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Today’s PTA: A leading child advocacy organization Dec 14, 2021

Show notes

Beyond the known monthly meetings and bake sales, today’s Parent Teacher Association or PTA is a leading child advocacy organization comprised of millions of families, students, teachers, administrators, and business and community leaders all devoted to the educational success of children and the promotion of family engagement in schools. The national organization goes back more than 120 years and on this episode of Keystone Education Radio, host Annette Stevenson talks with the president of the Pennsylvania PTA, Marie Merkel about the organization’s role in engaging families in their children’s education and how the organization has evolved and remained relevant over more than a century.

Episode sponsor: CM Regent Insurance Company

Skip to: 01:40 What role do you see the PTA playing in the modern-day education of students?

“Pennsylvania PTA will always play an important role in what is best in the health, safety and education of all children.”

Skip to: 02:23 How has the group remained relevant and how has it adapted over history?

“Throughout the years, PTA has been key in many important developments that improve the health, safety and education and welfare of our children.”

Skip to: 03:09 Has there been any significant changes in the organization during your time as a member?

Skip to: 03:26 How does the organization connect to the community of parents and guardians? And how do you go about growing your membership?

Skip to: 04:06 What role do you see the PTA taking in the diversity, equity and inclusion dialogue that is taking place in schools across the country right now?

“[National PTA has] a very strong diversity, equity and inclusion program and statement on that in our family engagement programs and other programs throughout the schools.”

Skip to: 04:44 How does Pennsylvania PTA strive to make the organization a place for everyone and make everyone feel welcome?

“From the time you become a PTA member, it’s important to make sure everybody feels welcome . . . Everybody has something they can bring to the table . . . People can do things and they don’t realize that they can do it.”

“And you can be involved, even if you’re a working parent.”

Skip to: 05:42 Tell me a little bit about some of the advocacy work that the PTA becomes involved in.

“The biggest thing is for equal and fair funding for all of our students. Whether it be in regular education, special education, all kinds of programs.”

“PTA is constantly learning more and more, what can be done to help with the advocacy.”

Skip to: 06:44 The Pennsylvania PTA takes its lead again from the national level, is that correct?

“Right. And we do get to meet with our legislators from across the state . . . we have been very lucky to meet with the senators in Pennsylvania.”

Skip to: 07:09 Beyond the monthly meetings that everybody thinks of when they think about PTA involvement, what are some of the programs that the organization offers for parents to be connected?

“One of the biggest programs is the Reflections program. It’s the national arts and education program and there are six different categories in arts. Every year, there is a theme chosen, and it’s chosen by a child and voted on.”

“It’s something different and they use their imaginations and it’s all their own.”

Q: What role do you see the PTA playing in the modern-day education of students?

A: Well, PTA is not an educational entity. We have a mission statement, which we follow. And that mission statement is “to make every child’s potential a reality by engaging and empowering families and communities to advocate for all children.” And so, that being said, Pennsylvania PTA will always play an important role in what is best in the health, safety and education of all children.

Q: How has the group, it’s been around for a very long time, a history of more than 120 years. How has the group remained relevant and how has it adapted over history?

A: PTA began many years ago with a few women that wanted to make a difference in the lives of children. And throughout the years, PTA has been key in many important developments that improve the health, safety and education and welfare of our children, such as the school breakfast program and lunch programs, safe schools, parent involvement in education, air quality in schools, public school library programs. And that’s just to name a few. We have many position statements and resolutions on different things in education.

Q: It’s probably way broader than people may realize. Has there been any significant changes in the organization during your time as a member?

A: I have just become more aware of how the advocacy part of PTA is evolving. And getting involved with the legislators and things like that, speaking up for children.

Q: How does the organization connect to the community of parents and guardians? And how do you go about growing your membership?

A: Every year, PTAs have their membership drives in the beginning of the year. And encouraging parents to become part of the PTA so that they can get involved in their children’s education and activity in school.

They have a membership drive. They tell them all kinds of activities that there is going to be, and they encourage every parent to become a member, so they can help not only the financial part, but also help physically throughout the year with the children.

Q: Now, what role do you see the PTA taking in the diversity, equity and inclusion dialogue that is taking place in schools across the country right now?

A: Pennsylvania PTA takes its lead from National PTA. And there’s constant position statements. They have a very strong diversity, equity and inclusion program and statement on that in our family engagement programs and other programs throughout the schools. They talk about the critical race theory and anything else that may be involved in the schools and how we should handle it.

Q: And how does Pennsylvania PTA strive to make the organization a place for everyone and make everyone feel welcome?

A: I can speak from experience on that. It’s from the time you become a PTA member, it’s important to make sure everybody feels welcome. I’ve had parents, “well, I can’t come to meetings because of this, that, some reason.” But you always say there’s something that everybody can do. Everybody has something they can bring to the table. Whether it be making phone calls. Now it’s sending texts.

Baking of when there’s the bake sales, things like that. People can do things and they don’t realize that they can do it. And you just offer some of the little things and people like to do that. And you can be involved, even if you’re a working parent. All my children’s career, I was a full-time working parent.

Q: Okay, great. Now, you mentioned the advocacy work. Tell me, if you would, a little bit about some of the advocacy work that the PTA becomes involved in.

A: Basically, the biggest thing is for equal and fair funding for all of our students. Whether it be in regular education, special education, all kinds of programs. Broadband with the computers, especially now in the last couple of years, with all the virtual learning and things like that. Also, to keep our schools safe, keeping them healthy. The air quality, the testing. Now, more with the vaccines, things like that.

PTA is constantly learning more and more, what can be done to help with the advocacy. Every year we have a national legislative conference and National PTA chooses a couple of key issues and we meet with the leaders and discuss that with them.

Q: And so then the Pennsylvania PTA takes its lead again from the national level. Is that correct?

A: Right. Right. And we do get to meet with our legislators from across the state. And I mean, especially when we do meet, we have been very lucky to meet with the senators in Pennsylvania, which is great. And then are some of our representatives.

Q: Beyond the monthly meetings that everybody thinks of when they think about PTA involvement, what are some of the programs that the organization offers for parents to be connected? And I know you said there is little and big things that parents and guardians can contribute. Is there any kind of formal programs or committees that are available?

A: There is. One of the biggest programs is the Reflections program. It’s the national arts and education program and there are six different categories in arts. Every year, there is a theme chosen and it’s chosen by a child and voted on. And then everyone can participate in one or more art categories, visual arts, photography, literature, music, dance, or film production.

And there’s guidelines. And they submit some type of art. And it’s judged first against children in their own school. Then in their own maybe county. Then they progress. They go to the state level. And then at the state level, then the top winners go to the national level.

We were very lucky in Pennsylvania. We had a couple of national winners last year. And it’s not only for children in regular education, but we have a special artist category. They are all honored at their different levels with different programs, different celebrations. So they get recognized and it’s really, it’s a great program for the kids.

It’s something different and they use their imaginations and it’s all their own. And it’s not necessarily done in schools. Some schools do it, some don’t.

Q: And so that’s a program that probably requires quite a lot of volunteer support, I would imagine.

A: It does. To get the artworks collected, make sure the forms are filled out correctly. Then you have to have judging. So it is. And to watch the children’s faces when they get their little participation ribbons or a trophy or whatever, they are just…

Q: Thrilled. I’m sure.

A: Yeah. It really, it’s a wonderful thing. Last year when we had our virtual ceremony at the end of the year, one of the winners was in India. And we got on at, was it some… Two o’clock in the morning when he was in India so he could get his award virtually.

Q: Oh, that’s awesome.

A: Yeah. The dedication was there.

Q: Yeah. It’s a worldwide program then?

A: Yes. It is.

Q: Wow. That sounds really exciting. What a fantastic program.

A: It is. And there’s been other programs, but that’s probably the longest running one and the biggest one. The PTA one.

Marie Merkel

Marie Merkel lives in Scranton and is the mother of three adult children. She is a retired special education teacher of 35 years within the North Pocono School District. Marie is an adjunct professor in the Academic Development Department at Lackawanna College as well as a behavioral consultant and mobile therapist for Youth Advocate. Marie’s experience in PTA spans over 20 years from local level experience through and including previous Board of Managers experience. Marie’s PTA experience began at Charles Sumner Elementary School when her oldest son entered Pre-K and has spread through a variety of PTA roles to today where she serves as Pennsylvania PTA president. Marie enjoys being part of the State Board of Managers and working with local units whenever they call for advice.

Pennsylvania PTA
National PTA
Reflections Program

The post Today’s PTA: A leading child advocacy organization appeared first on Keystone Education Radio.

**Community Relations & Communication: A talk with PSBA’s president-elect David Hein** Nov 30, 2021
Show notes

About this Episode

Time Stamps

Q&A

About our Guests

Building strong community relationships and advocating positive, constructive dialogue is a critical task for school boards, albeit a challenging one in today’s climate of strong opinions and hot button issues. On this episode of *Keystone Education Radio*, hear from PSBA’s president-elect and Parkland School District’s board president David Hein on his district’s drive to continuously learn, grow and communicate effectively, and what he calls failing forward.
Skip to: 01:23 What role does the public or the community members play with the work of the board? How do those fit together?
“Having that parent view of and perspective of what’s going on in the schools really helps to inform us if there’s something that needs to be addressed, that we need to maybe bring to the administration to look into.”

Skip to: 02:16 So how does a board individually and collectively build, maintain and strengthen the relationship with their community?

“Respectfully listening and paying attention to every speaker, taking notes and then working with the administration to have somebody get back to the person on their concern, whether it’s collectively or individually to get back to them, to clarify any misunderstandings or just work through an issue.”

Skip to: 03:57 How do you, as a board, work to address the challenges, or is there a way at all to preempt challenges with community members?

“I think the way to address it is to be prepared for that. Have the information readily available. Work with the administration because really ours is the governance, not the management role from a board.”

Skip to: 05:35 Do you have any examples or highlights of what you would consider to be successful situations or maybe successful exchanges that have occurred in working with your community or with a school board working with their community?

“The collaboration and wanting to hear from a board and a district perspective, wanting to hear the different opinions and different perspectives, so we can grow if we’re doing some something that’s, I don’t want to say wrong, but that just needs to be adjusted and incorporating different ideas.”

“Whatever the topic is, are we perfect as a school district, any school district or a board? No, there’s always room to grow and learn, and that’s part of it. And that’s part of teaching the students too, that it’s okay to make mistakes and fail forward and grow as an organization, a community, a board.”

Q: I’m going to talk about the relationship between community members and the school board. So let’s first define what role does the public or the community members play with the work of the board? How do those fit together?

A: I think the public voice is definitely very important for us as school board members to have. They bring the balance really, a lot of it from the parent perspective of what they’re seeing their children are doing and what’s going on in schools. A lot of school board members may not have children left in schools. They’ve grown up and moved on. So having that parent view of and perspective of what’s going on in the schools really helps to inform us if there’s something that needs to be addressed, that we need to maybe bring to the administration to look into.

Q: So how does a board individually and collectively build, maintain and strengthen the relationship with their community? How should they go about doing that or how do you go about doing that?

A: I think part of that is the agenda items at every board meeting, where parents and the community have the opportunity to come and address the board, either for comments on agenda items, or later in the meeting, comments on non-agenda items, where they bring their concerns to us for the items that we’re going to address and hopefully approve in the meeting, if they have concerns or need more clarification or just bringing us concerns on items of any topic really. Having that voice and bringing that to us is definitely one way to build a relationship. I think that is not a dialogue, it’s just a comment, the time for the community to come to us, but respectfully listening and paying attention to every speaker, taking notes and then working with the administration to have somebody get back to the person on their concern, whether it’s collectively or individually to get back to them, to clarify any misunderstandings or just work through an issue.

Q: There’s a lot of challenging topics. Certainly, there is now. And there can be challenging topics at any time. But how do you, as a board, work to address the challenges, or is there a way at all to preempt challenges with community members?

A: I agree, there are a lot of hot topics right now, but it also goes to anything from turf fields to redistricting to full-day kindergarten or whatever the topic of the day is. Knowing what the issues are that are coming up that the parents are concerned about, whether you’re hearing about it from trips to the grocery store or emails or whatever, knowing that people are going to be coming to the meetings to talk about it. I think the way to address it is to be prepared for that. Have the information readily available. Work with the administration because really ours is the governance, not the management role from a board. But to work with the administration to really have them prepared for what you’re hearing and what you feel is going come up at a meeting to be able to answer the concerns of the parents and the public.

Q: So it’s that ear to the ground approach and lots of listening, so that you can have those answers ready, or hopefully be able to address what’s being presented then.

A: Yeah, 100%. Yes. It’s just really preparation and knowing the audience, knowing what’s going on in your district.

Q: Do you have any examples from your own district or even some that you’ve heard about in other districts maybe, examples or highlights of what you would consider to be successful situations or maybe successful exchanges that have occurred in working with your community or with a school board working with their community? Any kind of successful outcomes that you can think of?

A: Two really come to mind off the top. One was a concern that a parent brought to the board as a representative of a youth recreation sports league, where there was going to be some fees charged to these organizations to come in to open houses and things like that to try to get registrations and all that and drum up support for their organizations. That was taken back by the administration, looked into, and then these organizations were invited in to have a meeting and an understanding of what was happening. And it was resolved where the fees weren’t going to be charged for these organizations. So, the collaboration of maybe, and not everybody knowing that these are going on, but then the collaboration to work to resolve it in a timely manner, as well as a manner that everyone is happy with.

Q: It sounds like that might be something that wouldn’t have been on your radar as a board without it being brought to your attention in that way.

A: Correct. There are definitely things like that that fall behind the scenes, that we don’t get into. Again, it’s the management piece where the district is running the day-to-day operations. So, we were very appreciative that that person came forward to us and brought their concerns to the board.

The other example that I can think of is around diversity, equity and inclusion. We have long standing work in the district to support that, not just recently with all the current events, but trying to really refresh that and bring that forward and have more people involved with that. We have a community committee of the diversity, equity and inclusion committee in our district, and some parents are coming forward and wanting to understand more about that and get involved with that because of not knowing what is involved with that, with CRT out there being closely associated by some people, mistakenly that way on DEI. So inviting especially one or two parents who have been coming to the board to come and be a part of that committee, not new committee, but that standing committee and get more information.

So it’s working that way. Again, the collaboration and wanting to hear from a board and a district perspective, wanting to hear the different opinions and different perspectives, so we can grow if we’re doing some something that’s, I don’t want to say wrong, but that just needs to be adjusted and incorporating different ideas. So, things like that I think are really successes and help our district and any district grow stronger.

Q: That’s great. Those are great examples. And as you pointed out, it’s not always a matter of a right or wrong situation, but more so, and maybe it’s evolving, developing something, that requires a new look or a new perspective lens on it.

A: Yes, absolutely. Whatever the topic is, are we perfect as a school district, any school district or a board? No, there’s always room to grow and learn, and that’s part of it. And that’s part of teaching the students too, that it’s okay to make mistakes and fail forward and grow as an organization, a community, a board. So, yes. Yeah, I absolutely agree.

Q: Yeah, I love that, fail forward. That’s a great term for that, really applied to any aspect of life really.

A: Truly.

Q: Yeah, absolutely.

David J. Hein

David J. Hein is starting his third term on the Parkland School Board and currently serves as its president. He has held the position of vice president, is a member of the Buildings and Grounds Committee and also has served in various capacities on the Personnel and Finance and the Academics, Arts and Athletics committees. Additionally, he is chair of the joint operating committee of the Lehigh Career and Technical Institute (LCTI), where has served as vice chair and treasurer as well as on several committees. Hein is the president of the 2022 PSBA Governing Board and served as president-elect in 2021. He also is PSBA’s representative on the School Safety and Security Committee under the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, and the PSBA liaison to the Parkland School Board.

The post Community Relations & Communication: A talk with PSBA’s president-elect David Hein appeared first on Keystone Education Radio.

Disruptive Innovation – Turning challenges into positive changes Nov 16, 2021

Show notes

About this Episode Time Stamps Q&A About our Guests Resources Disruption is viewed almost always as a negative variable. The Christensen Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, has been studying disruptive innovation throughout the pandemic and how to incorporate technology into the classrooms, creating more student-centered learning opportunities and individualized instruction. Learn more about the Institute’s research and what the report’s author Tom Arnett has to say about their findings in this Keystone Education Radio conversation with host Annette Stevenson. In this episode, you will learn: What disruptive innovation is and why it matters in education How technology can be embraced in classrooms, now and post-pandemic Where to go to access the complete Carpe Diem: Convert Pandemic Struggles into Student-Centered Learning report Skip to: 01:14 Could you give a brief overview of the Christensen Institute and your role within the organization? “After teaching for a while, I came to the realization that I could keep trying to get better as a teacher, and that’s, I think, valuable work, or I can start to try and be a part of coming up with new models and approaches to education that make education more student centered…but also make it easier for teachers, for educators, to better meet the needs of their individual students.” Skip to: 03:50 How was the research conducted for the Carpe Diem report? “When the pandemic started back in 2020, we’d been studying online learning in education for close to a decade…And then when the pandemic hit and, almost all schools were doing some kind of online learning overnight, we thought it’d be really interesting to get snapshots of what does this actually look like? How are schools using online learning resources in response to the pandemic? Where are they seeing opportunities? Where are they seeing challenges?” Skip to: 06:50 Why is student-centered learning important and is it more important now that we are cognizant of the effects of the pandemic? “How do we help education transform from kind of the mass education system we have where students are all kind of moving the same, to a system that is mass education when it makes sense but can also individualize better to help students with different needs.” “It’s really about how do we create new models of education that help teachers serve those different students’ needs so that all students can be successful and fulfill their potential. And I think that’s especially important now, given that the pandemic has just widened a lot of the disparities that have been around for a long time. A lot of the equity issues.” “I don’t think we can solve those issues by just trying to give students, you know, the same one size fits all approach. We really need to find ways to identify what does each student need. How do we meet them where they’re at, both academically and socially and emotionally, and then help them progress from where they’re at toward their goals and toward helping them fulfill their individual potential.” Skip to: 10:54 What can be learned from the report in terms of creating student-centered spaces in classrooms? “Using the time that you would use normally for class where you’re on that video call, less for how do I cover my material and more for how do I check in with my students? How do I find out what they’re struggling with, find out what they need, and then give them the targeted support, the targeted interventions they need, really spend more time on the relationship building and the social emotional check-ins.” “I often think of it as it’s not replacing yourself with technology, but it’s offloading some of the just foundational content coverage and foundational assessment and feedback to online tools so that you as a teacher can do more of the things that technology absolutely cannot do, the relationship building and the personal feedback, the orchestrating deeper learning experiences like discussions and projects, coaching students through projects.” Skip to: 13:38 Explain what Disruptive Innovation means and what place it has in K-12 public education? “I don’t think online learning on its own is interesting, but really the new instructional student-centered models that online learning enables have these same patterns of being the kind of innovations that we’d call disruptive innovations. And so we look at what does it take for these new innovations to really scale and provide their benefits more broadly within the education system that we have right now.” Skip to: 16:52 What other research subjects does the Christensen Institute focus on and study? “They look at opportunity gaps and how so many of a student’s opportunities come from who they know in their family, in their community, and how do we help expand students’ networks so they have more access to opportunities.” Skip to: 18:09 Where can listeners go to learn more about the Carpe Diem report, the Christensen Institute and the concept of Disruptive Innovation? Q: So would you mind starting by giving us a brief overview of the Christensen Institute and then your role within the organization? A: Yeah, absolutely. So the Christensen Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that was founded by Clayton Christensen, who was a professor at Harvard studying innovation across a whole bunch of different sectors and founded our Institute, basically with the intent of using some of the theories he developed for how innovation impacts different sectors and looking at some of the challenges in areas like education, healthcare, global prosperity and global development, to try and understand how can we use these theories to help inform innovation and help it happen with more predictable success and see the progress that we wanted to see with these social sector areas and institutions. My role… I’m on the, as you mentioned, on the K-12 education side of our work, and I’ve been here for eight years now, and I guess I’ll… To describe my role, I’ll give a little bit of background. So coming out of my undergrad degree, I started off my career as a middle school math teacher in Kansas City, Missouri, and felt deeply committed to the work, but really struggled with the challenge of meeting all the needs of my different students. I had, you know, students ranging from kids that were homeless and kids that had a lot of trauma at home, to kids that were highly supported and, you know, they were just at different places academically, at different places with their social and emotional needs and I really struggled with how do I, how do I even know what all these students need? And then even beyond that, how do I actually, you know, differentiate to their needs? And so after teaching for a while, I came to the realization that I could, you know, keep trying to get better as a teacher, and that’s, I think, valuable work, or I can start to try and be a part of coming up with new models and approaches to education that make education more student centered, and I think will talk about that later, but also make it easier for teachers, for educators, to better meet the needs of their individual students. And so I left teaching, actually went to graduate school there in Pennsylvania, and while I was in graduate school, came across the research of the Clayton Christensen Institute and found it really compelling as offering powerful theories for change for how do we take some of the innovations that I could see kind of in niches and in the periphery of the education system, what would it take to make those more accessible and more mainstream? And so I found my wife here and I’ve been here for the last eight years. Q: Interesting transition. So the report, Carpe Diem, how was the research conducted for this report? A: So, this report is really our latest output in a series that we’re doing in conjunction with some survey work. So when the pandemic started back in 2020, we’d been studying online learning in education for close to a decade before the pandemic hit. And then when the pandemic hit and, you know, almost all schools were doing some kind of online learning overnight, we thought, you know, it’d be really interesting to get snapshots of what does this actually look like? How are schools using online learning resources in response to the pandemic? Where are they seeing opportunities? Where are they seeing challenges? And so we conducted last year, two surveys: one in the fall, one in the spring. We’ve got another round coming out this fall and this spring. And the report, Carpe Diem, was a report we released in August that looks at our spring 2021 data and tries to paint a picture of what did pandemic instruction look like during that first full year of the pandemic, the first full school year of the pandemic? And I guess largely I’ll say what we saw was that there was a lot of variety in terms of teachers that some teachers that taught mostly in person, some teachers taught in hybrid settings where it was some students in person, some remote, and some teachers that were teaching fully remotely. It was kind of a mixed bag, but those that taught in a hybrid setting and in the remote setting, by and large the dominant approach was to have students log into a video call and trying to take the model of conventional classroom instruction and replicate it over those calls. And in our free response to that survey, we saw that was a real struggle for a lot of teachers. They just found that, you know, teaching kids over the internet, that just, I’ve used the analogy that’s like, it’s like trying to eat pudding with chopstick or like trying to make a jigsaw puzzle wearing gardening gloves. Like you can do it, but the medium just really constrained a lot of the things that they were used to doing and then to make it even harder, those that were in those hybrid settings, it was like you’re trying to do two different mediums at once and it was just a real challenge. But amidst that general kind of theme, there were also some interesting outliers of educators that said, I actually got to know my students better and meeting their needs became easier. And in many ways, those were teachers that were using online learning for some of the purposes that we documented well before the pandemic that were less about how do we provide continuity of learning when we can’t go into school buildings, and more about how do we make this instruction more individualized to students’ needs. And so we the report tries to highlight kind of both of those, those themes that we saw in our data. Q: Okay, interesting and interesting that you began this research well before the pandemic was even a thing, you know. So, why is student-centered learning important and is it more important now that we are cognizant of the effects of the pandemic? It sounds like you may have had your focus on that previously but talk a little bit about that if you would, student centered-learning and the importance of that. A: Well, to really illustrate that, I like to think of an analogy of the conventional way we do education that we’ve done education for the last hundred years is a mass education approach. And it’s evolved. I think there’s fault in some people in the field say, you know, there’s nothing that’s changed. Education has actually changed a lot in 100 years, but some of the core features of how we do education haven’t changed. You know, for all students in a given district or different school, the calendar starts on the same day, it ends on the same day. They all come to school at the same time, they all move through the content at the same pace. Usually it’s, you know, one teacher with 25 to 30 students, they’re all doing more or less the same activities and that, like, it served us well as a society. It’s what made public education affordable on the public dollar. It’s what, you know, brought education from where it was 100 years ago to where most kids didn’t even get an eighth-grade education to now the kind of system we have today. But it’s also a system that isn’t very adaptive to individual needs. And so I think of it as being kind of like, you know, railroads also emerged during that time of the last century. And if you think about railroad travel, you know, it was far better than crossing the United States on foot or on horseback or in the back of a bouncy carriage or stagecoach. But, you know, to ride on a train, you had to show at the train depot, you had to follow the schedule, the train, you know, the railroad company set, you had to go through the connecting stops that the railroad company provided, and so if you lived far from a train depot, or you needed to travel on something that didn’t fit the rail company schedule, rail just didn’t adapt to your needs very well. Well, fast forward, and in the early 20th century, we saw the development of the automobile and automobiles don’t completely replace trains, there’s definitely settings where we still use trains at the primary mode. But automobiles provided much more flexibility to where, you know, think about it today, if you live in a mountainous area, you can get a four-wheel drive vehicle that’ll handle that terrain. If you live in a city, you can get a commuter car that helps you navigate narrow streets and doesn’t, you know, consume a lot of fuel. And so there’s different types of vehicles for different needs. You know, you can travel on your own schedule, you can get a vehicle that’s comfortable to you. And so it, it just enabled a lot more of an individualized type of approach to transportation. And I think if student-centered learning is really being the analogy of how do we help education transform from kind of the mass education system we have where students are all kind of moving the same, to a system that is mass education when it makes sense but can also individualize better to help students with different needs. So one more quick story, I think of when I was teaching, you know, I mentioned I had that spectrum of students, it’s really about how do we create new models of education that help teachers serve those different students’ needs so that all students can be successful and fulfill their potential. And I think that’s especially important now, given that the pandemic has just widened a lot of the disparities that have been around for a long time. A lot of the equity issues. And so I don’t think we can solve those issues by just trying to give students, you know, the same one size fits all approach. We really need to find ways to identify what does each student need. How do we meet them where they’re at, both academically and socially and emotionally, and then help them progress from where they’re at toward, you know, their goals and toward helping them fulfill their individual potential. Q: And so taking that, you know, what you learn about the needs that a student might have different from another student, what can be learned from the report in terms of creating student-centered spaces in classrooms once those needs and differences are identified? A: Yeah, well, I will say in the report, most of our insights on that topic come from free responses from a few teachers and follow up interviews we did with a few teachers. But like I mentioned earlier, there were those few outliers that seemed to have a very different experience last year. And a lot of what seemed to be working for them was using online resources to kind of shift their role as a teacher. So to, to give some concrete for instances, these were teachers who often realized, you know, trying to engage my students over a video call, especially when many of them have their cameras off and it feels like I’m just teaching to a void is really tricky. But what they would do often is take some of the resources that now exist for developing online learning materials, whether that’s, you know, recording yourself, teaching your lesson and posting it online, or develop taking your sl…

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Creativity through Curiosity and Celebrating Mister Rogers’ Legacy Nov 02, 2021

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About this Episode Time Stamps Q&A About our Guests Resources Mister Rogers was a learning scientist, and his approach with children was certainly ahead of his time. Today, learning scientists are focusing on the same things Mister Rogers taught children through the lens of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” — things like developing curiosity, finding creative solutions, communication skills, collaboration, and self-acceptance, how to be a good friend and a loving person. These are the tools now scientifically proven to be essential to children’s success and well-being, and they are up to 10 times more accurate at predicting a child’s success than a test score or grades. In a new book highlighting these findings, authors Gregg Behr and Ryan Rydzewski are reintroducing Mister Rogers and his teachings to today’s children, parents and educators, sharing with a new generation the power of curiosity through creativity. The authors discuss their book, essential learning tools and more with host Annette Stevenson on this episode of Keystone Education Radio. In this episode, you’ll discover: What learning scientists are working on and why their work is important to today’s learners What are the essential tools for a child’s learning and success Why creativity is essential and how it relates to the joy in our lives Skip to: 01:32 What prompted you to write a book based on Mister Rogers’ lessons? Why Fred Rogers? “Increasingly, [learning scientists are] talking about things like, how do we make sure kids feel safe? How do we make sure kids feel like they belong to a community that cares about them? How do we make sure that kids feel that they are loved and capable of loving? When learning scientists speak today, they sound a lot like Mister Rogers and “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” And once we realized that we realized we had a book on our hands and we realized that what Fred was doing starting in 1968, in many ways, learning sciences is just catching up to him now.” Skip to: 05:02 In your book, you describe tools for learning, and they’re described as essential. Can you tell us a little bit about what the tools for learning are? “In the book we break them down as curiosity, creativity, communication, collaboration, learning, and growing, which is a sort of umbrella term for things like growth mindset and connection, which is of course what we remember Rogers for most, which is the power of human relationships.” “They have been shown to benefit everything from academic outcomes to mental health, to even physical health and children’s overall well-being. They cost almost nothing to develop. And they hinge on the very things that we think, and that Rogers thought make life worth living, which are self-acceptance, close and loving relationships and a deep regard for our neighbors.” Skip to: 07:49 How can curiosity be incited in oneself or others, or is it something that’s built into all of us? “What we need to do is to tap into that curiosity that we have as young kids and the ways in which we ask questions and the ways that we dance and sing and explore. What is it that we can do to maintain that sensibility?” “Creating a space, an atmosphere for learning where kids feel like they belong, where they matter, where they feel respected, where they feel like they’re safe, both psychologically and physically. It’s those grounding elements that are absolutely critical and essential for the moments that we then begin to be curious about what’s possible and start to wonder about, ‘What happens if I put these two numbers together? What happens if I take apart this toy and look what’s inside?’ One can’t be curious absent the grounding effect that a teacher or an educator creates in creating that safe, respecting environment where you say, ‘I belong and I want to learn.’” Skip to: 09:48 Tell us a little bit about what was tracked [in the study by Dr. George Land] and what does that mean, tracking that creativity from childhood through to adulthood? “Creativity is something that’s inherent to all of us, as we saw in those 98% of 5-year-olds. But as we get older and as we get more self-conscious, and as our peers start to give up their creative pursuits, they put down their paint brushes and they give up their musical instruments. A lot of us have a string of creative pursuits that we’ve abandoned over the course of our lives, we learn to become less creative. We learn to become less expressive, less open to new ways of thinking.” “These characters showed kids that they don’t have to give up their creative pursuits. And in fact, the creative pursuits can enrich our lives and they can make life better for the people around us.” Skip to: 14:25 Your book is for educators and school leaders, or is it for everyone in many walks of life? “We wrote this book particularly mindful of the role of parents, families and caregivers, and then our educators, the teachers, the librarians, the afterschool directors. Anyone who works in what we would describe as the caring profession, where they are responsible for the wellbeing and instruction of children, whether that’s at home or in a school.” Skip to: 16:10 Where can listeners find access to the book and/or any additional resources or contact with you? “We would love to hear from your listeners, any questions, comments, stories about Fred —almost everybody has one — they can reach us at whenyouwonder.org.” Q: So your book, I’ve already said the title, When You Wonder, You’re Learning, and it’s based on Mister Rogers’ enduring lessons, what prompted you to write a book based on Mister Rogers and why Fred Rogers? A (Gregg): Well, first and foremost, it’s a book about learning and it’s a book that stems from nearly 15 years of work here in southwestern Pennsylvania. For 15 years, schools, museums, libraries and all of the educators who work in these and other learning spaces have been coming together under something called Remake Learning, which is this amazing network of educators in and out of school, pre-K through higher ed thinking about what is relevant, what is engaging, what is equitable in support of young people and the learning experiences that we’re trying to create for them. I mentioned this because very early on, we started talking about Fred Rogers and it’s easier in 2021 than in 2007 to articulate this. But we talk about the Fred method and the ways in which these educators involved in Remake Learning take advantage of what Fred Rogers did. And we can think about Fred’s work in a simple formula: whole child plus learning sciences equals the Fred method. That is, like Fred Rogers, these educators are grounded in child development theory and practice, understand what’s developmentally appropriate for children and youth. And they’re also learning from what we’re learning about learning itself from places right here in our backyard, like Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, but also campuses of higher education and research institutes across this country. And I mentioned the learning sciences because for me and Ryan, this was our big aha, that is seeing Fred Rogers as a learning scientist, not just as that childhood hero of ours, not just as some convenient story to talk about education and learning, but really understanding Fred Rogers and his work as someone who was a learning scientist, a learning engineer, someone who was deliberate and intentional about what it is that he did with his program. And that’s what we’re finding among educators all across southwestern Pennsylvania, who are involved in Remake Learning. A (Ryan): One of the things that struck us early on was just how far ahead of his time Fred Rogers was. If you talk to some of the leading learning scientists today, many of them are working right here in Pittsburgh at places like Pitt and Carnegie Mellon. If you read the research papers, if you go to their conferences, which we’ve been doing a lot of over the past few years, they talk a lot like Fred does. It’s interesting. They don’t necessarily sound like scientists at first. They don’t talk about charts and graphs, they don’t talk about things that are being measured. Increasingly, they’re talking about things like, how do we make sure kids feel safe? How do we make sure kids feel like they belong to a community that cares about them? How do we make sure that kids feel that they are loved and capable of loving? When learning scientists speak today, they sound a lot like Mister Rogers and “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” And once we realized that we realized we had a book on our hands and we realized that what Fred was doing starting in 1968, in many ways, learning sciences is just catching up to him now. Q: You’re absolutely right. So far ahead of his time. There’s so much more to what he offered, I think then maybe what was on face value to television personality as beloved as that was. So in your book, you describe tools for learning, and they’re described as essential. Can you tell us a little bit about what the tools for learning are? A (Ryan): Sure. So it’s probably most helpful to start with why these tools matter and I’ll get into briefly what they are. So just to give you an example, a couple of years ago, Google was trying to figure out what makes a good boss. For a long time, they had just assumed that the people who know the most stuff should be promoted. If you can write computer code in your sleep, then you’re automatically going to be a good boss. Google being Google decided to validate that and they did this massive analysis of their own teams. They studied performance evaluations and employee surveys and exit interviews. And what they found was that content is important. There’s no way around it. If you’re going to work at Google, if you’re going to be a boss, you have to be a great programmer. But among the things they found that mattered most, content expertise ranked almost last. The more important things, the things Googlers wanted to see in their bosses, were things like communication. There were things like curiosity. Can you come up with creative solutions to problems? Do you care about your colleagues and their wellbeing? They wanted all these very human qualities that Fred spent so many decades teaching in “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” And these are what he called his tools for learning. In the book we break them down as curiosity, creativity, communication, collaboration, learning, and growing, which is a sort of umbrella term for things like growth mindset and connection, which is of course what we remember Rogers for most, which is the power of human relationships. All of these tools have been shown not only at Google, but in just about every aspect of life to be essential to children’s success. They are up to 10 times more predictive of children’s long-term success and test scores. They have been shown to benefit everything from academic outcomes to mental health, to even physical health and children’s overall well-being. They cost almost nothing to develop. And they hinge on the very things that we think, and that Rogers thought make life worth living, which are self-acceptance, close and loving relationships and a deep regard for our neighbors. So again, this is Rogers being ahead of his time, but things he focused on in the Neighborhood are now scientifically proven to be essential to children’s success. And at places like Google, they are the most essential things you can have to succeed. Q: So we always feel like there’s individuals in the world that are more or less curious with curiosity being kind of an inherent part of them or not as much. So how can curiosity be incited in oneself or others or is it something that’s built into all of us? A (Gregg): Well, you just said it and it’s built into each of us. It’s not something that some people have and some people don’t. Rather, it’s a learned behavior that we lose our curiosity and we lose our creativity. So what we need to do is to tap into that curiosity that we have as young kids and the ways in which we ask questions and the ways that we dance and sing and explore. What is it that we can do to maintain that sensibility? And as Fred Rogers would say, “A great atmosphere for learning that supports that sort of curiosity.” So what is it that a teacher does in a classroom or librarian does in a library space? Well, so much of it goes back to what Ryan was just saying about creating a human and humane environment. Creating a space, an atmosphere for learning where kids feel like they belong, where they matter, where they feel respected, where they feel like they’re safe, both psychologically and physically. It’s those grounding elements that are absolutely critical and essential for the moments that we then begin to be curious about what’s possible and start to wonder about, “What happens if I put these two numbers together? What happens if I take apart this toy and look what’s inside?” One can’t be curious absent the grounding effect that a teacher or an educator creates in creating that safe, respecting environment where you say, “I belong and I want to learn.” A: So you kind of touched upon creativity as well and I want to lead into that because I feel like curiosity and creativity are very intertwined. But creativity as well, I feel like there’s a kind of a label that’s placed on some individuals, “This is a creative individual. This is not so much a creative individual.” So in your book, you highlight a study that was conducted by Dr. George Land that tested for and tracked creativity in children beginning with 1,000 5-year-olds. Tell us a little bit about what was tracked and what does that mean, tracking that creativity from childhood through to adulthood? A (Ryan): Yeah, this is a really interesting study. So in 1968, Dr. George Land tested the creativity of 1,000 5-year-olds using a test that he had developed for NASA of all places. What he found was that 98% of those 5-year-olds scored so high on Dr. Land’s tests. They qualified as creative geniuses. We know that kids come up with strange and sometimes ingenious solutions to problems, they paint pictures and then make up stories and songs. They’re inherently creative. Anyone who’s spent time around a 5-year-old tends to see this pretty quickly. But George Land, he discovered something else. He tested that same group of 5-year-olds every five years. And when he found was that at 10 years old, the share of creative geniuses fell from 98% to 30%. And when they turned 15, it fell from 30% to 12%. And by the time they were adults, the share of creative geniuses had fallen from 98% to 2%. And what Land and his team concluded was, as Gregg alluded to earlier that non-creative behavior is learned, that creativity is something that’s inherent to all of us, as we saw in those 98% of 5-year-olds. But as we get older and as we get more self-conscious, and as our peers start to give up their creative pursuits, they put down their paint brushes and they give up their musical instruments. A lot of us have a string of creative pursuits that we’ve abandoned over the course of our lives, we learn to become less creative. We learn to become less expressive, less open to new ways of thinking. Rogers in “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” really tried to counteract those non-creative behaviors, those learned non-creative behaviors. The way he did so really started with adults. One of the most important things you learned from his mentor, Margaret McFarland, who was a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, was the Quaker philosophy that attitudes are caught not taught. So Rogers really modeled creativity. In almost any episode, you can find him doing things that adults might consider childish. Fred sits down and he draws pictures of butterflies and houses and rainbows. And he cuts things out of construction paper, and he builds things out of popsicle sticks, and he plays with puppets and he makes up songs. He does…

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Empowering Students Through Mentor Relationships Oct 19, 2021

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About this Episode Time Stamps Q&A About our Guests Resources Discover the work being done in Philadelphia schools between the Office of School Safety (OSS) and its students, particularly young black males, through its Leaders Encouraging Achievement and Development, or LEAD, mentoring program. On this episode of Keystone Education Radio, host Annette Stevenson speaks with OSS chief safety officer Kevin Bethel on the merits of this program and the benefits the district, the mentors and the mentees are gaining. In this episode, you’ll discover: The innovative approach Philadelphia School District is taking to pairing school safety officers with young mentees How and why the district and the Office of School Safety have plans to expand this program and find methods to capture its effectiveness How mentoring can develop empathy in both the mentee and the mentor Skip to: 01:11 What objectives were initially identified in the development and evolution of the program since it was launched? “And so how can we kind of build beyond, as has historically been in the space, strictly focused on safety around people coming and going, and some of the negative activities, but what are the positive things around safety, where we can really engage young people early upstream and really develop those relationships that will impact them for the rest of their lives.” Skip to: 02:22 To date, how many students and officers are involved? “We have a number of individuals who are stepping up, want to play in that role and be mentors. So we’re excited about building this program even further.” Skip to: 02:50 I imagine that [virtual component] may have been even more essential during these past months where folks were isolated. I imagine that might’ve even been more critical, that connection? “You know and your audience knows that I think what people learn from the pandemic is how critical school is to our children. Anybody had any questions before that, all of that should be dismissed.” “I’m really proud of the men and women who were involved in that virtual space. Because they kept it going through the supports of the strategic planning team, the principals, and those at the schools, we were able to keep it going and it was really exciting to see that happen.” Skip to: 03:56 Are there short-term and long-term markers of success that will represent the program’s overall effectiveness? “We are looking at, as we continue to build out the program, how do we bring in some of the research, because we kind of know mentoring works. There’s plenty of research in the spheres that tell you that it does, but we do want to make sure that the program is living to the efficacy of what it was developed to do.” Skip to: 05:33 Does the experience of being a mentor and having that interaction with the students, does that also impact the school safety officers and how they carry out their role? “I think sometimes we fail to realize, sometimes we get caught in this place where we lose our empathy and we kind of get very robotic and particularly in a safety space or even a law enforcement-centric space, the way you deal with the trauma, just lock it all out. And I think as an organization that’s changed its culture and really changing how it manages our young people in this space from an adolescent development approach and a trauma informed approach. When you get in a room and start to listen to kids and they talk about the issues they deal with every day and they humanized the process, it really can help that officer and those men and women in the field start to understand.” “We’ve seen our men and women and our officers really talk about the positive experience they’re getting from working with the young people and how they feel so empowered and so grateful to be in the position to do what they’re doing.” Skip to: 07:45 As part of the expanded program, there is a similar mentoring model for female students. Does that differ in any way from the program created for males or is it generally, the concepts are the same? “Some of my women stepped up and said, ‘well, what about us?’ And so, as a result, we pivoted and said we would not turn away one of our school safety officers and our women who wanted to be in that space.” Skip to: 09:15 Would you highlight what the mentor training includes? What is that newly envisioned role of the Office of School Safety? What does that look like? “I tell folks these children are used to somebody coming into their life and then leaving. And then we come in and we play mentor for an hour, and then we leave. Well, it’s bigger than that… And so making sure that everyone understands that there’s a process to mentoring and you just don’t throw it up on the board and check a box.” “And so this really fits neatly into our goal to really build relationships with our young people, respect them. And we’ve adopted a model around being procedurally just, and so that is all about being fair with our young people. They are our constituents; they are who we serve. And so the better we do that with all of these tools that I outlined … , we will be a better organization because we’ve set the tone for us here as an organization.” Skip to: 12:23 Are there any future initiatives that are on the horizon for the program? “Help us identify those kids that we know are going to need some help when they come to school. Let them know that there’s someone in the building who cares about them and wants to make sure that they assimilate well. And as part of that we’ll also be able to connect to the services that are available as they do their re-entry into the system.” “We’re really, really looking for ways to connect our folks with our kids. And we think that mentoring is one of the key ways to do that.” Q: So let’s start by, if you would, let us know what objectives were initially identified in the development and evolution of the program since it was launched? A: Yeah, I think your lead out was accurate, what the strategic planning had put together, but the objective for us as an office and partnering with them is really to take our Office of School Safety and our men and women, particularly our men, our African-American men, and really start to connect them with our kids in our system. We are going through a process of revisiting our work in the Office of School Safety and really saying, how can we as Dr. Hite said relationships, touching kids in a positive way. And so how can we kind of build beyond just, as has historically been in the space, strictly focused on safety around people coming and going, and some of the negative activities, but what are the positive things around safety, where we can really engage young people early upstream and really develop those relationships that will impact them for the rest of their lives. So we really see that relationship building with those young people as an opportunity for us to really see our work and really support us as we continue to… Our evolution is really being more restorative based in our work. Q: Okay. And to date, how many students and officers are involved? A: So we have around 11 mentors currently and around 40 students, which we were glad to be able to continue to do virtually. And as we move into the next school year, we will be expanding that work. We have a number of individuals who are stepping up, want to play in that role and be mentors. So we’re excited about building this program even further. Q: Great. And you mentioned the virtual component. I imagine that may have been even more essential during these recent, past 15, 18 months where folks were isolated. I imagine that might’ve even been more critical, that connection? A: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You know and your audience knows that I think what people learn from the pandemic is how critical school is to our children. Anybody had any questions before that, all of that should be dismissed. Everyone recognized that a child coming into a school around positive adults and a learning environment, a safe environment, thrive. And so we felt it was important to continue to, even though it was challenging. I won’t say it was easy. But to continue to work in that virtual space to give the young people in our place, their outlet to still talk about the issues they have. And I’m really proud of the men and women who were involved in that virtual space. Because they kept it going through the supports of the strategic planning team, the principals, and those at the schools, we were able to keep it going and it was really exciting to see that happen. Q: That’s great. Are there short-term and long-term markers of success that will represent the program’s overall effectiveness? A: Yeah. As you know, it’s a program that’s still evolving. I mean, obviously the short-term success and expectations that relationship building with a young person, that positive impact and those are pretty much immediate, right. You know at the point of contact when you’re mentoring young people, whether you’re being effective or not and when they were coming back. Right. When they were coming back for more and you can see them lighting up. In one case we featured one of our mentors and one of our mentees and the excitement, both the child and his parents had about the support they were getting from the officers. Those are immediate. We are looking at, as we continue to build out the program, how do we bring in some of the research, because we kind of know mentoring works. There’s plenty of research in the spheres that tell you that it does, but we do want to make sure that the program is living to the efficacy of what it was developed to do. And so we are looking at what are the long-term opportunities to do further evaluation, interviewing the young people long-term even longitudinally, what did they look like two years from now, or three years now? And whether that mentoring did in fact have the impact that we hoped to do. So we’re looking for those opportunities to continue to review our program and to make sure we’re really servicing the kids, and the parents, and the community in the way we intended to do. Q: And so we’ve talked about the impact to the youth, and we know that youth mentoring has a profound, or has the potential for profound impact on the youth, but does the experience of being a mentor and having that interaction with the students, does that also impact the school safety officers and how they carry out their role? A: Yeah, absolutely. I think sometimes we fail to realize, sometimes we get caught in this place where we lose our empathy and we kind of get very robotic and particularly in a safety space or even a law enforcement-centric space, the way you deal with the trauma, just lock it all out. And I think as an organization that’s changed its culture and really changing how it manages our young people in this space from an adolescent development approach and a trauma informed approach. When you get in a room and start to listen to kids and they talk about the issues they deal with every day and they humanized the process, it really can help that officer and those men and women in the field start to understand, wow, I didn’t know Kevin was living in a foster home. And I didn’t know Kevin came from that kind of situation. Guess what? I was like that when I was a kid. And so I think engaging young people in that way really, really changes how you view them. And really, really can do a significant change in the officers in that space as how they view our young people. And so we see that as an extreme benefit, particularly as we change our culture. And we’ve seen that. I mean, we’ve seen our men and women and our officers really talk about the positive experience they’re getting from working with the young people and how they feel so empowered and so grateful to be in the position to do what they’re doing. And so, as much as they’re getting the benefit from it we, as an organization are getting 10 times the benefit of really, really being able to engage our young people, particularly our young African-American boys who are sort of struggling in particularly a lot of our challenge communities and having that man that they could talk to where many of them come from a single parent home and don’t have it, is a great opportunity. And we’re embracing it. And my men and women could not be more proud of what they’re doing in this space. Q: That’s great. And you mentioned your men and women, and so that kind of leads into my next question. As part of the expanded program, there is a similar mentoring model for female students. Does that differ in any way from the program created for males or is it generally, the concepts are the same? A: Yeah. The concepts are the same. I mean, it’s going to be an evolution, right? It was something that came out of the blue ironically during our preparing with the LEAD and obviously it was really focused on black male leadership. Some of my women stepped up and said, well, what about us? And so, as a result, we pivoted and said we would not turn away one of our school safety officers and our women who wanted to be in that space. And so it’s constructed the same way, but obviously different issues with our young ladies. But I think it also raised an understanding for us that though we focus on our, oftentimes our black males, we can’t forget about our young girls. And so that’ll probably take another stream and we’ll build out upon that. But we’re also excited about the opportunity to be able to put our school safety officers who are women into the space with young girls to also give them a place where they can have an outlet and build that collaboration with them as well. Q: Okay. So I understand that all of the 325 school safety officers have received the mandatory mentor training that’s part of the Office of School Safety’s efforts to re-envision the role within the buildings. And so with that in mind, understanding that they’ve all received this training, would you highlight what the mentor training includes? And then maybe second to that, what is that newly envisioned role of the Office of School Safety? What does that look like? A: Yeah, yeah. So part of it, I mean, the mentoring process is really, we’re working with MENTOR IR, MENTOR Independence Region, a national organization that provides mentoring. And most of the training is really based in evidence-based development approach. How to deal with interactions with young people, practicing the listening skills that are necessary to engage a young person and kind of how the work and establish the boundaries and around what that process looks like. And because I think what oftentimes we think about mentoring, but you can hurt a child. I tell folks these children are used to somebody coming into their life and then leaving. And then we come in and we play mentor for an hour, and then we leave. Well, it’s bigger than that. Right. And so making sure that everyone understands that there’s a process to mentoring and you just don’t throw it up on the board and check a box. It really has to be, because you hurt a child and that’s the last thing we want to do. And so that mentoring really good sets us as an organization, really leaning forward into that space. So everyone understands, what does it mean? Before you touch that child, understand what that looks like. As we move into our Office of School Safety, part of what our evolution is, we’ve created a strategic plan, really rooted in five pillars, but one of the core pillars is really restorative practices. And in those restorative practices, so in addition to the mentoring, we’re training our men and women on restorative circles. So they’ve been trained. So we have a large quorum and many of our mentors are also been trained in being able to do restorative circles. All of that with the purposes… We come into our school setting, particularly this school year, when we couple that with our youth courts…

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Building Inclusive, Poverty-Informed School Communities Sep 21, 2021

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About this Episode Time Stamps Q&A About our Guests Resources As a person who grew up in migrant labor poverty herself, Dr. Donna Beegle holds firsthand knowledge of just how inequitable school can be for children coming from poor households. Through leading her organization Communication Across Barriers, Dr. Beegle has spent her career helping others understand how those living in poverty experience life differently. In the classroom, understanding poverty helps shatter myths and stereotypes, and this knowledge is key to creating a more equitable learning experience for all students. On this episode of Keystone Education Radio, host Annette Stevenson speaks with Dr. Beegle about her passion and commitment to breaking the poverty cycle. Skip to: 00:53 What is your background that led you to the point of co-founding Communication Across Barriers? “So when you can empower educators with an understanding of these different lived experiences, they hear their students differently, and they hear the families differently rather than projecting this one idea of poverty.” “It turned me into a research addict. Every single thing I do is research-based. I’ve studied the history of poverty, United States of America, and I learned that most people haven’t. I learned we graduate people to be teachers, social workers, psychiatrists, probation officers, school board members, elected officials, and they’ve never had the history of poverty in this country. So, there’s with the best of intentions, people working to address those impacts of poverty, but not always understanding it.” Skip to: 07:26 What are some of the stereotypes or biases that come into the picture and how do these stereotypes hinder progress? “When people know the facts, they then want to align and really fight the poverty, not the students and families who live in it.” Skip to: 14:43 If you were to identify some of the most damaging impacts of poverty on youth, what would that be? “Educators who understand that what kids know when they get to our doors, isn’t all they can know . . . When the information is meaningful and purposeful and we use evidence-based best practices of teaching and learning and we engage our entire community, we can shatter those statistics that a student born into poverty today is less likely to get an education than they were in 40s.” Skip to: 15:54 How does understanding poverty as a society and an educational system help to reverse this and flip this around? “We have to start shifting our paradigm to how will we make the learning happen. Not how will the students and families be ready for us, but how can we get ready for the students and families living in their cars, living in storage sheds, campers, doubled up, tripled.” Skip to: 19:57 How can we build responsive, inclusive communities that work for all? “What works is when we build the relationships, we create a platform for the entire community to get poverty informed and aligned with a shared understanding and shared language.” “Any barrier that can be removed, absolutely should. If it’s not in my hands to do it, whatever my role is, I need to be able to go, ‘Okay, well, who can?’ Who gets a paycheck to resolve this particular issue? And where are they? Who are they? And call them up and use our titles to get through the system.” “You have a faulty definition of poverty at the federal level, and then you have subconscious misunderstandings about what the impacts of generational, the intersections of poverty and race, the intersections of the working class who are very, very different from generational poverty. Very, very different from immigrant poverty. But, if we’re aware of that, as educators, as school board members, we can take that into considerations and make our efforts closer aligned with where the students and families are rather than where we want them to be.” Q: And so if you could start by giving us a little bit of background, your background, which led you to the point of co-founding Communication Across Barriers. A: Well, that is something that I bring to the work to break poverty barriers to education that is unique. I was born into generations of migrant labor poverty. So generational poverty, what that really means is there’s a high level of struggle with literacy. A lot of my family members can’t read and write. If they sign a paper, they’re going to sign with a X for their name or they’re not going to do it. Some of them would be maybe functionally literate but if you put a newspaper in front of them, they wouldn’t be able to read it. That would be me at age 26. So I grew up in a world where everybody worked hard but it was migrant labor work. So we were always working in the morning to hopefully get up enough for a potato chip sandwich, and then in the evening to get some dinner and gas to get back to the field again the next day. I have five brothers also born into the deepest poverty. I am the only family member who has not been incarcerated. I tell people it’s not because I didn’t break the law but we have to understand that, that context of poverty doesn’t always allow you to be good. People are doing what they see possible from their experiences and exposure. So I dropped out of school at 15 and got married. That was absolutely normal. I thought everybody did that. I met my ex husband at 12 and I don’t know if this would surprise you but he also came from generations of migrant labor poverty and his family lived exactly like mine. So one of the key lessons I really emphasize is that the isolation of poverty perpetuates it. Who do middle class people spend time with? Who did middle-class people sit down to dinner with? So all through school, I didn’t know the words my teachers would use. They would talk about things and I’d be like, “What does that word mean?” And my teachers with the very best of intentions, “you need to go look it up in a dictionary.” “You need to be responsible, independent learner. I will not enable you.” So I would go to the dictionary and there would be five more words that I had no idea what they meant. Nobody in my environment to even begin to say, “What does this word mean?” And learning theory, my doctorate is educational leadership. Learning theory says a human can’t learn the meaning of a word unless they have meaningful dialogue with somebody who can contextualize that word and give them meaningful examples they can relate to. So for me, it wasn’t only the examples or the words. It was also the examples. So the teachers, when they would explain things would use, middle-class lived experiences. Everybody knows this. Everybody’s been here and it’s like, yeah, no, I haven’t. One of the ways I help people remember this is I was training attorneys in Arizona. One of my books is Breaking Poverty Barriers to Equal Justice. So I was in Arizona, I’m walking out after a training, attorney’s walking beside me, hot, hot, hot. She said, “Oh my gosh, this feels like a spa.” At the very same minute, I said, “Wow, this feels like a laundromat.” We use examples that we are exposed to. So as teachers are using examples from their lived experiences, you’ve got kids in poverty going, “Yeah, I don’t know that. I’ve never heard of that,” or “That’s not how I would say it.” So when I work with teachers, we help them to really make sure that they’re communicating effectively. My master’s is communication and I studied communicating more effectively across poverty, race, gender and generational barriers, because meanings are in people. When I told a teacher at 15, “I’m quitting school.” She said, “Don’t quit school because you’re going to want a job.” Well, what’s the meaning of a job to a teacher? What’s the meaning of a job to a migrant labor worker? She thinks she’s giving me an incentive, a motivator. That’s going to really get me going. But to me, a job meant you work hard. You don’t get treated with respect. You don’t move up. You still get evicted. You still go hungry. So I looked at her at 15 and said, “I don’t want a job.” And how does a middle-class person respond to that? Probably like my teacher did. “You’re lazy. You’re not motivated, and you’re not going to go anywhere in life with that little attitude.” So, often there’s such a breakdown in communication. There’s a difficulty in building the relationships. So that really led to the work that I did all the way through the doctoral program for my doctoral research. I interviewed people from generations of poverty, which is the deepest, and there are many types of poverty. Most people don’t know this. This is straight out of my research. Generational working class, immigrant situational intersections of poverty and race mixed class. There’s so many different lived experiences. So when you can empower educators with an understanding of these different lived experiences, they hear their students differently, and they hear the families differently rather than projecting this one idea of poverty, “Oh, well, everybody’s been poor.” So if you imagine you have students from generational poverty, working class poverty, immigrant poverty in the classroom, we’re taking one approach to address the barriers. You can see how we’re going to really seriously miss some. So that work really led me. It turned me into a research addict. Every single thing I do is research-based. I’ve studied the history of poverty, United States of America, and I learned that most people haven’t. I learned we graduate people to be teachers, social workers, psychiatrists, probation officers, school board members, elected officials, and they’ve never had the history of poverty in this country. So, there’s with the best of intentions, people working to address those impacts of poverty, but not always understanding it. This is my 30th year. I’ve worked all 50 states and multiple countries. I’ve never advertised it. Always word of mouth. People will bring me in to train attorneys and the educators will hear about us they’ll train the educators and then they’ll hear about it, and I’ll train the social workers until you get a poverty informed community going so that no matter what door our children and families walk through, they’re treated with dignity and respect and we’re able to communicate and meet them where they are not where we want them to be, and that’s really when you build that, we start to see lives changed. Q: You talked about sort of that relate-ability gap, giving examples from life, and the student or the peer not understanding based on their own life experiences. That kind of leads me into my next question. Relative to those who live in poverty, and you touched upon this a little bit, what are some of the stereotypes or biases that come into the picture and how do these stereotypes hinder progress? A: Well, I mentioned that we graduate people from college to be educators, to be school board members, to be engineers without the history of poverty, United States of America. So we leave the media as the number one teacher. So what most people know about poverty, it’s going to be, “Well, they get rich by having welfare. They don’t want to work. They want welfare.” In 1986, my welfare check for me, my daughter Jennifer was six, my son Daniel was two. My 15 year old cousin didn’t have a place to go, she was with me. My marriage had ended and my ex-husband who couldn’t read and write after seven years at high poverty schools, he went to live in a car that we had bought at an auction for 25 bucks. I go apply for welfare and they said, “Well, we’ll give you $408 to take care of you and your three kids, but we won’t help the 15-year-old cousin because she’s not yours.” This is happening all across the United States where those subsistence amounts are stretched even farther than we even know. So my rent at that time in a neighborhood called Felony Flats in Portland, Oregon, and I lived in 17 houses in 20 years there, my rent was $395. So I had $408, that left me with $13, and they gave me $150 in food stamps. So when I got an eviction notice, because I’d pay the rent one month, utilities the next month, my welfare workers said, “Well, if you have any eviction notice, you’re now mandated to money management classes.” 23 states have passed legislation saying that you have a newborn baby our state will not help you. So there’s this belief that people have children to get welfare, and the states who still will help if you have a baby, while you’re on TANF welfare [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families], the national average you get is $60 a month to take care of your baby. According to HUD, there’s not one town in America where a person earning minimum wage, a person on disability, which is right about $750 a month, or a person on subsistence TANF welfare, and I told you, 1986 was my welfare check was $408. The average welfare check today, nationally is $478. We’re talking about 1986, $70 to 2021. Welfare does vary slightly by state. So in my state, we’re one of the more generous states. If you’re a family of three, you get $506 a month to live on. So knowing the facts about poverty helps us to suspend that judgment. In my book, See Poverty … Be the Difference, there’s a quote in there, that’s on the walls of the new Portland State School of Social Work building, which they named community classrooms in my honor. I tell people that’s really weird, I went to the ribbon cutting for that, and this professor said, “Oh, you’re Dr. Donna Beegle. I’ve been teaching the Donna Beegle community classrooms and I thought you were a dead person.” Okay. Very weird. I am proud. They let my cousin who had no K-12 education, grew up with my aunt Linda, my mom’s sister who can’t read at all, lived in a car most of her life. She’s my graphic designer. So if you go to my website, Communication Across Barriers, you will see Wanda’s magic all over there. Every book, everything, that’s Wanda. She took quotes out of See Poverty, and she put them on the walls of the new School of Social Work building. So when you walk in, it says, “Believe people can make it out of poverty. If you don’t. They probably won’t.” It says, “If you’re judging, you cannot connect. If you cannot connect, you cannot communicate, and if you cannot communicate, how will we educate?” So to suspend judgment we’ve got to gain poverty competencies and get poverty informed. So those are a couple big ones. Another big one is, well, they have Nike’s and they can’t afford food. So someone will do a home visit and they get there and “Man, they’ve got big screen TV. They’re watching cable. They’ve got painted nails. They’re smoking cigarettes and wearing Nikes,” and people will say, “I don’t want to help them.” And this is again, more of our ignorance. Oprah Winfrey said on her show, “I would rather help children in Africa than children in America.” And she said that because she interviewed kids in Africa and she said, “What do you want?” And they said, “Uniforms to go to school.” She interviewed kids in America. She said, “What do you want?” And they said, “X-Box, PlayStation, Nikes” all that. Because what Oprah Winfrey missed, and what most people miss is that United States is a consumerism society. Paulo Freire says every society teaches its people, “What does it take to belong?” So if a kid walks into school with the right shoes or the right cell phone, what happens? “Ooh, ah,” they get noticed. Maslow who taught us about human development says, “To be noticed is to belong.” And he put belonging right up there with our need to eat. It’s about belonging. The last one I’ll touch on is just that, when I go into school social work curriculum, I work with colleges around the country. When I go look in the curriculum for poverty, I almost never ever find poverty. What I find is drug addiction, child abuse, domestic violence, mental health, child sex abuse, no conversation about the housing affordability crisis in the United States, the childcare crisis in the United…

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Bully Prevention: Teaching Students to be Upstanders Sep 07, 2021

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About this Episode Time Stamps Q&A About our Guests Resources While statistics of bullying in schools may be alarming, organizations such as Network of Victim Assistance (NOVA) in Bucks County are working to prevent occurrences by teaching students of all ages strategies to fend off bullies and how to intervene when they see it occurring. On this episode of Keystone Education Radio, host Annette Stevenson speaks with Grace Wheeler, NOVA’s director of education and prevention on the organization’s efforts on this front. In this episode, you’ll discover: How and why bullying patterns can change as students get older The importance of creating a climate of support and empathy and teaching problem solving skills in schools What it means to be an upstander and how students can become one Skip to: 01:07 How prevalent is bullying in schools, specifically in Pennsylvania? “Of these high schoolers as well, we know about 8% of these students said that they miss at least one day of school per month because they did not feel safe in their school or on their school property.” Skip to: 02:13 I think that most people think it’s more significant of an issue at the middle or high school level. Is this accurate? “I always like to frame it as it’s not more or less significant, but just it looks different depending on the grade level of the student.” Skip to: 03:22 “What I think really comes at the foundation of bullying prevention is being intentional and taking bullying seriously. It is not an experience that every third grader just has to endure as a part of a typical childhood. It is something that is preventable. And certainly, when we don’t take bullying seriously, we’re really taking away the power and the voice of victims who are experiencing bullying.” “Upstander intervention can be really impactful, and upstanders are often that piece of the puzzle that has the potential for that positive change.” Skip to: 06:13 We’re hearing growing concerns this year over potential mask bullying. What advice would you offer to school leaders to address this possible scenario? “We as adults can be thinking about the tone that we are setting and the expectations that we have of students, and certainly being mindful of the behavior and language that we are modeling.” Skip to: 08:00 What kind of work does your organization do with school districts? How do you work with the school districts to help in this area? “It’s an Encourage Upstanders program, and it’s where we work with high school students and we prepare them, we train them to be peer educators in the younger grades of the elementary schools in their districts. They then are the presenters that go into our elementary schools, work with those younger students and talk about upstander behavior.” Skip to: 09:52 Is there any data or maybe anecdotal success stories that tell you that the preventative training is having an impact? “Our responses coming out of the post-testing is that 100% of the students were able to identify at least two strategies for supporting classmates who are being cyberbullied, and also to identify two appropriate responses if they were being cyberbullied. Those two responses is really at the core of what we’re looking to do with our programs. When we got that data, we were just really excited to have had that impact.” Skip to: 11:04 Is there somewhere [districts] can go or look to find an appropriate organization that they might be able to work with? Q: How prevalent is bullying in schools, specifically in Pennsylvania? A: Just as you were saying there in your introduction, about one in five students are bullied nationally in any given school year. We find that the CDCs youth risk behavior survey is a really great resource for looking at data that’s specific to states. For example, 2019 is the latest publication for this report that we have. In 2019, about 14% of high schoolers reported being electronically bullied, and about 19% of them being bullied on a school property. Of these high schoolers as well, we know about 8% of these students said that they miss at least one day of school per month because they did not feel safe in their school or on their school property. It’s really important for us to know the statistics of Pennsylvania and also to just keep that aligned with what we know about national averages and knowing that these statistics are actually fairly similar to what we see as national averages as well. Q: I think that most people think it’s more significant of an issue at the middle or high school level. Is this accurate? A: It’s not necessarily a question of more significant or worse, it’s different. When we think about bullying behavior at the elementary school level, we’re often looking at bullying behavior that’s physical bullying, social bullying, verbal bullying. At the middle school and high school levels is where we start to see that introduction more to cyberbullying. It’s a question of the evidence of bullying isn’t often quite as present in an elementary school. If we’re talking about a bully, who’s bullying a student on the playground, there’s a likelihood that a staff member of that school is not present to witness the bullying. Whereas cyberbullying has a much larger audience and there’s often the ability to provide evidence or proof. We can show that Instagram post, we can show that text. I always like to frame it as it’s not more or less significant, but just it looks different depending on the grade level of the student. Q: What are the most powerful ways that school leaders, educators, and parents can teach even the youngest of learners why we shouldn’t bully, and then also how to prevent bullying? A: Certainly, we can first have this understanding of root causes of bullying behavior, and they fall into some larger categories. We can think about power and control, the pure attention that a student might be receiving, inadequate or ineffective supervision, bias issues, and looking at the overall culture of acceptance of bullying within a school climate. What I think really comes at the foundation of bullying prevention is being intentional and taking bullying seriously. It is not an experience that every third grader just has to endure as a part of a typical childhood. It is something that is preventable. And certainly, when we don’t take bullying seriously, we’re really taking away the power and the voice of victims who are experiencing bullying. In terms of prevention, we like to focus on social and emotional learning. Are we delivering programs that are building in emotional regulation and empathy building, and perspective taking? Are we working through some activities that offer social problem solving? One of the things we really focus on is thinking about the role of a bystander. In bullying situations, about 80% of the time, a bystander, at least one if not multiple bystanders, are present in witnessing that bullying. We know that when children are bullied, if they are defended or supported by those bystanders, they are less likely then to feel anxious and depressed. What we actually like to do is turn it on its head a little bit and we call those who are bystanders who do take action, we call them upstanders. We know that when upstanders intervene in bullying situations, about 57% of the time that bullying behavior is going to stop within 10 seconds. Upstander intervention can be really impactful, and upstanders are often that piece of the puzzle that has the potential for that positive change. I think another piece of that puzzle when we think about bullying prevention, going back to something I said earlier, which is are we creating a culture in a given school or any district where bullying is not accepted, and certainly not the norm so that students are not giving an audience to those that are using that bullying behavior? Q: That’s really important and teachable moments at all age levels, really. We’re hearing growing concerns this year over potential mask bullying, whether students choose to wear masks, not wear masks, obviously absent of mandates. What advice would you offer to school leaders to address this possible scenario just to head that off before it begins occurring? A: Yeah. I think it goes back to what we talked about in setting that intention and taking this seriously. We as adults can be thinking about the tone that we are setting and the expectations that we have of students, and certainly being mindful of the behavior and language that we are modeling. Certainly, no surprise that children are watching and listening to us, so our behavior, our language is vitally important. This also, I think, comes to that point of school climate. What are the signals and the enforcement that we are giving? What kind of classroom management are we using within our smaller spheres of students to be, again, mindful and vigilant of masking bullying? I think it also has the potential to really present students with a real-life example to talk through a bullying situation. It’s a real-world example of practicing their social and emotional skills and empathy and compassion. But I think really at the end of the day, what we can project for students is that bullying in any form is not acceptable. We can handle any form of bullying, whether it’s something new and specific to the time we live in now or those typical forms of bullying that we’re familiar with, our prevention, our responses, they’re similar. Q: What kind of work does your organization do with school districts? How do you work with the school districts to help in this area? A: At NOVA we have a prevention education department, and our bullying prevention programs are the cornerstone of the programming that we offer. We offer parent programs. One of our most frequently requested parent programs would be Navigating Cyberbullying. We hold classroom presentations that start in those lower elementary ages that go all the way on up your high school, and certainly the content, the messaging is going to change and evolve as we’re working with students of the older grades. We also have a program at NOVA that we’re particularly enthused about because it’s a primary prevention strategy. It’s an Encourage Upstanders program, and it’s where we work with high school students and we prepare them, we train them to be peer educators in the younger grades of the elementary schools in their districts. They then are the presenters that go into our elementary schools, work with those younger students and talk about upstander behavior. Really just the power that that method holds when it’s coming from that older student, the impact is really tremendous. A lot of this is all supported by our No Bullying Run which we hold every year, and it’s a really great event where our community comes together. It’s a really powerful message, a powerful day that is that stand against bullying in our communities. Q: Great, so whole community support. I love the program that involves the older students, because what a different conversation that is, older student to younger student rather than adult to student. A: Absolutely. Q: Is there any data or maybe anecdotal success stories that tell you that the preventative training is having an impact? Is there anything in that area that you can share? A: Sure. Typically, our best practice when we’re working with students is to use an evaluation tool. Typically, that’s going to look like pre- and post-testing. This particular year we presented virtually. Typically, we’re in person. But virtually this year, our responses coming out of the post-testing is that 100% of the students were able to identify at least two strategies for supporting classmates who are being cyberbullied, and also to identify two appropriate responses if they were being cyberbullied. Those two responses is really at the core of what we’re looking to do with our programs. When we got that data, we were just really excited to have had that impact. We know that our schools call us back year after year. We’re often that call that they make when something has happened, there’s a new situation and they need some additional support. We find ourselves really fortunate to be that resource for our school districts in the county. Q: And that brings me to the area that you serve, which is Bucks County. I’m wondering if there are districts that are located in other regions across the state, is there somewhere they can go or look to find an appropriate organization that they might be able to work with? A: Sure. Well, NOVA is what’s called the Victim Services Agency, so I certainly would recommend that school districts identify if they have a Victim Services Agency in their county, and then what their prevention programs look like. Outside of that, a couple of really great resources, the Pennsylvania Department of Education has a page with just a host of different resources, slides, programs. It’s really a significant, I think, resource for our schools. Stopbullying.gov is another really great resource, and of course, this number that we often use with our students in schools is the Bullying Prevention Consultation Hotline that we have in this state as well. A lot of these resources I just listed may be able to help school districts find who are their local resources when it comes to bullying prevention. Grace Wheeler, Director of Education and Prevention at Network of Victim Assistance Grace Wheeler is the Director of Education and Prevention at Network of Victim Assistance (NOVA), where Grace provides leadership for prevention and training programs to children, youth, community members and professionals. Grace leads the education and prevention team with the strategic development and implementation of prevention and training goals and strategies. Grace has an M.A. in international peace and conflict resolution from Arcadia University and is a certified mediator in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and certified facilitator in multiple pieces of training including Stewards of Children, Safe Touches, and Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities. Grace has worked in conflict zones around the world including Rwanda, Northern Ireland and Sierra Leone. Grace is an avid hiker and can be found in the mountains of her home state, New York, in her spare time. Grace can be reached at grace@novabucks.org. NOVAPennsylvania Office of Victim ServicesPennsylvania Department of Education Bullying PreventionStopbullying.govBullying Prevention Consultation Hotline: 1-866-716-0424 The post Bully Prevention: Teaching Students to be Upstanders appeared first on Keystone Education Radio.

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Pursuing Passion and Optimism as a Foundation for Equity and Inclusion Aug 24, 2021

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About this Episode Time Stamps Q&A About our Guests Resources Kimberly Reed has spent her career inspiring and guiding some of the most influential business leaders in implementing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies and practices. Listen in on this Keystone Education Radio conservation, as host Annette Stevenson discusses with Kim her remarkable journey to establish her organization, her advice for establishing DEI policy in schools, and what drives her tenacious pursuit of optimism. In this episode, you’ll discover: How passion can shape your career path Fundamentals of tackling subjects such as diversity, equity and inclusion in educational settings Why embracing optimism in your darkest moments changes your response to these situations and builds resilience Skip to: 00:45 What is your background and what led you to where you are now? “The theme of that was people. And working with people, advocating for people, being a champion for our community.” Skip to: 04:36 What was the biggest catalyst for Reed Development Group? What did you set out to achieve when you started your organization? “I had a great mentor, sponsor, and I also had a wonderful boss who saw the talent in me and who believed in me, and who was a champion of my success. I’ll never forget those important ingredients or those two people.” “But for me, when they said that, ‘Kim, go follow your passion,’ I got on the plane that evening and I thought about what my passion is. What is it? I thought it was diversity and working for a global organization, making an excellent salary, and I will get on the cover of Black Enterprise Magazine, or Forbes Woman, at the time that I was reading, and I would ride off into the sunset. Continue to work and ride off into the sunset into retirement. Well, that didn’t happen. I followed my passion. I called them when I got back the next morning, and I said, ‘I am going to see what else is out there for me.’” “Our projects are sometimes short, our projects are sometimes long, but at the end of the day, what we do is develop people. We develop leaders and we develop organizations, to ensure that they are innovative and that diversity is in the DNA of the organization.” Skip to: 09:52 When you’re consulting, where do you advise or what do you advise as the starting point? What’s some of the groundwork that must be laid? “Encourage school boards to embrace the importance of teacher and school leader diversity. What does your board look like? Is it a replication of the communities you serve? That’s important.” “We’ve got to start in the right direction. We have to use the data. We have to engage the school boards. We have to look at recruitment. We have to look at work conditions. And lastly, it has to be about support.” Skip to: 18:19 What does your book title, “Optimists Always Win” mean to you? “What I want the book, what I want readers to know, that this book, is that it encourages readers to road test their optimism skills, eliminate discouragement and create new a set of positive habits.” “Learn how to really just embrace and take your inner strength, stand tall, and use your power to power through life with grace, confidence and resilience, because these difficulties and struggles are unavoidable in our lives, but a person has complete control over how you respond to a situation.” Skip to: 22:35 How do you advise people that they can generate optimism? “Gratitude is the rocket fuel to our resilience.” Q: So Kim, would you start by telling us about you, a little bit about you and your background and what led you to where you are now? A: Sure, sure, sure. So my name is Kimberly Reed, and I am a new best-selling author. Q: Awesome. A: Yes, and I’ll talk about that in a moment, but where I started is in corporate. I had the blessing to work with some of the most influential companies in the world, and I had such a great ride on my corporate journey. I had the opportunity to work with some of the best and brightest people on the planet. No question about that. I started off in recruitment, talent management. So if I hit the rewind button even further, I thought I was going to be an attorney. I saw Johnnie Cochran… I’m dating myself, but I saw Johnnie Cochran, the whole OJ trial, and I was in college at the time and I said, “wow.” I always wanted to be a teacher on the college level, but I also wanted to be Oprah, in the sense of, I love people. So I wanted to be a talk show host. Then I wanted to be an anchor woman on the 11 o’clock news. The theme of that was people. And working with people, advocating for people, being a champion for our community. And I still did that. I did that. How I did that was all of my corporate experiences in recruitment, talent management and diversity brought me to this very moment. So I had to learn the business. I was in professional services, for example. I worked for a company that you might know called PWC and Deloitte. I worked in these large companies, global entities, and I was able to learn about the business aspect of diversity and understanding back then it was just diversity, and inclusion wasn’t a part of the equation. Nor belonging, nor equity, or equality. So I was focusing on diversity, and ensuring in tech at the time, because one of the practices I was in was tech, and the tech practice that we diversify; that we had more women and people of color in that space. So I fell in love with diversity, and going back to the ingredients of what brought me here is the champion, the advocate. And my passion to ensure that women and people of color have a seat at the corporate table, because I know what that table feels like. I also know that a lot of mentees that I have on college campuses, they aspire to be those people. To be those people at the table, whether it is educational administrator, or whether it is a corporate executive like myself. So it was a kaleidoscope of experiences that brought me to this very moment. I am currently, my day job, is a diversity, equality and inclusion executive and strategist. So I have the blessing to work with still the world’s most influential organizations, some that I worked for previously, to ensure that they are not only hiring, because we know hiring is important, retention is important, but their culture is diversity ready. So in that there’s a sense of belonging also in that culture that permeates your employees. Q: Yeah, absolutely. You touched upon what your day job is now, so talk a little bit about what the biggest catalyst was for founding Reed Development Group. Was there a single big moment, or was it cumulative? What did you set out to achieve when you started your organization? A: Sure. I got laid off. Q: Well, that is a catalyst. A: That was the catalyst. So it’s funny Annette, I will tell you, when I tell the story sometimes of my background, or how sometimes where we weave optimism into our lives, etc., people always wait for me to say this big moment of that, I came to entrepreneurship. It was a default. I thank God that I have an entrepreneur spirit. I just didn’t know it was within me. Because… I will never forget, the short story; it was Deloitte, was my last corporate job, and I worked on the national practice. I reported directly to the chief diversity officer of Deloitte Global. One of my mentors was one of a few highest-ranking partners of color in the entire firm. So I had great air cover. I had a great mentor, sponsor, and I also had a wonderful boss who saw the talent in me and who believed in me, and who was a champion of my success. I’ll never forget those important ingredients or those two people. So I was working in Philadelphia, but both of my bosses, well one of my bosses, the chief diversity officer, was in Houston. And I flew down to Houston because she wanted to meet; no problem, that wasn’t out of the norm. And so when I met with her, then the partner who I told you about, who was a mentor of mine, was also there. And they said, Kim, we know that you love what you do. We are leaving the firm. I’m like, what? What do you mean you’re leaving the firm? Who’s going to be my air cover? Who’s going to be my advocate? Who’s going help me get work done? Because sometimes in organizations, you have some people that fully don’t believe in the cause. And when you have executives or when you have people at that level to help you navigate the culture, your job is that much easier. So needless to say, we ate dinner, we had this conversation, they told me they were leaving. They said, but Kim, we know that we see you as a professional speaker. You always are doing great sessions for the firm. We understand, we know your passion for diversity, etc., and the list went on. We can have another role for you in the firm because the Global Diversity Team was disassembling. There was a lot of re-org happening, etc. We just didn’t know where the chips were going to fall at that moment. So for them, as the mentors they were and great boss that they were, they were protecting me, because we just didn’t know where that fallout was going to be. They said, “Kim, you could stay with the firm and we’ll find you a role; no biggie. But go follow your passion.” And I thought this was my passion! But entrepreneurship is the hardest job I ever loved, and I have no ceiling. Meaning when you work inside, and there’s nothing wrong with working internally, because I tell my students all the time, you want to diversify your experience. Go work for a global company, travel, go work in education, go do what you want to do to make an impact in other people’s lives and simultaneously make an impact in yours. But for me, when they said that, “Kim, go follow your passion,” I got on the plane that evening and I thought about what my passion is. What is it? I thought it was diversity and working for a global organization, making an excellent salary, and I will get on the cover of Black Enterprise Magazine, or Forbes Woman, at the time that I was reading, and I would ride off into the sunset. Continue to work and ride off into the sunset into retirement. Well, that didn’t happen. I followed my passion. I called them when I got back the next morning, and I said, “I am going to see what else is out there for me.” And on October 20, it will be actually 14 years this year, I started Reed Consulting Group, and then the name changed later to Development. And you might say, why did you do that? Well, consultants go in an organization, they come out. We go in, we do the work, we come out. But diversity is a little different, because we tend to be a part of the fabric of the organization. Our projects are sometimes short, our projects are sometimes long, but at the end of the day, what we do is develop people. We develop leaders and we develop organizations, to ensure that they are innovative and that diversity is in the DNA of the organization. That’s how I got to where I am now, and the impacts to the world that I hope that I make. Q: That’s an amazing journey there. So some of the subjects that you talked about that you help incorporate into the DNA of an organization, tackling subjects like diversity, equity, inclusion, all of this can seem overwhelming for leaders of organizations, or leaders of school districts who are setting about to do some work in this area. So when you’re consulting, let’s say with an educational entity, where do you advise, or what do you advise as the starting point? What’s some of the groundwork that must be laid? A: Sure. I always recommend… There is a form of a playbook, this D-E-I-B [Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging], because some entities use belonging, playbook. And what I would say specifically to educators, and school district leaders, staff, teachers, who are interested in improving and walking in the evolution of diversity, equity, equality, and inclusion, I would recommend there are a few steps that you take. One, is that you encourage school boards to embrace the importance of teacher and school leader diversity. What does your board look like? Is it a replication of the communities you serve? That’s important. You have to encourage school boards, and we have to signal them to ensure that they are understanding the importance. We are seeing that play out in Florida right now. Also, step two I would say, is to collect and use data to examine school district recruitment, interviews and hiring practices. And that’s internal, so let’s talk about external. In your student population, let’s look at the data of how many students are in a challenged socioeconomic environment. That’s a part of diversity. There are over 10 dimensions of diversity and socioeconomic is one of them. So are we looking at the demographics of our kids? Because every student has a different need. Think about learning for a moment, Annette. A lot of times we have to modify our teaching, because I teach on the college level. We have to modify our teaching style, energy, etc., for the adult learner, because adult learners learn differently; visual, for example. Well let’s go back to children. There is a different learning style and a different, I would say, set of issues that students, for example, in the urban communities, face before they hit the school doors every morning. So we have to understand what our students, the kaleidoscope in the demographic of our students that we’re teaching, that we’re working with, in addition to the administrative stuff. Back what I just discussed; school district recruitment, interviewing, hiring practices. I’m reading a lot now about diversity because of what is happening in Florida. It prompted me to read into some of the horrific depictions, videos that we’ve seen. And I understand parents, I understand both sides. But not to get into mask versus not mask, but this is talking about diversity, but that is an element of diversity, so you can’t ignore that. Vaccinated versus unvaccinated. Some people who have religious beliefs of why they’re not vaccinated. They’re a part of this kaleidoscope of diverse people, and diversity in our re-made nation. Virtual learning. We developed, my team, we partner with the state of Delaware, and this is our second cycle; second year, if you will. And we developed an internship program and what the essential, without going into the weeds of what the program is, but it is a program that is for high school students in Wilmington. Most come from very humble beginnings. And so because it’s virtual, we have different issues than perhaps students that have access to Wi-Fi. Something so simple, but so powerful. Our students, some of them have to be on video. Why? Two reasons. One, because of their background. Sometimes students are on video or off video, and some are off video because of their environments. We have to understand that. Sometimes students just don’t want to be on video; we got that, we got that small pool. But depending on the student, the groups, and the demographics of students that you’re working with, we have to understand that there are different challenges, and one is Wi-Fi. Something that you and I may take for granted, or people that are listening to this podcast. It’s like, what? We have Wi-Fi. I have cable. That’s why I have Wi-Fi. But there’s still families that don’t, so the students have to figure out a way to be on a Zoom, or to attend their internships virtually. And that was eye opening for me, because I did not think about Wi-Fi, to be honest with you, for anybody. So I had to check myself. So it goes to my third step… Well point, I should say. We have to think about how we improve a working environment for educators of color in our students, because not all students of color come from humble beginnings. We have to understand that kaleidoscope of thinking. And I would say the fourth, is you have to question and change recruitment practices to identify qualified teachers of color. In Philadelphia we see a great diversity.…

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