Resilience Matters
A podcast dedicated to exploring the complexities of trauma and the pathways to resilience. Each episode offers expert insights, personal stories, and practical strategies to help listeners foster healing and growth.
Resilience Matters
Building Resilient Schools: Stanton Middle School's Journey in Trauma-Informed Education
In this episode, Jeff Sefcik, principal of Stanton Middle School in Fox Lake, Illinois, shares his transformative journey in implementing trauma-informed education. As he prepares for retirement after 33 years in education, Jeff reflects on the power of fostering connections, reshaping disciplinary approaches, and creating a culture of resilience for students and staff. He joins Kathy Hart, Senior Director of Learning Services and Solutions at Starr, and host Ben Reed to discuss the impact of the Circle of Courage model, the importance of relationships, and how his school community is evolving to better meet students’ needs.
Music.
SPEAKER_01:Welcome to Resilience Matters, the podcast dedicated to understanding trauma and building resilience. In this episode, Jeff Sefcik, principal of Stanton Middle School in Fox Lake, Illinois, shares his transformative journey in implementing trauma-informed education. As he prepares for retirement after 33 years in education, Jeff reflects on the power of fostering connections, reshaping disciplinary approaches, and creating a culture of resilience for students and staff. He joins Kathy Hart, senior director of learning Services and Solutions at STAR and host Ben Reed to discuss the impact of the Circle of Courage model, the importance of relationships, and how his school community is evolving to better meet students' needs. My
SPEAKER_02:name is
SPEAKER_01:Jeff Sefcik,
SPEAKER_02:and I am the principal at Stanton Middle School in Fox Lake, Illinois. It's a northern suburb of Chicago, and we are a building that serves students
SPEAKER_01:in grades five through eight. Can you describe the school and talk about the general climate, the students, the demographics class size, just like a snapshot of the school and the community.
SPEAKER_02:Fox Lake is an awesome community. It's a blue-collar, hard-working community. Our school, over the last couple years, qualified to be 100% free and reduced lunch. So some of our kids come from a challenging socioeconomic situation. Though we're in Lake County, and Lake County is one of the wealthiest counties in Illinois, we're kind of in our own little piece in Fox Lake. And so we are small. We're a community school. We're right in the middle of a neighborhood. We have anywhere, and this is my, I'm in my 20th year here. And so I've seen us have as many students as about 320, which a lot of people will laugh at because that's big for us. Currently we're right around 250. So we've had grade levels with 100 kids and we've had grade levels with 60 kids. And right now we're more in the 60s, but it's... I think you know when you've got one or two that are struggling, that 60 might feel like 160. So we're able to, because we're smaller, I think we're able to really dig in to kids and learn about their families and where they come from and what they bring with them to school. But conversely, we don't have the financial backing and the human resources sometimes to... to be able, the layers of support, if you will, to help out. But all in all, I think we have a great place. We have caring people. The person I took over for years ago, Bill Lomas, taught me the ropes. The street is named after him out in front here. He's got a mural on the wall. Kathy has seen. We have an award that we give out every year, the Lomas Legacy Award, to a staff member and community member that just goes above and beyond for kids, basically kind of what it is. And then prior to Bill, Ralph Stanton, and that's the name of the building. So over the last 50, 60 years, there's been three pretty main leaders, and I've been the last 20 years. So, you know, unfortunately, I never got to meet Ralph, but Bill and I speak weekly. We are connected friends. We go to dinner. If something weird happens here, I call him and say, I bet you never had this one. He's always with me. welcome here. We call him Pappy now. He's got grandkids. We do a day of service, a project that we do, and he always comes and volunteers. So it's a tight-knit community in Fox Lake. We take care of each other. We do what we can to help each other out. I got hired here 20 years ago, and I've had opportunities to go to bigger places, and some people might say bigger is better. Bigger is more money, but I fit here. I found my fit, and I love waking up every morning and getting here before the sun comes up and sometimes going home after the sun goes down. But it's been a joyful journey that comes to an end here at the end of May. So I retire after 33 years in education at the end of this year.
SPEAKER_01:So this kind of work that you've done in the last year, that must put your mind at ease a little bit. Like you're getting all this into a good place and you're going to pass the torch on to someone else with kind of like this new system in place that seems to be improving dramatically?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I would say yes and no. I wish I had learned about being trauma-informed 10 years ago. You know, if I was 40, I'd go back and get a master's degree in social work because it's really interesting to me. But at the same time, it's happening. I don't know who's going to be my replacement yet. We'll find out here in a couple of weeks. Actually, we had a meeting with our, we call it our wellness crew, our mental health people today. And we talked about doing some summer work, because I'm officially here until the end of June, and bringing the new principal in to that work. And we're talking about things like regulation stations throughout the building, which we haven't gotten to yet. We can talk about that. But have that person have some input and actually do some learning with us, because that person officially takes over July 1st. So this is actually going to be this work. Being trauma-informed is going to be a great way for the torch to get passed, whoever that person is. I know I saw some of the questions that the committee had put together, and the trauma-informed work that we've done definitely is represented in those questions. So I know the staff is expecting whoever comes in, if they don't have a lot of knowledge or background in that, they're going to expect them to do some learning before we kick off next school year. And I look forward to helping out. I'm going to be in the area. I'm actually thinking about maybe becoming a substitute teacher. So I may sub here. I don't know. We'll
SPEAKER_01:see. So, well, let's go back to that point then at the beginning of, was it the beginning of the school year? What year is it now? 2024, the beginning of the school year. You were identifying something that needed to change, you know, right? You were looking for something and, or you came, somehow you came across this idea of trauma-informed approach in the school. So how did that start for you? And what issues were you having that you're looking to solve? Yeah, that's a good question. So, I mean, we
SPEAKER_02:can go back to COVID. Yeah. So probably in every state, there was different ways COVID was handled, but similar. So we were shut down for several months. We finished the school year shut down. We started the next school year shut down. And then we brought kids back if they wanted to in a hybrid situation, so two days a week. And really then, we were just grateful to have kids back in the building. We were still six feet apart. You know, passing periods had to look a certain way. So though kids weren't in their homes anymore by themselves secluded, they were back to where they used to feel safe and knew the procedures in that, and now we have to do this whole different thing. And so even though we were getting them back in the building, I don't know, maybe there was The way we had to change their practices might have been even more impactful on their mental well-being, let alone what they had gone through just being by themselves in secluded for so long. And so that year and then the next year when we were back to basically normal school routines, we were just happy having kids in the building. And the majority of the kids were in the classrooms. The majority of the kids were coming back to normal, if you will. But We had a handful of kids who just couldn't be in that setting. And so we had probably six or eight long tables set up outside the office and kids were okay to come and not be okay at those tables. And there were quite a few, you know, just about every period. And so I always knew it was okay to not be okay, but I didn't know how to help make it okay or, or to help the student understand why they aren't feeling okay. And so our social worker and our counselor, Kim and Megan and I, we, a lot of times on the weekends, we'll find something, see something, a YouTube video, a meme, a saying, a quote, and we'll share it with each other. And so this was, let's see, the end of the school year, 22, 23. So 2023, I get this text from my social worker, Kim, with this YouTube video. And I was jittery. just getting ready to get in my cold tub. And so I always listen to something while I'm in my cold tub. So I click on this YouTube video and Kathy Hart pops up and I'm in my cold tub. And I, first of all, I hear her voice and I'm like, I, you know what this, I like this voice there, cause there's some people's voice that just wears on you. So this is a voice that I can connect to, and this is a person I can listen to. And, and Yeah. And so I stayed in that cold tub and I listened and I said, wow, this is what we've been missing. This is what our kids need for the ones that aren't okay. This is going to help me understand how to help them understand why they're not okay. And then also at some point move the staff. And so that year, it was really just me trying to do some things. Like I finally understood that, you know, the behavior is them communicating something that they need. They just don't know how to communicate it. And that was easy for me to understand in my office, not having, you know, 20 plus kids in the classroom and a couple of kids having an issue. So I could bring them in here and spend time with them. And then I listened to her second and her third. And I said, I got to figure out what the Star Commonwealth is. So I Googled the Star Commonwealth and the website popped up and this class popped up, this online class. And so I signed up to become a trauma-informed and resilient specialist. I did that actually virtually, and I was sold. Just had to figure out now how to get it into our building. And so it really took all of last year to kind of talk about it with our leadership team to get them to understand we need to do something different. What we're doing right now isn't helping. And so what is that difference? So I talked about a lot of little things here and there and then we got their guiding coalition which is our leadership team to agree to spend two days in the summer doing the the virtual online training which we did together which was awesome because you know we could stop talk ask questions start it up again rewind it if we needed to and at that point after we did that for those two days we needed to figure out how to get our whole staff on board and so like I was saying earlier, we don't have a whole lot of financial resources in our district. And so unfortunately, a couple of years ago, we were targeted by the state for an attendance issue. And fortunately, when you get targeted, you get funding from the state. And so if that didn't happen, we wouldn't be here right now. And so as frustrated as I was being a targeted school and embarrassed being the leader of a targeted school, it actually worked out for us because without that funding, we couldn't do what we're doing. And so I wanted to do this in person. I wanted it to be Kathy. We didn't know how to go about it. We had to actually partner with the Lake County Regional Office of Education because you guys are in Michigan and we're in Illinois and the funding is through a grant. And so we had to work together and the county's been great. Star's been great. And we were able to bring Kathy in in person two different Institute days live in our building here. We invited our bus drivers, which I think is really important. So, you know, let's make sure we talk a little bit more about that. And I'm just starting to
SPEAKER_00:track
SPEAKER_02:the bus
SPEAKER_00:driver.
SPEAKER_02:Sorry?
SPEAKER_00:The cafeteria workers and your secretaries?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, everybody that is for kids, you know. And so everybody in here is now a trauma-informed specialist, and we're talking about, like I said, right around 100 days. Lots of things have changed for the good. But really the challenge now is, okay, you have this certification. What are we going to do with it? And that's where we're at now. We've intentionally done some things, but there's a lot more to come.
SPEAKER_01:I love that idea where you had the long tables and it was like an indicator every day. Some kids aren't all right. I know they're not all right. That's okay. But I love that you just sat and watched you know, just had that idea. And so you could kind of see every day, like where kids were at, you know, and who needed that. And then obviously needed to take it one step further. What, what, um, what did you hear? What, what video was sent to you initially that you listened to with Kathy?
SPEAKER_02:Kathy, do you remember it was the, it was, so there's a series of three or four and one has a, it was, was recorded with a doctor. It was kind of like the more medical side of things. So I didn't, I honestly didn't listen to that one. It was more the people that you were with more of the clinical people
SPEAKER_00:that are involved with the kids? Yep, constant curiosity. One was with Tony Bentley, one was with Katie Carpenter, and one was with Will Weeks. They work with our student resilient empowerment center with kiddos who struggle in the middle school realm in Calhoun County in Michigan. And they've had experience working with kids all their careers, anywhere from 11 to 22 years old. And so I think it was, you've mentioned to me a couple of different times you really enjoyed Tony I think it was the first one you listened to. Yeah, the
SPEAKER_02:first one was, yeah. I mean, they all three were really good, but that one was, like if that one wasn't as good as it was, I probably would have went on to the next thing, you know. But it, for some reason, you know, my social worker heard it. She liked it, sent it to me. I'm like, yes, let's figure this out. You know, as you know, any change takes time. And I've been kind of known to, like my superintendent says, I'm a ready-fire angel. principle sometimes I forget to aim before I fire and so I've worked on that the last several years and I feel like I'm a little bit better at that but still got a little fire before aim and so I had to figure out and I did I came off firing and there was some whoa whoa whoa slow down push back you know the journey's been worth it and we are where we are because of that YouTube video or the constant curiosity video
SPEAKER_01:in the middle of that you were talking about how it was maybe kind of like an epiphany moment where that moment of like, and this is something Kathy talks about a lot, how behavior is a clue for unmet needs, right? Maybe Kathy, maybe you can go just give the little like quick synopsis of like what star means by that, you know?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, behavior is communication and it's the language for unmet needs. And Jeff loves the circle of courage. He's such a champion. for our model of resilience, the circle of courage, so much so that he painted it on his walls in the middle school, at Stanton Middle School. But behavior is communication. And when we have these unwanted behaviors, like if you're using Jeff's example of these, our young people survived a pandemic. None of us have ever imagined living through a pandemic. And you think about the things that we felt and experienced living through that. I can't imagine what that felt like when you're developing adolescents. Like middle school is like the worst time of my life, you know, as a growing up. I can't imagine experiencing that as an adolescent. And then so then they're sitting at these tables and thank God that your school did that, Jeff, that you knew that these kids needed a space to be safe and where they could be, you know, physically safe and separated. But then how do we help them? And so they're communicating that they're not able to be in a classroom, but then what do we do? And so the language is they're telling us that they're unsafe. How do we help fix that? So they're communicating that. So belonging, you know, the model of resilience. All human beings have these four universal needs. And the really cool thing, for those of you that don't know what I'm talking about with our model of resilience, Circle of Courage, was piloted in Nelson Mandela's South Africa, and it's used all over the world, which is so awesome to me. All human beings, not just young people, have four universal needs of belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity. And so when we think about these young people, instead of thinking of them as this bad kid or bad being What is that behavior communicating? Does this young person need a sense of belonging? Is it their sense of mastery? Do they just don't feel like they have any control or independence of what's happening in the world? Do they need generosity? Do they need to feel a sense of purpose of what's happening in their life? When we start to look at behavior through that lens of the circle of courage, we know, I'm 100% confident in saying this, when we start to look at behavior behaviors through the lens of circle of courage. And when we start to meet those needs of young people, we will see those unwanted behaviors decrease. Even while we can't control what's happening outside of our school walls or the doors, when we can make school feel like a safer place for them, we can absolutely see those unwanted behaviors decrease. We have lots of research and science behind that to prove that the science of resilience is amazing. And it's really cool to be a part of what we're learning with neuro science and the science of resilience in today's times. Ben knows I could talk about that for hours, as does Jeff. We have lots of content, so if you want to hear Chatty Cathy talk more, I'm sure you can find more of that by searching Star Commonwealth and Cathy Hart. I'm really excited to talk about that.
SPEAKER_01:We're going to have to start using the hashtag Chatty Cathy because I think people might start searching that and we just got to own that hashtag so people get to the right place. Cathy, was mentioning as you implement these things that you learn, you see unwanted behaviors decrease. So what was your, did you see unwanted behaviors decrease in the school, Jeff?
SPEAKER_02:When we first came back, the goal was safe and supervised. And that's a way we communicate here. Now kids know that now. But we didn't call it that then. It was just they were at the table and we knew where they were. And so something that's grown out of that is safety supervised and so our kids who have the greatest struggles during the day know that now if I am safe and supervised I can do what I need to do so they're not you know eloping and hiding somewhere or to the bathroom or they know they can they have a safe place to go and it's it's really different for each of the kids and there's only a handful that need that like one of our current safe and supervised students it's the the nurse's office and they've connected. And so that's okay. And we're working through a plan with that student and the nurse to start limiting those because it's such a good relationship now. There needs to be boundaries, you know, so safe and supervised and caring. And now where is the boundary that we need to set to make sure that that student is using that only when they need to, not when they want to get out of something. And so that's a balance that you got to play You know, one of the things when Kathy was talking about the circle of courage that I think one of the biggest things we've changed here in the last hundred days or so, when students would, you know, behave inappropriately and the teachers would have to document that and it would get turned in and would get put on the system that their parents could see, you know, the family access system. And then they had to, you know, pay the price, right? So what is that? That could be 90 minutes in a classroom, silent. With a staff member supervising it after school. That could be an in-school suspension where you sit at a table by yourself. Because we don't have a room here. We're small. So it's really, it was like a little hallway off the office area here. There was two desks there. Out-of-school suspension and, you know, definitely not something that benefits the student. Definitely something that I've learned over the last couple years. So we just had a student yesterday make a pretty bad decision. She spent the whole day with me here. in the office and 20 years ago, what she did would have been a zero tolerance violation. She would have been home for 10 days because that's not okay anymore. And it's actually, it's against the law now in Illinois. We didn't even consider out of school suspension. Her mom came in yesterday and we met and she asked, can I take her home? Because sometimes parents have to be with their kids too. And when they make bad decisions and that's okay. But today, she had an assignment, a learning task that she had to do along with the bad decisions she made. But also, it gave me time to go through what we now call an opportunity to be better with her. Instead of an ODR, Office Discipline Referral, we call it an OTBB now. So it's an opportunity to be better. So the first thing we do is go over the universal needs of the Circle of Courage. And we talk the posters on my wall right here, the posters in every classroom in the building. Kids are starting to see and recognize and understand. So we go through each of the four areas of the circle and I've asked them, and it's on our documentation now, I've asked them to score themselves. So you're either a plus, a zero, which would kind of be neutral, or a negative. And I explain to them what belonging is and what mastery is and what independence is and what generosity is and they score themselves. And then beyond that, any unmet needs, you know, hunger, consistency, lack of choice, those types of things, there's a section there. And then also we have a part that says unlearned skills because sometimes you get really frustrated in math class and it causes you to go, you know. So maybe it's because you struggle in math. So we look at those three areas and we try and figure out where the break in the circle is or where we're meeting the needs of the student or, you know, is Is that student in the wrong class with the wrong teacher? Where is the problem at? And from there, it's a two-sided document. Now we flip it over and we go over, what did you do? So we used to just do a reflection sheet. What did you do? Who did it impact? IDK, IDK, IDK. I would get them the next day and meet with the student. There was nothing there. And so we do it together. They don't even have to write. I ask them the questions. They talk, which is so much easier for kids. I write it out. They pick the areas of the circle that they feel that they're the best in. And we pick an area where they're struggling a little bit and we start to talk about a plan. And then actually the last part of the reflection is, and I talk a little bit about being a Buffalo here. I don't know if you can't see behind me, but there's a Buffalo head right there. So I could later, but the Buffaloes, they run into the storm. That's the resilience side of things, you know. So instead of doing this behavior because you were feeling this way, what can we do better? And that's part of the learning activity they have to do while they're, you know, it's an old school, in-school suspension, but really it's an opportunity to just hang out with the student. And actually this girl's a transfer student who transferred in probably about 30 days ago and hadn't even attended school this year. And so I'm so proud of her because she's been here I would say 95% of her time once we got her to come. Truancy was looking forward. The school was calling her. When I finally had the ability or opportunity to talk to her mom and get her here and just start to build that belonging piece, which, by the way, is the highest area that she scored herself, she now trusts and knows what she did was wrong, but we don't judge. We try and figure out why. So what What were you doing? How were you feeling when you did this? And what's a better choice? What's a better way to communicate? Because so many of our kids, they just don't know the right words to use or the right way to deal with it. So, you know, people too, sometimes they'll say, man, you had a lot of kids in your office today. You know, scale of one to 10, was today a one? And I would say, no, today was a 10 because we were able to impact the kids that were most in need. I
SPEAKER_00:got to reframe. Out of school suspension. Old school. I totally know what you're saying. You did not do an old school, out of school suspension. That's a lot of O's. You did a time in co-regulation with that young person and created that sense of belonging and fostering connection, which is totally building resilience and creating a sense of belonging, meeting her needs. I totally know what you mean. And I'm glad that you use that language because it gave the opportunity to reframe that for anybody listening. And that's exactly what a trauma-informed, resilience-focused approach is. Like, you totally defined it. And like what you said, this is such an awesome example, like what you said about that young person. She needs belonging. She doesn't attend school. Because what happens in the past, when she makes, you know, poor choices, probably because of stress or trauma in her life, or I'm going to, you know, go on a limb, not really a limb, but she's got some toxic stress and trauma in her life. And so she, you know, has a pattern of behavior. And we know the neuroscience behind those those things that happen right so then she gets you know consequences or probably punished because of those exclusionary discipline practices right you get expelled and or suspended which reinforces that private logic i'm a bad person i'm a bad human nobody wants me look at look at how bad i am which then reinforces those bad decisions and it's this shame cycle right that continues to happen with that young person but what you did was you broke that shame cycle and said, I see you. I care about you and I'm going to help you through this. Yeah, you made a poor choice, but you know what? We're going to work on it together and you helped break that cycle. So I'm so proud of you and proud of Stan and so thankful that you shared that.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. You know, the things that it brought up when I was hearing you tell that story, the first thing, I'm sure Kathy probably sees this all the time because she's like out there with everybody, you know, interacting. But like you talked about, this idea of safe and supervised. And you gave the example of the one kid, like what they needed was to be with the nurse. The recommendation would probably be make a comfort corner and have the kid go to a comfort corner. But it's really interesting to see how everyone interprets this education, this training. You're like, okay. And I think Kathy probably sees it all the time, all these cool interpretations of the training that star provides so you said yeah okay well we'll we'll give you that same feeling of a comfort corner it's just going to be in a safe and supervised way and and we're going to take it from there and we're going to and kind of the same idea with the comfort corner you know you don't just let them go there all day and stay there you know you slowly start to you know kind of work them back and see shorten the amount of time and try to like you know address the issue that at hand in the first place and so but I mean I feel like that sort of thing is probably really helpful for people to hear. Someone who's listening to this, like, oh, that's an interesting way to interpret this idea, you know? You know, so
SPEAKER_02:it made me think of part of the journey here that we haven't talked about yet, but when I was just starting to learn about a star and Bo Hutchings was sending me some literature on it. Bo's phenomenal, by the way. Shout out to Bo. He checked in today, actually, to see how everything was going. So anyway, I was reading about a school called called Mingus Brooke, and I don't even remember how this all worked out, but we had an institute day, I want to say maybe last April, and I was really pushing this with my superintendent, like, we have to do this, and she said, well, okay, fine, I need other people to get on board with you, though, so we had a Friday institute day, so four of my colleagues and I got one of the school vans, and we drove up to Mingus for four and a half hours, And we're a 5-8 building and they're a K-4. But there's not anything that they do that STAR does that can't be adapted to a middle school and, because I've spent 10 years of my career in high school as well, to a high school. You may have to change some of the visuals a little bit. You may have to change some of the wording a little bit. But all of these philosophies and practices fit in any building. So what an amazing school that they have. I met Heather Fossey and her staff, and they just opened their doors to us. We were able to just kind of open house it, go into different rooms. We watched their morning meetings, which to me was probably the best thing I saw while I was there and totally impacted the way we start our days here now. And it's called community building here, and I will put it up against any school in the country. I've had people come in to watch already. And again, we're not that far into all this, but Mingus has these reset regulation areas throughout their building. They have a resilience coach. They have a philosophy and a flow chart. If this happens, this is, I mean, I can't wait to get there, but I know that it's a process. And their story of being one of the schools that struggled the most in their district to now, there isn't really that many struggles, if any at all. And so it was amazing, and it really flipped the switch in some of my colleagues that I went with, and they started talking about it here. And I think that was probably the moment where, okay, it's not just Jeff talking about this. We've got Kim now, and we've got Lisa now, and we've got Katie now, and we've got Megan now, and they're talking about it in their teams and their groups, and maybe this is something that is going to help stay in school. And then the guy in coalition jumped in. on board. And like I was saying, we trained virtually and now here we are.
SPEAKER_01:You know what this is making me realize too is I think of principals and administrators getting their staff trained, but you're really making me realize like how important it is for its principals and administrators and vice principals to be trained. And I guess, I mean, this is just my own ignorance, but I'm like, oh yeah, you are at the forefront of so much behavior as a principal or as a vice principal, right? Right.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And you know, when everybody speaks the same language, has the same curiosity, cares enough to look at a QM file to find out about a kid or ask a colleague a question, when we're all doing it together, it doesn't feel like one person's carrying the load. So it's really a shared mindset shift. And it's impacted the building. Well, you've seen some of our early data and I'm going to tell you I was so cautiously optimistic when we started to track a little bit of this stuff and then the numbers started popping up and I can't wait to see the next month and the next month and the next and now I'm looking at bus driver bus conduct reports and those are down and so yeah I will toot our horn all over the country if I'm allowed eventually and that's why I'm here because I want people to know this is impactful. And it's hard. It's hard work. But it's actually brought our staff closer together too.
SPEAKER_00:I know it's going back a little bit, but one of the things I wanted to comment on that, I mean, it makes sense, but I don't think that we talk about it enough. Ben, you made the point about the nurse with that young lady. When we think about trauma, especially like young people who grow up in situations of what I would call toxic stress or trauma as a very young person. So you're thinking like zero to five when kids or kiddos are growing up in significantly deficient circumstances, that's what we'd call relational trauma. The way to heal that is with relationships. And so we can have kiddos, sometimes kids do need to have like tools and resources these comfort corners or regulation stations and sometimes that has to be what we do is teach them how to regulate that is a good skill obviously teaching them coping skills and strategies but we that's why we have the time in approaches like what Jeff did but sometimes we have to heal within relationships the way to heal relational trauma is you heal with other human beings we borrow that's what co-regulation is you're borrowing somebody else's calm we have to be the calm in the storm for our young people we're healing within the context of relationships and I think we don't talk about that enough is when you are harmed in relationships if you have been harmed if your trauma is that someone harmed you or that you were neglected like someone should have cared for you and they didn't that is some type of relational trauma and we have to heal that trauma through relationships and so having that nurse who's a caregiver take care of that child having Jeff take care of that child that is healing that relational trauma and there's a reason in our 10 steps to a trauma-informed resilience focus school what one we talk about the model resilience step one step two we talk about the theory of trauma the very first strategy is fostering connections because that is you are the medicine the human connection is the really is that is your ability to connect with kids not not doesn't that it's not about being a counselor or social worker or therapist while we are important people or anyway it's important to have those strategies it's just it's the human connection that makes a difference. If you're a human, you can help heal trauma. You don't have to have the counseling degree. And I'm not putting counselors down, right? Because I am one. It's just about that. It's the humanness that matters.
SPEAKER_02:You know, that reminds me of this story years ago. We had a student here who totally connected with one of our bus drivers.
SPEAKER_03:There you go.
SPEAKER_02:And he lived, I mean, right up the street here. He didn't even have to ride the bus. But not only did he ride the bus, he got on So our elementary school transports first. They start before us, and then our kids get on the route. So there's two routes. Well, the student would get on the first route and ride with that bus driver and then ride with that bus driver during his route and come to school. And when she retired, he decorated his bike. And so at the last day of school, we have like a bus parade and horns honking, and it's a big celebration. Well, the student wanted to lead Miss Kathy's bus out of the parking lot. And so he, and I have a video of this, it was awesome. He rides the bike, the buses go out, and that is, I mean, to me, that's the epitome of relationships and connections and belonging. And it was a bus driver. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You know, that's the other truth of it all, too, is, like, there's so many good people. They already know how to do this, a lot of this work. They know that kids need... You know, and they do these things years before you have this like framework for it. But I think it I think I think these practices maybe just help help you step back and like look at a circle of courage and identify a gap. You know, it just kind of give you just more of like a, you know, high level framework, even though I'm sure a lot of your teachers, obviously, and your bus drivers and yourself are already doing a lot of these things to make kids feel safe and, you know, welcome and I
SPEAKER_00:agree with you 100% there's so many schools Ben that are already doing things right this helps hone in on this is what we need we are doing right and we need to do more of this like we need to spend more time fostering connections like Jeff is a natural relationship builder and I think this really helped him realize I am doing this like reinforcing the right you know there are so many schools that are doing the right thing and helping them reinforce those right things and giving them a strategy around like building resilience with this organization But school, there's a lot of schools who are doing a lot of things right. And again, this gives them that strategy to keep doing those things right.
SPEAKER_01:So what other, I mean, I'm sure the two days with Kathy were transformative, but what other, you know, things have you put into place this year?
SPEAKER_02:So we changed the way we start our day every, every morning now. And so I'll talk a little bit too. So we added yonder pouches. We got rid of cell phones and that was big. The cell phone, the cell phones are, uh, definitely a weapon in the hands of 10 to 14-year-olds. Not always, but often. Actually, that idea came about last year, end of last year, and everybody wanted to do it. Like, everyone thought it was going to be great. All the teachers, all the staff, yeah, this is going to be great, but you're going to be the one that enforces it. Or the paras are going to be the one that greets the kids at the door and tells them to put their phone away because they had been fighting that fight for so long. And so, again, This summer, Guiding Coalition agreed that at 8.15, every person in our building will be in a location that they're assigned. And if you're a classroom teacher, you're in your room. If you're not a classroom teacher, you're in the stairwell, you're in the gym, you're in the cafeteria, you're in hallways, you might be out in front. I learned this from Mingus, too. I watched, I think it was Renee, their resilience coach, greeting the buses. I watched another staff member greeting the parent pickup and drop-off. So we do that now. And it's because of what I watched there and how it just, I mean, that's building relationships, even with the parents at that point, because you can say hi to them when they open the door to let their kids out, and they know you're there to help keep their kids safe. And so people are all over the building welcoming kids. We talk about personal greetings at the door. Every kid should be getting at least five on their way from getting off the bus, coming in our building, getting their breakfast, and getting to their kids. community building. They take their breakfast down and our teachers have the lights turned down, they have music playing. So from 8.15 to 8.30, it's just a calm way to start the morning. And then at 8.30, all of those people that are outside of the classrooms are assigned to a classroom. So there are two or three adults then in every classroom to start the actual day, but we do our first 20 minutes, we call it community building. And so we do like a practice to pause pause to start or pause and ponder where we just stop, ground yourself, you know, put your feet flat on the ground. That right now we have a former student who is in the hospital and in an ICU. And so this morning we just took a moment to think about him and just to send positive vibes his way. So, you know, every morning we do a little bit of something. And when there's something like that happening, we focus on that. Other days we just focus on, you know what, even if you're good, it's a good time to practice a tool in your toolbox when you're not good. And so we do that. And then I do announcements and I pass it over to, we're like this on a Zoom or a Google Meets throughout the school. So every classroom has the Promethean board on and we do about a two to three minute mindful moment. So it could be a movement, could be focused on some sound, it could be breathing. And then we go into a community circle. And I also, that was something that I watched. observed at Mingus Brook. And so we provide prompts. The kids have been great at getting in those circles and starting to feel comfortable to share. You know, it used to be yes, no, good. You know, like when your kids come home from school, how was your day? Good. They're gone. But now it's actually like I'm when I when I join in and participate with the kids, I'm learning. Like I had a student. The question was like one thing you're really proud of. I'm proud of myself for trying for basketball, seventh grade. I've never been on a team before. And this was a couple of years ago. And this kid is now on the freshman high school basketball team and he's doing great. He had never, he didn't know how good he was, but because of that circle and because he got comfortable, he's now playing high school basketball. And so we do that every morning on Mondays. That's our courageous classroom lesson. So we have implemented, you know, we shifted from second step that we've done for the last 15 or 20 years Because I think it's important that we align all of our practices. So we do our Courageous Classroom. Our PBIS rewards now are Courageous Cash. And so on Mondays, we do our lesson. The teachers deliver that lesson. Our mental health team kind of adapts it a little bit on slides to make it more age appropriate. And it's been great because Second Step had us doing different lessons at every grade. Now it's a school-wide thing. And so I can reinforce it on the announcements. We can reinforce it with the courageous cash throughout the day. And some are two weeks, but typically every week there's a new focus and it's Monday through Friday now. And so Tuesdays, we definitely get into a circle, a prompt that's led by our wellness team. Wednesdays, this is kind of cool. Our kids meet with their teachers who are their bankers and they deposit their courageous cash. And it kind of goes like into an online system so that when it's store time to go, you now have their cash. It's like Apple Pay now instead of having to carry all these little dollars around. And then Thursdays our instructional coaches get involved. The discussion or the team building that happens on Thursdays is actually an engagement strategy that our instructional coaches provide. We have a lot of young teachers and so we do a non-content Thursday morning and then they can actually take that and use it in their science class or in their social studies class. And then Friday we go back to our mental health team and do a checkout that way. But I just, the way my staff has agreed to do this, and we call each other par-cilitators because we've learned over the years that we just say, here's a folder of things you can do and you're the facilitator. A third of people will do it. A third of the people will put it out there and a third are doing something they want to do. And so the par-cilitator thing, again, it's brought our staff together and there are two or three adults in each one of those classrooms in those circles participating. This year we hired our first ever safety coordinator. He joins a different one every morning and so the kids get to know him. He gets to know them. So when it is time to get involved in a situation that maybe a student's misbehaving, they know each other. And so it's really been good.
SPEAKER_01:How is your staff reacting in general this year? You know, do you feel a sense of seeing a sense of relief from them or, you know, is it a difficult buy-in from some people just in general? How's the staff reacting? So today our
SPEAKER_02:leadership team meets to, we call like our things that we are expected to do our tights. And so we developed a list of tights as a leadership team before the school year. And so today's at the end of the day today, we're going to sit down and rate, you know, one to five, five were excellent at this, you you know, one or two we're gonna need to figure out. And so that's gonna happen now, and I think a lot of that will get answered through there. But I'm gonna tell you my expectations are, my hopes, that we're gonna get a lot of fours and fives because it is a mindset shift that they are buying into because I think we're being intentional about, you know, we talked about a lot of schools will do this or do that, and we did that too for years. I mean, I felt like we really cared for kids, but like in silos, you know? Now it's intentional. The circle of courage is the philosophy that we go back to. And we're not great at it yet. We're called specialists. We're not specialists yet. We're getting there. And I challenge them, too, like, OK, you've got this now. Now what? What are you able to do in your classroom? And when we have those discussions, sometimes it'll be like a little competition where, oh, man, you did that so well. I want to do it, too, because I want to be as good as you. they'll go to each other and say, you know what, I'm struggling with this. And I know this kid is really good in your room. What's happening there? So as far as the staff goes, I think, like I said earlier, it's really brought us closer together.
SPEAKER_00:Jeff, I'm glad that you said that because aren't some of you, didn't some of you take the coach course as well to be certified coaches?
SPEAKER_02:So I think I'm the only one that's done the certified coach. Yeah. And I do believe our Our social worker and counselor have plans to do that.
SPEAKER_00:But
SPEAKER_02:right now, I'm the only one that's gone through it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:No wonder you're so good. You just keep getting certified.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you. So when I retire, people ask, what are you going to do? Well, first, I want to be bored. And then I want to go wherever Kathy is and do this in person. My goal is to be bored on some days, but also to try and help this school continue and our district continue, but also the town I live in. I know a lot of those people there. Maybe I can help. Whatever it comes to, I don't know. But I'm not just going to be on the golf course every day. I can't afford it. I've lose about 18 golf balls every time I golf. Can't afford it anyways. Yeah, and I want to tell you guys just a quick story, and I don't know if this matters or means anything, but yesterday I told you about Bo. And so I have a...
SPEAKER_00:Bo is the child that he talked about that's in the hospital. Oh, not
SPEAKER_01:our Bo. We were talking about our Bo earlier, too, a different Bo.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. He's 24 years old now. He graduated from here. He's Down syndrome and great parents and... I just believe how things line up. Like Kathy came into my life through this podcast while I was getting into an ice bath. I just believe there's a higher power that puts people together. And so I didn't know that, I just found out two days ago that Bo was in the hospital. It was already his sixth day. And I wouldn't have known, but his nurse went to school at Stanton. So she told her mom, who is a kitchen lady at Stanton, who told me, so I called or I sent a text to Bo's mom and dad and they let me know yesterday like I talked to them at nine o'clock yesterday and he was not good and we weren't sure if there was going to be it today and so I called my superintendent said I got to go and I started thinking back to a student her name's Jaylee she was a popular kid you know athlete but she always looked out for Bo and I called I had I just happened to have her mom's cell phone. You know, one of the things when you're around for 20 years, you trade numbers. And so I called Jaylee's mom. I said, listen, Bo needs us, and I need Jaylee. She was at work. She called. She met me at the hospital. We spent four hours there. And I watched two of my former students, a nurse and a kid with a giant heart, take care of this poor kid who's intubated and sedated. And I'm getting goosebumps right now. I just sat back and watched this, and I was just amazed at how wonderful, the kind of wonderful people they've grown up to be. And it's because of the community that we're in and because of the schools that they went to and the families. And so yesterday was, though, a very sad day, it was a day that I was really proud of some of our kids. And keep sending the positive vibes because I'm hoping to hear some good news today.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. You probably don't remember one slide from the training, but we put the slide in there. It's not that it's not the trauma necessarily that makes it the worst thing that happened. It's being alone with the trauma that makes it the worst thing. That when we have that community support is what can make it bearable. We have somebody to go through it with. So you being there with people.
SPEAKER_01:I read a couple of articles that I had found that you know, before having this conversation. And one of your quotes in there, Jeff, was you take care of kids like they're your own. And this is obviously an example of that. We're talking about a kid who left your school a decade, more than a decade ago. Well, I'll tell you
SPEAKER_02:what, that kid, I mean, he touched my soul every day. He made me smile every time I saw him. And so, you know, when I heard about it, the only thing I was thinking about is he needs to hear my voice, you know, and he needs to hear Jaylee's voice. And so he sedated what he can hear. And when we walked into the room, he was sleeping. And this is the God's honest truth. He opened his eyes. And Bo, we have a ceiling tile that his mom made for us that sits right outside our main entrance. And Bo was not verbal, but he would give this double thumbs up anytime he saw you. Like this was, everything's great. And it's on our ceiling tile out there. And I'm not kidding you. When I started to talk to him, I watched his left thumb. thumb, start to try and like make up. And then he started to cry. Yeah. And I didn't know if it was like tears of joy for being there with him or, you know, he was, I'm sure he's scared. But yeah, let's just keep sending positives to Bo because the world needs him. We will. Absolutely. Maybe
SPEAKER_01:we can dedicate this to him. Absolutely. The other quote that I saw in one of the articles that I read was, I didn't write down who wrote it, but he said that, talking about you, said, he's the heart and soul of Stanton School. He takes great pride in each one of his students and staff members, and there's nothing he wouldn't do to help a family or colleague. And that seems very obvious after this conversation with you. And so, you know, thank you so much for your dedication. I mean, thank you for committing your career to helping children and families for decades. We so appreciate Appreciate it. You know, and happy that you and Kathy connected and just like the ripple effect is, is going to continue for years and years. And I'm just so thankful for that.