Drinking From the Firehose: A Podcast for School Leaders

Ep.7 Restorative Justice Pt.2Angela Ward:It's really important that ... So culturally responsive references basically that we are an understanding culture. And so culture is anything that makes you the unique person that you are. It's your background, it's your values, it's your beliefs, it's your bias, both good and bad. It's customs, it's traditions. It's things that -Ellen Willoughby:It's not just your race.Angela Ward:No. Culture is not synonymous with race. Race is a social and political fabrication that separates us by skin color and appearance. Culture is what makes us who we are and it impacts what we value and what our beliefs are. So a culturally responsive restorative practices requires us to really understand the difference between race and culture. It really requires us to have those critical conversations about Zaretta Hammond's book Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain. So she really looks at the brain and how culture impacts the brain and how different cultures around the world value different things and how that shows up in the way we engage with each other every day in school spaces and in society, and what I always framed ... Like equity work as cultural proficiency is that on-ramp to equity.Angela Ward:So you can't have an equitable space where a strong, culturally responsive restorative practices process exists if you haven't first looked at who am I, what are my values, what are my beliefs. What are the things that drive the decisions that I make every day? That's cultural proficiency. If we're not asking ourselves critical questions. Critical doesn't mean negative. Critical means critical thinking. It means lifting a heavy cognitive load and not taking everything at face value. So in order to be able to do a culturally responsive restorative practices on a campus, one has to be critical and critically self-reflective and you have to question the why of decisions that typically happen on a daily basis. Why do we receive students at the car line in this way? Why do we dismiss ninth graders in this way? Is there a better way? Are all the students receiving what they need if we send them all at the same time. Really questioning the why in your decisions and also questioning by doing it this way are we missing our opportunities for children to get exactly what they need from us as adults and each other as peers.Ellen Willoughby:Right. I bet a lot of times the why is, "Well because this is how we've always done it." Not a good enough answer, exactly, so ... Or this is how I want it to look and as a leader I need it to be this way.Angela Ward:I need it to be this way, That individualistic view of schooling is a sure on-ramp to the school to prison pipeline.Ellen Willoughby:Yeah. Absolutely. I'm loving this conversation.Angela Ward:Me too.Ellen Willoughby:So I want to take us back to tier three. So tell us a little bit about those practices that happen in tier three. Because to me I feel like this is where people have a definition of like you said restorative justice, but it's not that. It's about restorative practices. I'd love to hear your thoughts.Angela Ward:Yeah. What people typically think, educators who are not being critical and critically self-reflective, they think of justice as throwing the book at a child figuratively and kicking them out of the classroom and limiting their ability to be free and liberated in the school space. It's seen as a compliance measure.Ellen Willoughby:Oh yes. And compliance is a big part of schools that are not practicing ...Angela Ward:Yeah.Ellen Willoughby:Yes. Go ahead. [inaudible 00:35:33]Angela Ward:Restorative, community building -Ellen Willoughby:Exactly. Yeah.Angela Ward:Yeah.Ellen Willoughby:It's like just get it done and pass the test and we need our scores.Angela Ward:Absolutely, and it's interesting, this current reality that required us to have online learning really limited our ability to be in space with each other. It limited our ability to be connected and it created a microscope on children in ways that being in the school space didn't.Ellen Willoughby:Tell me a little bit more about what you mean by that.Angela Ward:We found teachers began to implement compliance measures through the computer screen.Ellen Willoughby:Oh.Angela Ward:So take your hoodie off your head, turn your camera on, you can't wear that on the screen, you need to do this, you need to do that. I did some empathy interviews with some eighth grade ladies and they were talking about how they weren't able to be their unique authentic selves anymore. One was talking about how she was ... She's basically the life of the party when they were face to face, she had her own table at lunch, she had her crew, everybody was like, "Hey, what's up, that's my girl." None of that was happening in this online space.Ellen Willoughby:So her whole social identity.Angela Ward:Her social identity went kaput when we closed schools. Because she was now finding herself at home with her family and not interacting with anyone. So completely different, and she longed for one teacher in particular would create the opportunities for them to have breakout rooms and talk about whatever they wanted to talk about. Or breakout rooms that were in the context of the academic content. But being purposeful about connection and trust building and those things are often missing which is what gets us to tier three. So those compliance measures that were happening through the computer screen were creating what I'm afraid we're going to have to have the fallout from when we're back face to face if we're not prepared as adults to utilize our academic content in a way that gives us the ability to have those meaningful conversations with students about life and society.Angela Ward:Those soft skills so to speak. Those soft skills need to be happening in your academic context, and so tier three ... It goes back to those structures that you have in place with that implementation team. That implementation team should have people, adults, who are responsible for engaging in community outside the school. They should know who the major stakeholders are outside the school that hold trusting relationships with the majority of the students or majority of the families. They should know where the places many of the students hang out when they're not at school or their families go when they're not at school. They should know how to contact parents, they should know particular ways of being for the parents and it's important that all of that knowledge exists on an implementation team because you're going to need it when students get to that tier three level. You might have a student who's been in your school system since elementary school and all along the way, all the adults have done their due diligence to make sure that we put them on the path to the school to prison pipeline, and now we have the nerve in high school to wonder why they don't want to be here.Ellen Willoughby:Exactly.Angela Ward:And so tier three becomes really crucial at middle school and high school because those are the ages where we lose them and we don't want to lose our babies.Ellen Willoughby:I feel like we're even in some cases losing them in elementary school.Angela Ward:We are. We are. Bettina Love calls it spirit killers. We're killing their spirits as early as elementary school. And if their spirits were killed in elementary school, of course their behavior is where the adults don't agree it should be, and we question the word behave. Who gets to decide what behave is, what it looks like, what it sounds like, what it feels like. Is it the teacher or is it the student? And back to that social discipline window, we're moving away from punitive which is the top of the adult has all the control and the child has no support. Moving over to doing things with the students where the students and the adult have an equal weight in regards to who controls the behavior and who's giving the support and so we really want to look at how we're doing things with students at tiers one, two and three and it really becomes crucial at three because we're at a space where we might lose this child academically, socially, or emotionally and often academic-wise, and when there's no behavior involved, it's the special education route.Angela Ward:Or it may be just putting in some tier two interventions and then they're able to function at tier two and never back at tier three but tier three is where we have those really crucial conversations about, "Hey, this ain't working. The child is not getting what they need. We're not able to function. They're not able to function. Something's got to change. What needs to change? What are the things that the adults need to do in this child's life so that they're able to function better at school?"Ellen Willoughby:It starts with the adults like you said.Angela Ward:It starts with the adults.Ellen Willoughby:Absolutely.Angela Ward:It's our responsibility, and we can't blame the parents.Ellen Willoughby:Thank you for saying that. Yes.Angela Ward:It's not the parents' fault.Ellen Willoughby:Right.Angela Ward:The parent may have whatever the parent may have, but when we're face to face with our students we have them seven plus hours a day. And my children are in extracurriculars, so they're at school even longer each day. And so you see our children as educators more than we see them as parents when the school year is in session. And so we can't say it's the parents' fault.Ellen Willoughby:And how do we involve the families in these practices as well. Like what's the family component?Angela Ward:We have to make sure that we're looking at all the ways of being with the family. We can't expect all the families to come up to the school. Some families don't want to come to the school because the school was not an inviting place for them as children, and it still might not be an inviting place for them as a parent.Ellen Willoughby:That's very true.Angela Ward:I remember we had one parent who was basically a bully. He came to the school and was angry about something, I can't remember what it was, but he was literally standing in the front office screaming at the top of his lungs, big huge fella, and I'm just 5'4", he's like 6'3", and just towering over me. I'm like, "I really want to talk to you right now but I can't talk to you in this state, so can we go in the back?" "No I'm not going in the back." "Okay. I can't have you in here screaming at my staff so something's going to have to change."Angela Ward:So eventually he left and had a different respect for me because I didn't allow him to just be what he felt like he needed to be in that moment and we have to find ways to dig deep into our emotional recesses so that we're able to be what we need to be for people because often people are dealing with something and it's not our fault that they're dealing with something but we have to figure out in a restorative practices type of way how can I build a relationship with this person because at some person I may need to restore it and so you can't restore a relationship that never existed and so that's something that people often miss when they're talking about restorative justice, restorative discipline. We have to figure out how are we at tier one creating the opportunities to build those strong, trusting relationships with adults, with children, with families, so that when some conflict occurs, we have something to restore.Ellen Willoughby:Because like you said, you can't restore a relationship that's not there.Angela Ward:And with that particular parent, I have worked all year to build a relationship with him. He wasn't hearing it that day, but he knew who I was.Ellen Willoughby:Again, he just wanted to be heard and that was how he was showing that but you also set a boundary that we can't do this like this and then that showed a level of respect. Like I want to hear what you have to say but we also have to do it in a way that is not disruptive.Angela Ward:And you're scaring my staff.Ellen Willoughby:And you're scaring my staff.Angela Ward:I'm not scared, but they are terrified of you right now.Ellen Willoughby:I actually have a couple of ... Like when you were telling that, I had a couple of memories that came back to those times and there was a time that I was scared but I didn't think I showed it. So that was good. So that was good. So I want to ask ... So you're a principal on a campus and this is not how you've been doing things. So how do you shift that mindset because you know you're going to get some people who are like I don't have time for this and also thinking about the COVID piece. Actually, I'm going to stop for a second so I can not ask you two questions at once, because I'm totally stacking questions.Ellen Willoughby:Okay, I'm going to ask this one first. So thinking about how you talked about the re-entry after COVID, and we know that schools are focusing in on the learning loss that has happened because school did not run as normal. How do schools ensure that they are balancing those practices or being aware if those practices ... Let me say that. I'm trying to think of how I'm going to say this. Because I feel like it's an area of like a challenge of that. Okay.Ellen Willoughby:So thinking about as schools return after COVID, I mean we know COVID is still happening but with the new school year, what advice would you have as know that the focus of teachers is going to be regaining the loss that the students have had academically and ensuring that they're continuing to stay focused on that restorative practice.Angela Ward:Well one thing is to not make the return to the new school year all about learning loss. That's step one. Let's start with social loss. Relationship loss. Connection loss. Those things were lost more greatly than learning. That's what the students lost. What we tend to do in education from this deficit standpoint is focus on what we can't control. So we couldn't control the daily academic engagement of children because they were not in front of us. So we assume as educators that they lost learning. I offer that that is not necessarily the assumption we should be taking. I offer that we should be looking at the greater loss which is a child who is engaging in community and conversation and being with their peers, being with adults, are gaining so much more learning than simply attending to the academic content. So how are we going to shore up our academic content delivery and our pedagogy so that our students are not continuing to lose the social aspect of learning. We can't go into this new school year focused on gaps and filling gaps. Because we have schools that exist in every single city in the state of Texas where children exist daily in classrooms where adults are only focused on skill building.Ellen Willoughby:That is true.Angela Ward:So what are we going to do, double down on skill building in those classes now? The children are never going to see the light of day. And so what are we going to do differently? I don't like to use COVID-19, I don't like to use pandemic, because that's not affirming language, it's not community-building. So I say current reality, I say online reality, things of that nature. But that taught us that as educators, we can shift on a dime.Ellen Willoughby:Absolutely, and do really great things.Angela Ward:And we can shift the budget in a matter of days to do what we need to do to make sure our children are taken care of. So I don't want to see us focus on learning loss for an entire three years. Don't kid yourself, it won't be one. It will be, "Oh the COVID reality, three years ago, yada yada yada," we'll be looking at those matrices for 10 years and talking about the loss and we were never able to recoup that loss. Hogwash.Ellen Willoughby:Yeah. There you go. Yeah.Angela Ward:I say just say no.Ellen Willoughby:Just say no. And I agree with that. I love that. All right, this has just been such an amazing conversation. Is there any last things that you want to share with our listeners about our conversation today?Angela Ward:I would say ... So one thing that I like to focus on with restorative practices are the seven core assumptions for humans and I'll read them to you. The true self in everyone is good, wise, and powerful. The world is profoundly interconnected. All human beings have a deep desire to be in a good relationship. All humans have gifts and everyone is needed for what they bring. Everything we need to make positive change is already here. Human beings are holistic and we need practices to build habits of living from the core self. Those are core assumptions that I hold true to developing the type of identity affirming spaces in our schools that help us as adults see that we already have everything we need to create culturally responsive restorative spaces in our schools. We already have everything we need to design human-centered ways of being for our students, for our staff. We have to begin to take a step back and look at the daily impacts on the decisions that we make to make sure the school functions and look at it less as schooling and more as an opportunity to build community so that students and staff are able to bring their unique gifts into the school space. That they're able to feel valued, that they're able to be ... Just be.Ellen Willoughby:That's beautiful. Wow. I've got chills. So I'd like to always end my podcasts with just seven short answer questions with an educational twist. So as an educator what keeps you up at night?Angela Ward:The plight of black, brown and indigenous students in schools where adults don't understand who they are and what their lived experiences are.Ellen Willoughby:As an educator what allows you to sleep soundly?Angela Ward:Knowing that I'm doing everything in my power to make liberating school spaces and workplaces for our children and adults.Ellen Willoughby:What sound or noise do you love to hear in a school?Angela Ward:Children talking and laughing. Being goofy.Ellen Willoughby:What sound or noise do you hate to hear in a school?Angela Ward:Silence.Ellen Willoughby:What is your favorite word in education?Angela Ward:Liberation.Ellen Willoughby:What is your least favorite word in education?Angela Ward:Discipline.Ellen Willoughby:Who was your favorite teacher and why?Angela Ward:Ms. Daniels. 11th grade English. She taught me that I was a writer. She saw me. She valued me and she's the reason probably I became Dr. Ward because I didn't see myself as a writer before I took her class.Ellen Willoughby:So Dr. Ward, I just want to thank you so much for sharing your time and your insight and your experiences with us today and we want to thank our listeners for joining in this episode of Drinking From the Firehose: A Podcast for School Leaders.

Ep.6 Restorative Justice Pt.1Ellen Willoughby:So welcome to this episode of Drinking From the Firehose, a podcast for school leaders. I am your host, Ellen Willoughby. On today's podcast, our topic is restorative justice. Over the last few years, restorative justice or restorative practices has been buzzing in the education world and we wanted to bring in an expert on the subject to share not only what it is but to learn about the practices and the impact restorative justice has on students, schools, and the community, and I am beyond excited to introduce my guest Dr. Angela Ward.Angela Ward:Thank you.Ellen Willoughby:So Dr. Ward, you were the founder and CEO of Toward Equity Consulting and you serve on national, regional and local equity groups.Angela Ward:Yes.Ellen Willoughby:You also led this work with AISD. So we are excited to have you and let's just kick it off and have you share what is restorative justice?Angela Ward:So in my role with Austin Independent School District, what we did was frame restorative practices as a culturally responsive approach to the work that we do with students and families and so we looked at ... It was very important to me to understand the history behind something called restorative and what is that and with my background I have a bachelor's degree in criminal justice so that word justice really piqued my curiosity and knowing how school systems typically operate as an on-ramp to the criminal justice system, we didn't want to reinvent ... I guess not the word reinvent, we didn't want to further solidify that reality in our schools, and so I really wanted to understand what is this thing they're calling restorative justice. What does it mean, what does it look like, what does it sound like in our schools.Angela Ward:So what I uncovered was no it didn't start in the criminal justice system, it's from practices that are thousands of years old. And restorative practices originate in indigenous communities and indigenous history and they are practices that have been practiced for thousands of years and they continue to be practiced by indigenous people who live amongst us. And so I wanted to make sure that bringing this work to Austin Independent School District that we were really focused on as educators telling the truth about the work.Ellen Willoughby:Right, absolutely.Angela Ward:We framed it as culturally responsive because it's important that we make people stop and think about the fact that this is something that has been co-opted by the criminal justice system and the social work fields very well. It's been popularized in both and often you hear that it started in the criminal justice system -Ellen Willoughby:Yeah, that's exactly what -Angela Ward:Which is not true.Ellen Willoughby:Oh interesting.Angela Ward:So as educators, we felt duty-bound to teach the true history of restorative practices. So we look at them as practices that the indigenous communities used to maintain harmony in their communities. And they also used those practices to solve conflict and repair harm. But what's popularized is, "Oh, this is an alternative to discipline."Ellen Willoughby:Right.Angela Ward:No, it's not an alternative to discipline. It is a way of being, it is a way of recognizing how each of us shows up in the world. It's recognizing that each of us has unique ... Oh my headphones are falling off.Ellen Willoughby:That's okay.Angela Ward:There you go. Recognizing that each of us has particular ways that we operate in the world, we bring our own lived experiences into schools and framing it as culturally responsive restorative practices opens the space for adults in our schools to see children as unique, living human beings, who each come with their own gifts, their own ways of experiencing the world, their own unique needs, and really helping us understand that we have to create those identity affirming school spaces so that our students feel safe, welcome and included.Ellen Willoughby:Great, and so when I heard you ... So first of all, I am completely shocked that it didn't start in the criminal justice system. Even with research that I've done on it, so I think that that's something ... I just want to stamp so people understand that. Because we do, we talk about the school to prison pipeline and I also want to stamp that you talked about like ... This isn't a program, this is truly like you said, a way of being. So when we ... I want to make sure I'm using the right terminology. So is there a difference between the restorative justice and restorative practices. Like just to frame that appropriately.Angela Ward:Mm-hmm (affirmative). So when you think about restorative practices, restorative justice fits within it. So often we talk about it from a multi-tiered system of support. So in my former role in Austin ISD we approached it from that multi-tiered system of support where social-emotional learning was that strong tier one. So there's three tiers in that multi-tiered system of support. At tier one you have community building, you have morning meetings at elementary school, you have advisory at secondary. You have all of these ways of building relationships, building trusting relationships with students, with adults, with families, with community members. Tier two is when there may be a conflict that occurs. There may be something that removes a child from the regular learning environment that maybe they're not able to grasp a concept in class and so they need an intervention, they need a little bit of tutoring, they need a support. Those things happen at tier two.Angela Ward:Justice comes in often when we're talking about discipline, when we're talking about conflict that has caused harm to someone and it often occurs at tier three when we have exhausted all of the typical ways of intervening for children where we intervene for them academically, we intervene for them ... Often we don't look at the academic when we're talking about restorative practices.Ellen Willoughby:Yeah, most definitely. Like again, I hear it, every example or any time that I've seen it, it's all about the discipline, and it's yes ... So I'll let you continue that.Angela Ward:That's how our state frames it as restorative discipline practices. We kind of push back on that a little bit because we need our teachers to see all schooling as important in regards to restorative practices. So at tier two we're looking at academic, we're looking at social, we're looking at emotional, we're looking at are they able to be in a school space and feel that their identity is affirmed. That's at tiers one and two. At tier three, often their identity is not being affirmed, they're not making connections with each other, with their peers. They're not making connections with one adult at least on a campus who they feel like has their back, they feel like sees them as a unique person with gifts and often they reach that tier three level of that multi-tiered system of support because we have not put the processes, the structures, and the engagements in place along the way for them to feel like a viable member of the school community. So at tier three, that's when justice may occur because a harm has happened. Some behavior has occurred that has removed them from a strong tier one, social-emotional learning where everyone's getting along. We're all in harmony and we have some things here and there, but ultimately we're able to function together.Angela Ward:Tier three is where we will bring in community members. We will bring in people who the student feels like contributes to their social-emotional well-being. Some people who have their back, people who may be able to support them in ways that the school typically cannot. You may bring in a pastor, you may bring in a social worker. A social worker will come in at tier one also. Tier two, I'm sorry. But it's really looking at those wrap-around services and approaching that justice from a true justice standpoint and not throwing the book at the child.Angela Ward:Usually when you hear justice and discipline in our schools, you hear problem child, and we try to reframe that as, "No, they're not problem children. There's a problem with the process. There's a problem with the environment. There's a problem where the student is not being able to access their full potential because the environment that has been set up for them is not optimal for them." So what do we do as adults, what can we do as their peers when we notice that there's something happening where our peer and our student is not able to access the learning environment in the way that we need them to to be successful. That is a culturally responsive approach to restorative practices.Ellen Willoughby:So take me back to ... So if I am a school leader and I am really wanting to do this right, what do those practices look like at tier one and tier two and tier three?Angela Ward:Tier one is ... So restorative practices happens on a continuum, and I think it's Ted Wachtel, and I can't think of the other author, but he wrote about the social discipline window and he also ... There's more research out there on the continuum of restorative responses. So the continuum looks at tier one we're having affective statements, affective questions. So those statements and questions that make a student feel seen and heard and we're attending to things that will help our emotions be more in alignment with community and harmony. And so you ask questions that engage a student in reflecting on how they are feeling, how they are doing, what things they like, what things they dislike, and being very clear in gaining an understanding of those dislikes because those are going to be your cues as an adult. If I do this, this may occur. So really being in tune to getting to know your students.Angela Ward:We typically do these things anyway as educators. We get to know our students, we get to know each other as adults, and you set up those opportunities to do those things on a regular basis. We don't just do it to open the school year. We do it to open every week. We do it to close out the week. So you do those small impromptu conferences also with students when there seems to be something that's gotten their just equilibrium off. We want to get them back to community. It's something we often would say. How do we give them back to community which is tier one. Where are we able to engage in those questions and statements.Angela Ward:Also looking at a simple way of engaging in tier one, restorative practices, is to implement what people call check-in, check-up, check-out circles. They don't have to be circles. They can literally be, "Hey, what's up. What's going on with you?" You have checked in with them.Ellen Willoughby:Exactly.Angela Ward:"All right, what are you going to do this weekend?" Or, "What are you looking forward to when you go home today?" You may get a clue that everyone doesn't want to have that conversation with you if you're not getting eye contact from all of the students. That's a clue. And so paying attention to the clues that children give you, recognizing when something is off kilter, those are restorative practices. You don't need a book, you don't need someone to come teach you that. Those are things you do regularly because you care about children and you care about being in community with people.Angela Ward:Then those small impromptu conferences, that's on pretty much the middle of that continuum. It's where you're creating those spaces to have trust building relationships with children. You're creating opportunities to walk and talk with them or you're creating opportunities to just sit and chat with them. Or you're making sure that there's one adult on the campus whose responsibility it is to know how that child is doing weekly, daily, whatever you can get into your regular stream of ways of being with the children. Then you get into informal and formal conferences with students and families. So it goes from affective statements and questions, check-in, check-up, check-out, informal conferences, formal conferences, and then formal. So that's how it operates on a continuum.Angela Ward:Like you said, these are things that people are already doing. There's just like more of an intentionality behind it is what I'm hearing. Being real intentional with your structures and your processes, and so what we did with principles, we really looked at on your campus, who are the people who are "responsible" for discipline. Who are the people that are responsible for community building? Who are the people who are responsible for checking in with students and families? So in Austin Independent School District, that can be the counselor, that can be the system principal, that could be your parents support specialist, that could be on some campuses they have restorative practices associates and then on other campuses they have social workers or social-emotional learning coaches or instructional coaches and so you take stock of who are the people on the campus that I can pull together on a regular basis to establish an implementation team. It's that implementation team's job to look at what are the structures we have in place, what are the processes that we have in place, so we don't lose a child.Ellen Willoughby:Wow. Yeah. I mean -Angela Ward:Period.Ellen Willoughby:That's period. So we don't lose a child.Angela Ward:Yep.Ellen Willoughby:Wow, that's powerful.Angela Ward:Because that's someone's loved one, that is someone's important person, and we spend so much time with them, when they're dropping their kids off at our schools, like they become our children and so that is our responsibility.Angela Ward:Yeah, and it's important also to see it not as a practice that's only reserved for students of color because of that word justice. It's one reason why we fought that word justice in our title is because schools that have a majority white clientele, they don't want to talk about restorative justice. We don't need that, we don't have bad kids. That's the language.Ellen Willoughby:Yeah. Definitely.Angela Ward:That's how it's talked about, and every school has students who are operating on the margins. In some way, shape or form, they are ostracized in some way or they're not necessarily accessing the best possible education for them. So we frame it as culturally responsive restorative practices because we want all schools across the city, across the system, to see these practices as relevant for them, relevant for their students, relevant for the families.Ellen Willoughby:Again, the verbiage, using that correct language. I mean that's so important because like you said, and I didn't make that connection before but I definitely see that where the use of the word justice, and again, because so many people also believe it started in the criminal justice system that it perpetuates that school to prison pipeline mentality.Angela Ward:Yeah, and we're trying to bust that pipeline.Ellen Willoughby:Yeah, we need to ... That is the one pipeline we definitely need to get rid of. Absolutely, absolutely. Wow, so much great information. So looking at when we move into tier two, tell me a little bit about those supports for kids.Angela Ward:Well they are typical supports. So when I was on a campus as an administrator, tier two was that level in the multi-tiered system of support where you caught most of the children for behavior, for academics, for social skills, and that was the place where we had those so that implementation team, that may just be your ARD committee. It may be your successful interventions team. Whatever that team is that already exists on your campus that meets to talk about how to support children, that's where tier two happens and you have to have fail-safes in place so that someone is always understanding the ways in which every child is accessing their free and accessible public education. Their free and appropriate education. So that tier two is where the important piece is that the school has processes in place to make sure no child is left out of the learning process. That's where adults have conversations about, "Hey, I noticed this. I noticed that this child in particular is having a difficult time at this time of day. Has anyone checked in with them? Has anyone checked in with the family? What's happening?" Those types of questions have to happen and they're not ... I'm trying to say not a double negative, but they're not not restorative practices. Those are restorative practices. Making sure that someone is paying attention when a child is not engaged in the learning community in whatever way that is.Ellen Willoughby:Welcome back to part two of Drinking From the Firehose with Dr. Angela Ward, who is talking to us about restorative practices.Ellen Willoughby:A lot of times, I have seen it, I have done it, especially when I was beginning my teaching career, of the separation of the academics and the behavior. But [inaudible 00:20:08] exactly and then also seeing that, "Oh. So the challenges of the academics, or the lack of challenge from the academics, are showing up and manifesting in a behavior that we can correct by how we serve the student academically," as opposed to taking kind of the back way around and just thinking that it's a discipline issue.Angela Ward:So many children have "difficulty with adults" because the adult just didn't understand and they haven't taken the time to understand. Often we send children down a spiral of behavior that is not conducive to engaging in the school community because they're bored or they are seeking attention. Or the adult is just tired of them and that's human. It's human to get tired -Ellen Willoughby:Absolutely.Angela Ward:Of children that you're with seven hours a day.Ellen Willoughby:Definitely.Angela Ward:We've had a bit of a reprieve with our current reality of online schooling and whatnot, yet we're about to go back into face to face with all of our babies and many of them have not been with ... In structured systems for an entire year. So what does that mean for our level of patience as adults coming into this new school year? It's going to require us to give each other space and create opportunities for the adults to be okay. Restorative practices starts with the adult and the adult has to be in an emotional space to give to the students, to receive the student's gifts. If the adult isn't in an emotional space to receive that, they're not going to be able to implement any tiers that are going to be supportive for the students. So we really have to think about what are the structures that we have in place as adults to welcome each other as colleagues into this new school year and then what are the supports we have in place when it gets tough?Ellen Willoughby:Because it's going to get tough.Angela Ward:It's going to get tougher than it's ever been.Ellen Willoughby:Yeah, because there's collective trauma. And I've had discussions with colleagues around this of that and especially like some teachers ... I had a job and I ... I'm one of the lucky ones in that way, but it was still a very ... It was a collective, traumatic event. So thinking about when ... Like you shared the teachers need to ensure, and the school needs to ensure that there is a system of support around teachers and staff so that they can build that level of support around students and families.Angela Ward:Absolutely.Ellen Willoughby:So thinking about that, what is your thought and what would you recommend?Angela Ward:I mean I can only think about what I did with my staff when we were told in a matter of days, "Okay, we're taking work online. We're taking school online." I'm like, "Okay, what does that look like and sound like?" We created opportunities, we had already done so. We met biweekly to check in with each other to have conversations about what's working and what we could improve upon to support students and families on the campus level and staff and we found ways to bring that into our online space. We scheduled check-in meetings, one-on-one with supervisors and campus level people. We set up silly time to do silly things together. The typical things you do to build community, you have to notice when it's time to do that, and you have to notice if you are feeling stressed as the campus leader, imagine how stressed the teachers may be. I mean the campus leader stress is humongous. Humongous. And everyone's going to be feeling this so intensely like we've never experienced it before. So how are we creating those check-in spaces? How are we creating those downtime? Are we giving people the gift of time? Are we meeting for the sake of meeting? We should never be meeting for the sake of meeting. Teacher's jobs are too hard to fill them with meaningless meetings.Ellen Willoughby:Absolutely.Angela Ward:One thing that I always encourage teachers to do when we're talking about tiers two or three of the restorative process is that when you get to a place where you're just sick of a child because you've dealt with them and you're the only one, because you're human, when you get to the end of that journey and you're like, "I need a break," ask for it. I also invite them to partner with someone. Who's your partner who gives you that space? Who can be there at a moment's notice if need be? Who can be there within 30 minutes?Angela Ward:What's the plan in place and one thing that we did when I was on a campus as a leader, we looked at the entire grade level, and we took that grade level as we were planning out where students would be the next year and we looked at if this class made, what would be the daily interaction that this teacher would have to do with all the students on this roster to be successful with each student, and then we would notice where there may be a cluster of students that would require an enormous amount of emotional labor and academic prep and things of that nature. Then we would try to level out those classrooms so that that teacher wouldn't have to have as heavy a load and then we looked at across the grade level are these class lists structured in a way that you would want to teach at principal, you would want to teach at assistant principal, so why are you giving this teacher a class that you don't want to teach because of the emotional labor that's required or the enormous amount of prep time that it's going to take to be successful with this group of students.Angela Ward:So that's a practice we put in place to help us make educated decisions about class lists. You can do it at the elementary and the secondary level. Look at that list. You know the children. You know who's showing up in that classroom and if you don't, somebody on the campus knows and you should be asking them, would you want to teach this class, why, why not.Ellen Willoughby:Right. What a great lens. I love that.Angela Ward:And it really helped teachers to be able to meet the needs of students, and if we couldn't level the class out, we knew, "Okay, we need to ask for support here," before the school year even started. We're trying to get more support for this particular classroom and if we can't, hey, we put our tennis shoes on and we got to that classroom multiple times a day to make sure the teachers got what they needed. So it's looking at the totality of how you set up the school space to make sure that teachers are successful, that students are successful, that when you're setting up the receiving of students at the beginning of the day, sending them off at the end of the day, all of those things go into making restorative practices, a culturally responsive restorative practices process that's going to support the everyday social-emotional well-being of the students and staff and make everyone feel safe, welcome and included.Ellen Willoughby:I think of it from the perspective of a teacher of how supported they feel with first of all that the leaders really understand who is in my classroom and that there was such intentionality about it. And again, that idea of like, "Okay, so if your class is a little bit heavier balanced with some students who may have some greater needs, then we're going to find that support for you. So I think that that return on the investment of spending that time is critical to the support of the adults and of course the children and the building.Angela Ward:Absolutely. It is and teachers, we would have the conversation with teachers, which class do you not want to teach. We had all the children's names on Post-its or cards or something and coded them for special needs and things of that nature and ways we would have to attend to them and the teachers would say, "I won't teach that class," and we talked through why and make good decisions about how to split them up so that it's more manageable and teachers could actually have a good work-life balance.

Ep. 5 Self Care, Defined (Show transcript)Ellen Willoughby (00:01):Hi, everyone. Welcome to Drinking From The Fire Hose, a podcast for school leaders. I'm your host, Ellen Willoughby. Being a campus leader can feel like you're drinking from a fire hose with all the information requests, tasks, and duties that are thrown your way on a daily basis. So how do you manage to do it all and help students grow? Well, that's what this podcast is all about.I am thrilled to introduce our guests today. Hello, JoEllen. I'm excited to get to have you on the podcast today.JoEllen Goldsberry (00:17):Thank you. I'm excited to be here.Ellen Willoughby (00:18):Great. Yes, we have so much exciting stuff to talk about. So what I would love for you to tell me a little bit about is tell me what is your definition of self care? What it is and what it isn't?JoEllen Goldsberry (00:30):Okay. So my definition of self care is any activity that we do deliberately in order to take care of our mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health. Whatever that means for you, whatever that looks like for you when we're deliberately taking care of all the aspects that make us who we are.JoEllen Goldsberry (00:53):And then as far as self care isn't I think self care isn't... It's the opposite of that. When we aren't deliberately taking care of, when we get too busy and overwhelmed, that's often the first thing that goes.Ellen Willoughby (01:13):And one of the things that I find really interesting is self care has become like a really big, important piece of life in general, especially during COVID times. So I would love to hear a little bit about how would self care be different now, now that we're in the middle of a pandemic than it might've been 10 months ago.JoEllen Goldsberry (01:37):Yeah, you bet. And I love that question because just like everything looks different now, healthcare is definitely a part of that. And for me, 10 minutes ago, self care may have looked like going and picking up my favorite cup of coffee from my local coffee shop while my husband had our kids and enjoying some quiet time, reading a book, and just listening without interacting with other people to the buzz around me in the coffee shop. And now how I've learned to transition that self care because I call myself a highly functioning introvert.Ellen Willoughby (02:16):Nice. I totally relate to that.JoEllen Goldsberry (02:22):I need that alone time to recharge. So now that version of self care in pandemic times looks like me maybe waking up 30 minutes earlier on a Saturday to have my hot cup of coffee, enjoy a book that I'm reading without my family buzzing all around me. So I think that it's maybe a silly lighthearted example, but I think that's an example of how even during pandemic times we can still be practicing self care.Ellen Willoughby (02:52):Yeah. And I don't think it's silly or simple at all. I think a lot of times we think of self care as like this really big, like I need to go to the spa or I need to take a staycation or those kinds of things. So I love that you gave like that really tangible, easy to implement example. So absolutely love that.Ellen Willoughby (03:15):And I think on the other end of the spectrum as well are... I am also a social introvert yet I live alone. And so it's one of those things too of like looking at instead of just falling into the rut of like, "Okay, I'm just home. I have all this time. I'm just going to keep working," taking that break and doing something that is valuable to me.JoEllen Goldsberry (03:39):Yes. And I think that's been a huge struggle for many people, especially educators. When we did have to go run out in the spring, it was super... And I'll speak from my personal firsthand experience. I was on a campus in this spring, and it was super easy to pick my computer back up in the evenings and keep chipping away at master schedule staff or figuring out, "Okay, what else can I get off of my, to do this," without taking time to pause and maybe practice what I like to call boring self care because boring self care can... You mentioned going to the spa earlier. Self care, isn't always about the facials or the massages or the this or the that. Boring self care can look like getting our bills paid on time. All the mental stuff that takes up our mental energy, the lists that we keep in our head getting some of those checked off is still a form of self care because you're taking good care of your mental wellbeing and freeing up that space in your head.Ellen Willoughby (04:47):Oh, wow. I've really never thought of it that way, but it totally makes sense because that alleviate stress and it just makes you feel good to have that thing checked off your to-do list.JoEllen Goldsberry (04:59):Exactly.Ellen Willoughby (04:59):Yeah, that's awesome. So before we dive into a few more questions, I want to share a little bit with our listeners about why you are such a perfect person to be our guest on this topic on the podcast. So for all of you to know that JoEllen, she has 13 plus years of experience in education. She's been a teacher, a counselor, a consultant, and a director of multiple programs that have served children and adults. She's also a mental health liaison between region 13 and the local mental health authorities. She's also a licensed professional counselor and she holds a professional school counseling certification. She is also a TBI practitioner, and she is a firm believer in working hard and resting hard. So this is why she is the perfect guest for this episode.Ellen Willoughby (05:47):So I would love to hear from you to tell me a little bit about why is it so hard to prioritize care?JoEllen Goldsberry (06:01):I thought a lot about that question. And for me, and again, this is just my personal view. I really feel like it's hard to prioritize self care because our culture overall is a very drive through culture and everything we need it fast and we need it now. And that can oftentimes not always, but it can oftentimes extend into the workplace environment. I'm thinking as out being on a campus. When I was on a campus, I was school counselor, director of counseling. There's always emergencies that pop up. There's always crises, especially as educational leaders, we know this. That's our daily lives. So when we're dealing with emergency after emergency, taking care of ourselves can often be one of the first things that gets off of that plate because we're so focused.JoEllen Goldsberry (06:56):I firmly believe education is a service industry. We're serving students. We're serving parents as educational leaders. We're serving our staff. We're serving our community. And so when you're in a service industry, it's even more important to be taking care of yourself. But when we have that service mindset and then also the busy-ness that can come along with our culture as a whole, that's when we start to see a breakdown in prioritizing self care.Ellen Willoughby (07:27):If you like what you hear in this episode, pop on over to whatever platform you use and give us a rating and review. It really helps people find our podcast and lets us know what we're doing right and what we can approve upon. And of course, don't forget to mention this to your colleagues. Thanks. Now let's get back to the show.Ellen Willoughby (07:48):And I think that whole busy-ness like we, as a society, have... We look at being busy as being productive or working hard. Where now all the research is showing us no, that that's not it. You have to fill your tank to be able to be effective.JoEllen Goldsberry (08:07):Oh my gosh, yes.Ellen Willoughby (08:09):And then especially in education, because like you said, it is a service industry and it's a service industry that's even that much more connected to the service and who we are providing the service for I would think.JoEllen Goldsberry (08:23):Right. Yeah, absolutely.Ellen Willoughby (08:25):So thinking... Oh yeah, go ahead.JoEllen Goldsberry (08:28):Well, you brought up that busy-ness can often equal productivity. I think I would link back to my answer about what self care isn't and that mindset that if I'm being busy, I'm being productive, to me, that's what self care isn't.Ellen Willoughby (08:45):Right. Definitely.JoEllen Goldsberry (08:47):Because there's the more that you can prioritize and rest, that frees up your brain to be more when you need it to be creative or think quicker in a crisis situation when you need it to think quicker. Because sometimes self care can look like resting, being still, napping.Ellen Willoughby (09:06):Yes, I love a nap.JoEllen Goldsberry (09:09):Yes, me too.Ellen Willoughby (09:11):And I think too, our society is kind of the fear of missing out. We have FOMO. And so in that you'll hear things like, "I'll sleep when I'm dead," but it's like, well actually if you don't sleep now, you might be saying that a little sooner than you would want to.JoEllen Goldsberry (09:28):You might get there faster than you think.Ellen Willoughby (09:29):Exactly, exactly. So thinking about it, why is it important that leaders are practicing self care?JoEllen Goldsberry (09:41):As a leader, you cannot help anybody, you cannot serve anybody if you're running on empty. And the analogy of the gas tank is really powerful to me. Are you full? Are you three quarters full, half full? Where you at right now?Ellen Willoughby (09:56):Is the red light on and you're trying to get 10 more miles in?JoEllen Goldsberry (09:58):Right. Running on fumes, yes. Fumes. Which especially for right now, in December, a lot of us are on fumes. We're headed into winter break where we know we can recharge. So we're trying to push through, right?Ellen Willoughby (10:16):Yeah.JoEllen Goldsberry (10:17):So I think you're not going to... Well, not think. I know you cannot be an effective leader if you're not pouring back into yourself as much as you pour into others.Ellen Willoughby (10:27):Got it. And I know a lot of leaders when we do have a break come up, they end up getting sick. They just automatically their immune systems just catch up with them and shout really loud that you've overdone it.JoEllen Goldsberry (10:44):Can I share a personal story about that?Ellen Willoughby (10:46):Of course. Please do.JoEllen Goldsberry (10:48):Okay. So I'm actually a third generation educator. And so my dad is getting ready to retire this school year from being an administrator in Florida where I grew up. Yep. And so I remember as a kid, literally every Thanksgiving break, every winter break, and every spring break that first weekend he would be sick as a dog. And it would start like that Thursday or Friday heading into this break. And we just knew, especially on winter break, don't plan any holiday travel plans until Monday or Tuesday when you're feeling better. He's gotten so much better about it. Again, as he's gotten older and wiser, I believe. And he shared with me that that's the case. But gosh, you're so right that we just run ourselves down. And when our stress is high, our immune system is low. And so to be practicing mindfulness and self care to bring that stress level down is only going to help our immune system. And especially in a pandemic, we need all strong immunity we can have right now.Ellen Willoughby (11:55):Most definitely. And I think we kind of started talking about this, but like we know that what's at stake is our ability to help others, number one, and then our ability to stay well, if we're not prioritizing. Any other thoughts on that?JoEllen Goldsberry (12:16):Yeah. So if I were to think through like the components of wellness, it's mental, it's physical, it's emotional. I add in fear. So not everybody does, but for me, I do. And so when we're not practicing self care, each of those four components of wellness start to take a hit. So we don't have as much when we aren't practicing self-care and wellness. We don't have as much patience that we need to be responding from a place of empathy versus reacting and just giving our short answer. Our overall health goes down, relationships start to suffer. I'm thankful that I have a super gracious and understanding family that when I was on a campus, we always knew, "Hey, we're going to be picking up meals because mom is not going to have time to cook this week leading up to a break."Ellen Willoughby (13:12):Right. Most definitely.JoEllen Goldsberry (13:13):Things like that.Ellen Willoughby (13:15):So talk a little bit about the four areas that you've talked about and kind of what self care looks like in each of them.JoEllen Goldsberry (13:26):Sure. So for me, mental self care is a lot of what I talked about with the boring self care. It's getting those to-do things checked off my list. It's making sure, "Okay, I've got holiday party outfits laid out for the kids tonight before." It's making sure if I'm presenting at least the day before I've got my ducks in a row and know that I can have an uninterrupted time to say things like that.JoEllen Goldsberry (13:58):Physical self care for me looks like getting outside, away from screens every day, getting some vitamin D with the sun. It looks like going on walks around our neighborhood, either with my family or without my family. Oftentimes without my family during the day because that's what, again, recharges me personally.JoEllen Goldsberry (14:21):Physical wellbeing also looks like that boring self care of making doctor's appointments and keeping them. Getting your yearly physical done, things like that.JoEllen Goldsberry (14:34):Emotional self care that's where I really draw on the practice of mindfulness, trying to take that moment of if something doesn't sit well with me, to sit with it for a second and figure out, "Okay, where's my reaction coming from? Where's my response coming from. That felt prickly to me. Is it me being prickly? Is it the other person?" I need to draw on my empathy that maybe they're having a little bit of a prickly day.JoEllen Goldsberry (15:04):Emotional also looks like for me, I look outward a lot of figuring out who can I help? Who can I serve? Because that fills my emotional well tank also.JoEllen Goldsberry (15:20):And then spiritual, I think that's really depending on each person. I know a lot of people have meditation practices. Some people go to church and prayer. I really love yoga and meditating, quiet time. Whatever space you may or may not practice can play a part there. But I think also just realizing connecting with other people is a spiritual practice too and realizing you're not alone and reaching out.Ellen Willoughby (15:53):Okay. All right. So you shared a lot of great information about leaders. How do leaders model self care for their teachers?JoEllen Goldsberry (16:10):That's such a great question. I was privileged to be under a really awesome principal who modeled that for me. And so I'm going to draw on my experience with her to say that she encouraged us to do things like not have school email on our phones as a boundary. If we did choose that, please don't respond after five o'clock. Like if an email comes in, it can wait until the next day. If there is an emergency, trust that I'm going to call you or text you. And so I feel like leaders can model self care for the people that they lead by putting in those practices themselves.JoEllen Goldsberry (16:57):I think it's also setting healthy boundaries around work hours and trying not to be on campus 24/7 or online what feels like 24/7.Ellen Willoughby (17:10):Definitely.JoEllen Goldsberry (17:13):I think being transparent and saying what you're struggling with on, "Hey, I'm really struggling to balance taking care of myself right now. I'm aware of it. And here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to share my plan for how to move forward." That builds empathy to too because gosh, what person, especially an educator, wouldn't be like, "Wow, I'm struggling with that too." Or, "Hey, I was doing that last night and then I tried this. Maybe this could help you." As educators, we're-Ellen Willoughby (17:43):That over because that was like, blah, blah, blah.Ellen Willoughby (17:46):I love that you shared that your principal modeled that for you because I think a lot of times we talk about like, "Oh, practice self-care," but we don't show people how to do it. Or we say things like, "Take your email off your phone. Don't answer emails after five o'clock," but then we send 50 emails at 10 o'clock at night to people. And that kind of makes the boundary not be super solid because I know for me, if my principal said, "Don't check him after five o'clock," and then I had 15 emails when I woke up at six in the morning, that I would feel like, "Is this really a real boundary?" So I love that she not only talked about it, but she actually implemented it for herself.Ellen Willoughby (18:33):And I think too, the other thing to shine a light on that you shared is just leaders are humans. Leaders are going to struggle with all the same things teachers do. I mean, there's not like when you become a leader, this downloads and your brain like, "I've got all this errancy," and having that transparency and that vulnerability with your teachers really goes a long way.JoEllen Goldsberry (19:00):Yes. The vulnerability piece is huge with this. It takes bravery and courage in order to be vulnerable. You can't have one without the other. Just like trust. Trust builds vulnerability. You can be vulnerable with people you trust. And so I think all of that, when we're looking at self care as a whole, all of that works together for leaders to really I hope be empowered to model self care because you're building trust with your staff. You're building vulnerability and all of that's going to lead to a healthier culture.Ellen Willoughby (19:39):Most definitely.JoEllen Goldsberry (19:40):Gosh, what leader wouldn't want that?Ellen Willoughby (19:42):Yeah. Most definitely. I was kind of hearing some Brené Brown type lingo in there. So like Dare to Lead is a great book. Just a little plug for her, even I'm not getting paid for this. But just a great book on leadership and like you said, you have to have vulnerability to have trust.JoEllen Goldsberry (20:02):Yes.Ellen Willoughby (20:04):Awesome.JoEllen Goldsberry (20:04):For sure.Ellen Willoughby (20:05):So are there any resources that you recommend or tools that you would recommend for our listeners?JoEllen Goldsberry (20:15):Yeah, absolutely. So one of the tools that I use a lot in my own self care is the Headspace app. It's a meditation app, but it's so much more than that. I use it for the mindfulness component. The more that I finding and learning about mindfulness, the more convinced I am that it's important in our lives to practice self-care regularly. When I can feel myself starting to get what I call kind of crispy and edgy-Ellen Willoughby (20:54):Mm-hmm (affirmative). I love that, crispy. [crosstalk 00:20:49]. Crunchy.JoEllen Goldsberry (20:55):Yes, crunchy. Exactly. Maybe a little bit of compassion fatigue, creeping in. That's that mindfulness. And I've learned to practice mindfulness through-Ellen Willoughby (21:06):So go ahead.JoEllen Goldsberry (21:07):Okay. Yeah. So there's an app. You can log into it through your phone, through your computer. They have it free I think for 14 days. And then after that it's $5 a month. So for me, that's like giving up a coffee run and I'm good. But it helps me be less stressed and more resilient. And that's the other piece of self care and emotional wellbeing that I think is really important is building your resiliency, especially right now as we're living through this pandemic. We need to be resilient more than ever. And so I learned a lot of my resiliency tools through that app and practicing mindfulness. It's just headspace.com is the website.Ellen Willoughby (21:56):So a question, two questions, actually. If you'll explain to our listeners, what is mindfulness because I know you talked about meditation and mindfulness. And a lot of times I know in my brain, I get those two mixed steps. So would you share a little bit about what mindfulness is?JoEllen Goldsberry (22:13):Sure. So mindfulness is, it's literally being aware of what's going on within your mind, within your body. So think about that feeling that you got maybe before you had to have a hard conversation with someone on your campus or for you Ellen, if you have this great idea that you were excited to pitch to your supervisor, mindfulness is recognizing the butterflies that you might have in your stomach before that conversation or the tenseness in your neck. As you're noticing that tenseness or the butterflies, you sit with that for a minute, you recognize it. Like, "Hey, I'm feeling tension in my neck. I have these butterflies in my stomach. What's going on?" And then that helps me realize, "Okay, I'm headed into this challenging conversation. I need to take some deep breaths so that I'm calm and more grounded before having to go in and have that conversation."JoEllen Goldsberry (23:17):Or for the example with you, maybe if you are excited, so maybe you still need to get a deep breath in.Ellen Willoughby (23:29):Get centered so I'm not looking like a maniac because I'm so excited about this.JoEllen Goldsberry (23:33):You got it. Exactly. So that's mindfulness is simply being aware of what's going on in your body and what emotions are connected to the physical responses.Ellen Willoughby (23:43):Okay. And then I thought it was so interesting, and I'm totally going to sign up for Headspace because learning resiliency... I think a lot of times we don't think about that as something we need to learn intentionally. We kind of look at it as, "I have just survived and been resilient." So tell me a little bit about kind of what that looks like to practice that.JoEllen Goldsberry (24:10):Yeah. So resilience is, it's really some skills that you can learn and develop within yourself, but it starts with self compassion. And self compassion is talking to ourselves like we would a friend. We would never tell one of our best friends when they make a mistake, "Oh, my word, you're such an idiot. How could you have done that?" But how often do we have that soundtrack playing in our head?Ellen Willoughby (24:40):Too often.JoEllen Goldsberry (24:40):That we messed up. Exactly. Yes, yes. So resiliency in my opinion starts with recognizing, "This is really hard. Whatever the situation you're in right now, this is a hard situation. You can do hard things though. Remember when X, Y, and Z happened and you got through that. Remember how you handled A, B and C?" Let's think through and draw on those strengths. So it's switching that internal dialogue from being our inner critic to being constructive and pointing out our strengths.Ellen Willoughby (25:20):Nice. I love that. Yeah, because that voice inside our heads and especially I'm a former campus leader as well. And just we beat ourselves up on the regular and teachers as well. Most people do it anyway, not even in education. So that's a great additional tool. Any other tools that you have in your tool bag that you want to share?JoEllen Goldsberry (25:47):Yes. So along the same self compassion line of thinking, Dr. Kristin Neff, she's a researcher at UT Austin. You're maybe familiar with her.Ellen Willoughby (25:59):Yes, I love her work.JoEllen Goldsberry (25:59):She's similar in the lane of Brené Brown. They work a lot together. Her website has so many tools. It's self-compassion.org.Ellen Willoughby (26:12):We'll put these links in the show notes as well.JoEllen Goldsberry (26:15):Perfect. So it's full of resources and it's full of some guided exercises. And that would be good to do. I know the last campus that I was on I actually took our staff and faculty meetings are short. Some of them are super short, like three to five minutes long. So we have been learning about self compassion along with some of the Dare to Lead work as well. And so we did a couple of these exercises in faculty meetings and it was just such a good reminder. Again, we were really working on building a culture of empathy within ourselves, within our staff and then in our classrooms.JoEllen Goldsberry (27:01):If we're looking at whole person self care, those are the two Headspace and Self Compassion with Dr. Neff are like my top two resources that I recommend to people.Ellen Willoughby (27:14):That's great. And it sounds like that their resources that they're really easy to access, don't take a lot of time, but really have a high impact. So I think that that is what leaders are looking for because time is of the essence at all times. So great. Thank you for that.JoEllen Goldsberry (27:31):Absolutely.Ellen Willoughby (27:33):Any other things you want to share about self care before I roll into our seven short answer questions?JoEllen Goldsberry (27:42):So if you are wondering like, "Well, how do I know if I need more self care," the fact that you're asking that question is probably a good sign that you might. But if you're anything like me, I love my data and I love my science and my facts. And so one tool that I would love to lead with your audience is called the Pro-QOL Survey. It's Pro-QOL, quality of life, Survey. It's a short 10 question survey that gives you a gauge on where you're at with compassion, fatigue, burnout, or you're doing okay.JoEllen Goldsberry (28:25):When I was at a beginning school counselor, our director of counseling had us do this as a group at the beginning of the year, the middle of the year, and the end of the year. And it was super powerful because we did it in August, January, when we just came back from our break, and then in May, right before the summer. And it was just so enlightening and it really was a good kind of self check for us as leaders on campuses to where, "Okay, I'm feeling a little crunchy burnout coming on. So I need to up my self care."JoEllen Goldsberry (29:02):If I've got too much mental to-do list going on, I know I need to prioritize that. So that I think gives data to something that can feel kind of like spaghetti on a wall at times.Ellen Willoughby (29:16):We've been talking to JoEllen Goldsberry, a mental health liaison about ways for teachers and leaders to practice self care. Please be sure to subscribe to our podcast on whatever platform you listen on. Thanks!

Ep. 4 Culturally Responsive and Affirming Schools Pt.2 (Show transcript)Ellen Willoughby (00:01):Hi, everyone. Welcome to Drinking From The Fire Hose, a podcast for school leaders. I'm your host, Ellen Willoughby. Being a campus leader can feel like you're drinking from a fire hose with all the information requests, tasks, and duties that are thrown your way on a daily basis. So how do you manage to do it all and help students grow? Well, that's what this podcast is all about.Welcome to part 2 in the conversation with Mera Dougherty on the topic of Culturally Responsive Schools.Mera Dougherty (00:17):Absolutely. I want to share another piece of data that according to the Hechinger Report, it's a national nonprofit newsroom and it reports on the only topic of education. And they say that educators who run US schools aren't a diverse group. Almost 80% of the nation's 90,000 principals are white. Only 11% are Black and 9% are Latino. And this is all according to federal data.Ellen Willoughby (00:46):This doesn't come close to reflecting the demographics of the nation's 50 million public school children who are 46% white, 15% Black, 28% Latino and 6% Asian. So I know that when we were chatting about having you as a guest on this topic, the first thing, and I knew that this was going to come up as you were like, "I'm a white lady who is a principal. And you're asking me to talk about cultural diversity." I want you to share a little bit more about why you thought that at the beginning and just kind of your thoughts overall on this data.Mera Dougherty (01:21):Sure. You know, I think the first important part of this is you have to acknowledge who you are as a leader, right? There needs to be cognizant of who you are as a leader. And I don't mean that in terms of, I think some folks use it as like, "Oh, you know, I'm sorry, I'm white." That's not what I'm saying. I am a white leader, and I need to be cognizant of the fact that there has been a huge amount of privilege that has allowed me into the position I currently am, or that I'm in. With that, I have to use that privilege to say, I am actively dedicated to creating pipelines, especially for leadership, right? If we look at that data for leadership, it's just really astounding, right? I will create pipelines for leadership and for my staff that make it equitable, right? That we have leaders coming into our schools, and that we have leadership pipelines that is valuing our leaders that are coming from the communities that we serve, right. That have some shared background with our students, and more than I can say I have.Mera Dougherty (02:24):And so I think what that means is, in a practical sense looking at your leadership teams, looking at things like the advisory board that we have at Compass Rose, looking at people like our assistant principals, our principals, our leadership pipelines within our teachers, right? How we advance folks, and making sure that we are really focusing on leaders that come from the communities we serve, and have that shared background.Mera Dougherty (02:49):And so as a white leader, it's something that I need to be doing that work actively. And I need to be doing it 10 times more than anybody else. And I need to know who I am, right. I need to be doing the work of actively exploring the biases that I have, making sure that I am using anti-racist practices in my schools. And then also realizing, I think with all of this, that even though we talk about school leadership, right, and I have this role of like principal or head of school. Like I said, before, you shouldn't be the person who's steering the boat all the time. Or if you are steering the boat, great. You're asking someone else where to go. Right? You are not just saying like, great, I'm steering the boat here. I've also like never really been on a boat that much. So I don't know if this is how boats work. You know, like driving the van, I guess, right?Mera Dougherty (03:43):Like if you're going to be driving the van you've got this leadership position. You're also not the person who's deciding where it goes, and how you get there, and when you're going to stop, right. That's not how it works. You need to have a team that reflects your community. And you need to have a team that is your community. That's telling you where to go, and how to get there, and is taking over the driving. And that eventually, you're really not needed in that driver's seat. Right? You're setting up the community to drive itself to wherever it needs to go. And so to me, that's what that data really says. Right? That's where we need to make this big shift.Ellen Willoughby (04:17):Yeah. So it's like, they are the GPS in a sense.Mera Dougherty (04:20):Yeah.Ellen Willoughby (04:20):And you're just following the directions.Mera Dougherty (04:23):Exactly. And then I'm using my privilege to get that right. To buy the van, and to get in that seat. But then I'm doing everything I can after that, to actually get myself out of the seat. Right? And that sounds strange. But I mean, you and I, we'll sit down and talk in five, 10 years. And when we do, and we're having coffee, ideally having non-socially distanced in five to 10 years, I would hope that you and I are sitting there and we're talking about the new principals at my school and how wonderful they are. And that these are people who are from the community that we serve or have shared background with our children. Right? And I am doing different work at that point because leaders like me should eventually become not useless, but to some extent very unique and not the folks that typically are in these roles.Mera Dougherty (05:16):I think we can shift this data if we shift our idea of leadership, again to culturally affirming, to looking for leaders who are from our community, to reflecting this culture within the schools that we build, and then valuing that. Actually putting a value proposition to say, when we hire, when we look for values that are important in our kids and our families and our teachers, we are using the values that were actually created by this community. We are not bringing in a separate set of things that we believe, that have nothing to do with the community we serve.Ellen Willoughby (05:49):Yeah. And that your students grow up to be the teachers and the leaders of your schools because they are in your community. And again, I think like really stamping that how we use our privilege. And that is the most important part. It's not a white savior thing at all. Not at all. It's about how do we use our privilege and how do we listen to those in the community to ensure that we are doing and using that privilege for what is in their best interest, and what they desire for their committee.Mera Dougherty (06:22):Absolutely. And I think when we talk about that privilege, what it means is a lot of times ask others. So get out of the way. Get out of the way. Be quiet, and let others share. Again, it goes back to that quote that that Celeste was saying. Like you have to do this work. You can't do this work without the community. Or you can't work for a community without the community. Get out of the way.Mera Dougherty (06:51):So for me, it's about you get that school open and then you listen. You listen to the people that are from there. You put the people who are from that community in charge. You make sure folks have a space to speak, a space to be listened to, and a real space of power where what they're saying is being turned in to action. And there's got to be an equity there. So if you have a position of power or any sort of sense of privilege, we need to use that privilege to get out of the way. Set up structures to get out of the way and let communities do the amazing things they actually have been wanting to do for years and just have had too much red tape to do it.Ellen Willoughby (07:29):Nice.Announcer (07:30):If you like what you hear in this episode, pop on over to whatever platform you use and give us a rating and review. It really helps people find our podcast and lets us know what we're doing right, and what we can improve upon. And of course, don't forget to mention this to your colleagues. Thanks. Now let's get back to the show.Ellen Willoughby (07:51):Talk about another hot topic around this, and one that you and I have both had really long conversations when we were together. So when we were on a campus together, one of the things that we really talked about is being culturally responsive, especially when it became to behavior interventions and discipline. So I love to hear a little bit about what your thinking is on that. It's a tough one, man.Mera Dougherty (08:20):It is. And we've been through that. I feel like you have seen me, gosh, I don't even know how many years. It's been a while, Ellen. But we've done that work together.Ellen Willoughby (08:26):Yes, it has been.Mera Dougherty (08:29):And so you've actually seen me do this wrong and I think you've seen me sort of like get to the point where we're starting to do it right. I don't think anyone's doing it right yet. Or I don't think, I believe. I believe when we are talking about making sure that we are affirming culture and that we're doing that through, I almost hate the word discipline because I think it's been just turned into something else.Ellen Willoughby (08:53):Definitely.Mera Dougherty (08:53):But when we're doing it with any sort of system we create within our school, especially our systems just of behavior. And I think it's culture, right? It's actually the culture of the school. Again, it goes back to do you know your community, right? Do you know what they value? Do you know what they want for their children? Et cetera. And then thinking about what are the practices that we say, what are the things that we believe kids must do every day? Here are the things that they must engage in every day. Here are the things they cannot do. Here are the things that we think are impeding their education. And then looking at those things continuously with the eye on where are these things coming from?Mera Dougherty (09:40):Again, are they reflecting the needs of the community? Are they reflecting what the hopes and dreams of our children and our families are? Are they going to get our kids to that place? Or, and this is where it's really difficult to sort of suss out, are the things we're expecting from children and are saying are right or wrong, did we put those in place because of white privilege, white fragility? Are those systems and structures in place because it was just easier, right? You know, kids being in certain kinds of lines. Kids being quiet during certain times. Was it just easier for us? And like, that's okay too. We got to admit that.Ellen Willoughby (10:19):Yeah, we do. I mean, definitely there's a level of control that we feel that we have to have, or it's going to be like Lord of the Flies. But we also know that that's probably not going to happen.Mera Dougherty (10:31):Especially because kids are great, right?Ellen Willoughby (10:33):Yes, kids are amazing.Mera Dougherty (10:35):They're humans and they actually don't... We have to remember, there's this idea about what will and won't happen with children when we let control go, or when we think of changing a system. We have to remember, all humans want to be loved. Right? They want to do the right thing. And sometimes there are things that get in the way of that, which is like their immediate needs aren't being met. They aren't fed. They don't have a roof. There's something that their immediate needs aren't being met yet. So we need to meet those first.Mera Dougherty (11:08):Sometimes it's they actually don't know what the right thing is and where we think it's so obvious. We're like, duh, this is the right thing. And I don't know how many times I've seen a teacher do that. I myself have done that in areas of like, "Well, of course you don't do this." And you see a kid's face and you're like, "Oh, so you didn't know that. You did not know that there was a different choice in that moment? Cool. Let's like talk about that first." Right?Mera Dougherty (11:32):But there's these roadblocks to having kids do what's right sometimes. And I think what it's really about is actively letting kids know, and teaching, here are the values that we hold dear. Here's how you show them every day already. Right? You actually already have these values in them, because again, they're important to your community. They're part of the fabric of who you are. They're a part of your history. And then here's how we build on those, right? Here's how we make really good choices, or choices that will get us to not where I want you to be in your life, but where you want to be in your life. Here's how you can use those values to make those choices. And here's what happens when you don't make them, and some really natural consequences that come with those. Punitive measures of punishment, we've got to get over these.Ellen Willoughby (12:23):Yeah. I mean, if we think about it as adults, like there are times we don't meet a deadline. There are times that we screw something up and nobody sends us home or makes us stay after work and get it done. And I know that part of that, we're helping kids build their own knowledge and their own self-awareness and self-management through this. But if it's reactive and it's not a natural consequence to that, are we really teaching them something?Mera Dougherty (13:01):I mean, I would say no. And again, it's a little messier. When we're thinking about systems of culture, or creating the culture of a school. And when I say that, I mean creating behavioral systems. Where we typically have gone wrong is creating these stringent, this is what's right. This is what's wrong. Here's what kids must do. Here's what kids can't do. And especially in charter schools, right, I think it's important to just call out this fact. There's no tolerance policy, which actually doesn't refer to anything specific. People have used it, no excuses, zero tolerance. People throw these things around.Mera Dougherty (13:45):The issue with that is most of the things that we put on that list are very white normative, and usually pretty racist ideas, right? We have not considered the background of our children. Again, we have not asked that question to our community. What do you want for your children? What's important to you? I think a great example of this is when we think about how we allow kids to speak in a classroom and thinking about the tone of voice that they use, or the volume, et cetera.Mera Dougherty (14:16):Well, when I think of the conversations I've had with families recently, there has been this idea of advocacy. Families want for their children to be able to advocate, advocate for themselves, and to advocate for their community. Great. I think that's wonderful too. Well then how in the world am I telling a child that your voice level needs to be at a whisper in the classroom, and that it's rude to disagree with someone. Like, no, we actually need to teach children how to actively engage in tough conversations, right? And how do we have a discussion without raising our hands, right? How does that naturally happen?Mera Dougherty (14:56):Because if we want kids who are going to be the next lawmakers, who are going to be people who are on a political stage advocating, they need to know how to be in a conversation where they're not raising their hand and speaking out of whisper. They need to know how to raise and lower their voice. They need to know how to modulate their volume and they need to be able to explore that within a classroom. Not be punished for it.Mera Dougherty (15:20):So again, I believe that we need to look back at our systems and again, use that same tool of what is it people want for their children? What is it children want to be themselves? What are the highest positions of power that we need to tell our children are open to them, right? And then are we creating systems of behavior that get our kids to that place that tell our kids, yes, you can advocate for yourself. Yes, you can ask questions.Mera Dougherty (15:52):Because I tell you when our kids go to the Ivy League school of their choice, they're going to need to be able to go to their professors and ask questions after class. And they're going to need to be able to push back on the ideas of their peers. And if they never learned that because we told them it's wrong, that's going to be a problem. Right?Ellen Willoughby (16:11):Yeah. Because our current kind of behavior system is really all about compliance. It's really all about in a lot of ways what makes it easier for the teacher.Mera Dougherty (16:23):Yes.Ellen Willoughby (16:24):Where there's not a true engagement of students. And again, like you said, them learning to use their voice, whatever that voice is. And also letting them know that their voice is important, and matters, and should be heard just as much as the student sitting next to them.Mera Dougherty (16:45):Absolutely. And I think as a leader, the way that you can do that, because look, I've been a teacher. I've been a teacher in Brooklyn, and Harlem, and Austin, really across South to North.Ellen Willoughby (16:57):You've done it all.Mera Dougherty (16:58):We've been there, as have you. And I know how tough it is. I know how tough it is to be a teacher. And it is so much easier to create these really stringent rules. This is what happens when you don't do this. This happens next. I get that. And I have been there.Ellen Willoughby (17:15):Oh yeah, absolutely.Mera Dougherty (17:17):As a leader, we can really help teachers, and educators, and help ourselves by saying, okay, let's go back to these values that we believe were important. Let's go back to what we believe kids must do in a school. Kids can do. Kids cannot do. Let's continuously go back to these lists. Let's go back to them with our teachers. Let's go back to them with our families and with our community. And then let's make sure to reinforce to our staff and to our community that here's what we want to see. Right? And where some of it's going to be messy and that's okay. Right? Here's where some of the mess is. Of course, as a leader, I have to say there needs to be some safety.Ellen Willoughby (17:57):Absolutely. Yes. It's not the idea of we don't have rules. We don't have expectations.Mera Dougherty (18:04):But there is this idea of, here's what we're expecting. And here's where we're okay with things looking a little bit different. So that teachers don't have a false expectation in their head of, Oh my gosh, someone's going to come in and observe my classroom and they're going to see that kids are talking over each other because we're in a unit right now where we're really learning how to have active discussion in class. And they're going to be upset with me.Mera Dougherty (18:28):We need to, as leaders, make sure that we really communicate here's what we're expecting to see. Here's what it's going to look like on the way. And then we're going to have discussions with you about it, and we're going to be working with you. We're going to be working as a school, and as a community together to figure out how to get there. And sometimes it's going to be messy. But there isn't going to be this sense of like divine retribution, right? Like that's not how this is going to work. We're working on this together, and we're going to figure out how it works, and we're going to make missteps. But here's what we're all aiming to do. And giving that vision of like, this is what our community wants. Okay. Here's how we're going to move together towards getting it. And here's how we're going to modulate and shift when it doesn't go right.Ellen Willoughby (19:10):And having the community be a part of that is huge because that's what we need. We need for that connection and that partnership of our families with our schools. Because then when there are things that feel a little bit outside of our locus of control in helping a student, we reach out to the family, because they know that kid better than we do. And they know ways that they can support, and help us support in the classroom.Mera Dougherty (19:38):Absolutely.Ellen Willoughby (19:40):Wow. This has been so fun. So what I want to do is ask a piece of advice question. So what advice would you give to leaders who are just starting out exploring how to create a culturally responsive school? Just kind of final thoughts on that?Mera Dougherty (19:59):Sure. So one, for leaders that are exploring that, one, like way to go, right? The first thing you need to do is pat yourself on the back and say, it's a tough time in education right now. And there's a million things you could be thinking of. And I know that if I was a younger leader at this time, I probably would say, Oh my gosh, that's like something I need.Ellen Willoughby (20:20):Right. I'm trying to figure out how to do synchronous and asynchronous learning. And I'm trying to do 90,000 other things in a pandemic.Mera Dougherty (20:28):Absolutely. Yes. So good for you. And know that this work is important, and it's not work that can be done next year. It's not work that can be done next week because you're always going to have, if you haven't realized this already, especially for our newer leaders. I'm so sorry, this is your life, right? This is a pandemic, and so it makes crazier than normal. But this is your life all the time. There's always going to be something else happening. There's always going to be a fire burning somewhere. And the first piece of advice is just, way to go for doing this work. It needs to be done now.Mera Dougherty (21:01):Two. The second piece of advice would be again, like go on a listening tour, find a way to make it work with the current workload you have. Right? So find something that is on your plate right now, whether it be a drive-through event that you need to host for your school, whether it be a big curriculum question that has been sort of on your mind burning there, something about what your kids need, et cetera. Find something that you can sort of mesh with this community listening, so that you have a way to listen to the community, but also feel like, okay, I'm getting something done off my list, right?Mera Dougherty (21:41):And set those blocks for yourself every week, where you have to speak to people from the community, and at the same time, you can get something done. Eventually you're going to get to the point where there's a week you don't need to get something done, and you're going to have some very cool conversations. But that's okay. I'm assuming no, one's there yet. If you are, my name is Mera, you contact me. You let me know what you're doing.Mera Dougherty (22:04):But find a way to do that. And don't be scared. You know, I was initially really scared to reach out to some of the people in my community. Right? Even though this is my backyard. People want to talk. Especially right now, you can literally... I just sent emails. "Hey, my name is Mera Dougherty. I'm founding a school at Manor. I just want to hear about your community." Or if I had a specific question like, "I really want to know more about what is it you envision for your children in the future? What kind of school do you want in your community? Or what kind of event would you want for this fall?" Whatever it is, send a bunch of emails out, right?Mera Dougherty (22:43):Just find people's emails. Go on LinkedIn. Go on Facebook and send them Facebook messages. I didn't Facebook till this year. Now I Facebook. Right? So like send them some Facebook messages. People will get back to you. They want to talk to you. And then find a mode of talking to you them every week so that you can start to get a pulse on what your community wants and needs. If you start that the rest of it will come, right? The rest of it, you are going to start to see like, Oh my gosh, I can now solve this problem with these people from the community. Oh my goodness. There is a way that I can incorporate what I heard from this person that I talked to last week into what I'm doing this next week.Mera Dougherty (23:24):It's going to naturally shift what you do. So that is my biggest piece of advice is start there. Start with listening to your community. Start with giving your community that platform. And then if you want to start building on that, think about how you're actually validating the beliefs and the dreams of your community, and how are you giving your community a platform. Right?Mera Dougherty (23:44):That's that third step that I would start to think about, is are you really, now that you're listening, are you giving them the stage? Right? And if you're not, then start to think about that. But get the first two down, right? Start it. Start the work. You've got to start it now.Ellen Willoughby (23:59):Right. You've just got to start.Mera Dougherty (24:00):And start listening. Right? Start those two first. Then start giving people the stage.Ellen Willoughby (24:04):Great. Are there any resources that you recommend, books for people to read, or at this point, just start there, and then?Mera Dougherty (24:12):Honestly, I think there are so many books, right? Just as I was driving here... Not as I was driving. Before I was driving, I was like, "Oh, I need to read this book," and was ordering it to my house. I think there are so many books right now. There are so many incredible leaders that are speaking about this right now.Mera Dougherty (24:31):I'm going to take sort of an oppositional viewpoint to that. You're probably already doing that. Right? Most of the leaders I know are reading a million books. They're doing all those things. You're probably doing that right now. And you can find those lists other places. I, as a white leader in Texas, I actually am probably not the person to ask. Ask somebody who is in your community what books to read, what texts to dive into, what trainings to go to.Mera Dougherty (24:57):I'm not the person to tell you. I think the place to start, again, is your community. And they're going to tell you those things. The book I got this morning was something that somebody told me yesterday.Ellen Willoughby (25:06):Great.Mera Dougherty (25:07):Ask them.Ellen Willoughby (25:07):Yes. There you go. So as we do with each of our podcasts, we're going to end with, we have a seven short answer questions with an educational twist that I just want you to just kind of fire off your thoughts.Mera Dougherty (25:20):Oh, fun.Ellen Willoughby (25:21):So as an educator, what keeps you up at night?Mera Dougherty (25:25):That eternal question, right? Are we/have we done everything we possibly could for our kids?Ellen Willoughby (25:31):As an educator? What allows you to sleep at night?Mera Dougherty (25:34):Getting to see my kids the next day. I mean, it's like different right now. But typically there's that moment when you get to school and kids start coming in. Right? And it's such a joyful moment. And so when I am like, okay, Mera, it is time to conk out. That's what I think about.Ellen Willoughby (25:52):What sound or noise do you love to hear in a school?Mera Dougherty (25:56):Educators and kids participating in things together. So I don't care if it's, like laughing together is the best. But also like when you have that first heartbreaking novel that a sixth grade class reads together and the teacher and the kids are all in tears. Right? So it sounds so weird. And you walk by their class and they're all experiencing this emotion, this like moment together. Or they experience their first time there's like a political disagreement in the class. And they're getting to experience that together. But when you can see the adults and the kids in the building experiencing something together for the first time.Ellen Willoughby (26:33):What sound or noise do you hate to hear in a school?Mera Dougherty (26:35):Suspicious silence. You know that, Ellen. You know that silence. You know that silence. It's like middle school transition time. And all of a sudden you're like, "Why is it so quiet?" And you know something is wrong.Ellen Willoughby (26:50):That is the greatest answer. What is your favorite word in education?Mera Dougherty (26:58):This is so hard. Paul Morrissey, our founder, uses a term the joy love thing. And really, I love that. Right? The idea that we need to take so much joy because this is the best profession in the world, right? Like this is hard. But this is the best. We get to do the best work every day. And we need to bring so much joy to it. And the fact that we are here to love each other and love our kids. That sounds weird, and people get super creeped out. But you know this from working with me. I'm going to tell you, I love you. Ellen. I love you. You know, I love you. I love the kids we serve. I love the families we serve. And I just love when you get to a place where you've got a community that is joyful and like loves on each other every day. You have done something right. It's my favorite saying.Ellen Willoughby (27:47):That's also how you get the hard work done too.Mera Dougherty (27:49):And it becomes not so hard then. When you really love each other, it's like, okay, I will do this for you because you are so great, and I want to see you learn, right?Ellen Willoughby (27:59):Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. What is your least favorite word in education?Mera Dougherty (28:10):These are actually words that I believe in, but I think have just been so misused. One would be structure, right? It's not that I don't believe in structure. Actually I totally believe in structure. You know this from working with me.Ellen Willoughby (28:23):Yes.Mera Dougherty (28:25):But it's just been, I don't know if I can say bastardize, but the word has become something very different than what it means. And accountability. I believe highly in accountability. I think people should be accountable, but I think the way that we use it now is actually this very judgmental, blaming thing, which is not what it's meant to be. So those two words, when I hear them, they always raise my flag to like, "Ooh, this is going to not be something great." Like typically when they're used, it's almost how we talk about what kids come in with, right? That conversation typically goes not the right way. And those two words, typically when I hear them used are being used to talk about real negative thing.Ellen Willoughby (29:12):Yeah. And give people like a visceral reaction, as opposed to like an open-minded thought that this is something that can be really good and really helpful and powerful in a really positive way.Mera Dougherty (29:22):Yeah. Like take accountability for the awesome thing you did. But take accountability for that learning that you, child, put in and that your brain got so much bigger. Take accountability teacher for this beautiful classroom environment that you made. We never hear it. I'm going to say, I have never heard those sentences.Ellen Willoughby (29:38):No. No.Mera Dougherty (29:39):I don't know about you, but I've never heard those sentences.Ellen Willoughby (29:41):No,Mera Dougherty (29:42):We do hear accountability in terms of like, you need to take accountability for this misaction that you made. Right? You need to take accountability for these negative things, which those should come too> but that's not what accountability means. Accountability, like this sense of ownership over what you do. Also like let's take accountability for your ability to change. Have you ever heard that? I've never heard that.Ellen Willoughby (30:03):Nobody said that to me.Mera Dougherty (30:04):No one's saying that to me, and I don't hear our kids saying like, "Oh, I would love to take accountability to make that change."Ellen Willoughby (30:11):How powerful would that be?Mera Dougherty (30:13):Yeah. Versus like, I have heard people speak down to kids, like, "You need to take accountability for what you did." That's great. So take accountability, say "Yes, I did it." That's what you want? Like, that was your big aha moment for a child was or for a teacher was you got someone to say, "Yes 'twas I. I did it. It me." Like no! So those words, they drive me up the wall.Ellen Willoughby (30:38):Okay. And who was your favorite teacher and why?Mera Dougherty (30:43):This was really hard. This one was like the hardest. I was really struggling to think about this, and I came up with two really different people. One of whom I'm not totally sure how it came into my head. So one is really obvious. His name was Mr. Mark Flamoe. I have realized I probably need to look him up at this point and send him an email. But he was a teacher at the high school that I went to, Jesuit High school in Portland, Oregon, which was just a really phenomenal place of instruction. And he was the first person, along with, I think he was our principal at the time, paul Hogan, that made me love literature.Mera Dougherty (31:21):I was someone who grew up. I went to a school, we spoke Spanish first. And so I was a really bad reader in English. And I shouldn't say that. I was a developing reader in English. But the way it was described back then was like, she couldn't read. Right? I was not a reader. I remember someone telling me that in like fourth grade, being like, "She is not a reader."Ellen Willoughby (31:42):So that's a really positive thing to put into a fourth graders head.Mera Dougherty (31:45):That was normal back then.Ellen Willoughby (31:46):Oh, it totally was.Mera Dougherty (31:47):A non-reader. And I caught up because I found books that I loved on my own. Right? Just sort of like salacious teen novels. But he was the first person that showed me how to dig into it. Like open a book and dig into the prose that was there. Dig into the writing, and figure out how to sort of be... Lucy Calkins talks about this too. How do dig into a text and explore it and love that process. And I never understood it until him, and my principal at the time. Both of them really worked together on this very cool and robust English curriculum. So that was great.Mera Dougherty (32:23):The other teacher, I don't know why she popped in my head. But was this woman named Sister Jackie. She was a middle school teacher of mine. And she got me in like huge trouble all the time.Ellen Willoughby (32:37):She got you in huge trouble?Mera Dougherty (32:43):Good point. I got myself in trouble. That was pre-existing middle school and has existed far beyond that. But I was always in trouble with her. That's the better way to say it, thank you. Taking accountability for my actions, Ellen. I was always in trouble with Sister Jackie. But she was the first person, I think, that made me realize that she could really like me. And at the same time, like she knew what was up. Right? Like she knew what I was doing, and I think for me, it formed a lot of the ideas I had, especially that I use now in terms of, we need to, again, sort of like accountability. That's how I've sort of revised that idea. It's like, we need to love kids and let them know no matter what they do, we're going to love them. My love is not conditional on anything for my children. The minute they step in that door, I love them period. And if they leave that door, I still love them period.Mera Dougherty (33:51):But there are going to be moments where they just do something crazy. And that's okay. Right? Like I'm here for it. One, it may be kind of funny, right? It may be enjoyable. It may be really not enjoyable. It may be really uncomfortable. And we're going to have a moment where we talk about it, right? We're going to have some moment where we need to figure this out, but it is not going to make me love you less. And so I think she was the first person that made me realize that in education. And now that is a really important concept to me with our kids.Ellen Willoughby (34:22):Well, Mera, I cannot thank you enough for you sharing your knowledge with us today, and on this really incredibly important topic. And also just the great laughs as well. And we want to thank all of our listeners for joining us for this episode of Drinking from the Firehose, a podcast for campus leaders. If you liked what you heard on this episode today, please hop over to whatever platform you use and give us a rating and review. It helps people find our podcasts and lets us know what we're doing right, and what we can improve upon. And, of course, don't forget to mention this to your colleagues. Thanks again.

Ep. 3 Culturally Responsive and Affirming Schools Pt. 1 (Show transcript)Ellen Willoughby (00:01):Hi, everyone. Welcome to Drinking From The Fire Hose, a podcast for school leaders. I'm your host, Ellen Willoughby. Being a campus leader can feel like you're drinking from a fire hose with all the information requests, tasks, and duties that are thrown your way on a daily basis. So how do you manage to do it all and help students grow? Well, that's what this podcast is all about.On today's podcast our topic is Culturally Responsive Schools.I am thrilled to introduce our guest today. Hi Mera, welcome to the podcast.Mera Dougherty (00:17):Hi Ellen. Thanks for having me.Ellen Willoughby (00:19):Absolutely. Mera Dougherty started college on the path to becoming a neuroscientist, but after volunteering with local high schoolers, many of whom hadn't received the academic preparation needed to fill out their college applications, much less succeed in higher education, she decided to pursue teaching. After working in local schools in Brooklyn, New York and Austin as a teacher and a principal, Mera is now the founding principal of Compass Rose Destiny, a new K through 12 charter school that will be opening up in the Austin area in fall 2021.Ellen Willoughby (00:51):I have also had the great honor of working with Mera in the past, and I know she has relentless passion and desire to create culturally-responsive schools for all children. So I want to start off by having you share your definition of a culturally responsive school and why that is important to you.Mera Dougherty (01:06):Yeah. I think when we think about culturally responsive schools, we all go back to the 90's definition, the Ladson-Billings, culturally responsive is you're taking account of what kids' culture is and you're incorporating that in some way into our pedagogy. I think now we've got to move on. That's great. I'm not against that definition, but I think it's time that we elaborate on it a little bit.Mera Dougherty (01:34):So when I think about culturally responsive schools and teaching, the thing that I think about is creating a school where an adult or a kid could walk in the door and they one, see themselves reflected in the school. In the culture of the school, in the texts they read, in the curriculum they learn about, they see a reflection of themselves. In addition, they have a window into seeing into other people's cultures. They actually have the ability to explore other cultures, learn about them in a way that makes them a respectful, but also active member in a diverse society.Mera Dougherty (02:08):And then I think there's a step that we forget, which is creating a culture that's safe enough, where kids can actually explore their own identity and they can be in a space where others are exploring their identities at the same time, and it's really safe and progressive to do that. So that's what I think about when we think about a culturally responsive school. It's important to me. I think look at the world right now.Ellen Willoughby (02:33):Absolutely.Mera Dougherty (02:34):But I also think, because our kids are really wonderful and the culture that they have, that they inherently come in with in school, and the adults we have in our school, all come in with these cultures that are really phenomenal. They're phenomenal humans. And we have said for so many years, "We need you to put that aside and then walk into the building." And I think makes kids and adults not engage in education the way they could. If we said, "Actually, let's bring that into the building, that is part of your education. Let's really affirm that. Let's affirm who you are, where you came from," and give that credit, we will actually see the face of education change.Ellen Willoughby (03:17):Yeah. And I think that one of the big pieces that you pointed out that is really so valuable is we have for so long, like you said, shut it down, leave that at the door. We all celebrate it on these particular times of the year, based on a calendar somebody created, and that's it. And what has been really the downfall of this? How has that shown up in our schools when we have ignored the different cultures and the different races, and the diversity of our students and our teachers?Mera Dougherty (03:52):Yeah. I think you're totally right, Ellen. When we ignore this, what we're asking kids to do is to engage in learning that has nothing to do with them, right?Ellen Willoughby (04:04):Right.Mera Dougherty (04:05):And I don't know how many trainings you've been... I would say you've been to millions, right?Ellen Willoughby (04:10):At least hundreds.Mera Dougherty (04:11):You and I have sat in hundreds.Ellen Willoughby (04:13):We have, together. Absolutely.Mera Dougherty (04:14):And when it has nothing to do with you, there's no way you're engaging in it. There's no way you're going to take something out of that. Maybe something minuscule, but it's not sticky, right?Ellen Willoughby (04:24):Right.Mera Dougherty (04:24):If you think of, again, I love incorporating neuroscience into what I do. It doesn't make memories sticky. It doesn't make information sticky. You're not able to retain that and actually apply it. And so when we wonder, why is it so hard to get kids to apply the information they're learning in schools. Well, the information that we're teaching in schools has nothing to do with them, and we're actually teaching them that they don't matter. "You don't matter, but this information does." And think about what that does to a kid every day when that's the message that's being sent, and what that does to a community when that's the message a school is sending, versus, "You matter the most, this community matters the most. And I'm going to give you information to help you engage in this community, make this community flourish, continue to help this community flourish." It really changes the way kids take in information.Ellen Willoughby (05:16):Yeah. And it's understanding that everybody has a voice and everybody's voice is valid.Mera Dougherty (05:21):Yes.Ellen Willoughby (05:21):And if we really think about the adults right now, who are trying to really incorporate this, who have been raised to leave it at the door, it's a really big shift.Mera Dougherty (05:32):It really is.Ellen Willoughby (05:33):So I want to share just a little bit of data. So according to the National Association of Independent Schools, "Building culturally responsive schools requires tapping into our own cultural knowledge, experiences, and perspectives. It begins with us. It is highly emotional work that explores existing beliefs, values, opinions, and unconscious bias. Because cultural differences are assets, heads of schools, administrators, and teachers need to create safe spaces where these differences are valued and affirmed." So as shared in the quote, it begins with us. So as a campus principal, where do you start?Mera Dougherty (06:11):I think for me, the biggest learning and where you start... So I would have said you start by making sure kids are reflected in schools and you buy these texts. That's great. All of that is good and that's important. The biggest learning, I would say over the course of the last three years and founding in different communities has been, you need to start with the community you serve, right?Ellen Willoughby (06:38):Right.Mera Dougherty (06:39):A coworker of mine, Celeste. I wrote down this quote, she always says of, "Nothing for us, without us." She's always using this quote, and it just brings me back to the idea that the first thing you do when you're thinking of making a culturally responsive school and just a culturally affirming school, because we don't necessarily need to respond, we should be proactive in this.Ellen Willoughby (07:00):Nice. Culturally... Say that one again.Mera Dougherty (07:03):A culturally affirming school.Ellen Willoughby (07:05):Culturally affirming school.Mera Dougherty (07:06):And I don't know if that exists. I don't think I'm coining that term. Maybe that does.Ellen Willoughby (07:10):Maybe it it.Mera Dougherty (07:10):If someone came up with it, thank you. But when you're making a school like that in any community like that, the first thing you need to do is go and ask the community who they are. Explore your community, know the history of your community, know what it is. What are the hopes and dreams of your community? Who are the people in it? Talk to everyone. Go everywhere. Once you've figured that out, then I think you have the internal work of figuring out, okay, great. This is who the community I'm serving is. Who am I in that community?Mera Dougherty (07:44):And that's where it gets really sticky. That's the work when it says that, you said, it's super emotional. This is where people have to do the hard work of saying, "Who am I?" For example, who am I as a white leader in this work? What role do I really play in this community? What role do I need to play? What roles can I not play? Once you've figured that out, what you need to do as a school leader and how you integrate, how you make sure that culturally responsive frameworks are in your school, it all flows from there. Once you know what your community wants, who they truly are, and who you are in that work, then I think everything comes pretty naturally.Ellen Willoughby (08:24):I think that that is also not only for someone who's founding a school, but even current administrators.Mera Dougherty (08:29):Yes.Ellen Willoughby (08:29):We have current administrators who may not be connected with the community that they serve, and also, their community very likely has changed dramatically over the last several years. So thinking about that, what does that look like? How do you build that, and build that connection and understanding with the community?Mera Dougherty (08:52):Yeah.Speaker 3 (08:53):If you like what you hear in this episode, pop on over to whatever platform you use and give us a rating and review. It really helps people find our podcast and lets us know what we're doing right and what we can improve upon. And of course, don't forget to mention this to your colleagues. Thanks. Now let's get back to the show.Mera Dougherty (09:14):I wish I had a cleaner way of doing this. Like, "Here are the five steps."Ellen Willoughby (09:18):Yes. But it's messy work.Mera Dougherty (09:21):But it's super messy work. So for example, right now, like you said, I'm starting a school in Manor. What this means is literally, I talk to everybody I can in Manor. So I start with folks, I've got a woman on my board, Sheila Matthews. She is a time resident of Manor, she's a really active member in her church in Manor, she's really an advocate for early childhood education in Manor.Ellen Willoughby (09:46):Great.Mera Dougherty (09:46):She does not hold any political seats in Manor, but she is like the unofficial mayor.Ellen Willoughby (09:51):Right.Mera Dougherty (09:52):No disrespect to the mayor. We love him too. And we've met with him as well. But you meet with everybody who is an active voice in Manor, and then you meet with the folks that don't have an active voice. You sit down for coffee, you get on a Zoom call, you do whatever you need to do to talk to everybody in Manor, or in your community. For me, it's Manor.Ellen Willoughby (10:14):Right.Mera Dougherty (10:15):So you can really say, "Okay, this is the diversity of opinions that I'm getting. These are the trends that I'm starting to hear." But I would say the first thing you do is a listening tour. As you're doing that, then you can do the things like looking up, making sure you know the history, making sure you know the school information, the demographic data, et cetera. That's the easy part though, and I think that's what school leaders naturally tend to do.Ellen Willoughby (10:36):Right. Yeah. We go straight to the data first.Mera Dougherty (10:39):Which is great.Ellen Willoughby (10:39):Yeah. It's a great starting point.Mera Dougherty (10:41):Yes.Ellen Willoughby (10:42):But the harder work and the most important work is the boots on the ground work.Mera Dougherty (10:46):Exactly. And then once you've talked to folks get entrenched. So for me, I'm at the food pantry in Eternal Faith Baptist Church, every other Saturday. Sometimes I don't think they need me, I think they're just entertaining me there. I'm at the food pantry there, I'm going to go to the events that happen in Manor. We're sitting down and having lunch with folks. You have to make sure that you're going to the events and you're taking part in the community celebrations, just taking part in the community that exists there, so that you understand really, you have a pulse of the community.Ellen Willoughby (11:22):And thinking about current principals, because that's one of the demographics or one of the groups that we really want to also think about, is the first thought I think of is like, "Oh, the time." But I also think about the return on that investment will pay off in spades.Mera Dougherty (11:43):And I think there's a way to do both. So for example, and I hear this, there are nights where literally last night I was like, "It is eight o'clock, I am so tired." And I've got another parent called to make, or I've got to reach out to another family because of this. The thing that I think, yesterday I came back to this, was for principals right now who are looking to do this work, and they're also in the work. Boots on the ground, they're reviewing data, they're there with kids every day. The best way to do this, I think is to mesh your opportunities.Mera Dougherty (12:23):So if you have something, for example, you've got a student event coming up, get parent opinion on it. As you're planning, as you're trying to figure these things out, go ahead and get... And not just parent, get family, get community input. Ask somebody that you've never talked to you about an event that you're doing. Ask somebody that you've never talked to, but you know is important in the community about something that's coming up. Ask somebody what you should do about an issue that you've just been mulling around in your head and is keeping you up at night. Go ahead and set up a quick 10 to 15-minute Zoom call with someone in your community that you can ask this question, because the shocking part is they are way smarter than you. They know.Ellen Willoughby (13:03):They know. Yes.Mera Dougherty (13:05):I sat, trying to figure out our social media campaign for weeks. "Maybe we should do this." I didn't need to do that. The best thing I ever did was get on the phone with three different people from Manor and say, "Hey, what is it you want to see for your kids? What do you want to see for this community?" And they figured it out for me. You can actually decrease the workload if you recognize that the community you're serving actually has the answers. You just need to implement them.Ellen Willoughby (13:31):Got it. Yeah. So they are your best ally. They are your information source of everything, because again, we can spend all this time spinning our wheels as campus leaders, trying to figure out what do we think they need, but why don't we just ask?Mera Dougherty (13:49):Yeah. Why don't we ask? And why don't we give people the opportunity to do some of that work?Ellen Willoughby (13:54):Yeah.Mera Dougherty (13:55):A lot of times, when we think of work that hasn't been done in a community, it's not that it hasn't been done because someone hasn't wanted to. They didn't have the platform. And so, again, as a leader, you hold this card of privilege and this is a great time to give it back to the community and say, "Hey, I've got the platform. This is work that you've really wanted to do. How would you do it? Great. Come and help me."Ellen Willoughby (14:16):Yeah. It's about handing over the mic.Mera Dougherty (14:19):Right?Ellen Willoughby (14:19):Absolutely. Yeah.Mera Dougherty (14:20):I don't feel like as a leader, I'm doing a ton of leading right now. I've got a wonderful advisory board. Again, I mentioned Sheila. I do what the community wants me to do. I'm trying to give this platform to the folks that need it and do the work that the community is asking to be done.Ellen Willoughby (14:37):Awesome. So one of the things I want to ask is because this work is highly emotional, how do you handle any pushback or resistance from teachers and staff on your campus about this?Mera Dougherty (14:51):I was nervous about this question, Ellen. I think this is one of the hardest parts of this work. And as someone that's worked with you, you do this really beautifully.Ellen Willoughby (15:04):Thank you.Mera Dougherty (15:04):Because I think there's an empathy with it. There's an empathy in terms of making sure, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, "Bring people to the table," and making sure you give people an opportunity to hear and listen and speak to what's going on. With that said, there is a real danger to that. And then what I mean by that is we are serving children. We are serving children and we are serving diverse communities.Ellen Willoughby (15:37):Right.Mera Dougherty (15:38):And so when you get pushed back, there's really two things to consider. One, is this someone that has shown evidence that they are willing to do the work in becoming a diverse, inclusive, teacher, educator, leader, et cetera? And I'm saying concrete evidence, right?Ellen Willoughby (16:02):Right, yes.Mera Dougherty (16:03):Not good intentions, because we, I think a lot of times say, "Good intentions are enough," and that actually isn't the case. At least in my opinion, I would say we have gone past the time for intentions. We need people in this work who are willing to be actively anti-racist, who are willing to be actively inclusive, who are willing to have their hearts and minds changed by their children and community. And if there's evidence that even if they're pushing back, that they've done some of that work and that we can continue to build on it, great, let's have a spot at the table. And I think you deal with that pushback really by exploring who they are and where that pushback comes from. Like, "That's okay. Let's talk about it. Let's figure out where that's coming from. What is it bringing up for you? Let's continue to do that work on ourselves." But if there isn't evidence of that, if there is evidence that this person isn't willing to do the work, then I think we really need to be brave and put kids first.Ellen Willoughby (17:04):Yeah.Mera Dougherty (17:04):The work that we do is putting children first and for too long, we've said the good intentions of adults is enough. And I would say, and this might be a really unpopular belief.Ellen Willoughby (17:15):That's okay.Mera Dougherty (17:15):So I'm sorry if this gets people angry.Ellen Willoughby (17:17):No. This is part of the work.Mera Dougherty (17:19):But we've got to stop that. We've got to say our children and their future comes first, and we need to have adults on board who are willing to say the same.Ellen Willoughby (17:31):Yeah. The productive struggle is allowed.Mera Dougherty (17:33):Yes.Ellen Willoughby (17:34):So if you're like, "This is hard, but I'm trying, and I'm putting forth the work. And I know that I have a belief that is anti-racist. But we don't fix racism overnight. We don't fixed our own conditioning overnight." So having that struggle is the important piece.Mera Dougherty (17:56):Absolutely.Ellen Willoughby (17:58):And when we look at, and I love how you mentioned that making that, "Oh, I think I might believe that way, but I'm not really willing to put in the work," is just continuing to stamp that, "I'm not willing to change."Mera Dougherty (18:16):Yes.Ellen Willoughby (18:17):"And I'm not willing to explore. I'm not willing to feel uncomfortable. This is where I stand," in a sense.Mera Dougherty (18:24):And in some professions it may be okay to say, that's okay. We can take as much time as we need. This is some immediate work that we need to do. Kids deserve better, right now.Ellen Willoughby (18:35):Absolutely.Mera Dougherty (18:35):There are kids in classrooms that don't reflect them in the least bit, that have some racist practices. In education, we've really incorporated racist practices for hundreds of years. So we don't have the time to mess around. That productive struggle is great. That is a struggle I want to see people do. I actually think our best teachers are ones that are most inclusive, are actually the ones that really sit there and say, "Man, I'm not sure if this thing that I'm doing is right. And it makes me uncomfortable to talk about it."Mera Dougherty (19:08):And that's actually great because then we can say, "Great, let's get three different books. Let's talk to the community. Let's actually have an open discussion." Those are the folks that we want on our team. But you're right, there's another group of folks that are like, "This makes me uncomfortable, and I don't really want to engage." And that's where we have to say, "If that's not an option for our kids in the classroom, we don't give our kids that option. That can't be an option for the adults."Ellen Willoughby (19:31):No. None at all. Absolutely. And I think too, that when we think about the struggle is where the learning happens. Just like with our kids, we create productive struggle so that our kids can learn. Just like with adults, we need the productive struggle so that we can work through the really hard messy. There's some resources and things that you can use to help you navigate this, but there's nobody who's hiding the answers underneath their chair.Mera Dougherty (20:06):Absolutely.Ellen Willoughby (20:07):It's about your own journey in exploring your beliefs and thoughts.Mera Dougherty (20:11):Absolutely.Ellen Willoughby (20:13):So thinking about that, I would assume that you incorporate this into your hiring practices. So what does that look like?Mera Dougherty (20:21):Sure. So first, I think you have to incorporate it into your current practices. I am really impressed with the work Compass Rose is doing right now, our schools in San Antonio and our little team in Austin.Ellen Willoughby (20:37):Small, but mighty and powerful.Mera Dougherty (20:38):Small but mighty. Yes. We've been doing this work and I'm just really proud of the organization. There are monthly to biweekly, actual sit-down PDs, where folks are engaging in actively anti-racist work. So I think the first layer is you have to be doing it within your organization before you think about hiring and doing this work.Ellen Willoughby (21:00):Okay.Mera Dougherty (21:00):Because you can't expect others to do it if you're not doing it yourselves.Ellen Willoughby (21:06):Right. Yeah, absolutely.Mera Dougherty (21:07):So I think that's the first step that we have to remember. And then when we think about doing this work within hiring, there's two parts to it. One, you're looking for folks that are willing to engage with this work. That they at least have the ability to say, "Oh my gosh, maybe I've heard of this, but I've never really engaged with it. This is so interesting. What can I read? What can I do as I'm preparing to get into a job where this is part of the work that I do?" So I think that's the minimum that we want to see, or people that have been actively engaging in this work for a long time.Ellen Willoughby (21:38):Right.Mera Dougherty (21:40):So I think that's part of the hiring practice. I think the other goes back to the community, in terms of, we need to be hiring people from the communities we serve. We need to be hiring people that reflect the cultures and identities of the kids and the families that we serve.Ellen Willoughby (21:58):Absolutely.Mera Dougherty (21:59):And not just randomly hiring them. That needs to be something that we value within the hiring process. So we need to think about what are the values that we're truly looking for? Are we reflecting the values and the needs of the community, that before I spoke about that, before we've already gone and gotten and talked to our communities about, and they've said, "Here's what our dreams are. Here's what our aspirations are. Here's who we are," are we then taking those values and reflecting those same values in our hiring? And I would say nine out of 10 times, we are not.Ellen Willoughby (22:35):Right, yeah.Mera Dougherty (22:35):Nine out of 10 times, we're creating a value proposition that exists because we think it's what's right for kids. Yes, we need to incorporate some of that, but we need to make sure that value proposition that we are communicating and the values that we are looking for in our educators are the values that our community is asking for. And very usually, some of those values have to do with being from that community.Ellen Willoughby (22:59):Right. Yeah, definitely. Because like you said, you want the representation of your community in your school.Mera Dougherty (23:09):Most of the schools that we're talking about, if I think about the school that I'm founding, we are a school community, meaning that we are part of the community we're in. We're not this separate entity of, "Come to Manor, and then once you enter our gates, this is a separate world, or a different universe." That's not what we want. I want people from the community coming to our school for events. I want our school to be part of the community. I want folks to, in 15 years say, "Oh, my grandbaby went there and they graduated and now they're in college. Oh, that school is my niece teaches." It needs to be an active, entrenched part of the community. And so to do that, how are we going to do that work if we don't have people from the community doing the work?Ellen Willoughby (23:59):That's a great question. It doesn't make sense. If we're hiring outside of people who don't know the community, who don't understand the needs of the community, even with best intentions, or if they're not willing to entrench themselves in the community, then we're continuing to create a divide that we could actually prevent if we're being really thoughtful in how we hire.Mera Dougherty (24:28):Yeah. Just the other day I was talking to somebody in Bastrop about science curriculum, and how they have really wanted ag science as their focus. And it was just fascinating to me because if I came in and had not talked to anyone from Bastrop, And let's say we came into Bastrop and started a school there, I would've just done a science program like, "Great. Here's some STEM, let's throw it at you." What I realized is, in talking to these families and kids and Bastrop, they knew so much more science than I knew about certain things. Their environmental science knowledge was off the charts.Ellen Willoughby (25:08):Right, because they live it every day.Mera Dougherty (25:09):Oh my gosh. There were things that just were shocking for me to find out, things I genuinely was embarrassed of, I graduated from Columbia university with a degree in sciences and I don't know what you're talking about. But the shocking part was, oh my gosh, you could build, here in this community, an incredible science program, but you're going to need to reframe the way you're thinking about it. We're really going to need to think of what topics we introduce first, how we actually tie this to the work that kids and families are engaging in every day. And so, when we think about, I've been part of leadership teams, as I think you have as well, that say, "This is important, but that's not the focus. The focus isn't knowing your community. The focus is first, we have to teach kids the curriculum." Well, that's an example of if you don't know your community, how are you teaching them well? How do you know what they know? How do you know what their history is?Ellen Willoughby (26:11):Yeah. And you don't, if you haven't asked. And so you're just plowing through and you're putting what you think is best, without looking at the huge, vast amount of knowledge that you have available at your fingertips through your community.Mera Dougherty (26:26):Totally. And you're actually kind of shooting yourself in the foot because you could build on this knowledge that kids and families already have. You could use this knowledge as a platform. And I promise you, if you do that, you're going to get kids to move so much faster. You're going to see academic results you haven't seen before, because you're actually saying what you already know is important and validating that, and let's build from there, versus, "You are a blank slate. You know nothing. Let me explain this all to you." And again, adults, that doesn't work for us. No one likes being told that.Ellen Willoughby (27:02):No, at all.Mera Dougherty (27:03):But we think somehow that's going to work with kids. And again, I am at fault for doing this. I have done this multiple times before, and I wish I could go back and change it.Ellen Willoughby (27:13):No, I hear you on that. Absolutely. I think it's one of those things where, as we say, when you know better, you do better. And when that realization comes up, yes. Because there are tons of times and I'm like, "Gosh, if I would have just done these three things, and really entrenched myself in the community better, then I would be able to really meet their needs." And I think one of the things that you said that really hit me was we look at kids as a blank slate, but they're not.Mera Dougherty (27:44):Mm-mm (negative).Ellen Willoughby (27:44):They come to us with so much, and we have to understand what they're coming to us with so that we can, like you said, expand upon that and build upon that, nurture that, and honor that.Mera Dougherty (27:57):And nine out of 10 times, when we talk to an educator about what kids are coming to us with, and I'm wondering, folks who are listening, if they have this immediate, my antenna goes up. We are typically talking about negative things.Ellen Willoughby (28:14):Yes, we are.Mera Dougherty (28:14):We are typically talking about traumas that kids come to us with. We are typically talking about past experiences that aren't positive they're coming to us with. That's fascinating to me, because we so seldomly talk about the great things that kids are coming to us with, that communities have entrenched in them, that they are bringing to us, and that they are being open enough to share with us. I would say that conversation is not the typical conversation that we're having as educators.Mera Dougherty (28:49):Yes, this work is hard. Yes, this work is really median. It's tough to go through. But even just the basic things of setting aside. In my calendar right now, I have two 30 minute windows a week. Two days a week, 30 minutes of my time that I have to be talking to someone from our community. It can be two 15-minute conversations, it can be one 30-minute conversation. It can be a socially-distant coffee outside on someone's lawn, whatever it is, two of those windows a week can fully change your perspective. It can give you answers to the things that you are doing today, to the things that you're sitting up in your office, trying to figure out what book are we reading in ELA next? Why are our scores on this science IA so low? Whatever it is, what do we make our next school event? You can get those answers in those conversations. You can do double duty and at the same time, your community is going to trust you. And you're going to know something more about your community that is going to help you longterm.Ellen Willoughby (29:53):We've been talking with Mera Dougherty on the topic of Culturally Responsive Schools. We will continue our conversation with Mera on the next episode, so please be sure to join us.Speaker 3 (30:10):If you like what you hear in this episode, hop on over to whatever platform you use and give us a rating and review. And of course, don't forget to mention this to your colleagues. Thanks.

Ep. 2 Culturally Responsive Schools (Show transcript)Ellen Willoughby (00:01):Hi, everyone. Welcome to Drinking From The Fire Hose, a podcast for school leaders. I'm your host, Ellen Willoughby. Being a campus leader can feel like you're drinking from a fire hose with all the information requests, tasks, and duties that are thrown your way on a daily basis. So how do you manage to do it all and help students grow? Well, that's what this podcast is all about.Today our guest is Katrina Bailey she is the Principal of Caraway Elementary, in Round Rock ISD.Hi, Katrina welcome to the podcast.Katrina Bailey (00:19):Hi, thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be here.Ellen Willoughby (00:22):Well, we are really excited and we want to go ahead and just start off by having you share your definition of a culturally responsive school and why it is important to create culturally responsive schools?Katrina Bailey (00:33):Well, that is a really, really great question and so relevant in today's world, in just our global world, global society and our approach to schools. And so a culturally responsive school is one that uses the cultural knowledge of their community, of their students prior experiences, the staff's prior experiences, and the diverse learning styles that students bring to the classroom to make learning more engaging and more effective for students.Ellen Willoughby (01:04):Great. And tell me a little bit about what that looks like?Katrina Bailey (01:07):So in the classroom, if I'm a classroom teacher, I would be surveying my students to understand their unique experiences, their backgrounds. I think that's the first thing that we do. You know at the beginning of the school year, you get that class list and you're looking to see who's in your classroom. You're looking at those 20, 22 faces, 25 faces I think sometimes in cases that are going to be in your classroom and you're going through... And you're doing your background. I think that that's important, I think it's important to understand who's coming into your classroom so that you can create a space where they feel comfortable. So I think it's doing your background as a teacher to understand who's going to be in your space, so that to know what they're going to bring, the cultural capital that they bring to the learning environment and recognizing that it's important in planning and designing learning experiences and making that class a community.Katrina Bailey (02:00):So I think that that's the first step is just understanding. It's surveying, it's asking students how best they learn. I think it's asking students what makes them comfortable in a classroom space, and really what they hope to get out of the year so that you can design your learning experiences around that. Around building that community and making sure that you are bringing in the students' cultural backgrounds, their experiences to the table because I think it's also not making assumptions about what students do and do not know, but it's also recognizing the brilliance that they bring into your classroom every single day as well.Ellen Willoughby (02:34):I love that, it starts with the kids. It sounds like.Katrina Bailey (02:37):Yes, it does.Ellen Willoughby (02:38):That's great. So I would love to hear a little bit about yourself and your school.Katrina Bailey (02:42):So for me, I have been the principal at Caraway going on seven years now and it's a really great school. And it's a really unique campus, the campus is 42 years old now, and it has a really unique context. We're a part of Round Rock Independent School District, but we're Austin-Travis County, where our location is. And so it really brings in a really unique context in that we have students from all over the place, really. We call ourselves a family, we're really an international family because we have over 38 different languages spoken in our school.Ellen Willoughby (03:15):Wow.Katrina Bailey (03:16):And our students come from all over, all over the US, all over the world. We have lots of students that are from India, we have lots of students from Europe, Latin America, Mexico, right here in the US around the Austin area. So our school really has a really international feel to it. We went through a period of time where we grew really quickly to following most of what's happening in the Austin area, where we were adding probably anywhere between 40 to 70 students a year. So we had this really fast growth from a school of less than 700 to close to 900 last year, really quickly. And so that is a really unique context for us too because we had to learn to adapt really quickly to the students and the experiences they were bringing into our school and it's been fun.Katrina Bailey (04:06):It's been really fun and enjoyable to see our students adapt and learn from each other and our staff adapt in our community. It's such a welcoming community in the Austin area and part of Round Rock. I always say that it's unique, it's a little hidden gem hidden back... It's a neighborhood school and it's a hidden gem, it's just a wonderful place to be.Ellen Willoughby (04:28):That's great. And just the incredible amount of diversity that your campus has, has to be just such a unique and really amazing experience not only for the students, but also for the staff.Katrina Bailey (04:43):Right, right, right. And in our staff too there's so... The unique thing about our staff is that they are truly... their desire to know their students is truly authentic. And I think that that is the piece of being culturally responsive that's important is that we are authentic in our approach to wanting to know our students because we know how important that is. And I think it's not maybe necessarily unique to our school, but I think that it's what makes our school great. In that our approach to getting to know our students is authentic because it really comes from a place of really wanting to know so that we can be our best for students.Ellen Willoughby (05:23):That's awesome. So I want to start out with some data that I found, that's going to lead us into to our next question. So according to The Hechinger Report, it's a national nonprofit newsroom and they report on just education. And they said that educators who run US schools aren't a diverse group, that almost 80% of the nation's 90,000 principals are white and only 11% are black and 8% are Latino and this is all according to federal data. And so that doesn't come close to reflecting the demographics of the nation's 50 million public school children who are 46% white, 15% black, 28% Latino, and 6% Asian. So what are your thoughts on this data, especially related to creating culturally responsive schools?Katrina Bailey (06:14):My mind immediately goes to the narrative that we're creating. If we think about leadership roles and positions in general, whether it's race or gender or whatever context we want to look at leadership, I think that we create a narrative that it is... when we look at those numbers, we're creating a narrative that maybe leadership isn't for certain groups. And so I think that that's one that we have to recognize that that there is a cultural mismatch, and we have to disrupt that narrative.Ellen Willoughby (06:45):Definitely.Katrina Bailey (06:46):And students do need to see themselves as leaders and the best way to do that is to diversify the leadership, not just the teaching staff, but also those that are in leadership positions within our school. Like I said, and my mind it immediately goes to disrupting that narrative that leadership is bound to a race or a certain gender. And so it's our job as leaders in the education field to advocate. And I think that it goes bigger than just the school system, I think it goes bigger to... I think it reaches across the preparation programs, the recruitment of a diverse group into education, I think it's important. So I think it's something that we need to recognize as a problem of practice I should call it, a problem of practice and that we do need to diversify so we can disrupt that narrative.Ellen Willoughby (07:40):Great. And I absolutely agree that it has to start from the recruitment piece of university and getting a diverse population into the profession. Absolutely.Ellen Willoughby (07:58):If you like what you hear in this episode, hop on over to whatever platform you use and give us a rating and review, it really helps people find our podcast. And lets us know what we're doing right and what we can approve upon. And of course, don't forget to mention this to your colleagues. Thanks. Now let's get back to the show.Ellen Willoughby (08:20):So as a campus principal, where do you start? And if we're looking at schools that have been in existence for a long time or even new schools who have just been going along with the status quo, and are really wanting to examine how they are meeting the needs of the various diverse populations of their schools, so what would you recommend?Katrina Bailey (08:48):I think there are some really basic things we can start to do as campus principals and leaders in approaching the work. I think one is just starting with recognition first, I think recognizing and I think we're already there. We recognize that this is a need. And so I think we're there and we understand it and how do we best approach it. And so for me, I think I look at the different practices that I have on my campus. I look at who I am hiring on my campus so that we can start to diversify. And I work with all of my stakeholders, my staff, I think it's important to build the capacity there because the teacher is the most important factor. The teacher is the program, we say that. And so I think it starts with building the capacity and the staff as well as a starting point.Katrina Bailey (09:39):And I think my hiring committee that when we sit down and we build a profile of what our campus needs, we look at our campus demographic data and we look at who's voice needs to be brought to the table and how we need to diversify our staff. And I think it starts at the hiring practices, I think it starts at the professional development because we control that as leaders. We control what professional development is in front of our teachers. We control the hiring practices. So there are some very basic things that we can do. We control the type of resources that we purchase in our school and ensuring that if I'm purchasing literature from my library, that I am vetting that. And then I'm vetting that I have diverse literature that my students can choose from.Katrina Bailey (10:20):So I think that there are some basic things that can happen at the campus level that maybe we can't control the larger context individually, but we can control the local context very easily. And there are some steps that we can take and I think part of that is starting with self too while we're growing self in the process there are some small moves that we can make because we do control a lot of our local context and how we approach the work.Ellen Willoughby (10:45):And so thinking about that, we know that this work is really highly emotional. Like if you're really digging into this and really looking at yourself and where you stand, and then wanting to grow that with your teachers and to help them build their own knowledge base and understanding of how to serve their students in the best way possible. How do you handle pushback or resistance from teachers and staff on the campus?Katrina Bailey (11:18):That is a challenge, this is definitely a challenge. But I think that part of that too is recognizing that in order to approach this work, we have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Culturally responsiveness and helping others recognize the importance in that work, and recognizing that it starts with self because a lot like I said, a lot of the work starts with self makes people feel really uncomfortable. There are certain topics that are just uncomfortable to talk about and race being one of them. Race, ethnicity, anything that is like I said, said to disrupt that narrative it makes people uncomfortable. So I think that we have to recognize that the work is going to be uncomfortable. And I think we speak to that, whenever you start this work, you speak to, "Today, we're going to be focused on XYZ topic." And recognizing and inviting that it is going to be uncomfortable for us to talk about this, but really bridging back to the why.Katrina Bailey (12:14):Why is this important? And when we look at the data, the data is pretty consistent across multiple context. Whether it be school or whether it be home ownership, or whether it be who has leadership and power and who's in different positions that that data is consistent. And so I think it's bridging back to the why and the why of the work. And I think when we start there, one with the why, and recognizing that our approach to this work is going to be uncomfortable and we have to make it a safe space too. When somebody tells me that they're uncomfortable with something or that they don't understand something, I have to as a leader recognize where they are on that continuum and continuing to work with, and even differentiate myself as a leader and my approach to supporting and growing my teachers and my staff in this work. And even community, right?Ellen Willoughby (13:13):Right.Katrina Bailey (13:15):Community is important in that I think it's really easy for us to just say we were going to fix the school piece, but I think the community has to also understand that why piece too because I think that that could also be a barrier to the work.Ellen Willoughby (13:28):Definitely. And I think in our current times where a lot of people in a really great way are really looking at where they stand and how they react to things such as the work of becoming anti-racist. And I think that that can sometimes... obviously, it can be very, very uncomfortable. And I think having the community really be a part of that conversation as well, just continues to help push the equity that we need in our schools and in our cities and our country.Katrina Bailey (14:09):Right. Right. Absolutely. I think creating equitable outcomes is something that I think we all agree on. And I think that when we start there with our why we all want the same thing, where we should. If we all came into to education to have better outcomes for all students. And I think if we could center on that and recognizing that there are ways to do this that are comfortable and some that are very uncomfortable, but I think that it's just recognizing and centering on that we all want what's best for students.Ellen Willoughby (14:42):Great. Thank you for that. So the next question, and this is a question... So I did another interview with another principal, she is a white principal and has worked really hard to build culturally relevant schools. And so I wanted to have that conversation with her as well. And one of the big things she and I worked together, and we found that there was a big gap in how campuses or schools are handling behavior interventions. So what does being culturally responsive mean when it comes to behavior interventions and discipline, and what does that look like? Because we know, the data shows that that black boys especially are suspended at a much higher rate than any other population in the school.Katrina Bailey (15:32):Right. I think it takes advocacy. I am a black principal and I've been doing this for about seven years now and you're absolutely correct. What we see is boys in general, but especially black boys and the approach to it is different. And it's interesting... I was having a conversation with another principal we were looking at some data, and it was specific to discipline data. And we were looking at an equity audit and it was showing the different reasons why students get referrals. And one was for African-American males it was aggressive action, for white males it was horseplay. And so that's something that I felt like was really important to pull out and recognize with my staff. When we are writing referrals for behavior, how do we view when we perceive that behavior.Katrina Bailey (16:29):Because for this group of students we're viewing it as an aggressive action. But for this group of students, which may be the exact same behavior, we are approaching this as, "Well, it was just horseplay." So even how we view students through that lens, and we can say we're colorblind and we don't see race, but our data says that we do. And I can tell you that that's how we approached it on our campus is just pulling up that data and seeing that people see the same things that we see and people do, like our staff they do, they recognize that. And we begin to have a conversation about it because we can't really argue with data. And then we start to vary our approaches to it, is restorative practice better.Katrina Bailey (17:14):Because as a campus principal, there's nothing worse than having a student come to the office... And I can tell you, my approach to students is very different because when they come to me, I'm not upset with them with what they did because they didn't do it in my office or in my classroom, they were in a classroom and they're coming to me to have a conversation about it. So the worst thing I can do is send them back into the classroom where a teacher's not ready to receive them. So one of the things in our approach is using that restorative practice piece and that we have to fix what's broken. If you're going to come to me, we're going to talk through what it is but really who you need to repair this relationship with is the teacher. And the needs to repair relationship with you because it's also recognizing that yes the behavior may have been wrong, but there's always a cause.Katrina Bailey (17:58):And maybe in some cases we didn't recognize really what the cause of that behavior was. But one of the approaches that we've varied in trying to change our discipline data and our approach and how teachers see things is really helping the teacher and the student repair that relationship. So after I have a conversation with the student and some time has passed, I go and I relieve that teacher, so that that teacher and student can fix what was broken. And sometimes that's facilitated by another administrator or counselor to facilitate the conversation between the two, so that that relationship can be repaired and the student can come back into class and feel safe and comfortable. And the teacher can feel that too because that's important. We don't want to send a student back into the classroom and the teacher not be ready to receive them and the message that that sends to the student is, "I'm not wanted here." Which can lead to further behavior.Katrina Bailey (18:53):So that restorative piece, I think is important and our traditional approach to how we handle this area... Issues of discipline are important too. And so it's not keeping a student in the office the rest of the day because the teacher's not ready to receive them, and then sending them back and never have an opportunity to repair that relationship. That's important. And it really also helps the teacher, what I've noticed is that it helps the teacher see the student as a student, who is still learning and adapting and growing. Because they are, they're still developing and growing their social skills and they're still developing and growing in lots of different ways. And the most important place for them to be is in the classroom.Ellen Willoughby (19:35):Right. Most definitely.Katrina Bailey (19:36):And so we have to work towards that approach.Ellen Willoughby (19:40):And I love that it's restorative for both, it's about the teacher learning as much as it is about the student learning. And I just can see how valuable that is. I'm thinking back to my time in the classroom of like, "Wow, how great it would be to have had that opportunity to sit down with a student, and have that conversation outside of the classroom in a safe environment for them." And the learning that comes from both parties for sure.Katrina Bailey (20:13):Correct. Absolutely.Ellen Willoughby (20:15):So I would love to hear from you about what are some of the things that you have done to increase your own knowledge about creating a culturally responsive school?Katrina Bailey (20:25):Oh my gosh. Lots of professional development around it, one of the best workshops that I've had the opportunity to attend and actually it was a summit. Our district did a summit with a professor from the University of Texas, Dr. Terrence Green. And it was really this kind of... It varied my approach to the work because I think that going back to what we talked about earlier is people being uncomfortable with the work. There was one message that he said that resonated with me, especially being a black woman principal and trying to approach the work with my staff who is 80% white females and trying to approach that work. And understanding the importance that it's not just me feeling like it's important and me recognizing that this work is important but all of us. And there was one statement that he gave to us that has resonated with me and it has guided my approach to this work. And it was, "It's not your fault, but it's our responsibility." We didn't create this education debt that some of our students are experiencing.Katrina Bailey (21:37):We didn't create the achievement gap, if that's what we want to call it. We didn't create the disparities that exist within the data, but we are here now and it's our responsibility to fix it. So lots of training in culturally responsiveness and how we approach the work. I love the book, How to Be an Antiracist. I love anything that I can get my hands on that gives me a nugget that I can use with my teachers and my staff, so that it stays fresh and I always have a tool in my toolbox to be able to use when I'm trying to guide them in the work too. And so again, I think that just that one statement has varied my approach to the work, and I think it allows people to safely enter the space of doing the work with me. That I'm not saying that it's your fault, but it's our responsibility together to help close these gaps and the disparities that we see so that we can create equity and outcomes for students.Ellen Willoughby (22:38):And that's just such a powerful statement, you can't argue with that that's for sure. For sure. And I know now we're so lucky to have so many different resources you talked about the book, How to Be an Antiracist. There's just so much information out there now that is really, really helpful for teachers, leaders, everybody on the street to pick up and really be able to do this important work. So thinking about, so we've obviously been in COVID times for 10 months, how has that impacted the culturally responsiveness of the work that you all do on campus or virtually?Katrina Bailey (23:22):Oh, wow. For sure. I think it's even more important. I think our teachers see the importance because now you have a bird's eye view into students' homes that we may not have necessarily had before. And we can see the different tools and resources that students have or don't have in their ability to fully participate in school. And so I think it furthers the conversation along and I think it furthers along our why. We have students whose families can hire a tutor to be at home with their students all day long and learn virtually and participate virtually in school. We have some students who the parents try to balance work and keep their students safe at home. And then we have some students, some parents who have really no options, but they maybe not want to send their students back to school in person, but they really had no choice.Katrina Bailey (24:21):We look at access of this kind of resources, do you have a book at your home to read? So it's easy for us to say, "I want you to read for 20 minutes and I want you to have a response on this." But what if I don't have a book in my home to read and plus I really think that teachers start to see... I think we know it, but I think we really start to see those disparities and how huge those gaps are and just access to resources and equity. And so I think that that equity conversation continues to come up. How do we create a balance so that everybody is able to participate and that they get what they need. And so I think our teachers have started to use their resources differently.Katrina Bailey (25:01):We have a 100 of parent volunteers on our campus who want to help and they want to be partners in this work, so then we start to use parents differently too. I got to get books to the students homes, so then we start to use our parent volunteers differently, "Can you go and deliver these books? Can you be the volunteer for my classroom who delivers books to students classrooms who may not be able to come to the school to get them or receive them." We start to really see our students in different ways. So our district even this is pre-COVID, our district last year started to see... Took a real investment in not just the campus library, but our campus literacy libraries. And that's where we pull books to do small group instruction with students and really wanting to diversify that.Katrina Bailey (25:50):And what was interesting is we had a team that was actually going through our literacy library and trying to get things organized because we had $10,000 worth of books coming in-Ellen Willoughby (26:00):Oh, wow.Katrina Bailey (26:01):... actually, probably even more than that. And really seeing some of the books that we had in there, how maybe inappropriate they may have been for families and for a lot of different reasons. And they felt empowered to come and say, "I don't really think that these books are appropriate for us to have in the literacy library. And we need more of maybe this, or we need to have books that are more representative of our families."Katrina Bailey (26:27):And families live different ways too and so our teachers start to recognize all of those things. And it's beautiful, it's a really beautiful... Part of the work is, it's beautiful when things starts to click and it starts to become more organic. And it's not top-down we have to do this, but it starts to become more organic because your staff starts to see this as a need, and that it's necessary, and that it's important. And it improves our overall bottom line and again, it just goes back to equitable outcomes for students.Ellen Willoughby (27:00):That's awesome. And that investment, you see the value of that investment and the impact that it has on students, which is amazing. We just have one more question and then we'll move into our little seven short answer questions.Katrina Bailey (27:16):Okay.Ellen Willoughby (27:17):So the last question I have is I would love to know what advice would you give to leaders... Actually, I think we kind of talked about this who are just creating culturally responsive schools. Let me think of another question real quick. Or is there any other thing that you feel is important that you share with our listeners today?Katrina Bailey (27:44):If we want to in essence create the kinds of schools that we hope like in our visions, we have these beautiful vision statements. But I think the thing for leaders to recognize is ensuring that when we speak those vision and mission statements, that they include all students. And when we say all that we truly mean all. And that we truly have that responsibility and I think that it takes courage right now to be a leader in schools.Ellen Willoughby (28:12):Most definitely.Katrina Bailey (28:15):For a lot of different reasons. And especially to lead in the context and where we are pre COVID, during COVID, and after COVID, it's going to take courage to continue the work. And so it's my advice to leaders is to stay the course, to have courage because were all in this together and our students need it.Ellen Willoughby (28:34):That's beautiful. As we do with each podcast episode, I'm going to end with our seven short answer questions with an educational twist. So as an educator, what keeps you up at night?Katrina Bailey (28:48):I think over... Excuse me, I'm going to-Ellen Willoughby (28:53):No, that's okay.Katrina Bailey (28:54):... repeat that question. What keeps me up at night is whether or not I've made the best decision for students.Ellen Willoughby (29:01):As an educator, what allows you to sleep soundly?Katrina Bailey (29:08):Knowing that I am putting forth my best every single day.Ellen Willoughby (29:12):What sound or noise do you love to hear in a school.Katrina Bailey (29:16):Student laughter.Ellen Willoughby (29:17):What sound or noise do you hate to hear in a school?Katrina Bailey (29:21):Violence.Ellen Willoughby (29:22):What is your favorite word in education?Katrina Bailey (29:25):Equity.Ellen Willoughby (29:27):What is your least favorite word in education?Katrina Bailey (29:30):Achievement gap.Ellen Willoughby (29:32):Who was your favorite teacher and why?Katrina Bailey (29:35):Oh my gosh. I think I would have to say my favorite teacher in school with Ms. Hall. She was my fourth grade teacher at Grove Valley Elementary in Austin ISD. And she was my favorite teacher because she one day asked me to get up and read my writing in class. And I was a great student in school, I'll say, but it was in that moment that I truly felt like somebody saw me and they were recognizing my brilliance and what I brought into their learning environment, that they saw enough to have me share my thoughts and the work that I wrote on my paper with my peers. And to me that is important, that somebody recognizes and sees all of the students in their classroom.Ellen Willoughby (30:26):Thank you so much for sharing that. And Katrina I want to thank you so much for just sharing your wealth of knowledge, and really being an inspirational leader for our podcast listeners.Katrina Bailey (30:38):Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate being here today.Ellen Willoughby (30:42):Awesome. If you like what you hear in this episode, hop on over to whatever platform you use and give us a rating and review. And of course, don't forget to mention us to your colleagues. Thanks.

Ep.1 COVID Learning Loss (Show transcript)Ellen Willoughby (00:02):Hi, everyone. Welcome to Drinking From The Fire Hose, a podcast for school leaders. I'm your host, Ellen Willoughby. Being a campus leader can feel like you're drinking from a fire hose with all the information requests, tasks, and duties that are thrown your way on a daily basis. So how do you manage to do it all and help students grow? Well, that's what this podcast is all about.Ellen Willoughby (00:23):Today I'm speaking with Dr. Wendy Kerr. Wendy is an administrative specialist here at Region 13, and she has over 25 years of experience in education. She also happens to be my teammate. So on this episode of Drinking From The Fire Hose, we will be discussing the topic of COVID learning loss and a need for there to be a call to action in developing a recovery plan for districts and schools. Welcome to the podcast, Wendy.Wendy Kerr (00:47):Thank you. I'm excited to be here today.Ellen Willoughby (00:50):I am super excited to have you, so let's go ahead and jump right in. Can you tell me a little bit about the Department of Education webinar you participated in? I think it was in mid-January. What are your thoughts on the information that was shared?Wendy Kerr (01:04):Yeah, so I did attend the webinar, first and foremost as a mom, I kind of had my mom hat, teacher hat on, and then of course, site leader experience and then joining our team here. So I just went in with an open mind. Obviously the topic was riveting and interesting to me, a lot of curiosity.Wendy Kerr (01:24):And then after the webinar was over with, long story short, I was just genuinely emotionally moved regarding the data and the information that was shared at the webinar. So I brought that forward to our boss and had a conversation with her about how we might get that information of the webinar into other folks hands.Ellen Willoughby (01:48):Great. So in your professional opinion, what were some of the hallmark pieces of data, or some of the most alarming pieces that resonated with you that you heard during the webinar?Wendy Kerr (02:00):Yeah, it's no surprise. I mean, I don't want to sound patronizing or condescending to the folks we work with in our industry because we know due to the pandemic there's going to be loss. Right? That's kind of the obvious.Wendy Kerr (02:17):But when you have other research, folks and experts in the field do the research on what that really means and what it really looks like, and they start to break it down into perhaps like you think of overarching, big picture ideas of learning loss. But also the social-emotional components of all of this too, the impact and ramifications that it's had. So I would say the fact that learning loss, what really blew me away was the amount, the significance of it.Wendy Kerr (02:49):So again, being a former teacher, principal and the work that I've done in the past, I always came to my position, whatever that might be, knowing that there were going to be students that were struggling, that had a gap. Right? Also we're not a stranger to the traditional summer slide. That would be another gap or learning loss opportunity.Wendy Kerr (03:10):But this is so much more than that. And so that's what they described, that's what they shared. And in fact, the word used in that webinar was alarming with regard to the amount of loss that has happened, how that equivalates to the years, if you will. So again, when we're talking about traditional gaps, perhaps, unfortunately we've had students that perhaps have had a gap over time. Maybe we were looking at a year behind if you will. Right? But now that same student, it would be more like three years behind as a result of the COVID implications.Wendy Kerr (03:48):Again, this is big picture that I'm talking about now, of course, all the research, we'd have to look at the data points. But the amount that has happened, the equivalency, they did some really interesting remarks about a student, goes to school, for example, 185 days a year, right? That's very traditional across the country. It's not just a Texas thing or another state. That's all kids.Wendy Kerr (04:11):So an example they gave was a student goes to school 185 days, but because of the COVID learning loss, it was as if they missed 116 days of reading instruction, and they missed 215 days of math instruction. Again, that was across the board.Wendy Kerr (04:30):So there's multiple ways to look at the data points as far as learning loss goes. And that's what's going to be important for, obviously, our school districts, and our school site leaders, and our teachers to take a look at what that looks like, obviously in their district, in their county, in their state, and then drilling down to the granular pieces.Wendy Kerr (04:50):The social-emotional aspect of it, too, is very alarming. An example of that reported by students, actually coming from from students was the number two social-emotional issue for them right now is significant depression, feeling as if they don't have a future. You know, kind of that stress and depression and things of that nature has just skyrocketed. So as much as we have to, of course, look at the academic side of the house, and we will. We know we will. But it's going to be just as important that we look at that social-emotional part of it as well.Ellen Willoughby (05:25):Absolutely. And I know that I've seen different news programs and things also talking about we've had a huge increase like CPS cases during COVID time. And we also know that for a lot of our students school is such a safe and important part of them getting three square meals, or two solid meals during the day. So it doesn't surprise me, but it also does surprise me as well at the same time.Wendy Kerr (05:59):Absolutely.Ellen Willoughby (06:00):And so you, shared some really, I think alarming is the right word, some really alarming data, especially around the learning loss. You actually lose way more days of learning loss than you would even have if you were in school for that number of days. So for instance, you shared it was something around the 200 and something mark for math, and kids only go to school for 185 days. So how does that work?Wendy Kerr (06:30):Yeah, so the interesting part of that, and me as well being a learner with all of this, was really taking a step back. What resonated about that data point that Dr. Mackie Raymond shared from the Credo organization during the webinar. So I want to be perfectly clear that everything I'm sharing with you is not my data.Ellen Willoughby (06:50):No, absolutely. You're just filling us in on this.Wendy Kerr (06:53):Yeah, exactly. And some of it is me synthesizing it, or kind of those broad strokes. But with regard to that, it's almost as if you're not going to school. So therefore this impacts the average and the above average student.Ellen Willoughby (07:09):Before we get back to the show, we wanted to ask for your help in reaching campus and district leaders. If you like what you hear in this episode, hop on over to whatever platform you use and give us a rating and review. It really helps people find our podcast and lets us know what we're doing right, and also what we can improve upon. And of course, don't forget to mention this to your colleagues. Thanks. Now let's get back to the show.Wendy Kerr (07:31):So another thing they pointed out, and again, not to be super, super clear, we know that there's an amount of students that have learning loss or gaps. Right? But what about the kiddos that have been on grade level? They've never been technically struggling before, let alone our achieving students. Right? And so they're impacted too.Wendy Kerr (07:55):Everyone is having learning loss. So that was what her point was about that. When we equivalate it to the amount of days a student goes to school, because of virtual learning and because of multiple variables that are impacting that setting, if you will, the opportunity to learn. And again I want to be really clear that it isn't the fact that teachers aren't trying and doing their best. Right?Ellen Willoughby (08:18):Absolutely. I mean, it was such a huge shift right into something that is completely foreign to everyone.Wendy Kerr (08:24):Right. So with that students, even our best, could see up to 50% of learning loss. So students who are going to school every day online, or have had disrupted learning because of what's happened, regardless of where they were at with regard to grade production and achieving their grade, they were all impacted negatively almost as if they weren't going to school X amount of days.Ellen Willoughby (08:56):Wow.Wendy Kerr (08:57):So, yeah. Like I said, that's right away where my hat shifted to the mom hat, thinking about my own son who is in college. And yeah, I can see it just in my own backyard. You know what I mean? That even though he's, quote unquote, showing up and logging on and logging in, there were a lot of barriers. And again it wasn't, quote unquote, anyone's fault.Wendy Kerr (09:23):The other part of that, that I think is very important to point out as we all move forward, what I've just described right now, based on the data are the students that are accounted for. That are in the database, if you will. Right?Ellen Willoughby (09:39):Yeah. Because there are a lot of students that schools have not been able to contact, or to know where they are, or where they're getting their education.Wendy Kerr (09:48):So we're all going to hear about the missing students. That's kind of the phrase that's coined, the missing student data. We literally, we as a community in whatever state we're in, we have not been able to track that student because they never logged in. They never logged on. So there's still a lot to be uncovered and reviewed and examined just as a result of that.Ellen Willoughby (10:13):Wow. Did they mention at all, like what percentage they think that the state has of students that would be coded as missing students?Wendy Kerr (10:22):Every state's different based on their student tracking system. I've heard some information about Texas, so I wouldn't want to misquote that. But again, state by state it's, I would say, alarming about how many hundreds of thousands of children a particular state just doesn't know where they are. So that's just a whole other variable we're going to have to get on top of, and circle that back into our data pool, and then start working on that and what that's going to look like.Ellen Willoughby (10:58):And that's just so huge for our leaders because not only have they had to just shift in general, just to try to continue school when COVID hit, we also didn't expect us to be 20 months into it at this point with really not a true end in sight at this point. So it's that kind of continuation of what are you doing right now, and then planning for knowing that you have this huge gap for all students. That you usually have a focus group of students that you're focusing in on for those summer slide and those kinds of things. But to see that the impact is across the board. Nobody is safe from it in a sense.Ellen Willoughby (11:49):So thinking about this from the lens of a district or campus leader, what information do you think is important for them to know or to be thinking about right now?Wendy Kerr (12:05):Well, one of the things that I thought about after the webinar, quite frankly, and my heart went to all of my peers that I know from many different facets of the different roles I've had. I thought about them, and just that, my gosh, this is like where do you go from here? You know?Wendy Kerr (12:30):I mean, you and I both, we've been in this business for a long time and I can't say enough about education, educational leaders, and how hardworking everybody is. Right? And we're just kind of cut of that cloth of we're going to get it done. We're going to figure it out whatever it takes. We roll up our sleeves. But at what point do you get to, like you said, after 20 months and kind of like, what's going to happen in the future. At what point do you get where you're like, I kind of am frozen a little bit, or I just don't know where to go first. You know, those kinds of things. I mean, that's just realistic,Ellen Willoughby (13:05):That's reality. Perfectly normal.Wendy Kerr (13:08):And they've been in like a triage. We're just trying to figure it out, building the plane as it flies as they might say. And to get to a point to where you can be more proactive than reactive.Ellen Willoughby (13:24):Right. Right.Wendy Kerr (13:26):So that's what my hope is that we can take the information and deal with it at fact level. And yeah, we all need to have permission to have our emotional reaction to it. Right? But then say, okay, what is next? What truly is next? And how am I going to make a plan, whether that be as a school site leader at my school, because perhaps I'm in a district that just isn't equipped for whatever reason. But that doesn't mean I'm going to wait around to figure out what the bigger picture is going to look like. I mean, I'm at least going to start thinking about it with my own school. My leadership team, my assistant principal, my counselors, and start to kind of hack at it.Wendy Kerr (14:08):Now as a district leader or someone at a central office, similarly, right? What does this mean for our district? Whether we're a huge district, a big machine, or we're a rural district, or a charter school, or private school. Again, looking at your context of who you're leading and who your students are, what the variables are, and then coming up with a plan.Wendy Kerr (14:31):The other exciting part of it, though, and I think that's what's really important. So once you move through shock and awe with the data, have your emotional response, and then say, "All right, we've got to come up with a plan." I would just encourage everybody, because I'm having to do this myself. I would encourage everybody also to say, "You know, we've been talking about it for a while, for at least the last decade if not two, about really seeing what we can do to change this up."Ellen Willoughby (15:02):You mean education as a whole?Wendy Kerr (15:03):Yeah. Like what does re-inventing like really look like? And we've seen, again, different schools and districts afforded those opportunities, or really embraced that, innovation and change and such. But all across the country, if we're really all starting kind of from the same place, we're all in the same boat because we're in the same storm. But we're all in our own little unique boat, because those are all so different.Wendy Kerr (15:32):So we've all weathered the same storm. So how can we come out on the other side of the storm with innovation and really changing things the way we think they should, and what's best for students. So I think we can embrace this and flip it on its head with regard to moving forward. But we're going to need to think differently and plan differently, and as always, have all stakeholders at the table to talk about what that could look like.Ellen Willoughby (15:59):Absolutely. And I love how you phrased that. We're all in the same storm, but we have different boats and different tools in our boat to navigate it. Yet, people have navigated it. And I think as hard as it has been for leaders. I talk to friends of mine who were principals, and check in on them and see how they're doing.Ellen Willoughby (16:28):I love how you talked about there is an opportunity in this because they have proven to themselves that, "Hey, we can do school differently." So why don't we continue to kind of crack that egg and see what other possibilities are there? So, yeah, I think that that's really exciting and really can lead to some amazing opportunities for schools, and of course, always for kids.Wendy Kerr (16:59):Yes. And families. And the way our families come around us as a school site or a district, those that we interact with. Again, through this webinar and other pieces of research, there's that component of, again, the broader community and our family community and how this has impacted them. So I think bolstering those relationships, and ensuring that they're with us as we move forward and make these changes is going to be really important.Ellen Willoughby (17:29):Yeah. And I think, too, what it also showed was a lot of schools obviously know the importance of family. But this could not happen without that communication and without that partnership with families, especially for campuses that are not having students back on campus at all, or very small numbers. So ensuring that that partnership is there. So, yeah. Thank you for uncovering that. That was great.Ellen Willoughby (18:00):So what I would love to hear about are what are your thoughts about how more than ever educators are so important to the call of action and that districts having a COVID recovery plan?Wendy Kerr (18:17):Yeah. So that's a great question because, again, we can talk about having a plan but it's only as good as the paper it's written on, or the fact that we actually go through with it.Ellen Willoughby (18:29):Exactly.Wendy Kerr (18:30):So we can talk all we want about having a plan, but most recently, as well as the Department of Ed webinar, I also went to the Texas Commissioner of Education's webinar. And so although Department of Ed spoke of this, he reiterated it. So that's what I'm enjoying with all of this research that I'm doing for this particular project for our service center is the fact that the same themes keep popping up over and over again.Wendy Kerr (18:59):And so one of the things that he pointed out was, like I said, very similar data points that the department did, but he really emphasized the fact that we need to have a plan. And like I said, that could be one of those like, well, yeah, of course we do. Right? Duh, that's pretty evident.Ellen Willoughby (19:16):I've got this great Google sheet with all of my plans.Wendy Kerr (19:19):Yeah, exactly. But yeah, what goes into that plan, like specifically to come out of a crisis? And with a sense of urgency. Not emergency, but urgency. And then how that's going to impact all stakeholders.Wendy Kerr (19:33):So one of the things he brought forward was the fact that there were two studies that he reviewed. One was on after Hurricane Katrina and the fact that that area, if you will, and the superintendents, they had a recovery plan from Hurricane Katrina. So they created a four year plan, so on and so forth, to address the different variables, but specifically the learning loss.Wendy Kerr (19:58):Then he referenced, and I apologize for not knowing the exact name of the study, but he referenced a similar study that was done in Argentina after a catastrophe, like a weather catastrophe as well. And they did not have a plan for learning recovery, learning loss recovery. Katrina, the students that were impacted by that, they were able to close learning gaps, if you will, and make gains swifter, faster, and that was permanent, within five years of the hurricane. With the plan being super-specific, measurable, systematic. Everything we know that's good about MTSS and systemness.Wendy Kerr (20:44):Then the school district that was over in Argentina did not have a plan. It was just, unfortunately after this catastrophe, reopen schools and build things and everybody go back. But just go for it. I mean, no real plan. And they never recovered. The students never recovered. In short, they never achieved again. They always had, or kept that gap, whether it was a six month gap or three. Whatever it was, the kiddos kept it.Wendy Kerr (21:12):And interestingly, they did a post study of this group of students 20 years later, and they never received the financial income earnings that they could have as a result of that gap for so long. So now we're talking about GDP, and we're talking, which we know, economics. The economics of not having a plan post-COVID, and a serious one and a really descriptive one. It's not only just, quote unquote. The make or break of a student's academic career, or graduation of high school, and all those things long-term. But genuinely will have a negative impact on their earnings as an adult.Ellen Willoughby (21:56):And again, that makes sense because once you have a gap, the gap only continues to get larger as you continue to go up grade levels if there's not a plan of remediation to ensure that those skills, those gaps are filled,Wendy Kerr (22:12):You bring up another good point. I did want to point out, I know it's like with all of this that I've been sharing in the loss. But there's been some growth in language in comparison to language arts and math. Okay? So if you look at the two subjects there's been steady, slow, steady growth in language arts compared to math, because they said... Again, this is in the worst case scenario our kiddos have been in, right? Little to no education or access to it. The student loss, like I said, their data missing. They're not showing up. Then all online, so on and so forth.Wendy Kerr (22:55):Well, because our natural world has us reading kind of on a daily basis. It's just more organic, authentic, that students are writing, and that they're reading things. They might even be reading the cereal box. It's just that's kind of part of our normal day-to-day. So they said in one of the presentations that because students kind of have access to that, and maybe even some books at home, it wasn't as negatively impacted.Wendy Kerr (23:24):But the math, the math is the one where, and that makes sense, the cumulative. And we know we already, as a country, had a deficit in math. So that's the area that's just kind of got to be prioritized.Ellen Willoughby (23:39):Yes. So Wendy, I just want to thank you for providing us with all of this really important information that's important for leaders to know about, because it's going to be about them creating that plan.Ellen Willoughby (23:52):We just want to thank you for joining us for our Drinking From The Fire Hose podcast, a podcast for school leaders. If you liked what you heard, please don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review us. I'm your host, Ellen Willoughby, and I will see you next week.

Ep. 00 Meet Ellen Willoughby (Show Transcription)Ellen Willoughby (00:01):Hi, I'm Ellen Willoughby And I'm your host of Drinking From the Fire Hose. I wanted to share a little bit about myself. I started teaching second grade in San Antonio, at the same time while I was working on my master's degree in elementary education. I then decided to move back to Austin and I taught third grade. After teaching third grade, I actually had an opportunity to move into a role of an instructional coach out in Manor ISD at a turnaround campus. As a team, we were able to turn that school around from a three years low performing school, to a recognized school in one year. During that time, I received my principal certification here at Region 13 and am really thankful for that opportunity. I am currently a project coordinator for educator evaluation and leadership, and get to do a lot of amazing things such as help and support campus leaders in the work that they do.Ellen Willoughby (00:51):So after the pandemic hit, we were all brainstorming about ways that we could support our campus and district leaders. We started something called a Campus Leader Meetup, which was a Friday Zoom call where leaders could get on and talk about the challenges that they were having on the campus. So while we were having that meeting, trying to determine how to best serve leaders, someone came up with the idea of why don't we start a podcast? So welcome to Drinking From the Fire Hose, a podcast for school leaders.Ellen Willoughby (01:17):Being a campus leader can feel like you're drinking from a fire hose with all the information requests, tasks, and duties that are thrown your way on a daily basis. So how do you manage to do it all and help students grow? Well, that's what this podcast is all about. We'll be talking about everything from self-care to staff retention, to creating culturally responsive schools. We know you're busy, so each episode will be around 30 minutes. I'm your host, Ellen Willoughby, an educator and former principal who now spends my time supporting campus and district leaders at Education Service Center Region 13. Welcome to the show.