[00:01] Announcer:
Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.
[00:13] SPEAKER_00:
I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome to the podcast George Valenzuela, who is a nationally recognized performance and education coach, author, and speaker at Lifelong Learning Defined. He got a start in education and has helped countless educators improve their leadership and instructional innovation skills. George specializes in emphasizing core instruction and is a trusted deliverer of reputable professional training in team building, project-based learning, STEM pathways, and SEL integration across the curriculum. And he's the author of several books on robotics, environmental science, and SEL, including his new book, Raising Equity Through SEL, a framework for implementing trauma-informed, culturally responsive teaching and restorative practices, which we're here to talk about today.
[00:58] Announcer:
And now our feature presentation.
[01:01] SPEAKER_00:
George, welcome to Principal Center Radio.
[01:02] SPEAKER_01:
Thanks so much, Justin.
[01:03] SPEAKER_00:
How are you, by the way? I'm well, and I'm excited to speak with you. I think this topic of SEL, and especially as it's related to equity, is one that we've been thinking about and working on for a long time. What particular set of challenges and opportunities prompted you to write this particular book?
[01:20] SPEAKER_01:
Well, I didn't really plan to write the book. So I'm an instructional coach or education coach. And sometimes I work with administrators, like superintendents, district leaders, and sometimes teachers, and now children. And we do action research. So action research, meaning that When we are implementing a new initiative into instruction, we really look at what's happening in the classrooms, and then we decide how the intervention is going to be. And so I had a little background in emotional intelligence from reading Emotional Intelligence 2.0.
[01:51]
And it turns out that that model or that framework is really identical to Castle's framework. And so one school district during the pandemic, they had to integrate equity and SEL into online instruction. And so we started getting into that and we learned a lot and we just realized that emotions are in everything. So it's challenging to not really take emotions or really consider what's happening with emotions as we're planning instruction, as we're facilitating instruction, and we're implementing new things.
[02:24] SPEAKER_00:
Let's talk a little bit more about that role of emotion and emotional intelligence. Because certainly it's gotten a lot of press. It's gotten a lot of probably also pushback in recent years. I think the old school perspective on emotion was as educators, we would like as little as possible, please, because it's just it's just a distraction. Right. Give us a little more of an up to date understanding of emotion in the classroom and in the school setting.
[02:48] SPEAKER_01:
I do want to say one thing. So SEL in many spaces is now a dirty word. And I think it's for two reasons. It's overly done. overly done, overly stated, overly presented in PD. And also some folks that aren't experts in SEL, I think they've presented SEL as a panacea for all the issues affecting schools.
[03:09]
And no amount of emotional regulation is going to solve the issues in schools. It might help you deal better with them, but it's not going to solve them. And so one of the things that we learned through actual research is that emotions precede feelings. Feelings precede mood and mood precedes behavior. And so if we're not very careful with the emotions that you know, trigger us. And in the classroom, it might be anxiety over learning something new or not knowing something.
[03:36]
Like if you're solving math problems and we don't know like what the procedure is or young people, I should say, that really causes anxiety and fear. And if a teacher isn't mindful of that and they can't help that kid with their emotions in that very moment, then we might lose a learner. And so I think it's important that emotional intelligence be part of the curriculum? What I mean by that is that it's integrated and opposed to being a standalone, something that we stop instruction to do. No, it should be weaved in and integrated into everything we do.
[04:09] SPEAKER_00:
I love that just a brief example of a student who doesn't quite know what to do to solve a certain kind of math problem that they're dealing with in class. They have feelings about that. They have emotions. They have a mood that they're in. There are behaviors that are going to ultimately appear that'll be visible to the teacher, even if nothing leading up to that was. Take us through some of the opportunities that are there to help students become more aware of their emotions, to sharpen their emotional intelligence, and to really set students up for success.
[04:39]
If I have a student who I know is feeling anxious or who I suspect might be feeling anxious, Where is the opportunity? Certainly, we don't want to just repress emotions, you know, and again, get to the old school view that, you know, we would like as little of that as possible, as little emotion as possible. Where are some of the opportunities for students to exercise agency and for teachers to make a difference in students' emotion?
[05:01] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, so I really consider that a formative assessment. It's a formative assessment. And you know that assessment really drives instruction. And so we have a learning goal every day in the classroom. And I think that how a child is responding to his or her learning goal that day, I think that's a big indicator. Now, there's times that something that's happened in the home or in the classroom or a current event is affecting them in a way where they can't really focus on learning.
[05:27]
And so I think it's important to loop back into the emotion or the emotions of the day. And so a lot of young people and even adults, I'm finding, don't really know that every human being experiences the same emotions and there's a primary ones anger anticipation joy trust fear surprise sadness and disgust and so when people know okay these are the primary emotions and the emotions we experience on a daily basis are an amalgam of those eight in tandem with secondary ones then it makes a person understand okay well What I'm experiencing internally is this. And then when we can have them do a small reflection, like a journal reflection on something that is showing up again and again and again, and it's a trigger, then I think that in that moment, helping them realize, okay,
[06:20]
It's anger, it's this, it's that, or it's fear. Now I can find a way out of it. And one of the things that I learned that I think it's an important thing to know is that even though we experience the same emotions, we experience them based on our life experience. So for example, I grew up in Queens. And so my anxiety and fear was really over bullies. Like I lived in a building, like in the projects where there's one family here, one here on the left and right, and then like one underneath you.
[06:50]
So when I stepped into the hallway, now I'm dealing with all these personalities. Maybe you, Justin, you had a different home experience. I don't know. So you experienced fear and anxiety too, but maybe for you, you know, different reasons. And so we have to feel it to heal it. And one thing that like, I really look at my work are high yielding strategies, you know, visible learning and the work of Dr. John Hattie.
[07:15]
And he says that SEL strategies take at least 40 interventions before it sticks. I mean, think about that. And if you think about anything we do like in the adult world, whether it's golf, whether it's smoking cigars, whether it's planning a party, you know, going on a vacation. Making a new meal, you have to try it over and over again. And repetition is the mother of skill. And so I think that that is something that we can impress upon young people with SEL.
[07:44]
And we don't have to make it something where they have to learn it in one year, in one semester. It's like spiraling standards. There's a reason why reading and writing is a standard that appears every year in the Common Core. Because you can't master it in one year. It takes time.
[08:00] SPEAKER_00:
And it strikes me that as with academics, you know, any given teacher is going to have students coming in at all different levels. And let me ask, do you use the term skills or competencies as far as students' self-awareness, self-regulation? What's a good term for us to think about this type of thing?
[08:17] SPEAKER_01:
I like to think of the Castle Five as five competencies, and there are skills within each of those competencies. So the five are self-awareness, and that's for self-management, social awareness for relationship skills, and then responsible decision-making. And so if you think about it, social awareness, it might be empathy. It might be perspective-taking. It might be monitoring or sharing airspace. These are different skills within that one competency.
[08:46] SPEAKER_00:
So self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, relationship skills, social awareness, and the idea that there's both the internal and the interpersonal dimension to consider.
[08:58] SPEAKER_01:
And that's a big thing in the CASEL framework and the SEL in general is that you really are considering yourself, but then also other people. So it's competency in both. So you can't really say, well, I have emotional intelligence because I'm self-aware and I know who I am. But then I don't have any many social considerations for other people. You see, so it's actually two things. And how I learned emotional intelligence, it was really because I was interacting with two high schoolers, which are my children.
[09:26]
Now, one is 20 years old and one is 17. And I was realizing back in 2018 that they stopped liking everything I said. And they would basically start to pay me no nevermind. So what that means for folks that are listening that don't know what that means, it means that anything I would say or do that they don't agree with, I would just get ignored and a lot of eye rolls. So I knew that I had some learning gaps and I was reading an article by Dr. Travis Bradbury on making first impressions.
[09:55]
And in the article, he talked about emotional intelligence, which I had never even heard of back in 2018. And he had a book and the book was based on research, I think with about a sample of half a million people, like over like maybe a decade. And so I went and got the book and it had an appraisal. and the appraisal was for your EQ or for your emotional intelligence. And I got a 74, which means that I have some, but I have to work on it. And so one of the things that I learned through the activities in the book and through the appraisal is that I would never ask them if they want my feedback.
[10:32]
And you know that When we provide unsolicited feedback, it might not be well received. And so I would do like 20 to 30 minute rants and I would compare them to other people. So one of the things I've learned is that you don't make comparisons and rather than, you know, ranting, all you have to do is journal and really write three to four concise, straightforward sentences that are respectful, are kind, and that are truthful. And then you start there. And I have found that my EQ increased and, you know, luckily that's like the same stuff that's in the CASEL framework. And so that just helped me out.
[11:11]
And when we went into the classrooms and we really did the work with young people and we collected data afterwards, then that helped me refine my own framework and the way that I tackled the work. SEL should not be one size fits all. Because young people, although they need those five competencies, it's like you said, there's things that's holding them back. And so we as teachers, according to research, have to know them as learners, but also as individuals. Like you can't really form a learning partnership if you don't have a personal relationship. And in that personal relationship, I just think that there should be a mutual respect first, but also we should know what their interests and their goals are, I think personally, but also academically, and we should know what their assets are.
[11:57]
And that can help us frame instruction in ways that they can see themselves in the curriculum. It sounds a little like it might apply to adults too. Well, so here's the thing that I discovered in my action research. How can we help young people understand themselves, their environment, and other people if we haven't done that self-work first. That's why in my framework, we don't really recommend that we just do that with young people. I think the first thing is that adults need to understand what the basics of the Castle Five are, but also the basics of emotional intelligence.
[12:32]
And what I mean by that is to work on themselves. Two is to know what they believe about their students. When we're not aware about what we believe about someone, it might allow certain biases we don't know that we have show up in our interactions. And the issue with that is that a lot of young people don't have that confidence yet. And so when they feel that they're not accepted or they feel like they're not regarded, then it causes a lot of them to really shut down. So it's hurting them emotionally, but also academically.
[13:03]
And that's something as teachers we don't want to do. And then finally is what we discussed earlier is to know. more about our students. I think if we can do those three things first, which is internal self-work, work that we do individually, then it's easier for now activate SEL in our lessons as needed.
[13:21] SPEAKER_00:
I was thinking about what you said about unsolicited feedback. Two minutes ago, and how as administrators, we're kind of in the business of providing feedback that is sometimes unsolicited. I have lots of thoughts about feedback. But often, if we were to ask people, do you want feedback today? Do you want me to come visit your classroom and provide feedback? Some people would say yes, every time and some people would say no, every time.
[13:44]
And we have a certain kind of obligation to not be too dissuaded by that from getting into classrooms, from talking to people about their practice. But when it comes to unsolicited advice and when it comes to kind of earning the right to be heard and figuring out how do I actually connect with this person, this other professional that I work with, How do I make sure that I'm providing some sort of helpful feedback? I love the questions that you mentioned a moment ago about it, about truthfulness and kindness and helpfulness and just the awareness that the other person is not simply a vessel. You know, whether we're talking about a student is more than just a vessel for information. And if we're talking about a teacher, more than just a recipient and responder to feedback, but really a person with autonomy, a person with their own thoughts, a person with their own motivations and goals. Why is it that it's so powerful to ask?
[14:34]
And how do we do that in a way that respects that autonomy that, you know, whether we're talking about our own kids as they get older, whether we're talking about teachers we work with, or whether we're talking about the students in our classrooms, how do we respect that autonomy and not just say, well, I'm here to give you X, whether, you know, that's learning or feedback on your teaching.
[14:52] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, so I just dropped into the chat an article on providing teachers feedback. And I'm dropping another link and you can include those in the show notes. And so what I have found is that the classroom is the incubator for whatever is needed in a particular school and by a particular teacher and by unique students. And if administrators are not visiting classrooms and doing learning walks consistently, and it's not part of the culture of that school, then what happens is two things. They don't know what's happening, so they don't really know how to provide the right feedback, right? And then two, you've got teachers that aren't comfortable being observed.
[15:31]
And so I think that the first thing is to make some shared agreements about how they're going to do their work. I always get invited into schools and I'm always asked things like, how do we retain our teachers? How do we produce engagement? How do we produce academic achievement? But they rarely have some shared agreements about how they're going to do their work. And so I think that once they've agreed that they will do learning walks and they will observe informally and also formally, but, you know, informally first.
[16:00]
And that the purpose of the protocol is to provide affirming feedback, but also things that are needed. And so that is a type of work that I do in my action research with schools. And we create a systematic approach. Like I just showed you that there's a teacher feedback protocol. And again, I like sentence stems, like the same way I would with students. I like those between adults.
[16:24]
And so after observing instruction, I think a simple conversation, which is I saw, and in that I saw you fill in the blanks with affirmations of all the good things, because there's no way that we didn't see anything good. Like you have to give the glows and then the growth, then you share it. what your concerns are. And rather than say, well, that was wrong, or I don't understand, or what are you talking about? I wonder. It's very simple.
[16:50]
Like the same way it works with young people, it also works with adults. And then finally, you have to provide assistance. And so I think that our teachers are the most prominent experts of young people. but they also need advice. And so I like a sentence stem that starts with, would you consider using? And then you fill in the blank with whatever you have.
[17:10]
And then you allow for dialogue, not monologue. You know, dialogue is where the two people like right now are exchanging ideas and we're sharing airspace and we're respecting each other. I think those are the type of things that our teachers need. And I'm also dropping into the chat an article for making shared agreements between staff. I think that these are the prerequisites to any relationship. I mean, think about it.
[17:37]
In the adult world, anyone that has, they're either married or they have a partner. At some point, you have to sit down and make some shared agreements. I mean, if you don't, then you're winging it. And we can wing it in all the good times, but in the difficult times when emotions run high, right, you need some agreements.
[17:59] SPEAKER_00:
Let's talk a little bit about when emotions do run high, because building all of this in does take a little bit of time, does take some efforts, even if it's not like a separate thing, you know, even if it is integrated. Talk to us about the payoff when things are more of a struggle, if someone is having a hard time. For a teacher who has invested in that relationship with students, who has invested in developing that self-awareness and those relationships with students, what can happen if we have done a good job of that when things are not going well, you know, If the student is struggling, if they're having a bad day, if maybe there's a conflict, what's some of the payoff of this work?
[18:33] SPEAKER_01:
You have the relationship. And I think that, like I know me, like when I was a young person, I thought I knew everything. Well, I thought I knew what's best for me. And I don't care who the adult was. When they sat in front of me and they were lecturing or they were telling me what to do, I would always yes them to death. But in my mind, I'm thinking, you don't know what you're talking about.
[18:52]
I'm going to do what I want to do. And so we all know that between the ages of 11 and 25, sometimes even older now, peer pressure wins out. And so I think that having the relationship and where you have a young person like myself, I think that I would work harder for a teacher that I know like me, right? But I'm seeing something in schools now that's really different. So- I get invited to model high yielding strategies with educators, but also with students. And I'm seeing that our young people don't want to be there.
[19:23]
And I've even seen like witness in front of me very recently, young people, you know, cursing at the adults straight out, like shut the F up, don't F and talk to me. And where they've made it extremely difficult for allowing instruction to happen. And so I'm I think there's a lot more going on than just emotional regulation. I think our teachers are at the front lines of what's happening in the home and not happening in the home. and also in society and on social media. And so what I tell my teachers is that we need to understand the science of the human brain and how decision-making happens.
[19:58]
And so folks that have high levels of cognition, meaning they know how to solve problems, they tend to lead from the rational part of the brain, which is the prefrontal cortex. And folks that don't are leading from the emotional center of the brain, which is the amygdala, which was really made for fight or flight. But when we don't understand those things, and a lot of teens, young adults, some preteens don't understand that, they're emotionally responding to everything. But here's the thing, even the most rational person When in anger, we're cut off from the prefrontal cortex momentarily, and it's difficult. It's easier said than done when we're in the moment, but we can't personalize how someone else is showing up, especially when we've done our best with those people. And I think that we should leverage our relationship
[20:50]
With let's come back to this. Let's talk later. Can we find another space so that you can deescalate from that trauma that has triggered you or that PTSD and allow me to teach my class? And I think that when that understanding takes place, it's because our teachers are better informed about how trauma works. And how emotions work. And the more I watch what's on the news, on social media, and hear about what's happening in classrooms, I don't think we understand that.
[21:23]
And I think that it's something that I'm not sure why it was left out of education, but I'm seeing it more and more now that we need to spend some time on that and find a way to weave it in.
[21:36] SPEAKER_00:
And certainly, I think especially as students have returned to school post-pandemic, we've seen a wider range of reactions, a wider range of emotions, a wider range of needs and behaviors. And frankly, we've got some work to do. We've got our work cut out for us.
[21:50] SPEAKER_01:
The research is showing, and out of Harvard, that young people are more dissatisfied with school more than ever. And there's three things I've seen, like in the CDC data, that it points to COVID isolating young people, right? And that like, you know, really bringing on a lot of depression and things like that. But also they have a lot of issues at home. What the data shows is young people saying that there's adults in their lives, whether it's a parent or it's a caregiver that uses violence, bad words, right. And negative interactions in the home.
[22:28]
So they've got those two things. And then when they're in school, a lot of times. They have to learn things that they don't feel are relevant to their lives. And so that makes them not want to be there. And unfortunately, as we all know, in life, you have to do things that you don't want to do. And I think that school is extremely important, but some of those tests or those assessments are a toeble from the highway of life.
[22:54]
You know, any career, whether it's a teacher, whether it's law, whether it's a police officer, whether it's being a nurse, there's some sort of examination or exam that we need to do. And so I think young people need to be prepared for real life. And so I'm not saying that everything we do is right as an educational system, but they have to be able to goal set and achieve a goal, I think. And if they're checking out, then we as adults, we know that we can't make them learn, but we can set the right conditions for learning. And I think that's important.
[23:27] SPEAKER_00:
You talk in the book about equity raisers for social emotional learning. Tell us a little bit about that concept and what some of those equity raisers are.
[23:36] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, so I said earlier that SEL is not one size fits all. And so I think that as teachers, we need to update our SEL plans with strategies that raise equity from other pedagogies. For example, we may teach young people that they belong to a different background, different culture. So we have to be more culturally responsive. And so that's a way of raising equity for those young people. Let's say we have young people like we just discussed that have trauma and they're easily triggered, right?
[24:06]
Or they have PTSD. And so as teachers to raise equity for them, it's not just about, okay, self-awareness and things like that. No, it's about understanding how trauma works and understanding how to deescalate them and make them feel safe. And that's an equity raiser. for them. Another equity raiser, I think, is restorative practices, are restorative practices, because sometimes young people, well, it's not sometimes, like we're seeing a lot of conflict now where they're arguing and they're fighting with each other and stuff like that.
[24:33]
They need to figure out a way to have a discussion and mend fences. I know that those are the equity raisers mentioned in the book. And that's what we discovered through action research that SEL alone, it's a behavioral framework. And so our framework in our book, And our Solution Tree book is really about helping educators update SEL plans, bearing in mind the unique needs of their kids.
[24:59] SPEAKER_00:
One other angle I wanted to ask about, because I know you have this in your professional experience, and this book is co-published by Solution Tree and ISTE. You have a background in technology and robotics. Tell us a little bit about that and where you see some of the connections, because I know you have a section on ed tech.
[25:15] SPEAKER_01:
So mind you, so that book was written in the pandemic, a big part of it. Therefore, We had to factor in ed tech because we didn't know if we were going to be back virtual or in person. And so that's why it's in the book, number one. But number two, yeah, I do have a background in computer science and STEM. But if you look at all my books, all three of my books, and I have a fourth one that's almost done now. And another one that we're thinking about, these are initiatives, equity, SEL, STEM, computer science.
[25:44]
These are initiatives that are part of education reform or part of like, you know, local reform. But in my book, they're weaved into instruction. That's the common theme. I'm an education coach. I'm an instructional coach. I help educators take these complex things and integrate them into their instruction.
[26:03]
And so what I'm talking about there and for folks that are listening, you know what I mean? You begin with the end in mind, whatever that final product or that summative assessment, whatever that thing is going to be, we need to think about our learning goals or the learning intentions or the if you call them learning targets, but then for each learning target, you need formative assessments and you need some high yielding strategies. So primarily I'm an instructional coach and I'm a master teacher, meaning that I can help educators plan curriculum, lessons, projects, and then how to facilitate them. And so using that knowledge and then using action research by visiting classrooms, seeing what the needs are and figuring out if it's content knowledge or if it's pedagogy, and then finding a way to bridge what that gap is. And because we're doing action research and we're looking at models and frameworks that have already worked, and then we're adapting them and we're tweaking them and implementing them and we're collecting data,
[27:03]
then we're not only learning what that content knowledge is, but we're learning how to implement it with young people and with adults first, of course. And so I had a background in computer science and in STEM because of school. That's what my major was in. But I took a deep dive into instruction and understanding curriculum and how it's implemented. And so I'm able to bridge those two gaps and help my schools through the action research piece. So they are learning along with me.
[27:31]
And as a coach, you really just need to know 10% more than your mentees. That's a 10% advantage. And so by doing it for so many years now, 15 years, a lot of the stuff now is just, it's a part of me now.
[27:46] SPEAKER_00:
The book is Raising Equity Through SEL, a framework for implementing trauma-informed, culturally responsive teaching and restorative practices. George, I know you have other books, as you mentioned. You also have a podcast and tell people a little bit more about where they can listen to your podcast and get in touch with you if they'd like to.
[28:02] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, so it's on Anchor, and it's on Spotify, it's on iTunes, and it's called the Lifelong Learning to Find podcast. It's for administrators, it's for teachers, just who are interested in personal and professional innovation.
[28:17] SPEAKER_00:
Well, George, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure.
[28:20] SPEAKER_01:
Thank you so much, sir.
[28:21] Announcer:
Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.
