You have to Maslow before you Bloom -- and that goes for adults too

Lindsay Record, the communications lead for our Learning Renewal team, hosts this episode. Her featured guests are Mashana Smith, Ph.D, director of REACH at the Center for Childhood Resilience at Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago, and Marla Graham, principal of the Lovington Grade School in Arthur CUSD 305. They share experiences and strategies to address trauma so that students can feel safe and ready to learn.

REACH stands for Resilience Education to Advance Community Healing. It's a statewide initiative, offering schools the tools they need to help educators support the social and emotional well-being of both students and staff. You can learn more about it and the services REACH provides at isbe.net/REACH.

Theme music by José Rivera

Transcript

You have to Maslow before you Bloom -- and that goes for adults too

RHODES  0:02  

Hello, we are the Illinois State Board of Education and we love Illinois schools. I'm Dusty Rhodes in the Public Relations Department, we have a guest host today. Lindsey Record leads the communications work for our Learning Renewal team -- the team focused on helping schools bounce back from the pandemic. In this work, we have a statewide initiative that goes by the acronym REACH. REACH stands for Resilience Education to Advance Community Healing. Lindsay's guests are two people on the frontlines of that mission. Dr. Mashana Smith, Director of REACH at Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago, and Marla Graham, Principal of Lovington Grade School in Arthur School District 305. 

I'll warn you, you may need to have a box of tissues handy. Here's Lindsey.

RECORD  0:49  

Principal Marla Graham and the staff at Lovington Grade School looked at student data to better understand their student population. The school is participating in the REACH Initiative and wanted to understand the challenges their students face. They looked at that data in December of last year. And the results, she says, marked a turning point for their school.

GRAHAM  1:10  

My staff is amazing and they already kind of had a good handle on things. So I came in to a really good place. But I think there was kind of a turning point. 

We had a staff meeting. It was December of last year, we looked at our data. We looked at like how many of our kiddos are free reduced lunch? How many of our kiddos have lost a parent? How many have a parent that's not allowed on property? How many are listed in an OP [order of protection]? Or they have an OP against somebody? How many just are foster kids? How many are adopted? How many have lots of siblings? 

We looked at that data, and it was just so humbling, because I think they didn't get it before. But if anybody was on the fence, there was this almost tangible moment of oh, my goodness, like no wonder math doesn't matter today. Right? 

Then, we sat down and we went through some questions, and how are we doing? We rated ourselves on how we're doing with some of these things. Out of that, we were able to kind of see where we needed, where are the holes? What are we doing really well? What could we do better? What can we bring in that we don't have yet? 

And so out of that process, we brought in a SEL screener, a social emotional screener, we're using the data here. So we were able to get that through that grant, and use it this year throughout the district, which gave us more data to help us to give specific instruction to the places where kids were using that.

RECORD  2:41  

That data analysis provided the staff with a clear reminder that children may have unseen trauma lurking beneath the surface, and that it can affect their behavior.

GRAHAM  2:51  

What does it mean to be trauma informed? I think it's just an awareness that, for example, that a behavior, there's usually a bigger cause or an issue underneath. Oftentimes, I think, traditionally in education, prior to, you know, maybe some more awareness of this SEL, and I do think COVID brought about the awareness more. But I think we've had these concerns, maybe didn't realize it as much. But we would treat the symptoms, a kid would misbehave and we would give the consequences. And that would be that. 

And now I think we look at a trauma informed school as looking at what's going on, like what is beyond this behavior, what was really going on. I think, just the personal story, for I have had the privilege of adopting some kiddos and early on, my son was adopted, he was kindergarten, first grade was okay, went to second grade really, really struggling at hiding under his desk, just an odd behavior, like things have settled. He was with us, he was safe. I couldn't figure it out. And so teachers reached out like what's going on? And so I, you know, let me come over and just observe him. I was there all of five minutes and I knew exactly what was wrong.

RECORD  4:05  

His kindergarten and first grade classrooms had been interior spaces. But now in second grade, his classroom was close to the main road.

GRAHAM  4:13  

So he had switched sides of the building, he was sitting on the roadside, and he could hear a diesel truck. Well, his birth mom drove a diesel truck, and he was certain she was coming to get him. He would trauma respond to that. It got looked at as a misbehavior because they didn't realize what was really happening. You're just being aware and looking at things like, what really might be going on, what's triggering this? Is it at three o'clock every day. Why? Why this behavior? So looking at the time, looking at the environment, what's going on that's triggering those behaviors is taking a deeper look and not just kind of taking that surface behavior and dealing with it without a deeper level.

RECORD  4:55  

I asked Dr. Mashana Smith, a Psychologist at Lurie Children's Hospital, to share more examples of what a trauma-informed school looks like.

SMITH  5:04  

A trauma responsive school knows how to support students, and regulate those emotions, whether that's through art or through music, or through sports. But there's tons of different strategies that have been proven to do that. So, when we talk about trauma responsive skills, we're really talking about five core things, we're talking about supporting students with relationships, they’re key, that's the most important intervention. Also, using strategies to ensure that students feel emotionally safe within the school environment, that they have an opportunity to get support with emotional regulation, and all within a context of a school being very culturally responsive, and paying attention to equitable practices within the school. 

Last but not least, none of this can happen without organizational self-care. Organizational care of the staff who are doing this and making sure that we're taking care of the staff and equipping them and enabling them and supporting them to do all of these other things to implement the trauma responsive policies and practices.

RECORD  5:09  

The effort to quantify and address childhood trauma started years ago, before the pandemic, but COVID-19 disruptions increased the challenges and the urgency of identifying strategies to address them.

SMITH  6:20  

We were fortunate to be working alongside some partners from the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress Network. A tool was developed called the Trauma Responsive School Implementation Inventory. What it did, which has really created great change in the field, is that it helped to operationalize and define for schools, what do we mean when we say trauma responsive? What are the different domains? And to help them to identify what are the specific policies and practices that we are talking about when we talk about “trauma-responsive schools.” They also wanted to support schools and how to utilize the data that they get from their needs-assessment process, and really develops solid, actionable action plans and goals that they can work towards.

RECORD  7:07  

At Lovington, one of the strategies is the morning meeting, which has age appropriate variations and can gauge everything from who's hungry, to who's happy, to who's scared. Here's principal Graham again.

GRAHAM  7:19  

So morning meeting is just what it sounds like, it's a quick meeting in the morning, sometimes it's longer depends on the need and the group of the kiddos, the vibe you're getting off of them. For example, let's just talk about our third grade, they come in and they get their lunch count done. Then a timer goes off, and they run; they just love this part of their day. They sit in a half circle, and they pass around the bird, it's kind of their talking stick, and they sometimes have prompts, like what was what's your favorite, memory from the summer. Sometimes it's more specific, sometimes it's reviewing, it's just getting everybody talking and doing some thing and they all just take a turn. So initially, they're learning to take turns. It's a really good segue from whatever has happened with their morning into getting their brains ready for learning. So they get a chance to have a voice to talk about whatever. 

So that is kind of what it looks like when they get at third grade level, junior high level, or even older, four, five, grades. Some of them do like a digital check; they come in, grab their Chromebook, and it's how did you sleep last night and they rate it on a Google form? How do you know your tank is full? Did you have a good breakfast? You know, no, I'm starving. Is there anything you want to talk to me about? Or there might be like, a fun challenge question of the day. It's just a quick way to connect to them. Then as a teacher, they get a good gauge, on how their kiddos are feeling that day, how they're coming in. For example, is your tank full, no, it's not okay, let's say here's your granola bar, we're just kind of taking care of some of those basic needs so that we can get them where they're ready to learn.

RECORD  9:07  

After you completed the trauma assessment, you look at this data, were there practices that changed in your school, as a result of what you learned through that process?

GRAHAM  9:18  

I would say some of my staff were doing morning meetings prior to that. Now, all of my staff are doing morning meetings, flexible seating, we brought in some of them again. We're kind of a hodgepodge and we kind of brought it together, like, we need this. And now it looks different, right? Flexible seating in junior high does not look the same as flexible seating in kindergarten; we have differences there. But we all have that same mindset and we're looking at that and our conversations and talk about restorative justice. We talk about natural logical consequences and fixing what you know, how are you going to fix the situation? You caused the problem? How can we fix it? That kind of stuff, the vocabulary has changed. We have common corners in every classroom. That's a change. We've had it in some, but not all and now we have it in all. I think we do have the TCI training. So some of my staff was aware of the summit de-escalation training, but I think we're all talking about it now.

RECORD  10:15  

Dr. Smith says one of the impacts of the pandemic is that educators have become more attuned to the social, emotional needs of their students. This new perspective has also made them more aware of their own emotional needs.

SMITH  10:28  

My perspective, I think, what's changed, I think maybe we were getting there before pandemic, but it definitely kicked in: It’s us not only being concerned about students’ well-being, although that's always there, front and center. But the level of attention that we're paying to our educators’ self-care, I would say has changed. Educators feeling overwhelmed themselves, educators, struggling with their own adjustments, and stresses that were related to COVID. And not being able to be fully present for the students without some support from their colleagues or peers within their school building and from administrators. I would say, what has changed, or at least has gotten a lot more attention, deservedly so, is the amount of effort and attention that we're pouring into our educators. No longer is there the expectation that they support students’ social and emotional development, without really understanding and appreciating our need to support the adults’ social and emotional development and wellbeing. And so that's what I would say, from our end, has changed the most. And just across the board, we have an opportunity to look at lots of the assessment instrument data that we've been talking about on the TRSIA, and almost uniformly what we see does not matter what geographical region we're talking about in the state, if the schools are rating themselves, the lowest on staff self-care, and making a commitment to change that.

GRAHAM  12:05  

I would echo that Dr. Smith, I think we're maybe finally at a place where it's okay to not be okay. And to admit that and ask for help. I think before the pandemic, I don't know that we were as aware of how much we need each other. And I think we didn't realize how much we needed that community and those relationships and connections until we didn't have them. Then it just became maybe more socially acceptable to say, Hey, I'm not okay. And I think that's great. I think the awareness of, that our staff needs support, I think they're weary and the educational challenges have grown tremendously as kids have missed significant amounts of education. 

And we have developed a schedule here, we call it our walk intervention schedule, we meet, and we do specific targeted interventions for reading. Every day, we do specific targeted interventions for math. Now, midway through this year, we added a specific targeted time for intervention throughout our entire building for SEL. We use our data, and we began a rubric and working with kids. Whether it's self-awareness, social awareness, motivation, and growth mindset, we're working on all of those competencies. And I don't know that we would have done that prior to the COVID. 

RECORD  13:33  

So let's talk about that a little bit, that staff well-being part of it. I hear that is coming up a lot in the assessments, and school leaders are realizing that this is an area that we need to work on. What are some ways that schools can support staff wellbeing? 

GRAHAM  13:54  

I think one thing is to physically go and check in on your staff. Go in and say, Hey, or I noticed you're having a rough day, can I step in for a little bit? I have attempted, what can I help you with this week? So now, there's a Google form and they can send me like, hey, I need help this week with or I'm struggling, etc, etc. Being able to be accessible to my staff and walking with them through those things and being aware. I mean, my building where we don't yell, it’s again one of those trauma things like I don't want to hear raised voices, that is going to trigger so many kiddos.  When I see a teacher start to get frustrated, I can step in. What I love is with any one of my staff there isn't this feeling like oh, I've blown it. And now here comes the librarian, right? Or here comes so and so but it's like hey, yep, I need to step out, I need some help here. And we just switch places and then someone is going and talking. 

Another thing that we are doing differently I would say is, after we have a child who's already been in crisis, we are intentional about our staff conversation after the child has de-escalated, has returned, then, you know, I'm saying, or someone on the team is saying, Hey, are you okay? You want to talk about that? Um, that was really frustrating, you know? How are you feeling. And just the more I think intentional really is just the key word there. 

SMITH  15:25  

I love all of those ideas. And the thing that I'll say just add a few more, I think, we often hear about like calming corners and physical spaces being made available for students. What I've seen schools do is now make that same physical space available for the adults and for the educators. So fixing up their staff room being intentional, that was what climate is like within that space and having a space for educators, just like we do for students. 

I have also seen schools begin to make the school counselor available to the staff as well. So typically, historically, the school counselor has been available for the students. But now scheduling appointments with the staff and just making their presence known and making themselves accessible to educators has been a change that I've seen in recent years. The other thing, of course, is schools have been more thoughtful about building a sense of community, among the staff, whether that's having outings or doing breakfast together in the morning, building community and hopefully building and strengthening relationships among the staff, I've seen quite a bit of that. 

And then the last one I'll mention that I've seen is school administrators have become much more cognizant and aware of trauma and its impact, and just the needs among their staff.  It’s not engaging in as much shaming of educators taking off. I think, in our field, if we're being honest, oftentimes, educators are encouraged to have spring break, and have summer break. And you know, they're pretty … or we have the holiday break on a holiday break. But knowing that educators may need time off and other times besides that, and I think engaging in a lot less shaming and encouraging folks to take the time that they need. I'm definitely seeing improvement in that area in the past three years.

RECORD  17:16  

 I want to turn the question back to Principal Graham here that you can answer one of two ways. What has been the impact of this work that you have seen changes that you've seen in your building? Or what do you hope to see as you continue on this path?

GRAHAM  17:37  

 I think that we are on our way to reaching a goal, I think that you're never ever there, right? You're always working towards becoming better. One of the big things we talk a lot about is you have to Maslow before you Bloom. So we have to meet those basic needs, we have to make sure kids are fed, we have to make sure they have shelter, that they're warm, all of those things, before we have the right to be listened to and to teach them.  I think that has happened greatly.

We have done some other things besides SEL stuff. But I will argue that SEL was the foundation we needed to have in place. So we have seen tremendous academic growth this year. More actually. We had a data yesterday, where we sit down and we look at the data of all of our kiddos and we meet as teams, and we move them up. Whether they need more support in phonics or whether they need to be in a different SEL group or different math group, we talk about all of those things. We talked about every single kid, and I asked the question to my title teacher yesterday, I said in all of the years, she's been here a long time, of you doing this role, would you say that we've had the same amount of growth? And she did not hesitate and said, Oh, absolutely not. I have never seen the amount of growth we've had this year and kids moving, especially our middle kids. 

We work really hard with our tier three kiddos. And she said, I can usually get them, like, non-readers to be readers when I'm working with them. But this middle group of kids of tier two kiddos have struggled and we help them but there's just not enough. She felt like there wasn't enough of her to help them enough. And we're doing this intervention, which helps, but I would argue it's because they feel safe, because they're fed, because they don't have to worry about any of those things while they're here, that's why we're seeing some of that growth, more than what is traditional.

RECORD  19:35  

Of course, our main goal is those academic gains, and they are a common byproduct of social-emotional learning. We ended our conversation with a reminder that this change takes time.

SMITH  19:46  

I'm encouraged by what Principal Graham said and just engaging in their progress monitoring and being hopeful for change and recognizing that sometimes change takes a while. But laying the foundation, engaging in all the right practices, and recognizing that it's a long-term commitment that there will be some changes that we'll see immediately and there will be some that they do not. But being in it for the long run, I think it's just key. I want to remind schools to do this sometimes, the change may not be seen overnight. But we know that these practices and changing our policies really matter. I just want to piggyback on what Principal Graham said that it's important to think of a trauma-responsive school that it’s not asking what's wrong with children, it’s aksing what's happened to them, right? And having a good understanding of what happened and what may still be happening in their world and recognize how that impacts students and being able to take that into consideration as we educate and support the growth of our children in schools. In summary, I would say really pleased with how many schools have taken to the REACH Initiative. And really, when they've taken to it, they're making a commitment to the children and their families and our staff, frankly, to be more trauma responsive. And to meet those social emotional needs and place the importance of those at the same level that we place those academic needs. 

GRAHAM 21:20

And I would say, I know I said it before, but I would say even more so. Like we can't even get to academic needs if we have social emotional needs that aren't being met. 

RECORD 21:30

Absolutely. Well, that's a great ending note. Thank you both so much for your time. I appreciate you sharing your perspective and your stories with us.

RHODES  21:41  

That was Dr. Mashana Smith from Lurie Children's Hospital, and Marla Graham principal of Lovington Grade School, speaking with Lindsay Record from our Learning Renewal team. REACH offers free on-demand virtual learning to help educators support the social and emotional well-being of students and staff. You can learn more by going online at isbe.net/reach. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe on Apple or Spotify and share it with your friends. Thanks for listening.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai