Podcast -school administration
[00:00:00] Welcome everyone. You are listening to the MI guys that stands for motivational interviewing and we are here to basically be the communication solution to change your world, which means we’re going to talk about communication, but we’re going to talk about it from a particular angle. And to do that today, we got our director, Casey Jackson, and a wonderful business.
Extraordinary. Tammy Calais and myself, John Gilbert, to hopefully help you out in this process of really serving the individuals, the communities, or the organizations. You’re a part of to really help improve outcomes in the way that you’re trying to do that through communication and evidence-based practice and in particular motivational interviewing lens as we will bring it back to today.
For those of you that clicked on this, or are interested in this, we’re going to be talking about motivational interviewing in schools and [00:01:00] education. And some of you might’ve gone through the training with Casey around that. We do do trainings with motivational interviewing in schools. There are books and resources we can talk about out there.
And, and, and dive into this, but I know Tammy, you had a particular kind of frame. You wanted to walk into this from of how to talk about how to start with it, if you wouldn’t mind. Well, one of the things that I often think about with motivational interviewing is we’ve, we’ve had podcasts on what the world will look like and all these types of things, but what would a school look and feel like.
If motivational interviewing was implemented from school administration down to teachers all staff and what that would look like for students, what that might look like for the administration, what that look like for teachers? Because I think I have some, obviously some thoughts I’ve been thinking about this, but I think there could be some real impact into.[00:02:00]
Yeah, just into the community, into the students, into the teachers, into the administration. I just think it would be super impactful. So that’s kind of the broad topic. And I want, I’m going to jump in first because Casey is going to have so much richness around this, just with the, at the engagement you’ve had and the talking with different teachers.
I know that you’re going to get into very deeply here. I just want to mention something that we were starting a second ago, that this can be taken at a lot of different angles, but starting with where we’re starting, it’s a very wonderful place to start. It’s. What is the possibility? What is worthwhile to think about that we could do from this motivational interviewing lens?
There’s also those of you that are like, well, how the heck am I going to do this amazing thing? In the real world with standardized tests and all this stuff. So there’s, there’s different angles to take this and we’re going to do our best to address as much as we can. But I would be just making sure that, you know, right up front, just [00:03:00] because we’re speaking to the ideal doesn’t mean that you can immediately do that.
Or maybe there is a way and Casey, you’ve interacted with some people of how to navigate that. And that’s what I’m really curious to hear you speak to. If you wouldn’t mind, Casey, for just getting into, where would you start with?
You know, the first thing I think of honestly, and it’s when I work with any organization at all, is the place I always start is looking at the vision mission value statements. So whether an educator, if you’re an educator and administrator within a school district just think what life would be like, if everything within your district or within your school operated completely and aligned with your vision and mission statement that you’re empowering students, you’re empowering families.
You’re empowering educators. To enhance, enhance communities and the future by the interactions you provide and the structure and environment or community you provide within your school or your school district to feel parents are more engaged and empowered. In supporting their children [00:04:00] in a learning and academic experience in a holistic educational experience, what would it be like if teachers love to go to work every day and work with students to bring out the very, very best in them.
We talk about these things that, of course, that’s the quote unquote ideal. The beauty and motivational thing is you can actualize that there is a, there is a blueprint or a roadmap of how do you actualize that? And like John was saying, of course there’s budgetary political, there’s all sorts of barriers or potential barriers.
But what I will always go back to is in spite of any budget in spite of any program changes. We still have control over what comes out of our mouth and that can be evidence-based and facilitate behavior change. So when I look at it from a school administration perspective or a teacher perspective, the, the beauty in motivational interviewing is you shape individuals to make values based decisions to make socially, you know, targeted decisions in their lives.
So [00:05:00] they can be the best, absolute, best version of them. And, and, and the same traps come into play in the educational community as it doesn’t behavioral health and healthcare, that we tend to be driven by compliance based systems. But we want to get behavior change, even though we’re using compliance, compliance does not generate sustained behavior change.
So you have the same kids who are behavior problem, kids in kindergarten that still tend to be your behavioral problem kids, whether it’s third, fourth, fifth grades with these IDPs that chase them all over the place. And then we have all sorts of rationale for why the kids get stuck or the family is stuck, but we do, we look at how the system is stuck, how maybe we’re just used to doing the same things, because what the responses tend to be is if this kid would just listen, if this parent would just do this.
And so it’s so externally focused on compliance. Instead of how do we reach inside and empower truly not just [00:06:00] theoretically, philosophically, how do we empower? How do we strategically. How do we strategically communicate in a way that empowers individuals to be the best version of themselves, to empower parents, to empower teachers, to be the best version of themselves.
So they show up every day performing at their optimal level. I mean, that’s, that’s my, how I know motivational. We can work within a school. One thing I’d like to pause in or jump in on is just imagine if students were walking around feeling engaged. Empowered excited and, and aligned with themselves. So often teenagers or high school students, you know, start to feel this conflict of.
You know, trying to fit in versus, you know, trying to understand who they are and all this type of stuff. And I’m not gonna say that Mia is going to fix all that. Cause I don’t, I can’t promise that it would, but just the constant [00:07:00] conversation that they might have with teachers or with administrators that remind them of who they are and, and their values and yeah.
Pushing someone else’s values on them, but helping them to be reminded of their own values. I think you’re going to find a really exciting school. Oh yeah, absolutely. And, and I, I know the struggle that most professionals have, and I know this is the way it is for education. As you work within a system that has so many regulations and guidelines.
And like John was talking about with, with standardized testing or just behavior expectations, because you’re trying to manage, you’re trying to manage behavior. And while you’re educating and the mastery of motivational interviewing is the mastery of a very, very, very specific set of communication skills used in a very specific way to [00:08:00] reduce tension, to reduce resistance, to reduce discord with an individual or a classroom and engaging them in a behavior where their behavior aligns with our values and goals, because most kids want to be successful in.
We don’t start as children saying, I don’t want to be successful in life and their behaviors can look like they don’t want to be successful. Their behaviors can look like they’re not engaged in the academic process. Their behaviors can look like they’re socially IC. Or don’t want to have things happen that most people that are good in the education world know that there’s, there’s a spark inside of this little, this little being that I want to engage.
And I want to, I want to maximize their potential to the best of my ability while I’m managing 25 other students. Like, how do I even. There is a mastery with motivational being of literally, how do I open my mouth in a very specific way that will shape positive with that case that was so powerful to speak to because it’s a wonderful place to start.
And then I’ll be kind of curious, where were both of you and [00:09:00] Tammy want to take it from here, but starting is, do you genuinely try to find that spark? Do you see that spark? Do you believe that that spark could exist? And the more you are. It could be stigmatized as jaded we’re down. You feel helpless, hopeless.
The more this can sound fantastical and so difficult when you have people cursing at you at a young age or whatever, it would be difficult to manage. You know, there’s so many of you out there that have very difficult situations that I want to acknowledge and honor advocate. So I want to start with really starting there in Casey.
I know you can speak to that far more at a much more specific level. Having an aunt that did this, she’s taught me a lot and you know, but at the core of it, having talked with her about motivational interviewing and what we’re talking about here is what really the core of teaching is it’s that you’ve got in this helping [00:10:00] profession for a reason.
To really contribute to someone or something in this world. And that, how much are you seeing that there’s a spark within this person to tap into that there’s a spark of possible something there to work with that the, you know, art of teaching is assisting discovery and really working with that. And that’s a wonderful quote.
I forget who said that, but that is the stuff of teachers of why we look to them. For such compassionate beings that then get boxed in, in certain systems. And so from here, what I’m curious of, of what you want to talk about is first, can we start there? And if we are starting there, where do we go from there?
And that’s what I want to ask you. Tammy and Casey of like where to take the discussion because on the one hand we could then go, okay, given that, how do we start using EMI in specific scenarios to navigate our reality? We could go kind of that. Or we could talk about, well, if M I had its way, what would [00:11:00] be the ideal system and educational setup, right?
Like what would be the ideal, ideal, where people are aligned with their behaviors? How would that look? How would that sound? And there’s two kind of different directions we could go. That would be in the range probably of like Montessori Windsor. President school, all those sorts of things, but then there’s also people that can’t do that.
So I’m just kind of wondering which direction you want to take the conversation from here. I’ll tell you what. The pandemic has been really helpful and interesting for me because I have so many people that I’m their close, close friends of mine that are in the educational system, you know, Brandon session DRM and who are both, you know, principals, vice principals activities, directors, you know, Justin and Jennifer who are both math teachers, extraordinary and Starla fate.
So many people Christie’s won all these really brilliant people. Even from Lori Schneider, head of an English department and, and care sharks, they’re just really smart people in education and being around them [00:12:00] during the pandemic has helped me understand that. We can have an ideal, but their systems, they work within.
Like the thing I was saying is we’re lucky. We know we’re lucky because our girls did well during the pandemic have done well educationally. And they said, you know, the thing we’re terrified of is the kids that don’t sign in because we know what’s going on in those home environments. And so it’s hard for us to be educators knowing these home environments.
So I think as we’re talking fantastical, because I think some of the things. That we say, and people here, they think, yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it. But you know, the kids that we work with, you know, the families, you know, the, the, you know, the district that we work with in June, our funding constraints, she wants some of our policy issues are.
And, and again, from an MI, from motivational and perspective, by definition, we know that that is resistance talking system. So it is valid. So I think where do we start with as a level of high empathy for people within, you know, school administration within the educational settings is just an incredible amount of empathy, which [00:13:00] is yes, we got into the field to transform the lives of children that we work with through, you know, our school environments and academic pursuits and excellence.
That’s of course that’s what we wanna do. But do you understand. So, I mean, that’s the first thing that I can, I hear in situations like this, the mastery of evidence-based practices though, is that it, it, it starts to mitigate. Those barriers because you still have control over what comes out of your mouth.
And then people are going to justify why they’re saying or communicating with other teachers, with their administration, with family members, with students, they’re going to justify why they communicate a certain way. And they’re very invested in that justification. And they’re going to get validation from other people within that culture to say, yeah, you don’t understand here’s the problem.
The mastery or the beauty in innovation and evidence-based practices is even in real-world settings, these skill [00:14:00] sets matter. These skill sets can transform. It’s just not what we’re used to doing. And, and when I think about the reality of real-world is people are driving to school in the morning, you know, their educators, drivers school swinging through Starbucks, thinking about the lessons plans for the day.
You know, there there’s, there’s certain things we’re thinking about. But like when we measure motivation things that evidence-based practice, what is your active intention, not your passive intention. What is your active intention when you show up for work? And it usually is more classroom management and getting through lessons plans that, that that’s survival.
I mean, how could that not be at the forefront of your brain? But what that means is you are going to get through lessons plans and do classroom man. It is not going to necessarily, you hope that the bypass. Is it, you’re engaging these, these young minds and inspiring these young minds for academic pursuits and for personal development and growth, you know that that’s going to have an effect on the family.
That’s your, that’s your S your, your [00:15:00] intention, but it’s a passive intention. So often because you have these things in the forefront, your brain you’re having to deal with, and this is the exact same thing for doctors. For nurses for mental health specialists for addiction specialists. It’s the exact same thing.
What we’re trying to do is manage the disease. What we’re trying to do is help people with their addiction or their mental health issues and our, our, you know, our more passive intention is that we really want to help these people get better. But right now you need to listen to what I’m telling you, and you need to sit in your class.
You need to sit in your seat and you need to pay attention. You need to get your homework in. I mean, that just tends to be survival. Emma. When you’re managing large groups. So when you look from a high empathy perspective, it does become like Johnson fantastical to think, well, yeah, of course that’s what we all want.
And the first thing that’s going to come after that is, but you don’t understand. I mean, I can literally hear it in that perspective. So I think that’s the fascinating part about how do you. Inspire or create this, that moves [00:16:00] beyond theoretical, that moves beyond philosophical, that moves beyond fantastical and gets into, you know, what these are.
These are learnable teachable mechanisms that education tends not to invest in. They do soundbites one hour lunch and learns they do their in-service trainings, but that is not how you adopt evidence-based practices, which is followed by. Yeah, but you don’t under. There’s only so much time and only do so much training.
We’ve already got this training on the docket. They’re already overworked. Right? Exactly. So, so that’s why I liked talking from the, from the fantastical or from the best case scenario. I think the thing that. I know the thing for me that stays inspired and wanting to connect people to see that vision like within academics within school administrations is that we have literally worked with organizations that have made the desire or the commitment to become the best version of their vision and [00:17:00] mission statements that they are that invested in it.
That in spite of all the odds, they pull it together. I, and, and the ones that are the most complicated tend to be the public ones. And I think of the work we’ve done in division of VOC rehab. I think of the work that we’ve done in child and family services. I think in the work that we’ve done in aging and adult care in state systems and how literally learning to master this skillset, they see themselves.
They now, they self-report, there is so much more in align with our vision and mission that the outcomes, hard outcomes, measurable outcomes, improve. When you use an evidence-based practice as intended. And I think this is where you start to bridge that from the yeah. But into. We literally can embody this.
We can embrace this. And there is a blueprint for us to be able to move on this path into truly every student and family feeling empowered and maximizing the, the services and [00:18:00] resources that academics and, and schools, teachers feel really good. They’re going to feel empowered and engaged and excited.
But that’s also gonna, that’s also really going to help the students. And one of the other things that is in the back of my mind, when I think about motivational interviewing and in schools is another big issue that schools are dealing with is suicide. Kids are not feeling heard. They’re not feeling understood.
They’re feeling alone and they’re feeling I’m not entirely sure cause I’m not. You know, 15 years old and in high school. But I think, you know, they’re having a hard time finding their own value and for whatever reason, there’s a lot of things pulling at them. And when I think of motivational interviewing, which is a very altruistic way, a very respectful way to communicate with people.
I just also wonder, gosh, you’ve got the teachers feeling good and teachers are using this with students. [00:19:00] I wonder if that’s going to help students to not feel so alone, to, to feel more engaged, to feel, to get more affirmations in their life. We were just, obviously today we were doing some skill building practice and we, we talked about affirmations which is part of our membership.
Anyways, and there’s different ways. That part that’s part of motivational interviewing that is so empowering and lifting people up that I go, I wonder if that would impact also some of the suicidal rates? I don’t know. Well, Tammy, the thing you’re bringing up on the periphery, well, more than the periphery, John, I’ve been fairly involved in king county.
So even just here in Washington, Literally from Seattle to Spokane, they’re doing more screenings. They’re getting more resources to do more screenings with more students in more schools. And the screenings are helping find where the mental health, where the stressors, the suicidal things that you’re talking about.
But like I just reached out to our own school district and said, [00:20:00] I know you’re doing the screening, but once. Capture the data. How are you going to respond to the youth? And that’s where the mastery of a communication skillset comes in. Working from the best of intention does not change outcomes. The best of intentions is not using evidence-based practices in how you communicate and you don’t have to be a therapist.
Educators can be highly skilled in motivational interviewing. It’s not therapy or counseling. It’s why am I opening my mouth? And do I have any idea how this is impacting this child’s thought process? And the thing that we’re educators have such a leg up is they can see with the kiddos they work with.
What’s happening and why they’re responding the way that they are, what the educators do not have the skill set in is how do I respond differently? Literally? How do I open my mouth and say certain things that will get the outcome that I want instead of throwing my hands up in there and saying, this is why I can’t have this kid in my class.
’cause, I just don’t have the time to [00:21:00] manage his behavior. And, and so it doesn’t, it doesn’t eliminate some of those really difficult behavior problems. It doesn’t eliminate them, but literally being able to open your mouth and see a profound impact on how the brain is firing. That makes a significant difference.
It’s like the training I’ve been doing now, just the tons of requests for training with M I and trauma informed that when you understand brain science and then understand brain science or communication, and then understand when somebody opens your mouth, you can assess where their brain is at and learn to respond accordingly.
That is not prevalent in any services in our society. That is not the prevalent approach. We see the problem and we try to fix it. And if we don’t have the resources to fix it, we’re going to refer them out of our classroom or try to get them engaged in something else. And, and, and it on paper, all of that makes sense to me why it unfolds the way that it does.
But what it’s missing is how do we develop a communication skillset that [00:22:00] really does make our classrooms more efficient and more effective, so we can get to the core providing, you know, empowering students and academic excellence and just social excellence in a different way. Yeah. And this is really, really helpful for talking about the dynamics of kind of the current state, as it were certain challenges that are happening.
And just kind of concepts and navigating certain concepts including this, this sense of, gosh, I really want to have a different impact. So how do I, you know, do that? And that’s what I want to speak to a little bit more, especially Casey, what you’ve learned because there are certain dynamics we know that people tend to fall into.
And we talk about these things more in our intro training for those that haven’t been introduced to this, but like falling into compliance versus I’m going to focus on helping this person go inside themselves. And I’m going to do that in a one-off moment in a group of people in a classroom. I’m that mindful to do that multiple times a day to instead [00:23:00] of immediately jump in with here’s what you need to do, you, what you have to do.
Please be quiet, please. Whatever I’m instead going to generate something like, well, it’ll be interesting what you choose to do for right now with blah, blah, blah. You know, just little moments where you’re focused practically on generating ambivalence and them going within themselves. As much as you can, given the.
The lesson plans and everything you’re in, you still have that control and certain days where you sleep better or whatever it’s going to be. You’re going to feel more up for it because you’ll be in thrival mode versus survival mode. But I really want to speak to that practicality, Casey, that you’ve learned from, I mean, you just mentioned the eight wonderful people.
I think I’ve got to meet like one or two of them, but so many people you mentioned You’ve got to talk with in the education system. And, and so I am curious kind of what you’ve learned from them, and yes, they are going to be specific to, I believe, elementary school. So those of you that are listening and you’re thinking at the level of.[00:24:00]
Okay grant. Whereas if we haven’t, if we haven’t addressed a specific group, please let us know. We Casey at ifc.com. And we will definitely address a more specific age group. We’re speaking to it more generally right now, but I am curious of these friends, you have. What appears to be junior high and high school.
What are some of the lessons that you’ve taken from them? And what are some of the things that like you were talking about with the home environment? What are some of the things you’ve told them or that, that they’ve implemented that have been successful so that someone listening to this isn’t just interested in, you know, maybe some things we could help them with, but they take away some tangible things that they could just go away and start implementing or experimenting.
Well, I want to rewind just a little bit, then I’m going to pick up from where you live, where you were bringing up to John, but what you just touched on a few minutes ago, when you were talking about having control over what comes out of your mouth and, and, [00:25:00] and you know, this is where you want to go, but this is what we have to deal with in this moment, in this lesson plan right here.
And you’re saying, but these one small, these small statements matter the whole time, you’re talking about that as clicking. I mean, it’s, it probably doesn’t make a logical connection, but it does, for me as a trainer is to department of corrections. When I worked in the prisons, you know, and doing training in the prisons because it’s not, it’s different.
I’ll just say that because I’m not going to get myself in trouble. It is different, but there are similarities because you are managing a popular. And so of course, when I’m doing those trainings, the first thing that the guards say is we don’t, we’re not therapists. You know, if I’m standing and talking to one person for more than three minutes, somebody’s boots going to be up my butt.
Like we need to get on and manage. And I think that concept is not wildly off from educators. Like I don’t have 10 minutes to talk to this student because I’ve got 30 students. So, how do I make what I say efficient and effective? That is critical in good communication. We believe [00:26:00] that we can’t make a difference with what we say.
And so it’s thinking about this one example of an offer or an officer in a prison who ended up thanking me after the training and had tried doing some of this stuff. And he said, you know what shocked me is it, John was what you would say. I, I don’t understand how I can turn somebody from being really resistant to ambivalent in one, in one line, I only get one or two lines.
And what I told him is those one or two lines are not going to be motivational interviewing. It’s not going to be the entire meal deal, but you can be cognizant when you open your mouth what’s happening. And when you say. I had this epiphany when I called somebody out on the line, because we found contraband on their cell and he comes out on the line and I’m walking down thinking, okay, can I try this?
Can I try this? Can I try this? And all he said was, it will be interesting to see what happens from here and turned around and walked away. And he said, you could feel this reverberation every direction from all these different cells going. What the heck does that mean? I don’t know what that means. That by definition is ambient.
Versus what he said, [00:27:00] I would have said a hundred percent of the time, which would have generated resistance. So even one line is exactly what we’re talking about. Can convert it into ambivalent. I think the challenge that I see with educators that I think of, I mean, thinking of somebody like regrow, I just, there’s so many great groups, all these other great educators in elementary, middle school and high school.
The number one concern for the majority of them is not the kids that are easy to work with. That is not their concern. Those give me a class of kids that I can work with. We hear this about, you know, at least one of our twins all the time, you know, got a fad 20 of Laila in our class. I, I would feel like as the most perfect teacher on the planet and until those are not, those are not the problems that teachers have.
They have problems with my Bella. So those are the things that. You look at how do I engage more effectively in this moment to maximize how I can get the best out of this, this in the student and in this classroom. And that’s what I see teachers struggle with. Eric Wolfram is an educator in the ESL educational service district, which [00:28:00] covers school districts all over basically Eastern Washington.
And he he’s a trainer as well. I’m an administrator and he and I talk about even how. How educators get trained is really intriguing because it is very soundbite based because they’ve got to get back to the classroom. And so it’s, how do we do this education in a way that does provide a depth that they feel like they can integrate this into their daily life?
So that’s what I hear so much at all grade levels. And, and what they talk about is how much. Human resource, the ones that are non-traditional how much resource that takes from my classroom, how much of my brain that takes. And I, I just think of regroups as one during the, because he gets so emotional during the pandemic is the kids that I can’t put my eyes on, or the kids that I’m the most worried about the ones that are signing in every day.
I can teach those kids that I can do. I can manage. I’m trained to manage those kids. What, I’m not, what I can’t do is help the ones that I can’t see. [00:29:00] The ones that aren’t signing in that I know that if I can’t see my eyes, I don’t know if they’re physically safe sometimes. Because of their living situations or their family situations, those are the pain points and educators that I think are devastating.
I think it, Cara sharp, the same thing. She works in a behavior classroom, just exceptionally good at her job. And she said, those are her biggest, her biggest stress stressors. The academic side is not the stressor. It’s all the things they’re doing outside of the classroom that she can’t control that causes her the most stress as an educator.
And the same thing with, with Sasha Jarman is a principal of an elementary school. It’s the same thing. What Matt and I hear that’s just mind boggling is our principal sprinting down the street after students, like, you know, a couple of times a week, like you just don’t, that’s not the schools that I went to when I was a kid.
But that’s what, that’s what principals and vice principals are having to do. Like her Christie’s one, they literally are trying to chase kids up into the mountains, like [00:30:00] physically or down railroad tracks just for health and safety reasons that, and that’s elementary school kids. That’s not even the junior high high school kids.
So those are the things that just skills. Would be so profoundly impactful on how they interact and how to get better engagement. But then I just listened to the fact that I know that the majority of them don’t go home at three 30. I, the ones that I know that they’re at work, especially the administration who’s there until seven 30 on a Friday night.
Just trying to get things in aligned so they can get ready for Monday because they’re trying to support their staff. So I think those are the, I think the, the inertia and the weight of the demands in education currently are so strong. And another one, because just, I’m so lucky to train so many people.
I think the same thing with the police department. And I think of educators at the same time, the big dilemma in law enforcement is because on one hand we want them to be social [00:31:00] workers, but they don’t go into law enforcement to be social work. Yeah. So it’s just like, how do we do that? Educators did not go in there to be a social workers and therapists and family counselors, but that’s what they are expected to do.
So I think those are the things that I hear in real time that it’s like, you know, give me a classroom of 25 wireless and I’m good to go. The problem is, is I have maybe 20 Laila’s and I’ve got, you know, 30 students and, and those 10 students, you know, the minority of the students end up getting. Most of my time and resource, then I’m having to hand them off to other people because they need to manage my classroom.
And, and I know that the educational system is so far behind on understanding that these methods, these innovations, these evidence-based practices can have a profound, a profound impact on the daily operations of any one given classroom. And that a teacher who feels even that much more skilled in their communication feels like they’re a better educator at the end of.
They know they did [00:32:00] everything they could instead of going home and going, oh my gosh, what else can I do? I’m not getting through to this kid. It’s, I’m not having the impact that I want to. And am I sacrificing my other students because I’m putting so much energy into this one student. I mean, these are just the daily dilemmas of most educators.
Like how do I balance this? And, and I know from the ones that I talked to, I know they don’t have this, this skillset because they’re not trained in this skill. But it would have a profound impact on their daily operations in a way that they felt so much more in align with their own value and vision and goals as an educator.
Absolutely. Especially individual or organizational change that we, we speak to in so many levels and other podcasts. And if you want to make it specific to your organization or your situation, you can submit a, an email to Casey, Casey@ifioc.com and we will definitely address it before we get to wrapping up just to bring some things home, Casey there’s just so much richness in what you’re talking about of real world struggle and [00:33:00] realities that are being faced both in teaching aspects as it relates to management and just survival day to day that it, that we’re talking about.
Arrival this sense of contribution and breaking through that. And we want to recognize that that can take time and energy and effort. And if you’re just trying to survive, maybe that’s not of interest to you right now, but if you really want to have a different impact, if you want to try to manage your own stress in a different way, this is just one way to do it.
That tends to work for a lot of people in a lot of situations. Called motivational interviewing that we’re speaking about. There are different books that get into this as well. We, of course, are biased to our trainings and, and and have worked with different people, but from Steven Rolnick and his book and motivational interviewing in schools to motivational interviewing for counselors to motivational interviewing in schools, by Keith and and windy and.
And the fray. I was just looking at a list there there’s a lot, if you just Google and you can find books on this, but I wanted to [00:34:00] speak to too, as we’re, we’re bringing it to the end of just certain things that were practical that you taught me, even as a trainer in teaching that can relate, which is even if you just have a one-on-one or a group time, think what am I doing of how I started off?
Or what am I doing to make this internal to the person? Or what am I doing to leave them with a sense of. Being more of who they want to be. And practically that could be, you know, some of you right now must be going through this and speaking and just giving voice to what it must be like to be the students at the very beginning of the day.
And maybe that’s all you do different for the day. Cause you got it, you got it in and you’re just trying to survive for your own life. Or maybe it’s in the middle of the day. You have a moment of epiphany or. This is a moment to really get into this, this person’s world, this, this adolescents world, and be it chasing them down the railroad to who in that moment, pulling them to the side, that when you open your [00:35:00] mouth, you have a very evocative, thoughtful type of question that gets deep into their motivation of who they’re being and what their situation and the five minutes or whatever it is you spend with.
Is as deeply impactful and ethically influential as you can do as much as possible. That’s what we’re speaking to or how you leave the classroom at the end of the day and how you choose to frame that in a way of people’s choice to do whatever they want given it’s their future to shape, you know, all of these things I’m just trying to speak to can be one-off moments, or you can string them together to create different ways.
And treating and being with your students out there, and it’s easier said than done, like we’ve spoken to, but hopefully this has inspired. Acknowledging the difficulty, but that there is a vetted way. And Casey spoke to the friends that it can work for as well as just there’s an operationalized way where we can help with feedback through the motivational interviewing competency assessment, if you’re interested [00:36:00] or other fidelity tools out there.
But I was going to bring it to just giving people some resources of where to go from here. Tammy, you looked like you were going to jump in, so go ahead. I was just going to say that real quick. We, there were so many different ways we could have taken this podcast and we could honestly, it could continue on that.
There’s so many different topics in schools that we still haven’t even gotten to. So if that’s an interest to you, again, always reach out, we’re happy to customize it. And we’re happy to talk about the things that are most important to you. So if you have real life, school SU scenarios or situations, like John said, the email is Casey at IFI, ioc.com.
Send that our way and we’ll be happy to discuss it, you know? And I want to, I want to wrap up, I want it, let’s say a couple of things, you know, John, you were just saying, you know, this is a vetted process. I think what I want to reinforce for anybody that’s listening is that this is learnable and TT. Which when you’re thinking about educators, boy, isn’t that what you’re looking for, this is learning when woman’s teachable.
So, and it’s, and it’s measurable. [00:37:00] The communication style is measurable and it is effective in those, even those three to five minute conversations, it can be very effective. We’re not talking again. We’re not talking therapy and counseling. It’s literally, if I’m going to open my mouth, I want to have the maximum impact on this.
I want to produce the best possible outcome. And with motivational interviewing, it is a measurable evidence-based practice on communication where you can maximize those interactions. And the last thing I want to close with with this is that I know John, when you’re talking about how they want to feel at the end of the day, and because it’s so on point or how they want to launch their day, I know education.
Come from a deep place of compassion and empathy and want to make up an impact on the students. I just, I just literally have 15 teachers. I can go flip through my brain right now at the schools that we’ve been involved in. And I just think they’re just amazing human beings who really want to have a profound impact.
And this is a way to embody it is literally a skillset. [00:38:00] So you can operationalize. Your own vision statement as an educator, regardless of where you’re at in the system, you can operate, you can measurably operationalize your own vision, mission, and value statement as an educator. So it’s not fluff.
It’s not an inspirational thing. It literally is a measurable skill set that you can acquire. And I just want to reinforce that because it helps you be why you got into the profession you got into it helps you be exactly who you want. What’s in that field that resonates with for me and for hopefully you Sarah as well.
There’s so much to keep going on. I’m going to point you to just where you can go from here with our resources. There’s other resources of course, out there. There were some things floating through my brain that I just, that resonates so deeply. Casey, quite honestly, it left, left out of my brain, but for now, if you’re interested with us you can go to.
But for now, I’ll bring it back. Cause I’m not [00:39:00] willing enough to respond in the moment to those things yet. We’ll, we’ll bring it back to you. Or you can check us out more on IFIOC.com. We have an online membership there. You can get a newsletter from. You know, we have our particular angle and take that Casey has led for us with how we look at MI
so if this is resonating are valuable, those are free resources. We’ve got a blog there’s if you want to take it to another level of skill development we have a whole nother level of membership as an option there. You can subscribe and get notified on apple iTunes on YouTube. If you want, you know, there’s different ways of doing that.
We’ve got a Facebook group for motivational interviewing every day as the name. We’d love to see you there and engage with different possibilities there. Even if you, we spoke mostly to like groups and individuals of, of students. But if you’re an administrator, we especially would love to be helpful to very specific leadership issues.
Cause that’s something that Casey, you have, especially a lead in a lot of organizations. So even the Facebook group, isn’t just for students, it’s for anyone looking for. Perspective. So, anyhow we’re also [00:40:00] on LinkedIn and last but not least, we’ll just say, regardless of all of that, we are here to serve you and be the communication solution to change your world and hopefully today has done.
So we’re wishing you well out in the real world, especially with everything that’s happening nowadays. Thank you so much and take care of. Thanks. Thank you.
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