[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 Gene Bedley. Gene is the Executive Director of the National Character Education Center, and a 40-year veteran of the education profession who's won numerous awards, including the National Distinguished Teacher Award and the Milken National Educator Award. And we're here today to talk about his work with Ambassadors of Compassion, an organization that helps young people develop resiliency, hope, and personal leadership skills.
[00:45] Announcer:
And now, our feature presentation.
[00:47] SPEAKER_01:
Gene, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Well, thank you, Justin. It's great to be with you. I wonder if we could start by talking a little bit about the need that you saw among students that you address through your work with Ambassadors of Compassion. What is it that students are experiencing that they're going through that you're drawing attention to through your work?
[01:05] SPEAKER_02:
I have been involved with Rachel's Challenge. Rachel Scott was the first victim of the Columbine High School shooting, and I spent 10 years as chairman of their advisory board in Littleton, Colorado. And when we would go out to do programs, basically assemblies telling her true life story. And by the way, there's no greater story. But I think what happened is that sometimes assemblies only last for, you know, a week, two weeks, maybe even a month at the best. And especially an assembly like, you know, the story of her true life.
[01:34]
But what I found and observed is that it didn't go deep enough with kids. That we didn't really get into who they were, why they're here. and their purpose. And so I felt like we needed a deeper journey, a longer journey, a more mentor-type journey that would help kids look into who they were and really begin to identify themselves. A program for them, you might say.
[01:59] SPEAKER_01:
What are some of the issues that you've seen that students are going through that they need more support than our traditional curriculum provides them with?
[02:08] SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, a lot of kids that we have worked with in the past have really... are not connected to, and they don't really know what other kids are going through. And sometimes their feelings of loneliness or rejection is based upon a few comments, whether it's cyber-related or whether it's a person that doesn't really know them or doesn't know their family situation. And until you really get into their pain, until you really help them identify what the pain is, they'll never be able to release it and replace it with different options in their life.
[02:42]
And so... Basically, that's what we saw in Rachel's Challenge. We saw a lot of kids intently listening to a story of a girl that was struggling with her own life and how to build relationships there at Columbine High School. And what happened to her, of course, being the first victim of the Columbine High School shooting, you know, she was struggling with a lot of her own identity issues, such as how do I fit in?
[03:06]
What happens when I get rejected when I don't make the school play? How come my peers don't accept me because I don't do the same things they do? You know, all those different issues. And so our journey, our 17 week journey with Ambassadors of Compassion is really set up to meet those kinds of deep seated needs.
[03:23] SPEAKER_01:
And I know in schools, we've paid a lot of attention in recent years to the category that we call social emotional learning. And I know schools are adding programs. I spoke with someone the other day who was a school-level director of social and emotional learning. So we're starting to recognize that this is something that's worth our attention, that it's a serious student need. Tell us a little bit about how you've set up ambassadors of compassion to go beyond that kind of assembly level, you know, because I think we've all sat through assemblies that were, you know, designed to be heartwarming or designed to be motivating or designed to be deeply moving in some way. And certainly, you know, Rachel's challenge has, you know, has that impact and has that reputation.
[04:06]
But you designed ambassadors of compassion to kind of be a more long term program. Is that right?
[04:11] SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, we felt that if we could take America's 100, the top businesses in the country and And not only have them provide the funding to get the program in schools, but also provide their employees and make them a part of the mentoring program. In other words, we would train team coaches to meet with small groups of kids, seven to 10 kids, once a week over a 17-week period in which we would begin that process of really going a little bit deeper with kids. And as a result of that, we found that a lot of the time, that we needed to spend was in just training the team coaches because, I mean, we were working with basically governmental agencies such as the police department, district attorney's office, faith-based organizations, you know, to train these people to come in. I mean, they had a big heart for kids and for teens, but they didn't really know exactly how they present themselves.
[05:07]
They didn't know how to facilitate a discussion in the social-emotional environment. Because kids are, that's really the backbone of this whole program. It is social-emotional and mental and academic. I mean, it's related to a lot of different issues, but that certainly is a big part of it. So we train them through our training programs online and in person to be prepared for what they would encounter. And then, of course, we have a Facebook page now that we're assisting with them as they continue their journey.
[05:38]
We start off with a kickoff event. You know getting to know the kids for example the team coaches all these volunteers would be there at the school When we do kind of an introductory in and we talk about why they were chosen and why they're gonna what's going to happen with this journey and the thousands of kids across the country that are taking the same journey and so we start off with that and then we introduce those team coaches to the students and they tell a little bit about their story and And then the point person at the school tells a little bit about their story, their own personal journey, letting the kids know that you each have a story to share. And we're going to begin that process by teaming you with one of these team coaches, these people that care about you, are going to invest this time with you and make a difference in your life and help you realize your goals and your dreams.
[06:29]
and the things that you aspire to become.
[06:32] SPEAKER_01:
And how are students getting signed up? Is this a referral basis or is the intent that everyone in the school participates or students sign themselves up?
[06:41] SPEAKER_02:
Well, the program is really designed for all students. We talk about high-risk students and sometimes we place... kids just with certain kinds of risk in that group. But all kids, all teenagers, especially in the middle school or eighth grade program and then the high school, ninth grade, they're turning points.
[06:58]
These are critical years in which kids are really at risk. They're trying to determine whether school's going to be important to them or whether it's an interruption to their life. And there's a huge dropout, the determination of when they're going to be, whether or not to continue on with their education or whether education even means anything to them. And so we begin the process at those ages. And then our goal is to have a curriculum for each of the grade levels as we go through. We've been working at this for about 10 years, and we've tried to find the kids who need it the most.
[07:29]
And those are the two grades. RISE program, our RISE program, it goes into responsibility, initiative, service, and expectations. And we cover those not once, not twice, but three times in that 12-week session as the team coaches meet with the kids. And then the high school program or the ninth grade program is life. It gets into labor, the importance of the work ethic. I is the influence.
[07:55]
Who are you talking to? You know, show me your friends and I'll show you your future. And then F is forgiveness. That's huge. You know, just forgiving yourself, the inner critic can be devastating to a teenager. And it doesn't take very much for a comment that said, on the Internet to withdraw, go in, and even commit suicide.
[08:14]
So we felt this was really important in terms of influence and forgiveness, because the biggest person we have to forgive ourselves is our own inner self in terms of the criticism we place on ourselves. And then E, of course, is experiences, the different experiences that you have. And the way we introduce it is through, we've done these things in Hollywood High School as a major CBS event. And we would bring in the actors that come behind us with their agents and support our work. Like Mario Lopez is one of the ambassadors of compassion. And so we need the star power, you know, the star power in order to grab kids' attention to say, this is a journey that you've been chosen for and that you're going to be participating with kids across the country.
[09:00]
And we want you to know that this is a very special journey that you'll never forget and will change your life forever. So that's what the kickoff event does.
[09:09] SPEAKER_01:
I appreciate your point about different categories of at risk. You know, we think of at risk students as being students who are academically behind, who maybe have a difficult home life or who have had run ins with the juvenile justice system. But you're talking more about things like, you know, feelings of failure or feelings of negative thoughts, feelings of hopelessness that might not manifest themselves in the the traditional kind of ways like interacting with the justice system. But really, you know, to go back to your earlier comments about Columbine High School, you know, the things that came up in the national discussion after we kind of realized what led up to that incident, you know, the kind of bullying, the kind of alienation, the feelings that weren't resulting necessarily in bad grades and criminality, but ultimately did blow up in something terrible, you know, and looking at all of our students as
[10:03] SPEAKER_02:
They're not life-ready. They're not life-ready. And the only way that we can get them life-ready is to deal with the skills needed to do life. And so, I mean, you talk about resilience. Our metrics are all centered around resilience. We're working with the Resilient Institute of Canada.
[10:22]
And a good example is we do a pre-resiliency assessment inventory and we do a post-resiliency effort to see whether or not the 31... characteristics of resilience are embodied in that inventory. And we can tell right away when the kids take that pre, you know, where they are in terms of their ability to rebound, their ability to draw a line through the word quit and move on with their life, to get over it, to see the comments that are being made to them and right next to them on another chart to list all the things, to give them the language that mediates their behavior. For example, if a kid says, I'm burnt out, because they've got too much on their agenda, we would be teaching them, well, that language will cause you to become burnt out.
[11:12]
Language mediates your behavior. But if you chose words like, I'm OBE'd, I'm overbooked on events, or I need to reorganize and take a look at my priorities, and decide what are the most important ones that I need to put at the top and prioritize them and do some weighting of each of those priorities. Kids don't have any tools to really do all of that. And so the curriculum doesn't speak to this. And that's what we felt. And as a lifelong educator working with kids and with families, I've just found that this is an area that is just – It's an empty curriculum that needs to be filled.
[11:52]
And that's why I was really drawn to the work at the Lift Up America organization in terms of trying to fill this void by giving them the skills, the tools, the strategies in which they could do life with, life-ready. They're not life-ready. Look at how many freshmen are dropping out of universities. These are kids that are getting into top-notch universities, 20%, 30%. Universities are losing millions of dollars because their kids can't do the first year, the freshman year. Just the freshman year alone.
[12:24] SPEAKER_01:
Right. And on paper, they have everything they need, right? They have the test scores. They have the grades. Their family is able to get them there. But it's those kind of life-ready skills, as you said.
[12:35]
What are some of the transformations you've seen in individual kids? What do they go through when they develop those skills?
[12:44] SPEAKER_02:
I think one of the things that I've seen from the interviews with the kids, and we're doing more and more interviews with the kids, because the way that the kids, in fact, we're even talking about some of our schools in Florida, of doing more Skype sessions from kids that are already into the journey or through the journey with kids that are beginning the journey. And I think at first, a lot of the kids are really confused about why me? I mean, did somebody find out something about me that, you know, it's like, you know, the question of trust. And, uh, when you had mentioned earlier, you know, how are they chosen and, you know, they're nominated by their teachers. We felt that was the best way to do it. And then to have Mario Lopez invite them, you know, literally to participate because they're, they're a little cautious in terms of any adult and they forget that we're former teenagers.
[13:31]
And these are people who really care. And I think once they hear the team coaches, once they hear why they're there, then it begins to settle in. And usually we don't find out until about maybe three or four weeks into the 17-week journey do they start opening up a little bit, start being a little more transparency, start sharing some of their struggles, some of their setbacks, some of their doubts, some of the resiliency factors in many of these things in terms of And developing an accurate self, you know, based upon not what your friends tell you or what you're told, you know, through the cyber world. But what are you building? What do you know about yourself? And what do your best friends know about you?
[14:12]
And what do your parents believe in you? And the list goes on. You know, it's a different kind of a list. So with the resiliency thing, what we're noticing is kids are far better at self-disclosure. They're far better at talking about who they are, their connections, who they're not, you know, that many of them have been defined going into the sessions with us. So I see that probably as one of the biggest things.
[14:36]
I think they also are more forgiving than they were before because we teach forgiveness, the importance of letting go, and because forgiveness cements us in a moment that we can't get away from unless we do forgive. And so we're teaching them that and we hear them now saying, I finally forgive my father who abused me. And so I can move on with my life and I can do something with my life. And the stories they tell, I mean, they're pretty heartbreaking, you know, when you hear them. And of course, even the team coaches are put in a position of reporting, you know, abuse. We have to stay with the laws, you know, and the confines of that, but at the same time, get kids to really open up.
[15:17]
So those are the big ones.
[15:18] SPEAKER_01:
I wonder if in interacting with schools, you've come across any schools that, you know, in addition to putting in place your program as kind of a more intensive support, are there any things that you're seeing schools do on a broad basis, just kind of as, you know, as curriculum or as policy or as a system or a culture within the school that addresses some of those same challenges kind of at a, you know, what we'd call an RTI tier one level?
[15:42] SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, I think that we've done it. We've done it that way. In other words, in terms of identifying where kids fit on the triangle and that type of thing. But I think they're still, you know, and usually when we go into school, they are looking for programs for the very high risk kids. So we usually get the least functioning kids in a school in terms of academics. They'll give us their special ed kids.
[16:02]
They'll give us the court schools. The access schools will give us probation, you know, kids, etc. We always get those kids. But what we're experiencing is that we really do need to take it to a broader audience because it was designed for that. But, you know, just in the area of teaching kids about rejection, I mean, we teach them how to reject rejection because kids are, I mean, one thing they want more than anything is just to belong in the school. And so we see a lot of programs in school that focus on belonging, on getting kids connected.
[16:31]
I see a lot more focus in terms of alternative schools so that the kids have different choices and options and, I think we've come a long way. And of course, the social-emotional, we would probably put emotion first before we put social. The emotional-social curriculums are proven, you know, 11% higher academic gains when you focus on that. But for the most part, kids still are uncertain about their future. There's a lack of hope out there. They're still not writing short-term goals, 20-day goals.
[17:05]
You know, it's kind of piecemealing it, you know, instead of giving a gestalt. See, the gestalt that we're trying to give them is much bigger than them. It's focused on things where they can give service. For example, every one of the kids in our program do a service project because we feel until they give back to their community in some way. And you ought to hear that. service projects these kids are doing in terms of helping younger kids, doing things in their community, fixing the community, interviewing kids for a school newspaper on who are you.
[17:40]
And I mean, it's just, it's amazing the different things that we're hearing.
[17:43] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, they can surprise us and they'll usually do more than we would assign them in similar circumstances.
[17:48] SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, if you extend an invitation to do that. And without the service projects, this would probably never happen in my mind. I mean, you can teach them all about these skills and you can teach them all about these truths and how to be right at life ready. But until you put them in life, the beautiful thing about businesses coming alongside us and partnering with us is that they get to go. Then the students, we're asking businesses to open their door to them because down the road, we want them to see the correlation between what they're learning and getting in front of the line for that job. And so if they can shadow those people in those businesses, we don't want businesses just to give us money.
[18:25]
And they're doing that. I mean, we've got more businesses in Arizona, as an example, that are ready to sponsor a school at $6,000 per 50 kids for the journey. We've got all kinds of business stepping up on that. But what we're saying to them is, what about your employees? We have a Fortune 500 trainer that will come in and train you in how to relate and work with kids. What will that do to your employees?
[18:52]
What kind of money are you paying for professional development in your business that we can actually provide for you? And in turn, all we're asking you to do is to do something for the good of our next generation. And that's where we feel the difference will really happen. And so it's beginning to happen. We're seeing more and more businesses give their employees And they're basically the causal businesses, the businesses that really believe in a cause and get their employees working that way.
[19:20] SPEAKER_01:
Well, Gene, that sounds like a great opportunity for companies that want to get their employees involved, that want to be able to contribute. What's the best way for companies to reach you and get in touch?
[19:30] SPEAKER_02:
They can contact us at Lift Up America. We have the information email there. And we have a separate division that is working with the businesses in the Americas 100. Wayne Heinzinger from Miami and former owner of the Miami dolphins. You know, some of those folks are leading that. And, uh, so there's people there that can answer their questions and the importance of being involved in a business school partnership.
[19:56] SPEAKER_01:
Nice. And that's at AOC life.org.
[19:58] SPEAKER_02:
Uh, yeah. Or lift up America.org lift up America, all one word.org. And there's an information line on there that people and the business field, uh, And the marketplace can contact us.
[20:12] SPEAKER_01:
That'd be great. And then for schools that are interested in bringing the Ambassadors of Compassion program to their school to work with a group of students, would they go to that aoclife.org website as well? Yes. Well, Gene, based on your experience, As an educator and the work that you're currently doing, if you could kind of wave a magic wand and get all of us in the educational leadership profession, school administrators, central office administrators, if you could get us all to do one thing, what would that be if you waved your magic wand?
[20:45] SPEAKER_02:
Life is a series of responsibilities lived out in the context of relationships. It doesn't happen without the relationship. We're placing far too much emphasis on linear measurement in this country. We're not placing enough emphasis on who kids are and why they're here, the who and the why questions. We desperately need a curriculum for that. And that's what we created in the Ambassadors of Compassion program.
[21:11]
That's what we're creating. It's an in-process type of thing.
[21:15] SPEAKER_01:
I was reading the quote the other day that we have lots of data. We have lots of data about our students, their attendance, their test scores, all kinds of things. But often we don't have a lot of information. We don't know them the way that we need to. And I think just kind of...
[21:31]
thinking about the kinds of issues that our students are dealing with and the kinds of skills that you work with them to develop in terms of being life ready. I think that just adds a whole new dimension to the possibilities for how we can make a difference in their lives.
[21:46] SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, Justin, you said it, you're right on. And I think that the time is running out. You know, time is short on this. We're not talking about, you know, we'll just spread this out over the next 10 years and see what happens. We need to do it now. And we're just about ready to launch, even in a bigger way, what we're doing.
[22:05]
And this is all volunteer work. This is not something that is going to help us economically in any way, shape, or form. I feel that I've been taken care of in my lifetime, and now it's time to do something for America. Now, our program will be, you know, it's not just Lift Up America, Lift Up Australia, Lift Up Germany. I mean, all the other countries of the world. And we have boots on the ground to do that.
[22:32]
We have the boots on the ground here in America to do it. So we have the people that will take the message to their communities. They're already there. And it's just a question of are we that committed enough to really take those first steps? And we've held off on the public relation and programs like this because we felt we really wanted, it's taken us 10 years to get to here, to really define and to take a look at what was happening to students in the long run. And what we're finding with our results is we're talking about significant changes in their behavior.
[23:03]
Significant. And we can provide that information that anybody's interested in that wants to contact you or contact us here. At Lift Up America, we have the metrics.
[23:14] SPEAKER_01:
So the program is Ambassadors of Compassion at AOClife.org. Gene, thanks so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio.
[23:22] SPEAKER_02:
Hey, thank you, Justin. Thanks for all your great work. I've been at your site there, and I'm just very, very impressed with what you're doing for principals. Well, thank you very much. Really appreciate it. Thank you.
[23:32] SPEAKER_00:
And now, Justin Bader on high-performance instructional leadership.
[23:36] SPEAKER_01:
So high-performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my conversation with Gene Bedley? One thing that really stands out to me is the idea that when we educate students, we're educating them not just with their academic needs in mind. Students don't just come to school as reading scores and math scores that need to be improved. They come to us as whole people. And often we take for granted students' ability to handle what life throws at them. You know, when students show up for school, we expect that, by and large, they're ready for what they're dealing with.
[24:11]
But when we inquire, when we talk to students, we know that that's often not the case, that they really do need help becoming, as Jean said, life-ready, dealing with what life is going to send their way. So I don't know if the ambassadors of compassion program is right for your school, but I do know that every school needs to be thinking about these issues because every school is full of students who have these needs, who face these challenges. You know, all of our students are going to experience exclusion. They're all going to experience some sort of failure or feeling of hopelessness at some point in their lives. And I don't think we can just say that they need to come with those skills because the reality is they don't. And it's our responsibility to do everything we can to help kids develop those skills and to deal with what life sends their way.
[25:02]
So again, if you want to check out Ambassadors of Compassion, you can go to aoclife.org and learn more about the Rise and Life programs that Jean talked about. And in your school, if you are working on... a social-emotional learning curriculum or working on some other type of support.
[25:21]
Maybe it's under the banner of RTI, the Tier 1 Intervention. I'd love to hear from you. Let me know what you're doing in your school.
[25:29] Announcer:
Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.
