to question the system, not the child and that’s everything right there.

Daniel: I would add on that questioning the system rather than questioning the child or necessarily questioning only ourselves… I think we as educators have the tendency to, of course, we want to reflect on our own practice but we also have to recognise that… we exist and operate within systems of oppression and that I notice it every single day and the limits of the power. I could say one thing in my class but when the child move to the next grade, or goes home or goes to another school, is that message, even if it’s a great message, if that message is muddied by something else. So recognising what power do we have and what responsibility our leaders have.

Lori: Agreed. And I do encourage teachers when they’re looking into moving schools, when they’re moving schools to really take a look and study the school or the system they’re moving into and what are their core values and what are the messages that they are sending to the world through their website, to, through their actions, just through everything and ensure that you’re going to be a good fit for that system. That your beliefs and values match. So. Yeah. 

Well, yeah, Daniel, thank you so much for your time today and for teaching me something new. It’s just great to hear from experts such as yourself and if you could just, before we leave, share a little bit more about your identity centered learning website and what people can get from your website.

Daniel: Sure, yeah. Thanks for highlighting that. So the website, it’s, I would say that it has some articles I’ve written and it has some podcasts that I’ve been on like this one, but I feel like the page that probably gets, that might be the most useful is the resources page. And it has a ton of infographics that I admit are very cluttered, I tend to have a lot that I want to say and I can’t stop myself from saying it as you might’ve noticed from this podcast, but I feel like the infographics, they kind of break down the key concepts that I’ve kind of fixated on and help to… my hope is that they kind of demystify and complexify identity so you know, there’s nothing there that says “here are 3 easy steps for…” no. None of this. As I mentioned to you before, we’re juggling all these things at once. And so I feel like those infographics, they tend to hopefully broaden our perspective and our set of practices, kind of to grow our toolkit, our toolkit of strategies for approaching identity in a way that is really empowering. 

Lori: Perfect. Well, we will also have your website on our show notes as well as the articles you’ve written. So again, thank you for you time today, Daniel! 

Daniel: Thank you so much for having me – it’s been a pleasure. 

Thank you for joining us for today’s show. For more information including how to subscribe and show notes, please head to our website. That’s SENIAinternational.org/podcast. Until next time, cheers.