Hacking School Culture: Designing Compassionate Classrooms

[00:01] SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

[00:06] Announcer:

Here's your host, director of the Principal Center and champion of high-performance instructional leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:15] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined today by my guest. Ellen Feig Gray. Ellen is founder of Parent with Perspective, a developmental psychology researcher and positive psychology practitioner. She's the author, with Angela Stockman, of Hacking School Culture, Designing Compassionate Classrooms.

[00:36] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:38] SPEAKER_01:

Ellen, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:40] SPEAKER_02:

Thank you, Justin. Great to be here.

[00:42] SPEAKER_01:

I wonder if we could start by just framing up why compassionate classrooms need to be designed, right? As adults, we think if we model, if we just kind of teach our expectations, then kids will treat each other well and we'll have the kind of classrooms that we want. What need did you see in classrooms around the country that prompted you to bring this design thinking approach to compassionate classrooms?

[01:05] SPEAKER_02:

That's a great question. Actually, Angela and I were inspired by design thinking, and particularly because it begins with empathy. Designers always look at their audience, who are they designing for, whether they're designing a product or a service, and ask, what are the needs and interests of the people I'm designing for? So that really resonated with us. And you know, we kind of riffed on the theme of beginning with empathy. And we asked what if practicing empathy was the first step to designing our children's education?

[01:44]

And design thinking begins with empathy and takes the process of defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing. And because we're talking about classrooms, education, where relationships are built and culture and climate is being formed. and it's a psychological environment, we thought that beginning with empathy is the best place to start, understanding the needs and interests of students, teachers, and leaders, and learning is a process. So the process of design thinking with its invitation to develop ideas, to prototype them, to test them, and to iterate, through that process is we think a really ripe environment to practice design thinking.

[02:38] SPEAKER_01:

let's talk about that idea of iteration because, you know, often we, we notice that we don't get it right the first time, you know, every teacher has had a moment in the first couple of weeks of school where they think, you know, we're off to an okay start, but there's this one thing that we really, we need to keep working on. I was a middle school science teacher and often it was when we would get into labs and people would start moving things around the room and, you know, that I would realize, Oh, oh, I thought we had this more dialed in, but we need to go back to the drawing board a little bit here. So what does that iteration look like when it comes to classroom culture? Because in one sense, it does feel like we get one chance to get it right at the beginning of the year, but we also know that there are opportunities to iterate. So how have you seen that play out in classrooms?

[03:23] SPEAKER_02:

We actually don't see that there's an endpoint that we could call right. that because we're talking about dynamic environments with all kinds of complexity and intersection of complexity, we really recommend the just do it and try it kind of Nike attitude. What we observed is that So many teachers and administrators often rely on a packaged program of which there are many wonderful ones to address the concept of school culture. And we think that The classroom is really where it happens more than in the boardroom and in the auditorium. And that real transformation and sustained positive change does follow that iterative process in the classroom.

[04:18]

And so in our book, we present a whole variety of protocols and tools and practices that teachers are invited to try. And see what works. And the whole concept of positive psychology and positive education, which is my wheelhouse, really is based on seeing what works and building on what works. So that's why we see the whole iterative process as a valuable one in the classroom.

[04:50] SPEAKER_01:

And what are some of the differences that show up when teachers take this approach to developing empathy in their classrooms and to designing compassionate classrooms? How does that look different from what we might think of as just a traditional approach? We set up the rules at the beginning of the year. We practice procedures. What's different in the classrooms that you see?

[05:09] SPEAKER_02:

As we see it, it's more interactive. It's more vulnerable. And as Brene Brown points out, vulnerability is actually a strength, not a weakness. It is more relationship based. It relies on creating an atmosphere of open communication, respectful communication. skeptical communication.

[05:33]

But I'd like to get back to where we've started, which is empathy. And we think that's really the power of this approach, too, is not kind of dropping in an approach or lifting and dropping, I should say, an approach into teaching or learning. It's more of a first understanding students needs and interests and seeing potential and building from that. So I guess that's the main difference we see. And in order to practice empathy, teachers really need to start with cultivating their own empathy and their own self compassion. And I think that's really the core of everything.

[06:20]

And when there's that mindful self compassion, And that permission to be human that comes with it and invitation to be kind to oneself, that creates an atmosphere and sets the tone in a classroom for kids to model that, to be invited to be human themselves. So taking that human-centered approach is really the underpinning of the difference in this approach.

[06:54] SPEAKER_01:

I love that. So self-empathy and getting permission to be compassionate to yourself. What does it look like when that self-compassion or self-empathy is in place? And what does it look like when it's missing?

[07:05] SPEAKER_02:

We actually interviewed a number of teachers who reflected on their own practices and described to us the evolution of their own self-compassion practices and compared and shared with us what was happening when they felt that they weren't being kind to themselves and weren't treating themselves with kindness and understanding that kind of, you know, everybody is suffering in the same way in the classroom or struggling, you know, not necessarily suffering. Although sometimes that's a reality in the classroom and burnout. So some of the teachers described to us how when they became more mindful, when they engaged in practices such as, for example, practicing yoga, meditation, self-care practices, eating well, getting enough sleep, keeping a gratitude journal, all kinds of different ways that they cultivated their own self-compassion.

[08:03]

And they felt better when they were in the classroom. That was a noticeable effect with their students. And then they started bringing some of those practices into the classroom and modeling them and actually explicitly teaching them they found that the atmosphere was way more positive, open, comfortable, and much more conducive to really healthy learning.

[08:31] SPEAKER_01:

And I think that connection there is really critical, that compassion, you say in the book, compassion is a prerequisite to learning, that it has to be in place for students to learn. Let's talk about some of those big ideas, the 10 principles of compassionate classrooms that you identify in the book, because I think these are so powerful. And number one that we just mentioned is compassion is requisite to learning. What are some of the other top principles of compassionate classrooms that you want to share with us?

[08:56] SPEAKER_02:

The one that I really like and is particularly relevant to your audience of school leaders is that compassion thrives in environments that give people permission to be human. I mean, we often feel so responsible for success and meeting standards and goals and feel like it's all got to be right and it's all got to be right quickly and we have to fix things. And sometimes we just have to give ourselves permission to be human, meaning that we're fallible, we're vulnerable. We have to try things in order to make them better. And it's okay to feel a full range of range of emotions. We're not happy or joyful all the time.

[09:40]

We don't feel satisfied all the time. We sometimes get frustrated. We sometimes feel anxious and that's all okay. And that's part of being self-compassionate and setting the tone for students and for teachers to be compassionate. Another big one is that the seeds of compassion are planted in the classroom and really need to be tended by the entire system. So even though we're giving a lot of power to individual teachers and individual learners for transforming school culture, That transformation, which is a slow process like growing a plant, really needs a lot of care and tenderness and tending to, by the entire system, all the players in the school, in the district.

[10:34]

in order to truly be cultivated.

[10:36] SPEAKER_01:

Another one that really jumped out at me is this idea that compassion inspires us to see people in all of their complexity rather than sorting them into categories that diminish them. And I was thinking about the importance of self-compassion and self-empathy And it occurred to me that often when we see our students who are not doing as well as we want them to do, that's what's missing, that they need to stop putting themselves in that category of I can't do it, or I'm a bad kid, or I don't have much of a future in this whole education thing. So seeing people as fully human, you know, getting permission to be human for ourselves and not narrowing ourselves into those categories, man, I think that could be so transformative for students who have maybe given up or just gotten discouraged about their own learning.

[11:24] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. You know, as a parent of now a successful adult who struggled with fitting in and feeling really valued in the classroom, I can say from that perspective as a parent that I really appreciated when certain teachers saw the various dimensions of my son and that he had a lot to offer. And his million questions that he wanted to ask, though couldn't because of the realities of 30 kids in a classroom, were still valuable. And some teachers recognized that and made him feel like they believed in him and his potential. And that really went a long way. I mean, one of the exercises we actually did on Twitter, Angela and I, was having teachers imagine and look back at their most compassionate teachers in their lives.

[12:24]

And what we found was that many of those responses included compassionate educators who really saw themselves as full human beings, saw who they really, really were, not just a label or a grade or a track in school or they were gifted, they were learning disabled, they were challenged. They saw a real complex array of characteristics and saw through to the positive characteristics and the strengths, the character strengths, the academic strengths that they felt could be cultivated in that student. So that's really what we mean by seeing students in all of their complexities.

[13:15] SPEAKER_01:

Ellen, this is a topic that I think elementary teachers naturally gravitate toward, but I'm interested in your perspective as an author and from getting into classrooms and working with teachers. How does this show up at the secondary level? Because I feel like this is a topic that we just don't talk about enough at the middle school level, but especially at the high school level.

[13:34] SPEAKER_02:

Yes. One of the people we interviewed for the book was actually a high school student who was the victim of bullying, and described to us situations in her school where not only was she bullied or treated unkindly in front of those teachers, but some actual teachers engaged in using unkind language or bullying practice, which was very damaging to her. And what she was actually inspired, which turns out she left that school, She was inspired to create an app for her classmates, which is now, you know, available worldwide, which was an invitation on an app to sit with other students at lunchtime, where a lot of that unkindness often happens outside the classroom and, you know, in the hallway and in the lunchroom, but also inside the classroom.

[14:34]

So the compassion in terms of teacher practice can really show up by teachers recognizing that there might be stuff going on. that they don't see, but that they might feel. I've talked to teachers who create safe spaces in their classrooms where students know that they can come and talk to them about whatever they wanna talk to them about and receive love and acceptance and support in their classroom, either during class or after class or during lunchtime. And another way it could show up at the secondary level is, With regard to giving students second chances in making up work, in doing their assignments and homework, really getting to know students' real potential and being perhaps a little less harsh with requirements.

[15:37]

And of course, everybody has to meet the same standard. We're not saying throwaway curriculum, throwaway standards, but maybe being a little bit more human in relating to students because they come to school with baggage like we all do and difficult lives often and you know that we don't see and maybe we want to be a little bit more open to unending the full range of experiences that they come with. As a parent coach I just actually had An experience working with a 17-year-old, very, very successful academically high school student who decided one day he wasn't going to school anymore. And he's in the process of applying to colleges, very competitive colleges.

[16:27]

And when I started talking to him about his school experience, he told me that he was taking seven AP classes. And my eyes bugged out in my head, you know, and I tried to remain a little neutral. And I said to him, seven, really? Tell me about that. And he proceeded to list math and science classes, calculus, AP government, AP economics, AP biology, chemistry, AP physics, and I broke out in a cold sweat just listening to him. I think He really invited compassion, well, certainly in me, and had his school advised him in a humane way, perhaps they would not have let him register for seven AP classes, even though academically he was capable.

[17:22]

Living that life created such an anxious environment for him that he just basically had a breakdown. And I'm hearing more and more students report that and families report that. Yes, we want our kids to succeed. We want them to do well. We want them to thrive. But is it really doing them a favor to push them in ways that are beyond the bounds of what is actually humanly possible?

[17:58]

And don't we want a balance? their emotional and social lives with their academic lives in mentoring them and helping them flourish and succeed. Because what's the end goal? Anyway, we want them to be flourishing adults and flourishing adults are not successful or, you know, don't flourish. if they're being pushed beyond their means and their potential and their capabilities, which is often superhuman. if they're not practicing self-compassion and if they don't have people around them to nurture them.

[18:37] SPEAKER_01:

And I think that's such an important perspective because it's not that that student needed additional tutoring or a productivity strategy to get through all of his homework. He needed to cut himself some slack and realize what I'm trying to do is too much. No one could handle all of this. And if I can't handle it, that's not a negative about me. That's just a sign that I need to give myself a little bit of a break here.

[19:02] SPEAKER_02:

Exactly. I mean, the schedule that he described to me was beyond freshman college schedules.

[19:09] SPEAKER_01:

So if people want to learn more about the book and more about your work, Ellen, where's the best place for them to find you online and read more about hacking school culture, designing compassionate classrooms?

[19:22] SPEAKER_02:

Okay. So Angela and I have created a community online. The best place to reach out to us is on compassionateclassrooms.org, compassionateclassrooms.org. They can give us their name or not even their name, just their email address and stay in touch with us.

[19:42]

And we provide a lot of free resources to our community. We link them to a pretty robust Google Drive file, which has all kinds of links to articles, links to various books, people who are doing research in the field, tools, protocols, practices that we've developed and that other people have developed. So that's probably the best way to reach us. We have a pretty active Facebook group called Compassionate Classrooms, and they can reach out to us on Twitter at Ellen Feig Gray. And we've just started an Instagram page called Hacking School Culture. And if they buy the book, which is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and at various other bookstores, at the end of every hack or chapter, there's a QR code which links them also to our Google Drive full readers of the book.

[20:48]

with all kinds of tools and resources that we've selected, which is a dynamic file, which we add to periodically. And we would love to hear from teachers and school leaders when they find resources or tools and protocols that are working for them. We'd love to add that to our dynamic file because really the magic of this is sharing what works. And that goes back to that, you know, iterative process of trying things and defining, aligning and refining our practices.

[21:23] SPEAKER_01:

Ellen, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio.

[21:26] SPEAKER_02:

Thank you, Justin. Pleasure to be here.

[21:28] Announcer:

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