Raw Notes From Learning and the Brain 2021 - Sunday

Each year, I used my blog to take notes.  What you will find here are raw, including a mix of the presenter's thoughts mixed with my own responses as I mentally process.  They will make sense to me, but they may or may not make sense to you.  I usually process all of this in the following week and post things that make actual sense, so check back in if you are interested.

Keynote I: Handle With Care: Managing Difficult Situations With Dignity and Respect When School Returns - Jimmy Casas, EdS

He has a lot of energy.  Getting through the day with your students can take so much energy that you have none left for anyone else when you get home.  If we want our best people to stay in the profession, we have to take care of them.  Veteran people must be welcoming and care for new teachers to nurture them.

• Don't talk about excellence.  Live your excellence.  The kids need you at your very best.  Kids know which teachers are all in and which teachers are not.
• We are genuinely idealistic in our interview, but some have lost their way.  It's hard when you can't get a kid to reach their potential.  It's hard to let it go when parents are demanding and bashing you online.  It's hard, but you can't change them; you can only change you.  "Remember what you said you were going to do for students when you sat in the interview char."
• They are the way they are because of an experience.  We can listen to it, understand it, and help them reframe it.
• You have to get past the idea of immediate results.  Think long-term.  Any time you champion a kid, you have made a difference whether you see it or not.  But this job was never meant to be a committee of one.  If you are trying to do everything yourself, you will not serve kids well.
• "You're not a problem.  You're a drummer." - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p5286T_kn0 
• What if we put a "Handle with Care" sticker on our most challenging students because we know they have stuff going on in their lives?  Since everyone has something going on, what we put a "Handle with Care" sticker on all of them?
• "You lose your way when you forget your why."
• The majority of time should be spent on the goals and philosophy that guide decisions.  You will spend less time putting out fires if you have set up a system to have fewer fires in the first place.  
• Clarity is Kindness - Lack of clarity in expectations leads to confusion, anxiety, and bad behavior.  When you lose hope, you become apathetic, which leads you to a state of hesitation.
• You need to lead with your core values.  The people in your school need to agree with and practice those values.  Otherwise, they are just words about words.  Revisit your values every year, and decide how you are going to deal with people who don't live up to the values.  There will be days when you don't live up to the values, but if you live in a culture of trust, people will lovingly confront you and redirect you back toward your values.
• Just don't quit.  You can't fix a kid, but you can not quit on them.
• You don't choose the students or families you serve, but you do decide what kind of climate you serve them in.
• Model and expect excellence.  
• Everyone in the school is responsible for everyone else in the school.
• Administrators:  If you expect your teachers to differentiate based on the needs of students, then you have got to be willing to differentiate based on the needs of your teachers.
• Don't let anyone else take away your excellence.  You are responsible for your own mind.
• He may not be a difficult student.  He may be a student going through a difficult time.
• Quit trying to this job by yourself.  Be willing to say, "I need your help."
• When a student (or parent) gets louder, you should get softer.  Don't escalate; de-escalate."  At the end, of the interaction, they should think you treated them fairly and that you care about them.
• Be a merchant of hope.  Give kids an opportunity to be great.
• I'm not asking you to fix them.  I'm just asking you to not quit on them.
• Every student may be one caring adult away from greatness.

Keynote II: Reaching Teens in Times of Trauma, COVID, and Uncertainty - Kenneth R. Ginsburg, MD, MSEd, FAAP

• Obviously, COVID has created a time of uncertainty, but to be honest, just growing up is a time of uncertainty.
• Resilience is built by lending them your calm.
• We re at an inflection point in human history.
• Childhood trauma MAY affect:  the body, the brain, behavior, and genetics.
• Trauma is a risk factor, but we are complex.  There are also many protective factors.
• The trauma-informed movement has done a lot of damage because, instead of viewing kids as a whole, we have made or expectations based only on their trauma.  
• We need an integrated model that includes what we have learend from
• Positive youth development.
• Resilience building strategies.
• Trauma-sensitive practice.
• Restorative practices.
• This means harnessing the power of human relationships that are safe, secure, and sustained.  Lowering expectations traps them in a cycle of failure, but they must know that high expectations are rooted in caring.
• He's a doctor who works with kids who are homeless.  He has a strengths-based program to help them find what they can do to break the cycles.
• Stay in your lane but know your power.  Outside of the home, school is the place with the most sustained relationships with caring adults.
• A neural pathway is something that happens so often, you never have to think about it.  It's just the way it is. When you experience the world as a safe and secure place throughout childhood, you view the world that way later.  If you don't, you communicate more dramatically until your needs are met.  
• A kids with an "anger problem" is someone whose brain pathways have been developed by experience because anger was the only thing that got their needs met.
• Adolescence is the second window of astounding brain growth for the formation of pathways.  It is the best time to take advantage of teachable moments.
• Kids live up or down to the expectations we set for them (if we make them feel safe).
• Zero to three and adolescents are when they are super learners and natural explorers.  
• They push the edges because they get a dopamine hit they explore a novel situation.  It's not about risk-taking; it's about novelty.  We must activate rational thought by speaking calmly and with questions they can answer, not emotional thought by yelling, talking too fast and not letting them answer.
• In fight or flight, blood leaves your stomach and brain, goes to your legs so you can run or fight.  This means you also cannot think and plan or act rationally.
• Uncertainty creates a state of constant threat.  Cortisol keeps the body on high alert ALL THE TIME because we don't know where the danger is.  Authoritarians always sow uncertainty first before they take you over because they can take advantage of the chronic fear it creates.
• When a kid you know and love misbehaves, you can start with their strengths and then address the behavior as an inconsistency.
• Resilience is not invulnerability.  Don't just say a kid is strong enough to handle what they are going through.  They still need your support.
• Sometimes what a kid hates about himself is the greatest thing about him.
• When resilience reaches its limits, there are
• physical symptoms like fatigue.
• disinterest.
• dropping grades.
• irritability/anger.
• substance abuse.
• They won't always look sad.
• Kids learn from their experience and observation of others.  Modeling how you work through complexity is how to create thinking, problem-solving kids.
• Model forgiving yourself when you feel you have failed.  
• But also model learning from the failure.
• Don't just tell them to have empathy.  Show them what empathy looks like.
• Adolescence is about gaining independence, forming social connections, planning the next phase of your life, honing your idealism, and looking for adult role models.  They have had to step back from this for almost two years, which is why this time is more frustrating for them than it may be for adults.
• We are always nastiest with the people we love the most because we know we can't push them away.  It's part of being human.
• Maintaining your physical health strengthens your emotional health by activating the autonomic nervous system.
• Dial down catastrophic thought by
• Recognizing "I better" or "If I don't" thoughts.
• Evaluate whether it is really as high risk as you are telling yourself.
• Ask what tools you have.
• Things aren't going to be the same, but kids can make it better using the tools they have gained during this time.  Just like people who grew up during the depression were frugal for the rest of their lives, this generation will be problem-solvers for the rest of theirs.
• A lone stick is breakable.  A bundle of sticks is not.  This is why strong relationships matter so much.  Trauma affects us, but it does not have to break us.  The change in the brain made by cortisol as a result of childhood trauma can be minimized or reversed by a loving adult providing a safe place because they are doing the vigilance for the child.  It does harm to the adult, so we must take care of them as well.
• If you go from emergency to emergency, the thinking/planning part of your brain is less developed.  The sensory part of the brain develops more.  
• The starting point of helping them is to recognize their behaviors are not about you.
• Traumatized kids have a "protector's brain."  You'd want them with you on a desert island.  Help them to view this as a superpower but when it is appropriate to keep the cape tucked in.
• There should never be a diagnosis of ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder).  It is not real!  A traumatized brain is not experiencing a disorder.  
• Change your lens from "what's wrong with you?" to "what happened to you?"
• Tolerable stress is uncomfortable, but it is within our window to cope.  The key to whether or not it is tolerable is whether you have skills to adapt to and deal with it.  This is where adults are helpful.  Self-regulation is a skill to be developed.
• Co-regulation - borrowing someone else's calm (flight attendant still serving snacks).
• Behavioral Change
• There will be both forward and backward movement.  Don't praise them only when they are moving forward, or they won't come to you when they are going backward.  Provide genuine relationships when they are moving both forward and backward.  Have their back at all times.
• Shame will keep them from starting to make change.  Confidence will allow them to start.  Find ways to give them confidence by listening and celebrating their strengths even when it is mixed in with messiness.  Tell them what is good and right in them and that you are here for them FIRST.  Then tell them why you are concerned (because it won't give you your best life).  Accompany them to people with more resources; don't just refer them (because they will fear losing you).
• Hot communication is counter-productive because you have activated the danger part of the brain.  Cool down the communication.  Pause to let them process and answer to activate the rational part of their brain.
• Defining the stressor
• Distinguish real tigers from paper tigers.
• Identify when bad things are temporary.
• Identify when good things are permanent.
• The worst thing is not to be stressed.  It is to be numb.
• I __________ it out. (Ways to express/release feelings in addition to coping strategies)
• www.parentandteen.com 
• The things that matter most are not measurable.  Judging your success will likely not be something you can put in a spreadsheet or a graph.  Success is when a student knows he is worthy of being loved.

Concurrent Sessions D

Helping the Helpers: Recognizing and Coping With Secondary Traumatic Stress for Teachers - Mays Imad, PhD

Personal Note (Pre Session):  Since August, I have been looking for language to put around the impact of being a hybrid teacher last year.  Many have called it PTSD, which made me uncomfortable because I didn't want to minimize or pretend my experience was on the same level as those who have seen someone shot or been a victim of violence.  At the same time, I knew what we were all feeling upon returning this year wasn't nothing.  If I get nothing else from this session, I am happy to finally have a name for this (Secondary Traumatic Stress).

Second Personal Note (Pre Session):  I am skeptical of things having to do with Self Care.  It's not that I don't understand the concept that an unhealthy person can't help others.  It's that we have swung the pendulum so far that we act like the biggest problem the world has is selflessness (which is clearly untrue) and that people can nobly shirk their responsibilities in the name of self-care (which is, as it always was, just being a jerk) and because anything that can be monetized can manipulate us with messages that make us feel like something is wrong so we have to buy something to make it right (which is why self-care now a multi-billion dollar industry).  I cannot think of anyone I respect in history or in Scripture that I can imagine using the term self-care.  This session has not yet started, so I don't know if it will be about this, but if my notes turn to the skeptical, this may be why.  

• When she was offering trauma support to students, she began to realize how many teachers were struggling as well.
• Uncertainty is one of the biggest stressors.  Add a heavy workload, anxiety, and grief to that, and the brain will become overwhelmed.  Yes, we are expected to keep giving and work more.
• http://sacompassion.net/poem-think-of-others-by-mahmoud-darwish/ 
• She was a refugee, and she remembers getting help and seeing exhaustion in the face of the helpers.  Then she started working with refugees, and she had exhaustion and a broken heart every day.  
• Secondary Traumatic Stress 
• "It is the stress resulting from helping or wanting to help a traumatized or suffering person."
• Vicarious traumatization
• Symptoms include exhaustion that sleep doesn't alleviate, a sense of helplessness, wondering if other people care at all.
• It can change your worldview at a fundamental level.
• Leads to burnout.
• Burnout causes:
• Excessive workload causes chronic stress.  The amount we used to do seems like more now because our minds are occupied by the stress of uncertainty.
• Perceived lack of control
• Lack of meaningful connections and relationships
• Lack of recognition
• Lack of fairness
• Values and skills mismatch
• Trauma-Sensitive Teacher Care
• Resist pathologizing (making everything about the trauma)
• Don't try to fix your feelings, just acknowledge them.
• Get to know individuals rather than making assumptions about categories of people.
• Acknowledge that we are a work in progress and that since we all are, we can journey as a community.
• Develop a coping plan.
• Strategies in a Coping Plan
• Negotiate with your brain.  Ask "will this matter in six months?" and 
• Give yourself permission to move forward more slowly than usual.
• Ruminate on the positive.  "I am a good person because . . ."
• Have a distraction plan for when you find yourself in a worry loop.
• Develop backup plans in anticipation of setbacks.
• Create something.  Write something. (likely why so many people gardened or baked bread or learned a craft skill during lockdown)
• Laugh with others
• Hold your hand.  Hug yourself.  (In late May 2020, I looked down and found myself patting my own hand.  I don't even know how long I had been doing it or if it was even the first time.  My body just knew what it needed.)
• Document hope and beauty.
• Lovingly say "no" to or delay some things. ("Can we talk about this tomorrow?")
• Know who you should contact when you are about to crash.
• Check up on your colleagues (I love you, Blue Pod.  I love you, Elizabeth.)
• Try to detach from the outcome because so little of it is within your control.
• Try not to take things personally.  You didn't cause the problem, and it is unlikely that you can solve it.
• Psychic disequilibrium (realizing suddenly that the world is different than you thought) can lead to shutting down.  Advice - The problem was there before you, and it will be there after you.  Don't be arrogant enough to think that you alone can fix it.  Do what is within your control.
• Have a conversation with yourself to remind yourself what you can do and what you cannot do.  Students know you can't solve it, but they want you to see and hear them.  That can be enough.
• It is NOT only about self-care because that is not sustainable.  It is about community care.  Turn to your elders for wisdom.  (She lived in Iraq during the first Desert Storm, but what she remembers isn't depression but laughing with her family.)  We need to transform systems to help the community care for each other and give each other grace.
• https://poets.org/poem/kindness 

Personal Note (Post Session):  Okay, so it turns out that she was lovely.  I left out one or two pieces of self-care advice, but her history as a refugee and her work with refugees definitely gave her more credibility.  I am not going to the next one in this thread because it is done by a vendor, and as I've already mentioned, I think the monetization of self-care is a problem.  (Also I heard them talking to people yesterday and thought they were loopy.)  So, I'm going to hear a man tell his own life story and talk about how he went from unmotivated to even graduate high school to getting a Ph.D.

Motivating the Unmotivated - Craig J. Boykin, PhD

• From GED to Ph.D. - Had dropped out of school, didn't consider school important.  After going to jail and getting shot, he changed his mind.
• Started his seminars with young, black, at-risk men.  He only started doing professional development for teachers when they reached out and said they wanted to be able to connect with these students.
• To grow, you've got to get at least a little uncomfortable.
• If you only see a person for a short time at a high-stress moment, you will think of their behavior only as disrespectful or inappropriate.  You might change your perspective if you know their story. (Personal side note:  This reminded me of what Leslie Odom Jr. said about playing Aaron Burr in Hamilton.  He realized that the only thing he knew about him before was the worst day of his life.  It wasn't until he played him that he understood what led up to that day.)  The behavior is still not okay, but you can have a better understanding of its cause.
• Causes of Low Motivation
• Lack of home support
• Lowered expectations from educators
  
• Hurt, at-risk kids put up a tough facade because their experience has taught them that vulnerability will get you killed.
• Don't be the next person to hurt them.
• Empathy vs. Sympathy
• An empathetic response never starts with "at least."  Don't try to "silver-line" their pain.  Don't tell them how you feel about their situation; let them tell you.
• It is a rare occurrence that saying the right words will make any situation better.  What makes it better is human connection.  Just be there and listen.
• As an adult, you have to turn down your emotional response.  "He who angers you controls you."  Don't give them the keys to your temper.
• Kids haven't changed; stop saying that.  The environment has changed, and their brains have responded.  They've been exposed to too much too fast (easy access to porn, nonstop nature of social media, nonstop nature of news events).
• When you are in survival mode, it is physiologically impossible to learn.
• It's much harder to unlearn something than to learn it, so be careful what you are learning.
• Apologize when you are wrong.
• Seek to understand before seeking to be understood.
• If you don't like a kid, there is no need to let them know that.
• Your actions must match your words.  If you make a promise you can't keep, you might be able to rebuild trust with some kids, but you won't be able to with an at-risk kid.  You'll just be one more person they can't trust.
• Model appropriate levels of vulnerability.
• Praise in public.  Correct in private (I'm going to add whenever possible to that one because I have had times where the correction HAD to be immediate).