Transcript: Session 1A: Balancing Acts: Nurturing Educator Wellness for Sustainable Impact

Jenny Betz:

So hi, good morning. It’s great to have you all here. Again, welcome to this session, Balancing Acts, Nurturing Educator Wellness for Sustainable Impacts. My name is Jenny Betz and I serve as a technical assistance provider for the California Center for School Climate, and I’m a senior program associate with WestEd. I will be your moderator for this session. If you are able to join our keynote this morning, you’ll notice that there’s so many connections to the sessions, to this session and other sessions throughout the day. Really, part of that shift in transforming school climate mindsets and systems is also thinking about the wellness of educators and, really, the humanity of the people in the system, right? So I think you’ll find a lot of connections along the way. Go to the next slide. So before we hop in to the main presentation, I just want to share a quick note about the California Center for School Climate. So the California Center for School Climate is funded, it’s a California Department of Education initiative that’s led by WestEd.

We provide free support and trainings on school climate and data use to local education agencies or districts and charter organizations in California. We invite you to visit our website, which is ccsc.wested.org to learn more about the supports that the center offers to districts and schools across the state. Next slide. And if you haven’t already, please in the chat, do share your position, role, your name, what community you’re located in, whatever those important things are that you’d like to share with folks. So now the exciting part I love, and I’m very excited to introduce our guest speakers for this session. So first, please welcome Antoinette Miller, technical assistance provider for the California Center for School Climate and program associate in WestEd’s Resilient and Healthy Schools and Communities area. I’m very lucky to work closely with Antoinette, so you’re really in for a treat today. In this capacity, Antoinette provides coaching, technical assistance, and professional learning to schools, districts, and county offices of education. Antoinette’s experience is grounded in school climate and culture, mindfulness, healing-centered and restorative practices, social emotional learning and diversity, equity, and inclusion, so the perfect presenter for today.

Antoinette comes to WestEd with two decades of knowledge and experience and education, having previously worked as a general and special education teacher, a district-wide intervention specialist, and an MTSS support coordinator. So Antoinette is dedicated to supporting the growth and development of all students and adults. And our second speaker today is Dr. Rachel Vatannia. She’s the coordinator of educational services at San Leandro Unified School District with an unwavering commitment to fostering inclusive and equitable learning environments, Dr. Rae works in areas related to whole child learning, multi-tiered systems of support, college and career readiness, student and family engagement, and the cultivation of student agency. Her work is really grounded in pedagogical, I know that word, sorry, in pedagogical intricacies of child and adolescent development with an emphasis on equity and inclusion. Her intentional focus really underscores her dedication to ensuring that educational practices not only meet high standards of effectiveness, but are also inclusive and prioritize the diverse needs of every student. We’re super excited and really grateful to have both of you here, and with that, I will pass it on over to Antoinette.

Antoinette Miller:

Thank you, Jenny, and good morning, everyone. As we get settled for our morning together, I just want to highlight our intentions for the day. So this session is about educator wellness. Our three intentions for the session are to, number one, prioritize our wellness, number two, center around community and collective care, and number three, provide you with wellness strategies at the individual, collective, and systemic levels. So right now, I know that we’ve already introduced ourselves in the chat, but I would like you to choose an emoji that resonates with you, how you’re doing today, how you’re entering this space, and share it with everyone in the chat. So for me, I want to choose probably this weird, silly face, because I feel like I’m all over the place today with laughter, but also just my mind is all over. And so I got the laughing, but it’s also a little bit silly and crazy.

But yeah, I see some of us are tired, some of us are excited to be in the space, happy. I’m not sure what some of these mean, but thank you for sharing. Please, continue to share and let us know how you’re doing. Today we’re going to start off talking about paradigms. So a paradigm is a belief system that informs our values, assumptions, habits, and practices. It’s kind of like our worldview. So we operate from paradigms and our systems as individuals and as groups. We also operate from paradigms, because our systems are created and designed by us. So when we think about a traditional paradigm of care and wellbeing, what we have are, ultimately, individualized approaches of coping without systems of support, there are things we do for ourselves to survive, basically, and engaging or not engaging in those approaches is viewed as individual moral failing or succeeding.

In this traditional paradigm, our wellbeing is singularly ours to do well or poorly. There isn’t an examination of the larger external conditions that play a major role in how we show up to our own wellbeing or how wellbeing is defined. If we were to have systemic care, we’d have infrastructure and cultures designed to support collective, emotional, psychological, and social wellbeing. So let’s take a look at this chart on the screen. On the left side, we have what traditional wellbeing care has looked like. There’s a focus on self-care, we practice those individual activities without support, and things are done on a very transactional level. So as we shift to the right, to systems of wellbeing and care, there is a focus of community care, we have those systems and supports in place, and our relationships become more transformative.

Positive relationships are an important part of wellbeing at work, so as we think about strategies for promoting relationships at work, we need to think about how prioritizing the time needed to cultivate these relationships. They won’t happen on accident, especially given the typically busy days that most educators experience. And we do need these relationships to help us on our journey of wellness. So if we want to be well, it’s important to have an emphasis on sustainability. The social, emotional, and physical health of educators is a shared responsibility and a critical component of student learning and overall community wellbeing. When thinking about our wellbeing, we can’t just practice individual strategies, we must have the conditions in place, so that wellness can be sustainable.

When we are well, we’re able to navigate through stress, stay in the profession, and improve our relationships with our peers, students, and families, so on the next few slides, we’re going to dive into a few practical strategies to use to support us on our wellness journey. On the next slide, we’ll discuss what we can do on the individual level. The first strategy that I want to discuss today is about things that we can do on an individual level. Over the course of the past 20 years as a teacher, intervention specialist, and coordinator, I’ve had to embed small moments throughout my day, so that I could take care of myself and be well. So on the next slide, we’ll dive into these three strategies that I imply throughout my day.

So these might be simple strategies for some of us, but I have found that these three strategies have worked for me. Them being journaling, mindfulness, and just getting outside of the confines of my classroom and going outside. So as an intervention specialist, I worked with the whole school and, at times, I found myself overwhelmed with behavior referrals or mediating between fifth graders. One strategy that helped tremendously, especially after incidents, was journaling. I took three to five minutes to check in with myself. I wrote down how I was feeling and I was able to leave it on the page, so that way, I can continue to do my job and be present for the students and the staff that I was supporting. Sometimes this involved a lot of tears, but it was a great way to release all the different things that were coming up for me throughout the day, and sometimes I had to take out multiple moments throughout the day to journal. Going outside is another strategy, or a thing that I did.

I was able to get in some steps, bask in the sunshine, and that always helped my day. At times, I would actually go out and walk around our grassy field at the school, and then soon enough, students were walking with me. So it was just something very simple, but also refreshing. Guided meditations and practicing deep breathing techniques also have truly helped me. Throughout the day, whether it has been dealing with a fight at lunch, phone calls with families, staff meetings, or endless fundraisings to attend outdoor ed camp, I found that taking a moment to check in with myself and just practice deep breathing helped to keep me calm, it got me through my day, and it helped me to stay grounded. So on the next slide, we’re going to have an opportunity for you to practice.

So Sarah Blondin is one of my favorite teachers. She teaches us about transforming moments of discomfort and stress, so if you learn to stay, you learn how to be. And in being without avoidance, we learn that life, joy, abundance, strength, and healing are each born from the very earth we are standing on. Never somewhere else, but in every moment, at all times, wherever we are. So get comfortable and I invite you to take in this guided meditation.

Sarah Blondin via meditation video LINK TO VIDEO (https://youtu.be/UVCn5hdf6Jw):

Hi, I am Sarah Blondin and I am the author of Heart Minded, How to Hold Yourself and Others in Love. Most of us have a challenging relationship with our feelings, and we’re most often stuffing them down or ignoring them or letting them make all their noise and never really addressing them, and a really easy practice that I use for feelings, instead of getting caught in identifying with them, we’re just going to learn to let them go. So we’re just going to begin by bringing our eyes to a close and getting really comfortable in our bodies. Deep inhale, long exhale out the mouth.

And I want you to see if you can blur the edges of your physical body. And imagine turning into this great wide ocean. And there’s ruby-colored coral in your sand and there’s fish all around. And everything is a deep peace. Feelings are not us, they’re not who we are. They’re trapped memories of hurt. They’re trapped identities, old stories, habitual ways of thinking, but we are the ocean and we are alive. And I want you to imagine a bubble rising up from the shifting sand of the bottom of the ocean. And as the bubble rises, I want you to maybe name a feeling, even a thought or an old memory that is no longer serving you or that you’d like to let go of.

And just watch that feeling rise to the surface of the ocean and watch it pop and enter back in the air. And you can do this for as long or as little as you need, just naming any feelings that rise up within your water, maybe even bringing a soft smile to your face as you watch these things leave you. They are not you. They are but passing wind, they are but bursting bubbles of grace. Our feelings are not punitive, they’re not meant to be wished away or to feel shameful about. They’re there just to be let go of. You can open your eyes once your waters feel a little more calm. Thank you.

Antoinette Miller:

Thank you for participating in that with me. I just need to take a deep breath there. As I was listening to her words, two things came to mind, less hustle and just being able to flow. As I said, when we were sharing our emojis, I felt like my brain was all over the place and I think I needed that brief break to calm down, slow down, breathe. Yeah, I know that it’s not only important for us to talk about things to do, but it’s equally important to practice, and so I hope that that brief meditation gave you just a few minutes to practice. I know that we don’t have enough time for everyone to come off of mute or share in the chat, but right now I want you to silently check in with yourself. Did the guided meditation spark anything within you? What came up for you? What might you need to put in place to take care of yourself today? So just check in with yourself, maybe identify what you need or even set an intention for your day.

During our wellness break today at 12:30, you’ll also have an opportunity to participate in another mindfulness activity, and so we encourage you all to attend. So on the next slide, we’ll explore strategy two. So as intervention specialist, I had the opportunity to support multiple school sites. I continued to embed those small moments throughout my day for my own wellness, but I also began to plan opportunities for my colleagues. From Healing Centered Engagement, the work of Dr. Shawn Ginwright, and also explored this morning by our keynote presenter, Dr. Lee Porscha Moore, we learned that care, commitment, and connection are at the core of transformative relationships. When we build transformative relationships, we begin to matter to one another. We spend time, connect, and stay engaged with each other while forming bonds where we can be vulnerable and authentic. Human-centered approaches help us build connection, commitment, and care. So on the next slides, I uplift two of the activities that the staff participated in. Wednesdays were early dismissals for the school that I supported, there were 20 to 30 minutes window between dismissal and staff meetings, so our school started having Wellness Wednesday.

This was an optional time for all staff to participate in a variety of activities. While the aim is to support our wellness journey on a daily basis, it was important to designate a time where all staff could come together and do these things. We participated in walks around the neighborhood, yoga, body scans, guided meditations, playing games like foursquare, journaling, and art. This time became really important for the staff. It was a time to connect, build relational trust, build and uplift our community and start a new practice on our wellness journey. So this picture is actually of me doing yoga. It ended up becoming so popular that we also did it with students.

Another strategy or an activity that we did during Wellness Wednesdays were nature walks. These are actually three images that I took walking around the neighborhoods in San Leandro, California. So being in nature helps to improve our physical, emotional, and mental health. And so just being outside with each other helped us before we had to go step back into a staff meeting. On the next slide, we’ll dive into strategy three, so systems, right? So we’ve gone over what you can do possibly at an individual level, those practical strategies, and then moved into what teams or the whole staff could do. So now I’m going to hand it over to Dr. Rae and she’s going to dive into systems.

Dr. Rachel Vatannia:

Good morning, everyone. My name is Dr. Rae, and I’m really excited to be here with you all. Thank you, Antoinette, for that amazing meditation and information around individual and collective wellness. We are going to be talking about systems and really looking at a remix, so to speak, a rethinking of what we know or what we think we know and how we be in terms of schools and school systems. And to start, I just want to share a story that my father used to share with me when I was a little girl, about a little girl watching her mom prepare a Christmas ham. So they were in the kitchen and the little girl was watching her mom prepare this ham, and she noticed that her mom cut the butt of the ham off and tossed it in the trash before putting the ham in the oven. Curious, the little girl asked her mom, “Mom, why do you cut the butt of the ham off before you put the ham in the oven?”

And the mom said, “Well, that’s the way my mom used to do it and she taught me to do the same.” So then the little girl, still curious, wanting an answer to her question, went to her grandmother and says, “Grandma, why do you cut the butt off the ham, throw it in the trash before you cook the ham in the oven?” And the grandma said, “Well, that’s the way my mother used to do it, so I learned from my mom.” So the little girl, still curious, went to her great-grandmother and said, “Great-grandma, why do you cut the butt of the ham off of the ham and tossed it in the trash before you cook the ham in the oven?” And the great-grandmother said, “Well, back in my day, we had small ovens and the only pan that would fit in the oven couldn’t fit the entire ham, so I had to cut off the butt of the ham before I could cook the ham in the oven.”

And the little girl, satisfied with that, shook her head, “Okay, but then why do you throw the butt of the ham in the trash?” And then the great-grandmother continued on talking about how they didn’t have proper refrigeration and talking about food contamination and not wanting to get people sick, and so forth. And if we were going to situate that story about the little girl and the curiosity about the ham and then the systems and the ways of doing things within education, we have to question why we’re continuing to do things and why we’re continuing or the expectation for us to thrive is still there, within systems that weren’t necessarily designed for us. We have to rethink ways of building more flexible systems that will move and shift in ways that we can thrive. So we’re going to go through and we’re going to be looking at the power of “Re.” Next slide, please. Thank you. So the power of re.

We’re going to be looking at four different “re’s”. So we’re going to be looking at reframing, re-imagining, restoring and redesigning. Rethinking what we know, always of being and doing, and then this paradigm shift that Antoinette talked about before, so away from this black and thinking and moving towards more a spectrum of possibilities. So the first “re” is reframing. So next slide, please. Just reframing the way we see things. Next slide. Thank you. So as Antoinette said, she talked about the individual wellness and then the collective wellness. So we’re going to look at three different systems level, so reframing how we look at systems. So systems… Typically, when we think of systems, we think of these big huge elaborate operating systems, like district level, but actually, there are intra-level systems, which is… It starts with the self. And so we are a system, how we operate our wellness, and that’s why it’s important to center our own wellness and have tools and resources to help us be well.

And then there’s also the inter-level systems when we look at it from a micro level system, and those are the collective systems. So our PLC, so Professional Learning Communities, it could be grade-level teams, and again, connecting to what Antoinette was saying with those collective systems. And then there’s the inter-level systems that are the macro, so you think about the district-wide systems. Next slide, please. All of these systems need to be functioning and operating well in order for… Your intra-level system needs to be operating well, so that it contributes to the inter-level micro level as well as the inter-level micro levels need to be operating well to contribute to a healthy inter-level macro level systems. And what happens is, if even one little system in the larger system isn’t functioning properly, it can impact the entire system.

So just making sure that we reframe that, we’re not thinking of systems as just the larger thing, but we’re looking at individual, collective, and the larger systems, and how they all work and they’re all interconnected and impact wellness. And then next slide, we’re going to move on to reimagining. So we’re going to reimagine what that might look like. Next slide, please. So how many of you… I’m going to give the opportunity to add to the chat, but I’m just wondering, how many of you have heard of KPI when we talk about systems? And typically, the P in the KPI is a performance indicator. So when we look at performance, we look at things that are measurable, so let’s say in a business, if you’re selling a product, you look at how well that product is, how it’s marketed, how much money you’re making off that product, but in education, what are the performance indicators that we’re looking at in education?

And what are we measuring and what are we valuing in education? So I want to give you an opportunity to think about this, in terms of an education standpoint. And what are some of the things, the performance indicators, that we value or that we measure in education? If you could just take a moment to drop in the chat, what are some of the key performance indicators in education? And just take a moment to look in the chat, we say literacy, test scores, Kelvin Pulses, attendance, attendance data, grades, graduation, healthy kids, IEP goals, the California dashboard indicators, participation, standardized tests, benchmarks, California healthy kids surveys, yes, SATs. And keep adding in there, the performance indicators that we measure in school. We are going to reimagine what that P stands for in KPI when it comes to education. So next slide, please.

So when we’re thinking about KPI and education, we really want to shift from performance indicators to people. So it’s a shift in the macro level systems from performance to being person-centered, and we want to do that shift, because we want to shift from valuing what we measure to measuring what we value. When we value what we measure, then we move further away from that human-centered engagement and that connection piece that our keynote speaker, Dr. Lee Porscha Moore shared and also what Antoinette shared. And we move away from people and we lose that connection, so when we’re shifting from performance to people, we want to look at ways that we are being very, very, very transparent and our why and our reason for doing things by keeping people informed. We want to look at ways that we are just really inspiring people and motivating them and keeping them involved. We want to look at how relevant our systems are and what we’re doing to keep people interested, and then we want to look at, “How are we keeping people inspired in this work that we’re doing?” And then next slide, please.

The next “re” is a restore. Antoinette talked a little bit about doing mindfulness and yoga and actually taking time to journal after helping students manage conflict. That’s an example of restoring your feeling, you’re rebuilding your capacity. We’re going to look at that… At three different levels. So next slide, please. So in education, when I was a classroom teacher, I taught the littles, so I taught first grade, and I always thought about the physical load that the classroom setting or that education was placing on students, and the cognitive load. I didn’t really… I thought about the emotional load, but when I was in my teacher education program or when I was working with teacher partners, that emotional load wasn’t there.

So when we’re thinking about overall wellness in a setting, we want to make sure that we’re restoring capacity around all three of these things, and just to give an example, so when you’re thinking about physical load for a first-grade level, I always thought about, “How much time are students… Am I expecting students to sit and attend to learning in a particular location? Am I giving them opportunities to get up and move about the room?” And then cognitive load, we’re thinking about how we’re chunking information and how we’re making it accessible, so we’re doing that scaffolding, but the emotional load is often the piece that’s missing. So when we’re thinking about a redesign and a reshift, we want to make sure that we’re centering that emotional load as well for ourselves and for our students. So what are we bringing into the classroom in that moment that we need to consider when we’re going throughout our day? How are we holding compassion for ourselves and our students based on that emotional load and things that students and ourselves can be bringing into the classroom in a particular day?

And then next slide, please. And now we’re going to talk a little bit about our redesign, and this is where it’s going to really connect to what our keynote speaker, Dr. Lee Porscha Moore, talked about, and then a little bit about what Antoinette was talking about with the hustle and the flow, and this work is really based on Dr. Shawn Ginwright’s work. It’s not meant to be a complete explanation or deep dive into his work, it’s very superficial with just some key examples about the ways that I have implemented these strategies in my work. So let’s go to the next slide. I strongly recommend, if you haven’t jumped into Dr. Ginwright’s work, definitely, I highly recommend that work. It’s just empowering and just very transformative. So the first one is the Healing Centered Engagement that Antoinette talked a little bit about, the Cs.

I’m going to be looking at this more so as the shift away from the trauma informed. Dr. Moore, Lee Porscha Moore, she mentioned it briefly when she talked about the, “What’s wrong with you?” That shift from, “What’s wrong with you?” To, “What’s right with you?” Which is… “What’s wrong with you?” Is the trauma-informed versus “What’s right with you?” Is the healing-centered engagement. So we’re going to be looking at that shift from trauma-informed to the healing-centered. So trauma-informed will typically treat a student, so it’s individual treatment, but the healing center looks at the collective, like the environment in which the children are expected to thrive, or that we are expected to thrive. The trauma-informed also can take on a deficit thinking, because it places the problem on the individual as opposed to the conditions that we’re expected to thrive in.

So as you can see in the image, you can treat a fish that’s swimming in contaminated water, but if you put them back into the contaminated water, then the fish is going to eventually get sick again. So we really need to look at systems that look at the context and the container in which we are expected to thrive. How are we healing those environments and the culture and the climate, so that we don’t continue to be unwell?

And the next slide, please. The next body of Dr. Ginwright’s work that I’m just going to touch on a little bit, involved around the four pivots. Again, that was also something that was discussed with our keynote speaker. So we’re going to look at, how do we realign the way that we think, the way that we connect, the way that we act, and the way that we work? We also want to reassess our narratives. Are they still true and do they still work? When you think back to the ham story, just that curiosity of the little girl asking her mom and then going back to the generations to find out, “Why are we doing things this way today?” And, “Do we still need to do them that way? Do we still need to try to fit ourselves into systems that weren’t built for us or that don’t serve us anymore?” So Dr. Ginwright’s…

The Four Pivots involves renewing our sense of possibility and transforming how we see the world and shifting the values of our culture. It’s not a complete abandonment of what we know, hence the re. So we’re going to re, re, remix things a little bit. Next slide, please. So the first pivot that Dr. Ginwright talks about involves this awareness, so it’s this lensing to mirroring. So Dr. Ginwright, he explains this, and again, I will not do it the justice that he does. So again, I highly recommend that… He has talks on YouTube and other interviews where he just really goes into depth. He talks about this concept, is that we are really good at looking out and identifying problems in others, problems that need to be fixed, excuse me, but we struggle when it comes to mirroring and turning the attention within to see what and who we need to be or how we need to show up in order to realize the changes or make the changes that we need to do in order for us to thrive.

So it’s a really deep critical self-reflection, exploration, and curiosity, and then figuring out what our personal contributions can be to the solution of health and wellness. And then next slide. And then the next one is connection, so it’s like the shift from transactional to transformative. So we think back to KPI and we’re thinking about performance, and I heard… In the chat, we talked about grades, standardized tests, and all of those things are numbers and statistics, and so forth. If our connection involves around those things, then we’re not being person-forward. And we need to really think about, “How can we shift from those transactional relationships and connections to those transformative ones, to those human-centered connections?” So those moments of vulnerability, empathy, and listening. So in my role as a manager, I meet with my team. Either weekly or biweekly, we have individual check-ins, we have collective group check-ins, and one of the things that I make sure that I practice is, “How do I connect with my team as individuals first?” So we always start with a check-in, and it’s not work-related. It’s like personal check-ins. I check in around their personal goals, I check in around their families, we check in around just our health and wellness, and they do the same for me. They ask me questions about my goals and things that I’m working on or things that I might be even needing assistance or struggling with. So really looking at ways that we are being person-forward and valuing and honoring those human-centered connections and engagements. So again, just back to that KPI, shifting from the performance to the person. And then next slide. And then the problem to possibility. So Dr. Lee Porscha Moore really talked about this. It’s like, again, from the “What’s wrong?” To the “What’s right?” How do we refocus on creating those possibilities? So it’s human nature for us to focus on… It’s called “Negative confirmation bias” and negative confirmation bias was really important when we were in the… We needed to have that to survive. We’re being chased by wild animals, or what have you. That negative confirmation like, “Where’s the threat? Where’s the threat?” Looking for the threat, that was really important once upon a time, but is that still valid and relevant for today? So we need to really shift away from focusing on the problems that are showing up to the possibilities of what could be. The other thing that… Just an example of… Again, when I was in the classroom, I remember there was this shift away from talking about what we don’t want students to do and putting it in an affirmative language for focusing on what we do want them to do. Because even if we put “Don’t” in front of something, the next word after that is, let’s say, “Don’t run.” We put “Don’t” in front of it, but “Run” is still there. We want to instead re-shift and change our language to, “Walk, please.” So that affirmative. So it’s shifting away from the problem or what we don’t want to the possibilities and the solutions that we do want that promote better healing and engagement in our culture in schools.

And then the other… I have a funny story I wanted to share really quickly. Let me check my time to see if I have enough time. I’m running out of time, so I can’t share that story, but I’m going to move on to the next one really quickly. Sorry. Next slide, please. It’s from hustle to flow. So again, Antoinette, she talked about hustle to flow, and we live in a hustle culture. It’s just… It’s inherent, capitalism… My timer, I’ll be really quick. Sorry, I ran out of time. Capitalism, we have to just hustle, hustle, hustle. This idea and this need to just feel like we’re being productive. I remember, during the pandemic, that shift from working in an office to working from home, this constant just anxiety and just drive of just like, “I have to have to be busy all the time in order for me to feel productive, in order for me to prove my worth.” And then more recently, I remember my partner yesterday asked me to have lunch with him. And just the entire time I’m out having lunch with my partner, feeling guilty that I’m here eating lunch in a restaurant instead of in my office working through lunch. So it’s a constant thing that I am still struggling with myself, to just say, “Hey, how do we shift out of that hustle mindset into that flow, that wellness?” Giving ourselves permission for flow and for that wellness that we rightfully deserve in our lives. And then, lastly, I just want to invite you all to take a moment to reflect on one intra, so that’s the individual, or inter level systems that you can “re” in order to promote a culture of healing in the chat. I just got a text that said, “Don’t rush. No worries, it’s okay.” I’d rather give the extra time for Q and A if there are some. So if you just take a moment to just… If you want to pop in the chat, just one thing that you can commit to today to just to re, to remix your way of being, your way of doing, your way of showing up, to promote a culture of healing in schools.

I see “Reconnect,” love the play on the word. Re, “Be present and pause, slow down.” “I can use my sick days without feeling guilty,” yes. “Restore.” “Be present.” “Changing my classroom language from what’s wrong to what’s right.” “Pause.” “Recharging.” Yes. “Don’t over-schedule self.” “Regenerate.” “Restore.” Yeah, nice. I invite you all to read all the amazing responses that are coming in the chat, “Say no to extra duties.” So I always say that people who struggle with saying “No…” I always tell my friends, I’m like, “You’re not saying ‘No’ to them, you’re saying ‘Yes’ to yourself.” If that will help you say “No” more easily. “Create possibilities.” “Take time for self.” “Pack a great lunch.” Yes, food is life. All right, I’m going to mute and I’m going to turn it back over.

Jenny Betz:

Great. Thank you both so much. Wow, there’s so much in there, and I’m sorry if the timing actually added to your stress. You’re there talking about slowing down and being person-forward, and all of that. And then it’s like, “I only have a minute left,” so thank you both. We do have several questions that have come in the chat and in the Q and A, there are a couple that are a little bit more technical, so I might start with one of those, and then go really jump into some of the meatier ones. So the first technical question, and either of you can answer, but Dr. Rae, you’re the one who brought it up, is someone asked, “You mentioned transformational leadership, and is that synonymous with adaptive leadership?” So if there’s anything you’d like to share, either of you, around that.

Dr. Rachel Vatannia:

I can share. So when I think of adaptive, I think of yourself and how you adapt and fit and change to make change, but when I think about transformative, I think it’s not just you. It’s like, how are you transforming the entire system? So that’s just the short answer of how I would differentiate between the two. It’s how well I’m able to adapt within the systems to do the work that I need to do, as opposed to, “How am I actually impacting the entire system?”

Jenny Betz:

Yeah. Thank you, that’s helpful, and I think that actually leads us, really, to the next question, which is, “How can the healing strategies work when it’s in a system and folks, educators, are coming back to places where the environments that they’re working in every day are actually traumatic themselves? And after decades of working in those systems, how can we ever reverse this trauma enough to stay in the work?” It’s a big question, so I think we’d love to hear from both of you.

Antoinette Miller:

Yeah, I took a deep breath. This is a really big question. And for me, I think there’s a definite challenge, because we do need to change the system. We really do. And as much as… And just in my experience, because I went from my classroom to supporting schools, to supporting a district, I could try all the things for myself, to connect with my colleagues, but when that system piece, when that support piece from the district or the higher ups is not there, it is challenging. And so for me, it was almost like numerous things at once, simultaneously. Not only communicating and continuing, having these conversations about the things that need to change. And I found that, for myself, I had to build my community, I had to stay true to the things that I knew worked for me while continuing these courageous conversations. And for me, I also just dove into more learning. That’s why I feel so passionate about Healing Centered Engagement, because I did my master’s in trauma and then I became trauma-informed and then now healing-centered. And so for me, that growth piece helped, but it really is challenging when you have to go back to those environments and be almost re-traumatized. And so for me, I mean, I know it’s not necessarily an answer to it all, but I had to just continue that, quote, unquote, “Fight,” that, quote, unquote, “Conversation.” And I also found that when I was in a position outside of my classroom, it was easier for me to do so. I was able to connect with more people and then, when I became an MTSS coordinator, I was at the district level, I was in the room with the educational services team, and I had that voice. And I find sometimes that, when we’re not in those positions, it’s hard to get a seat at the table.

Dr. Rachel Vatannia:

I just want to add onto what Antoinette was saying around when you’re not getting that support district-wide, and let’s be honest, we all have our spheres of power in which we’re able to operate in. And I feel like, when we’re not receiving the support from the larger macro systems, that’s when we lean more into boundaries. We have to set and uphold firm boundaries that protect ourselves. And a lot of times, when you start putting those boundaries around yourself to protect yourself, you’re going to get resistance or pushback, but that’s okay. Again, I’m going to share again, I always tell my friends and even my team, “No is a complete sentence,” and, “Think about it, reframe the way you think of a ‘No.’ It’s not a ‘No’ to them, it’s a ‘Yes’ to you.” And then also just uplifting what Antoinette said about finding your people, finding the people who are not only doing the work to help themselves thrive and be, but also are willing to be there to help you as well. I think one of the biggest things that I’m seeing now post pandemic is this isolation and just this feeling of having to do it on our own and just, where are the places where we can plug in to be recharged, to be held, and to be collectively healthy?

Antoinette Miller:

Can I just add, I just want to say thank you for the reminder of “Yes to you.” “No” is hard for me, and so just that reminder of “It’s yes to you,” and… That’s something I just want to carry with me at all times so thank you, Dr. Rae, for that.

Jenny Betz:

It’s making me think, too, that there are a few questions that have come up around, “How do we convince people?” Or, “How do we get more buy-in?” And buy-in sometimes to me sounds pretty transactional versus transformative, even if that’s not what the intent is. And thinking also, Antoinette, about how… When you shared that you were at a school and there was that little window, the Wednesday window, and that sometimes you were like, “I’m going to do the thing,” and eventually, people were like, “We’ll do it with you, we’ll do it with you.” So maybe the question is also a little bit about modeling, especially for administrators or folks in those leadership roles or even unauthorized leadership roles. What does it mean to bring people along for maybe what we think is their own good in a meaningful way?

Antoinette Miller:

I think that one of the things that we first have to realize and be open to is that we have to meet people where they are, right? And so when I did… As the intervention specialist in San Leandro, and I did that wellness Wednesday, I didn’t have a clue if anyone would show up. I mean, I knew that the principal would at times, because I got that agreement with her at that time, but I didn’t want to make it like, “This is a must do.” This is right after dismissal, parents are at your door, you want to drink water, you want to eat, all those types of things. So for me, it was like, “Okay, number one, yes, modeling, but number two, I’m not going to pester people about it.” I’m going to say, “These are the opportunities, this is what we’re doing this week,” and it’s open to anyone, right? Certificated, classified, doesn’t matter. And also, simultaneously building those connections. Like you say, I love to connect with people, so just having the conversation. So for me, it was just being open and you might not do anything for your own wellbeing besides the basic needs, but this is a time for you to start experiencing if you haven’t, this is a time to continue if you’re in the middle of your journey, and if you are pro at it, right, come help us out, partner with me, lead an activity. And we’re going to offer a variety of things, because I know what might work for me doesn’t work for you. And so just having that open space, and sometimes it was about three to four people with a body scan, but then when we were outside and doing the nature walks, it was about 20 of us. So just being open with that, communicating and connecting, and just remembering everyone’s on a different place in that continuum of our journey, our wellness journey.

Jenny Betz:

Yeah. What a great… And Dr. Rae, I come to you in just a moment, but what a great reminder that wellness, or these activities we want to do around wellness, come after those basic needs. “Did you get to go to the bathroom today? Did you eat anything? Did you drink water?” What are even just those very basic survival needs that you have before you can think about, “Now I’ll go on a walk or go do yoga”? Or something, right? And that that’s the reality that so many folks in schools especially are dealing with. We have just a couple minutes left before we have to just do our final wrap-up stuff, and I’m wondering from each of you, if there’s one more thing that you would share with folks, what would it be?

Dr. Rachel Vatannia:

I’ll just share two words, “Grace” and “Compassion.” Grace and compassion for yourself and grace and compassion for each other.

Antoinette Miller:

I’m going to be like one of the kids in the classroom, you stole mine. And so I honestly was thinking give yourself grace for all of the things. Even if you’re doing a guided meditation and your mind starts going off on a tangent thinking, give yourself grace.

Jenny Betz:

Thank you both so much. Please, please join me in thanking Dr. Rae and Antoinette and the whole team here at the California Center for School Climate and all of you for being here. We appreciate it.