00;00;06;06 - 00;00;25;26 Unknown Welcome back to Expert Instruction, the Teach by Design podcast, where we dive deeper into the research surrounding student behavior by talking with the people implementing these practices where they work and with the students they support. I'm Megan Keefe. Hello. Hello. I'm so stoked for this episode. You want to know why nobody asked, but I'm going to tell you why. 00;00;26;00 - 00;00;53;13 Unknown It's two reasons. The first one is we have a co-host, people. There's another person in this room. I'm not by myself. I want to introduce you guys to my colleague and my friend, Nadia Sampson. I've been thinking about adding a co-host to this podcast for a long time, actually, and mostly because I think it would be fun. It gets a little lonely in here sometimes, but also because everybody has their own background and experiences in this educational realm. 00;00;53;28 - 00;01;14;14 Unknown I wanted to add someone to these conversations who is a veteran in this field, someone who has watched how PBIS as a framework has evolved over time and someone who has a real sense of humor about themselves. Because we got to laugh sometimes, right? That is all of those things and so much more. And I'm really excited for all of you to get to know her better. 00;01;14;22 - 00;01;35;21 Unknown I'm thrilled that she agreed to be a part of this thing in the first place. Group. Thank you again. What an introduction. Yes. Thanks for being. I'm excited to be here. Yes. This is quite an opportunity. I think I've really enjoyed the podcasts and now I get to be a part of them. So here we go. Just a quick note about who I am, what I've been doing. 00;01;35;21 - 00;01;59;28 Unknown I've been working at the University of Oregon for about 25 years. I've worked in educational and community supports or PBS applications for about 20 of those years, I've had the opportunity to work on Tier three grants, Tier two grants. I do training right now I'm working half time on a grant for check in, check out, and I'm also working back with PBS APS on training. 00;01;59;28 - 00;02;23;24 Unknown So I've been around the globe. Yeah. Have you been in schools? You've done sets, you've done it all. So I'm I'm glad that you're here. And apart of these things on the rig, as am I. Another really big deal about this episode is the topic itself. We have been listening to the conversations around us, both on social media and in person, among our friends and our colleagues and guys. 00;02;23;24 - 00;02;55;17 Unknown There's something that's happening in schools and classrooms right now and it all just boils down to how everything feels more escalated now than it did in the past. Teachers are burning out quickly. They're leaving the profession and they're starting to name student behavior and the lack of disciplinary response to it as a primary reason for their departure. So instead of leaving all of that to just spiral and spin out on Twitter, we wanted to give intentional space here to discuss real solutions to the issue. 00;02;55;28 - 00;03;20;00 Unknown Today, we're going to kick things off with the first of our two part series, Two parts. You get two episodes. Guys, this is the first exploring the topic of de-escalation. So joining us today are Dr. Kathleen Strickland, Cohen and Alex Newson. Kathleen is a colleague and a dear friend. And up until recently, her office was not so far away from ours. 00;03;20;11 - 00;03;45;27 Unknown She recently left the University of Oregon and is now an assistant professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Utah. She's also a doctoral level board certified behavior analyst. Kathleen has an extensive background in special education and PBS application in schools, and she's a researcher, a teacher, a trainer, and truly a stellar human being. Alex who we're just getting to know. 00;03;46;10 - 00;04;12;23 Unknown Alex Newson is a doctoral student in special education here at the University of Oregon. She is a recipient recipient of Project Co-lead, which is a leadership grant focusing on autism, evidence based practices, diversity and collaboration across universities. Prior to all of this, Alex taught in both private and public school settings throughout the Pacific Northwest as a certified special educator and educational assistant. 00;04;13;01 - 00;04;40;01 Unknown She brings so much wisdom and experience to this whole conversation, so we're really glad to have her here. Yeah, we were so lucky to have a great conversation with the two of them yesterday and Alex, along with Kathleen and their colleagues Katherine Meier, Robert Putnam, Laura Kern, Brian Meier and Amy Fleming have all just published a practice brief for the Center on PBIS called Strategies for De-escalating Student Behavior in the Classroom. 00;04;40;02 - 00;04;57;28 Unknown You don't have to write that down. It's written down for you and linked in the description. So check it out. We have been waiting for this brief to be here, and now it's actually out. We can start talking about it in real life. I know that you guys have questions about how to deescalate those behaviors happening in your rooms, and so do we, honestly. 00;04;58;06 - 00;05;23;07 Unknown So we're going to take our time with this conversation. In the first episode, we're starting off by talking about those Tier one school wide, classroom wide, all kid prevention strategies, the things that you can do upfront to keep those behaviors from escalating in the first place. We're covering all the basics. What is de-escalation? How do your existing systems and practices support your efforts to create and maintain calm? 00;05;23;16 - 00;05;45;12 Unknown How can we expand those existing systems to meet the emerging needs right now? And finally, by the end of our chat, you'll hear from Kathleen and Alex what they think are the top 3 to 5 things you can do to make this year feel more successful in your classroom than last year. Well, Alex and Kathleen, we're so happy to have you guys here with us today. 00;05;46;03 - 00;06;06;18 Unknown Thank you so much for having us and inviting us to do this. Yeah, it's honestly like this conversation. It feels like it couldn't come at a better time the year, the beginning of the school year. It feels like there's still some systems and practices that we can build up and improve upon and still get them in place to have an effect for the rest of the year. 00;06;07;01 - 00;06;36;02 Unknown And just based on some of the conversations we've heard, we're at a really good point to start talking about, I don't know, escalated behaviors in classrooms and maybe implementing some different strategies and really learning about de-escalation as a schoolwide practice or a classroom wide practice. So maybe we can just start there. So we're talking about de-escalation today. So how how would you define it within your work? 00;06;37;19 - 00;07;04;12 Unknown So I think that the term de-escalation is pretty much what it sounds like. So is the process of preventing challenging situations from getting worse. Yeah, I think that when we think about escalation, which is more of that escalated behavior, is what we're talking about when we're talking about escalation or behavioral escalation. That is the what I think of as being the external piece of things like the externalizing sort of challenges that students are having. 00;07;04;12 - 00;07;29;13 Unknown Oftentimes what we're seeing directly, we think of as being escalated behavior. But I think it's also really important to talk about what we mean by regulation or dysregulation of that is that's what I feel is more of that internal piece, if you will. So the thing that we're not necessarily seeing, but that is leading to the escalated behavior is this state of a sort of dysregulation. 00;07;30;06 - 00;08;17;08 Unknown So some people think of it as being that by fight or freeze, okay. Kind of, you know, kind of response internally. So it's an it's it's a reaction to something that's going on in the environment that is perhaps even trigger triggering something that is a perception that we can't see that can cause students to become disregulated, essentially. So with that fight or flight kind of response that can look like things like being excessively emotional or aggressive or engaging in unsafe behavior with things like elopement or leaving the classroom or unfortunately, sometimes even running away from a playground on toward a highway, you know, that we think of as being behavioral escalation. 00;08;17;08 - 00;08;57;09 Unknown And that way, it's also important to realize, though, that for some students, this can also look like the freeze response, which can just be completely shutting down if. I think it's also important to understand that when students are disregulated that they are oftentimes having a hard time taking in information. So, you know, thinking about some of our ways that we address this kind of behavior, which is seeing adults actually becoming more, in fact, disregulated themselves, you know, engaging in behaviors such as, you know, becoming what I say, bigger, louder, meaner. 00;08;57;18 - 00;09;23;07 Unknown You know. So I'm going to raise my voice and use a lot of words to explain to you why this isn't okay is oftentimes, at best, it's sort of a moot point because the student isn't really hearing you. At worst, it's only making the situation worse. It is actually further escalating the challenge. So so would you like to add anything to that? 00;09;24;07 - 00;09;45;07 Unknown I would just say tapping. I really appreciate that in the paper that we have and in our conversations, we talk not only about de-escalation and regulation of students, but the conversation does not often go to the adults in the space. And we need to remember in PBIS, in systems, the adults that set the example, the adults that are are the places where we do intervention. 00;09;45;07 - 00;10;02;10 Unknown It's not the students. And so we need to have that conversation around how do we de-escalate adults, because adults are humans too, and they have things that make them upset during the day. And there's things that are happening throughout the school year that can escalate them, whether that be student behavior or the fact they didn't have coffee that morning. 00;10;02;18 - 00;10;35;02 Unknown There's lots of different things that happen. And so we need to bring the conversation not only focusing on what is happening within the student and the big emotions that they're feeling, but what is the reaction of staff, What is there, how are we looking at the adult behavior as well? Because it's a relationship that happens and either can be a positive, fulfilling relationship or we have student teacher relationships that are sustainable and healthy, or it can be that coercive cycle where we're like you were saying, Cathy, we're trying to one up each other of constantly being more upset, or I can be louder than you and I'm smarter than you. 00;10;35;25 - 00;10;58;00 Unknown And we know that those power struggles do not turn out well. So I'm really appreciative that we we brought that into this space and that you spoke about that. Yeah, you might hear this on another podcast because we're having other folks back and we talk about this, but you might hear them say that a disregulated adult cannot help regulate a child. 00;10;58;19 - 00;11;32;29 Unknown So that's a really. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. So when we're talking about de-escalation, we're talking about the process of bringing a dysregulated person back to a regulated state. Yes. Great. That's. That's how I see it. Yeah. Yeah, that's. I think it's important to define for us as we move forward through our conversation. Do you know, like, when, in your experience, what kind of training do teachers have or experience do they have around the process of de-escalating behaviors? 00;11;34;04 - 00;11;57;09 Unknown Is it is it is it professional development that they get or is it more of like a learn as you go learn it on the job kind of kind of process? In my experience, it's a little bit of both. But when we see de-escalation, it's usually not explicitly taught like academic preparation programs. We see it naturally embedded here and there in classroom management or relationship building. 00;11;57;19 - 00;12;18;16 Unknown But it's not something that is explicitly taught to teachers of how to de-escalate students and especially how they escalate themselves. And as we look at more professional development around trauma and from training that is provided to teachers, there is again glimpses of that. But it's not explicitly defined. And so in my experience, it's all learn as you go process. 00;12;18;25 - 00;12;38;22 Unknown I had to learn it by being a teacher in a classroom and having mentors like Dan Courtney and the school that I was at explicitly teach me how to do it and and how to do it with my staff, because that was the one thing of I could maybe do it with a child. But how do we de-escalate the special education staff afterward as well to make sure everyone is feeling healthy and whole at the end? 00;12;39;29 - 00;13;00;20 Unknown And I think a part of it that we often forget again is that adult peace that the adults have to be calm and need to come back to baseline to be able to teach effectively. And when I think about professional development as well, it's often not with the voices of educators, currently educators in the past, but right now we're going through a pandemic. 00;13;00;20 - 00;13;30;07 Unknown Now, these teachers are are struggling because like I was, I was an emergency certified teacher. I had no idea what was going on. I just knew the basics. But I didn't have the de-escalation strategies. So I think that that's part of it. As we have a new crop of teachers coming in that have less experience, less training, and they're they don't have the opportune DS that some of these teacher preparation or professional development have to to be successful with de-escalation. 00;13;30;22 - 00;14;03;14 Unknown Mm hmm. I think that that really leads into the next question that we wanted to ask, which was it seems that right now, more than a few years ago, there's a lot more conversation about students and escalated behavior, but that students and staff are really struggling with this more than they have in the past, or at least we're talking about it more if we read the room, there's a sense that things are just different now. 00;14;03;22 - 00;14;40;10 Unknown Do you get that sense? What have you seen in classrooms that you've visited over the last couple of years? Do you think students are experiencing more dysregulation and behavioral escalation or or not? My answer, I'll jump in on that one. My answer to that question is yes and no. So the disruption because of COVID, I think the disruption in what we thought of as quote unquote, normal life can be thought of as collective trauma. 00;14;40;25 - 00;15;04;21 Unknown So and I actually I got that term from Alex, who's not here with us. But but that that term it really spoke to me when you said that term collective trauma, Alex, because I think that that's what we're experiencing. So we know that many students and staff across the whole country were away from the structure and predictability of in-person school for many months. 00;15;05;12 - 00;15;31;16 Unknown Some like over a year. And so many staff were trying to be full time parents while also working a full time job and educating their students while trying to also be, you know, part time educator for their own children at home. Many of our students, in addition to sort of losing that structure that they were used to for many of our students, home is not necessarily a safe or a nurturing environment. 00;15;33;02 - 00;15;55;15 Unknown So I think that it kind of goes without saying that with students coming back to school or have they come back to school? Yes, we've we've definitely seen more behavioral escalation. I think it only makes sense if you think about the context that that would be the case. But I think it's also it's also really important to understand that it's not just about student behavior. 00;15;55;15 - 00;16;22;15 Unknown It's also what I was just saying about staff experiences and behavior and the fact that honestly, what I've seen and even had some of the educators that I work with tell me is that there's just this sort of lower threshold of tolerance for any kind of stress inducing event. Yeah, we're all pretty maxed out. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So adults themselves aren't necessarily feeling very regulated at this point. 00;16;22;15 - 00;16;47;17 Unknown Right. And so trying to address students who are also coming in with additional sort of issues that they may have not had prior to the pandemic is is a real challenge if you don't mind, I want to really quickly circle back to the question right before this one. Yeah, sure. I just wanted to jump in there and say to along with what Alex was saying, I really appreciate Alex, what you were talking about in terms of training. 00;16;47;17 - 00;17;14;07 Unknown As a special educator, I just want to make the point that less than a third of teacher prep programs for general educators even have instruction related to classroom management. So say that again. Yeah, I'll say it again for the full back and the third of our teacher prep programs where general educators have courses that are focused on classroom management, incredible. 00;17;14;07 - 00;17;42;12 Unknown So we're we're talking about something that you talk about working or getting training on the job. You know, in a lot of our general educators come to schools completely unprepared for for these types of challenges. And so their response to these things aren't necessarily what we think of as being evidence based practices for supporting students who are experiencing disregulation. 00;17;42;24 - 00;18;15;17 Unknown Mm hmm. Well, and I do think, too, that there's this I don't know. Lately I've been reading a whole lot about building schoolwide community and and so there's this. I don't know, I think something that you were saying, Alex, that sounded good, which was that you heard that you received some real mentorship from someone within your building, and maybe this was a more veteran educator, or maybe it was just a peer that's, you know, someone who had been there for a year or two longer than you. 00;18;16;12 - 00;18;52;16 Unknown But I do think that there's value in listening to the experiences of other teachers, and especially if you're new. And I think in any any profession that you have, you show up and you're just like thrown into it hoping for the best. And and I think if you can really find those mentors within your building, they can they can do a good job of shepherding you through the process in what it what it is like for them to to manage their classrooms, especially if if you can find a classroom that you're like, that's what I want in my room. 00;18;52;16 - 00;19;32;24 Unknown How do you do that? And asking those questions? But to your point, too, Kathleen, there's really those evidence based practices. I think that that really work. They're proven to work. And and there's a whole body of research that that can support that. And it's important for for everyone to have access to that level of training. Also, I think it's interesting, too, that we can I think we can easily point back to now, well, there was COVID, there's this gap that has happened in terms of instruction for students or they're coming to the table, they're coming to school with with with a gap in terms of how to do school, how to do life. 00;19;33;06 - 00;20;03;15 Unknown And yet we can I think a lot of educators, educators point to that. They know that's there. We have something to say. We know why that there's probably more students struggling with this. And yet you but both of you, I think, said at some point our tolerance educators tolerance for that because they too have experienced the collective trauma, are still struggling with that even having a sense of why things might look different. 00;20;03;17 - 00;20;32;03 Unknown It's still really challenging to actually be able to address it in a way that is sensitive to the whole idea of what's happening for students internally and for ourselves as educators. So yeah, and I think some of the staff that we because Alex and I spent some time out in local districts last year, and one of the things that we were hearing even from the staff, was that sort of recognition because there would be this discussion of how everything's workforce workers. 00;20;32;03 - 00;20;54;17 Unknown Yes. And then almost invariably there would be like this voice of reason raised in the room that said, you know, but most of these things that we're talking about were happening before the pandemic. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and then, you know, like it's kind of this realization that they're having that, Oh, you're right. Like we we have many of these, if not all of these challenges. 00;20;54;23 - 00;21;18;26 Unknown Again, some of them may be a little bit escalated at this point, but also that recognition that they have just less in their bucket to give because of everything that they also have an excuse. And I would also say that COVID has exposed a lot of disparities that have been happening in schools so that some of these things have been happening. 00;21;18;27 - 00;21;53;10 Unknown It's just it hasn't been widely known. And so teachers I mean, in my when I was teaching, we had behaviors every single day, but it wasn't well known because we were, you know, students were is included as often. And so as we include more students in these spaces and as we learn more about that community and talk with one another and and work with one another, rather than being in these individual silos, we recognize that some of these things have been happening to certain parts of our school, and to make our whole school community better, we need to recognize and acknowledge that. 00;21;53;10 - 00;22;18;03 Unknown And how can we support all students? How can we support our staff in making sure that that schools are a welcoming and safe space? And when we when we think about the why of things, I want to hesitate because we don't want to be trauma. Investigate ours and ask the children, you know, what happened to you, you know, and tell me everything that we want to give them privacy and and respect, just like we want privacy and respect. 00;22;18;15 - 00;22;39;05 Unknown So there's big things that happened. I know that there's articles about the millions of children who their parents have passed away. Food insecurity, housing insecurity, all of these things that happened outside the school building that come into the school building. Because while students are with us and we love them very much all during our classrooms, they're outside doing their own thing for most whole people. 00;22;39;06 - 00;23;20;26 Unknown Yeah, their whole lives. Yeah. So to recognize that and to recognize that because this whole human is experience, seeing a lot of things and trying to communicate with me in the best way that they know how. And that means sometimes it's through big emotions and big behaviors. And I love what you said about the siloed piece to Alex because you know, too often and it's one of the reasons that I have appreciated being able to do this work with you, because I think, you know, too often we think about things like behavioral escalation as being a special education issue, like erroneous belief that this is something that, you know, is how it happens and in 00;23;20;26 - 00;24;02;29 Unknown different contexts with different, quote unquote, types of students, you know, and and don't really take into account the fact that this is something that we're all experiencing. This is something that all students can experience. It's something that because all students experience that all educators need to be able to address. So some of our listeners and I think what what you're starting to touch upon is some of those Tier one strategies, some of our listeners, some of the folks that will be listening to this are implementing PBIS or MTC and there are parts of the Tier one strategies that I think provide a good start for that foundation for supported behavior. 00;24;02;29 - 00;24;33;29 Unknown And I think it goes to what you're saying is that everyone can benefit from from having strategies in place that help us get back to regulated behavior. But can you talk about some of the strategies that you think schools have already in place that may support that work? Yeah, absolutely. So I think that well, first of all, I think that this is just my word, but a sort of a cornerstone of PBIS is this idea of creating safe and inclusive environments. 00;24;33;29 - 00;25;07;17 Unknown So that's kind of where we're beginning, you know, and part of that is really thinking about as a as a staff together, what are those behavioral expectations that we want to clearly define for our students? How can we include our students within that process and also include their values as well? But but clearly defining, explicitly teaching and regularly regularly reinforcing those behavioral expectations within and across the school and classroom environment, I think that that's huge. 00;25;08;00 - 00;25;43;18 Unknown It's a great way to increase predictability in the environment, providing supportive, supportive in a predictable environments helps to promote that self-regulation and prevent dysregulation. So I don't really think that it can be overstated the importance of that sort of building predictability within the environment, having those consistent routines within the school, within the classroom, people knowing what to expect, not only students knowing what to expect, but staff knowing what to expect on a daily basis when they come into school. 00;25;43;18 - 00;26;10;28 Unknown I think that also providing not only acknowledging pro-social behavior, but also redirecting and teaching with behavioral errors. Common I love the term behavioral errors because I think instead of thinking about like the behavior, right, the kid is the behavioral sense we're talking about, Oh, you must have forgotten like that. That's the way that I approach challenging behavior. Oh, you must have forgotten. 00;26;10;28 - 00;26;34;12 Unknown We we could remember we've been working on this and, you know, maybe you didn't really forget, but that's how I enter with the assumption of. Oh, yeah, right. Like, you know, best case scenario, it's like you just forgot what we were doing here. So, you know, thinking about behavioral errors in the same way that we think about academic errors that we need to just redirect and reteach. 00;26;35;11 - 00;27;01;07 Unknown So rather than relying on those sort of punitive or exclusionary be exclusionary practices. Yeah, really focusing more on that teaching piece. And it's a heck of a whole lot easier to reteach what you've taught in the first place. So maybe start there. Maybe. Yeah, but it's like, this is how we do business, this is how we do business, and a lot of how we do business. 00;27;01;07 - 00;27;25;06 Unknown Actually, those strategies that you're talking about would address a lot of the needs of students and staff around being able to come to school or be in school in a way that is more regulated. Yeah, less escalated. You know, the way I think about Tier one, too, we've talked about this a lot with staff in going into schools over the last year. 00;27;25;06 - 00;28;18;23 Unknown But, you know, this idea that as things change, think about your triangle. Think about how Tier one might need to shift, because if the whole environment has shifted, then thinking about the kinds of struggles that staff and teacher staff and students are having very proactively, does that shift what we're doing at Tier one? A little, right, Yeah. We were talking earlier, Kathleen, about about that idea of expanding the notion of what Tier one strategies might be now and that there could be some strategies that we can throw in to teach everybody at this point that I was in a meeting recently where I heard a colleague say that if our students showed up with some 00;28;18;23 - 00;28;50;22 Unknown if many, let's say many of our students showed up this year with a gap in their academic skill set, we wouldn't just immediately refer these students to individualized academic supports that would actually expand our curriculum to meet the emerging need. And I think that we can think of of behavior in this way, too, that we can think that we have these these pretty typical Tier one school wide practices. 00;28;50;22 - 00;29;24;18 Unknown And then we also have these these targeted interventions, maybe or targeted strategies that we might have in place during more typical years that we would we would help, you know, specific students with those gaps. But we've got lots of kids that are showing up with some gaps in their in their coping strategies. And so maybe we should be thinking about how to expand those those Tier one strategies to meet the emerging need of our students. 00;29;24;18 - 00;29;48;18 Unknown So in what ways do you think that we could we could start to think about that? We I think that when we talk about behavior in academics, all of that is skills. Yes. So when teachers get overwhelmed about teaching social emotional learning or teaching de-escalation, it's all skills that we are teaching. And teachers know how to teach a skill. 00;29;49;04 - 00;30;08;10 Unknown Yeah, teachers know how to differentiate instruction. Teachers know that if a student doesn't understand a fraction, we don't throw the whole board at them and say, Figure it out. We figure out a new way to explain it, a different example, a non example. We model it with them, we give them a break to give them a brain break if it's too heavy. 00;30;08;18 - 00;30;50;00 Unknown So all these are skills that can be taught and that students are capable of doing so. We want to presume competence when we talk with students, presume that they can do the thing. And one thing in the paper that we really focus on is the idea of co regulation and doing that with students and what co regulation is for those who don't know is it's assisting the student in the process of regulating their emotions by expressing empathy, acknowledging and labeling their emotions, modeling that desired behavior and providing positive reinforcement for following the expectations is what we see with parents and young children when it's when a young toddler shows a big behavior, yelling at that 00;30;50;00 - 00;31;27;17 Unknown child and begging your finger doesn't do anything but getting down on their level and saying, Oh, but Alec, sometimes it feels nice. Yes, it feels comforting. I mean, I do this with my partner of like, I'm really mad right now. Cookie yelling feels good. Yes. And so what? What? You're right. It does not solve the problem. No. What we want to do is we want to try to have empower educators to be able to regulate with students so they're building connections over just pure compliance, that they're creating consent in the process rather than forcing decisions, bringing them that choice and promoting choice. 00;31;27;23 - 00;31;54;06 Unknown And so making it making children do what we want to do because we want them to do it. Yeah. So we when I think about tier one, I often have heard, well, that's a tier one kid or as a tier three kid, you other words. That's heavy quotations. Yes. Class B Yeah. But I like to think about the tiers of the pyramid as nesting bowls that all students fill in are in that tier one strategy. 00;31;54;15 - 00;32;13;11 Unknown So reframing our mindset, then when we think about tier one, we're thinking about all students. Yeah, it goes from the bottom of the jungle all the way to the tip of that green direction. All It's a whole triangle, it's the whole thing. It's not just the 80% of kids that we see in that beautiful green, yellow, red triangle. 00;32;13;17 - 00;32;33;11 Unknown It is all students and so what can we do as a team to make sure that all students feel safe? Welcome. Just like Kathleen was saying, it's a cornerstone of PBS. How can we make sure that students feel safe? And one of those ways is a think about that core regulation piece. All students and all staff will become disregulated during the school day. 00;32;33;11 - 00;32;55;11 Unknown That's one of the only expectations I have during the school year. For certain someone's going to get that, someone's going to get upset. Yeah. And so what can we do to prepare, prepare and be preventative about that, making sure we're building those relationships and do those correlation strategies explicitly teach in each setting what it looks like to be regulated, what it looks like to self regulate. 00;32;55;20 - 00;33;16;03 Unknown It's different in the cafeteria versus math. You know, in the cafeteria. Taking a deep breath may work, but maybe you need to move your body a little bit. Maybe you need to talk to an adult. So thinking about those specific things and being really intentional about what we are doing at that Tier one, are we intentionally thinking about all students? 00;33;16;11 - 00;33;35;01 Unknown Are we intentionally thinking about all staff? It should not be an afterthought that students with disabilities are included in this process. It should be something that is at the forefront of our minds. And it's not just students disabilities or students at Tier three who are experiencing dysregulation. It is all students, and all our staff have opportunities to experience that. 00;33;35;14 - 00;34;04;28 Unknown It matters what we do once they experience it. Are we allowing them to feel affirmed, safe and welcome, or making them feel punished, horrible about themselves and excluded? And that's that's the key point there. I wonder to I don't I hear from a lot of educators that that schools or teams are really feeling like they have to go back to the drawing board in terms of their tier one or they need to kind of start over. 00;34;04;28 - 00;34;40;02 Unknown And as we're talking about expanding Tier one to really encompass all students again, with that, students are coming in, maybe looking a little bit different or having different behaviors. They're things we've seen before, but we're experiencing them in a different way as adults. If we look at that more as an opportunity to take our Tier one and say, you know what, we do need to go back to the not to the drawing board, but we need to go back a little bit and rework our Tier one and let's take this opportunity to do that rather than seeing it as, Oh my gosh, everything's falling apart. 00;34;40;02 - 00;35;10;02 Unknown And we're we're just everything's a mess. I think that's a hard refrain right now, just because people are struggling, adults, children, students are struggling and we are there's so much going on. But I want to start thinking about that in a new way of saying there's an opportunity here to do Tier one a little bit differently in terms of bringing expanding it in a sense, in the way that we probably originally designed it. 00;35;10;02 - 00;35;33;18 Unknown But now really having to look at it in a little bit of a different way. And I don't think that it's I don't think that these things are bad to teach to everybody, right. Like, these are these are great skills to teach and to just even if it's just to say that you've done it so that when something happens, when someone gets upset, you can point back, be like, Oh, now I can reteach, right? 00;35;33;19 - 00;36;04;21 Unknown It's back to what you were saying. Kathleen We're like, If you don't teach it in the first place, then what are we doing? You can't possibly go back and reteach something. So doing that to teaching these things while people are in a state of calm is like the greatest time to do it right. Because there is no way that if I'm upset about something that's going on and someone tells me, Megan, you need to calm down, there is no way I am calming myself down now. 00;36;04;21 - 00;36;24;14 Unknown No way. No. So but if you if someone were to say like, Oh, I see, I see this is happening, maybe you forgot I maybe you forgot. But there are some things that we can do right now and like, point to those things and maybe, I don't know, like, I think that all of this stuff is good, right? 00;36;24;14 - 00;36;52;17 Unknown That like, if you're going to teach one person how to take a break, why not teach everybody how to ask for a break? If you're going to teach one person how to do some deep, calming breaths to help them calm down, teach that to everybody. You know, you can't assume at this point I'm in a place where I cannot assume that anyone ever taught you how to do this thing, because we're all in a weird spot, so may as well to teach it to everybody because it's good for everybody. 00;36;52;17 - 00;37;17;04 Unknown All of these skills are good for everyone. So go ahead and teach them, expand it, expand it, and make this a classroom wide, a school wide practice where everyone gets the same information so that when those behaviors go up, you can be like, oh, remember, this is what we do. What we do remember as a kid, let's stigmatize in language students having a breakdown in the middle of a hallway. 00;37;17;19 - 00;37;36;03 Unknown We know as a classroom culture, as a school culture, that everybody has those moments in the time the student is ready to come back, they're able to be welcomed with more acceptance and a lot of good then. Alex Yeah, like that kid is the kid who yells all the time. No, we all yell at times in our day and we all have moments that are hard. 00;37;36;03 - 00;37;55;11 Unknown And so I think part of it is reducing the exclusion that happens and bringing it back to the inclusiveness that we want to see in spaces of if we all learn the strategies. When I taught the strategies to all my students, my students are able to regulate each other. They were empowered to say, You don't need the adults to do this. 00;37;55;11 - 00;38;11;09 Unknown Like I know that right now my friend is at a level four on the thermometer every couple deep breaths. Hey, Brian, do you want to take a couple of deep recipes? And I was like, I am out of a job. And that's the best way it's going to be, you know, because we want we want that companionship and that friendship. 00;38;11;09 - 00;38;36;21 Unknown And I was there, of course, to supervise. But I think that's empowering that culture of inclusivity rather than just saying, like Kathleen said, you also have said of it's a special education thing, that's the certain type of student does this. Let's just make it really aware that we're all going through things. We're all human beings with ranges of emotions and tolerances that depend on sleep, that depend on what we ate, but depend on, you know, lots of different things. 00;38;36;21 - 00;38;58;00 Unknown And so I think, again, making that an intentional part of your chair, one where everyone is included, creates more inclusive environments where students feel safe to say something before they get to the point where they're super escalated. I'm like, right now I feel kind of uncomfortable. I don't like what's happening right now, or I'm feeling angry and I would like someone to talk to. 00;38;58;04 - 00;39;23;01 Unknown It's it's it's a preventative strategy, which is what two One is it's about prevention. I think it's also really important to point out, because I'm hear what you're saying, I think it's really important to point out that when a student or an adult, for that matter, when an individual is in crisis, this is not the time to. Teach a strategy like this is not a teachable moment. 00;39;23;11 - 00;39;54;01 Unknown This is a turn things around, keep people safe moment, you know, and we oftentimes talk about de-escalation or people think about de-escalation strategies, if you will, as what you do when someone is in crisis and they're already there, they're you know what? When they're already there, what do I do? And that is such a it's such a backwards, honestly way to think about it, because, again, that's not the time to teach. 00;39;54;01 - 00;40;13;11 Unknown That's not the time you're going to have success. So that's also not the time that the adult is going to have any success, which leads to people saying things like, Oh, well, those things don't work. Well, no, they don't work because you didn't use it until the student was always. Yeah. And so you see, it's like I don't work, right? 00;40;13;22 - 00;40;59;05 Unknown So if idea of thinking about this from proactive standpoint, how are we teaching everyone? How are we putting things in to someone's repertoire so that we can remind and reteach and help someone to remember, Oh, I'm just going to give you a signal when I start to notice that you're becoming agitated and maybe that can be helpful. And you remembering what we've just been talking about, you know, But yeah, it's it's so it's so customary for us to wait until someone is already in that disregulated or that escalated state and then start saying, oh, well, I'm just supposed to use this strategy, now's a good time. 00;40;59;12 - 00;41;27;29 Unknown Yeah, yeah, I, I bring it back to academics though, because again, I feel like teachers have a better understanding of the academics. We don't put a big hard test in front of a student when they've had no lesson and go figure it out right now, you know, decimals like that is the making you to change and losing control and you practice in low stakes environments and you do, you know, lots of different ways of showing it and you provide lots of it. 00;41;27;29 - 00;41;46;13 Unknown It's takes a long time to learn a skill, to become fluent, to master that skill, and then think about it generalizing to multiple situations. So when I talk with educators, I bring it back to the academic language because they know you don't do that. Students in state testing children don't just magically know all the answers to those tests. 00;41;46;21 - 00;42;06;11 Unknown It takes a whole year of instruction for them to be able to have that test even presented in front of them. So what can we do to mirror that in our behavior, skill instruction? And when we think about that in preventative ways, we have to teach, we have to practice, we have to teach, you know, even when we know that we master it. 00;42;06;11 - 00;42;25;22 Unknown Let's remember it again and try to go back and see if we can do it again in a calm, low stakes environment so that when the big day comes or when something happens, we know like riding a bicycle that we can just do it and keep going. I think that's the best description of teaching pro-social behavior, like academic skills that I've ever heard. 00;42;26;07 - 00;42;49;02 Unknown That was awesome. And you'll be able to listen to this back and like, write it all down. I'll be able to remember what I said because of the power of the podcast. So I think we're at a place now where I'm convinced, right, that I would love to see these kinds of things expanded and taught to my own children in their classrooms. 00;42;49;02 - 00;43;13;02 Unknown So talk to the teachers right now who are listening to us. And what are some of the actual strategies that 3 to 5 things that they might be able to do this year in their classrooms that would help them to have a year that feels more successful in terms of behavior than maybe it was last year. Alex, I'm going to let you go first on this. 00;43;13;13 - 00;43;40;01 Unknown Okay? I have a couple of things, but the main thing that I want to focus on is give yourself, grace and space. I watch a lot of teacher candidates and they're doing they're ding, ding hardest, they're working hard. They're working like doing their best. But they have this expectation that now that they know the knowledge, you'll be able to implement it with 100% fidelity and that they're going to just it's just going to be easy. 00;43;40;01 - 00;44;02;28 Unknown And I feel like we need to allow for grace and space. You are doing the best you can with the resources that you have. You're doing the best you can to serve your students in the best way you know how. And in space means providing an understanding that we don't know it all and that we're constantly learning each day is a new day and that we can get better. 00;44;03;00 - 00;44;24;14 Unknown Sometimes it's not going to be the greatest thing. And then my next thing would be take care of your wellness. You cannot teach well, if you are not well, you cannot pour from an empty cup. It's something I'm very, very passionate about is as teacher teacher wellness and teacher mental health. And so when we talk about all these regulation strategies, they're all great. 00;44;24;14 - 00;44;43;20 Unknown But if you're not regulated and you're coming in upset and angry and yelling at students, the best way, best laid plans will not happen. So what can you do to make sure that you're taking care of yourself, both mentally and physically, so that you can come into the classroom and feel like it's a safe space for you so you can make a safe space for students. 00;44;43;20 - 00;45;04;18 Unknown Students learn when they feel physically and psychologically safe, So make sure that you yourself feel physically and psychologically safe, and then you're going to be able to do the strategies like code regulation and being able to teach in a way that you're present for your students. You're going be able to listen to their feedback and listen to their voices and incorporate that into your lessons. 00;45;04;27 - 00;45;23;15 Unknown You're going to be able to think of more about the prevention rather than the reactionary quick judgments that happen. So that's what I tell my teacher candidates when I'm when I'm with them. And that's what I wish I would have heard when I was teaching. They're such high expectations for us all, and it's such a big time. You're teaching during a pandemic. 00;45;23;22 - 00;45;46;19 Unknown Wow, Good for you. Like I, I'm in awe of teachers right now and the amount of power and wonderfulness that they are and what they're doing. So I think acknowledging that is really, really important. When we when I'm speaking to educators, I actually self-care was the top of my list as well. You know, thinking about taking care of yourself. 00;45;46;19 - 00;46;13;00 Unknown And I love what you said, Alex, about how you can't really care for other people if you aren't caring for yourself and if you are not well at yourself. I think that that's that's critical I also think what I would say is to focus on that, especially early in the year, to focus on building those relationship with your students, really focusing on that because I think that that is what you all are talking about. 00;46;13;00 - 00;46;44;07 Unknown And I know I keep going backwards, but what you are talking about, about this idea of of shifting, you know, Tier one and thinking about your Tier one strategies, I would hope that that's not just something that we do because a pandemic has occurred. I hope that that's something that we're doing yearly anyway and really thinking about, you know, if we're thinking about culturally responsive periods and we're thinking about how do we make this fit our culture, well, every time you get a new group, Chicanos in, you've got a new culture, you know? 00;46;44;07 - 00;47;17;03 Unknown So thinking about thinking about your students, building those relationships, thinking about how you might need to go again, like you said, now not, you know, go back to the drawing board, but you can shift a little bit those strategies that you already have in place, what you might want to focus on a little more, but really thinking about your tier one, how you're supporting all of your students and how that may need to shift slightly based on based on the current group that you have and based on what you're coming table with at this moment. 00;47;17;03 - 00;47;45;17 Unknown You know, how does that look? And I think that the other thing that I would say is also just modeling those strategies is for your students, not just in the context of I'm going to teach a self regulation strategy and this is what you can do. But really, when you come to the table with some issues that day modeling, what does it look like to talk about this in a very normalizing kind of way and saying like, you know, I a rough morning. 00;47;46;17 - 00;48;04;17 Unknown We're going to start with 10 minutes of video of what? Fill in the blank, you know, so that we can all kind of calm down and get on the same page. But I think that that's that again, that's normalizing that helps to show students that it's okay. And we all struggle at times. And this is how we might deal with it. 00;48;05;02 - 00;48;32;23 Unknown But well, guys, I think we've reached the end of our time. But there's more to come. Yeah, we're going to we're going to sort of just pause the conversation for now. And next month we'll pick it up and we'll talk more about de-escalation. But I think all of the things that we've talked about today have really set the stage because I think here's what I think is that behaviors, not everybody just shows up disregulated all the time. 00;48;32;28 - 00;48;55;15 Unknown Maybe they do, but most people don't. And so the idea is that they're like, people are coming into your classroom in a state of calm, possibly, and most of them maybe, and then the like, the behavior just ramps itself up over the course of a certain amount of time. And so at any given point during that ramp up, we have the opportunity to interrupt that process. 00;48;55;15 - 00;49;29;22 Unknown And to de-escalate the behavior that we're all we're doing is we take it back to that definition that you gave us earlier, Kathleen, which is that all we're trying to do is to get students who are experiencing any level of dysregulation back to a regulated place, even for ourselves, that if we ourselves are feeling that way, that can interrupt that cycle at any point and model for our students, the ways in which they can also bring themselves down or teach each other or talk each other about how they can they can get themselves back to a regulated place. 00;49;29;22 - 00;50;00;13 Unknown So all of this is so good at laying that foundational work for, what we can do next when things do escalate. But for right now, I think talking about those preventative strategies, those school wide, classroom wide, whole school strategies that we can do to establish this is how we do things and this is how we support each other, is so critical when we're talking about the process of maintaining calm and establishing some level of regulation and classrooms this year. 00;50;00;28 - 00;50;22;22 Unknown So I really appreciate you guys taking the time to talk to us and and we'll be back to talk a little bit more next month about this whole topic. So thanks, guys. Thank you. Thank you so much for focusing on this because. I think you're right. Are going to have I think that it's a great time at the beginning of the school year to really think about these phrases. 00;50;23;22 - 00;50;28;00 Unknown We agree. We agree. Thanks, guys.