Creating a Culture of Caring Comes First

A special episode recorded in front of a live audience! Host Dr. Kari Vogelgesang welcomes distinguished guests - Des Moines Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Ian Roberts, the 2019 National Teacher of the Year Rodney Robinson, and the 2018 Iowa School Counselor of the Year Shelby Bryce - to the 2023 Iowa BEST Summit stage. 
 
Join us for an enlightening conversation about the importance of caring for our educators, ideas for building school communities and classrooms of belonging, and how our complex education system can shift to better support educators, students, and families. 

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Transcript

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- Hello everyone, I'm Kari Vogelgesang, your host of the "Educator Wellness Podcast", here to share and promote my life's work and passion, all things wellness. But not just any wellness, we're here to discuss wellness specifically as it pertains to educators. I am a former elementary school teacher, and I am passionate about helping educators see wellness in a very different way. This podcast is dedicated to educators across the globe, creating a space for us to come together in an authentic and therapeutic way, sharing our stories, our hopes, our joys, our fears, our sorrows, and hopefully creating some space to share some laughter with one another as well in our journey to learn how to support one another to prioritize wellness and enhance our overall wellbeing. Please join me as we talk with nationally-recognized experts to guide us on a transformative journey of self-discovery, helping us to embrace and weave all dimensions of wellness into the fabric of both our personal and professional lives. Also, please note that the opinions and perspectives that are shared on this podcast do not necessarily represent those at the Scanlan Center for School Mental Health, or the University of Iowa. Today, on the first episode of season two, I'm excited to bring you a live recording from our 2023 Iowa BEST Summit. And for those of you who are unfamiliar with Iowa BEST, it's our statewide school mental health summit where approximately 1,700 educators come together in Des Moines, Iowa, for about a day and a half to learn about and discuss all things school mental health and wellness, actually. In today's episode, we're going to focus on the importance of caring for our educators in a very complex system of education here in the United States. As many of you know and hear frequently, the data that has been collected, particularly over the recent years, the last few years since COVID, teachers are reporting at higher rates than ever before that they are unsatisfied with their jobs and that dissatisfaction is oftentimes connected to and related to not just salary, but also the stress of the job, the demand of the job. And there are different challenges that we're seeing in our schools connected to also the challenges that our families and students are experiencing outside of our school walls. Data from a recent survey developed by the RAM Corporation, a nonpartisan research organization, revealed recently that while teachers report feeling happier at work than during recent years and during the height of our COVID years, they are still twice as likely as other working adults, professional working adults, to experience frequent job-related stress. And about a quarter of these teachers who completed the survey reported they were likely to leave their job at the end of the school year. We've been hearing that a lot. 70% of whom cited the stresses and disappointments of teaching as being the reason for their exit from the profession. Special guests of this episode include Dr. Ian Roberts, who is the new Des Moines Public School superintendent, Rodney Robinson, the 2019 National Teacher of the Year, and Shelby Bryce, the 2018 Iowa Multilevel School Counselor of the Year. I invite you to join the podcast today for an enlightening conversation about caring for educators in our complex American education system. So, let's talk about it.(upbeat instrumental music)- I am so excited to start this new season off with all of you here today. This is a really special treat to have a room full of educators joining us and joining us on this critical conversation and topic. We're gonna focus our conversation today on caring for educators, but even more than that, we're gonna talk a little bit about our communities and how our communities are feeding into our schools and creating environments for our educators, our students, and families that either help them thrive or just keeping them in a place that's allowing them to potentially survive. Before we get started, there's a little bit of housekeeping, I think, that we need to do. So, one of the special features today is that we are going to allow all of you to join us in this conversation. You should've received an email through Skedge that allows you to submit questions and interact with our guests today through the chat feature in Skedge. So I think there should be some directions that will be put up on the screen here shortly. If they aren't on the screen shortly, then if you look in your email, again, there should have been some directions that were pushed out through Skedge either last night or this morning. You do have to make your profile public in order to submit your questions, but we would love to hear from you. You are why we are here today so please feel free to either ask our guests questions or maybe contribute to the conversation in whatever ways that you feel would benefit this conversation. Okay, should we get started?- Let's do it.- Are we ready?- Yes.- Okay. I'm gonna talk a little bit, I'm gonna give you some more background information about our special guests today. So I'll start with you, Dr. Ian Roberts. He is our new Des Moines Public School District superintendent. Welcome to Iowa.- Thank you.(Kari chuckling)(audience applauding)(Kari cheering) That's right. Thank you, clap for him. He is coming to us from Millcreek Township School District in Pennsylvania. He shared with me that he's a little bit nervous about our winters.- Just a little bit.- A little bit?- Just a little bit.(Kari chuckling)- It won't be that bad. He started his career as a special education teacher, then principal, then district leader, then leadership trainer, and now he's a superintendent in our largest school district in Iowa. We're so excited to have him join us here in Iowa. He's written several books about leadership, empathy, and cultural responsiveness. He competed in the 2000 summer Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia. Wow.- Wow.- And you have four dogs?- Yes.- I'm forgetting the names. Did you tell us the names of all your?- I didn't.- And two of them run with you.- Yeah. They're my running partners.- You have two German Shepherds.- Two German Shepherds.- Are they all German Shepherds?- No, two German Shepherds, a Chihuahua, and a Chihuahua Yorkie mix.- Wow.(audience laughing)- I know.- So yeah, the German Shepherds would run with you, not the others?- Who do you think I run with in the mornings?(Kari laughing)(audience laughing)- Not the Chihuahua. Okay, well thank you for joining us.- Thank you.- Okay, let's move on over to Rodney Robinson. He's currently serving as a senior policy advisor with Richmond Public Schools. He is the director of Teacher and Leader Pathways and RVA Men Teach, a program to recruit male minority educators with Richmond Public Schools. Rodney was selected as our 2019 National Teacher of the Year. Amazing.(audience applauding)(Kari chuckling) He spent over 20 years in this profession in numerous positions, making an enormous impact on probably literally thousands of people's lives at this point in time. Something that I think is really interesting that Rodney shared with us is that he is excited to return home because he's going to attend his first Boy Scout meeting on Saturday with his godson, who is refusing to allow his mother to attend because, well, quote,"She is not a boy so she can't go."(audience laughing)- Yeah.(people laughing) Yeah, I'm excited.- You're excited, so no Boy Scouts when you were growing up?- No.- No.- That's a whole nother story. My brother ruined that.- He did, is this Michael?- You know how we would have a kid that gets in trouble, the mom is scared to introduce the next kid to the organization.(audience laughing)- Oh yeah, I actually lived this.- Yeah. Yeah.- Yeah.- So when my brother got in trouble she was like, I think you won't be able to do that.- Okay. Okay. Well, I'm excited to hear how this goes.(people chuckling) Okay and our final guest, Shelby Bryce. She actually holds a very special place in my heart. She worked with me through some difficult times, actually, when my kids were in school. She is a school counselor. She's currently serving as a school counselor at Liberty High School in Iowa City, Iowa. She oversees the American School Counselor Association National Model implementation. She was selected as the 2018, right, Iowa Multi-Level School Counselor of the Year by the Iowa School Counselor Association.(audience applauding) Yes, congratulations. And Shelby's family recently welcomed, and I got to see this little guy too, he's pretty cute, welcomed a Golden Retriever puppy to their family and they named her, Clover. Shelby hopes to train and bring clover to school with her at least once a week.- Yeah.- Now, your school principal is here today right? It's Justin?- He has gone home last night, yep.- He went home.- But he's a dog lover.- I was gonna say, Justin, where are you? She's bringing the dog.- Yes. Yeah.(Kari chuckling) All of my principals and assistants are dog people, which is a wonderful thing. So they say the more the merrier. Bring the dogs in. I also have a 13-year-old Golden, and she is not too pleased that we brought home a baby, so, it's been a little rough.- Oh, adjusting.- Yeah.- Yeah.(Kari chuckling) Okay, let's go ahead and get started. I think what we're gonna do first is start off with a short little video. And before we start with this video, though, I do wanna emphasize that this video is meant to help us start a conversation focused on how we can support one another. So I think this video highlights some of the things that educators who are boots on the ground, on the front lines, how we've been feeling over the last few years. And then we'll just kind of have a natural organic reaction to that and maybe some participation from the audience and kind of move from there.- [Rehema] Teachers will tell you it's demanding work.- I just, I was running myself ragged.- I went from someone who was happy to someone who was overwhelmed.- I got so burnt out.- [Rehema] Over the last two years, more than 600,000 educators have called it quits.- I quit teaching because I was overextended.- Our commitment became even more emotionally taxing.(teacher speaking in foreign language)- [Rehema] Long days grew longer during the pandemic.- Today, we're working on lesson 22.4.- Before the pandemic, a 50-hour work week was pretty typical, and I felt like I was on top of my job and doing things well. During pandemic, a 70-hour week was fairly typical.- Trying to connect content with students at various levels, and then lack of support with special education teachers as well, is hard.- [Rehema] Students started showing academic and behavioral problems.- Give me an example? You said there are things going on in the classroom?- Physical assaults, ridicule by admin in certain areas. It is things that I think no professional should have to endure.- I went from a teacher who never had a child fail the state exam, to experiencing my first students failing the state exam.- [Rehema] And outside pressures made teaching even tougher. Battles over masks and vaccines trickled from TV screens into classrooms.- The politics are getting into it, and it's just kind of really, a really negative place.- [Rehema] Tough jobs with little room for financial growth.- I think teacher pay is an issue across the nation. No, we did get some one-time bonuses but they were very small.- [Rehema] Still, the decision tugging at the heart.- It's hard on you even now thinking about it.- Yep. Yep. Yes.(teacher chuckling emotionally) I'll need a, gimme a moment.- We are told,"You're doing this for the kids. What about the kids?" And at some point it's like, well, what about my family?- What was the best part of teaching for you?- The way that children love on you.- The best part of the job is definitely the kids, the students.- It was helping them figure out what it is that they needed the most.- With them, more than their own parents a lot of time throughout that day and so you do, you build like a little family in your classroom.- I think teaching really helped me find the best of myself.- [Rehema] Saying goodbye to the classroom, but holding onto the joys of teaching. Rehema Ellis, "NBC News".- I think one of the reasons why I wanted to start with that video is because I think it's important for us to have an honest conversation. I think it's important for us collectively as a group of educators to have an opportunity to be in a space together and really be honest and authentic about things that are happening in our profession and in our communities right now. And how that's impacting not only our students and our families, but all of us as educators individually, how that impacts our families, how that impacts our larger communities in which our schools are situated. What are your thoughts when you see videos like that? I know we've seen hundreds of videos like this.- Yeah, I think it just really points out the reality that we are existing in, in public education, right. Teachers who have an unbelievable love for what they do. We know that teachers don't do this work for anything other than the fact that there is so much joy. In 2012, The New Teacher Project came out with a study titled, "The Irreplaceables". And in that study, they pointed out that some of our best teachers were exiting the teaching profession, and it was not necessarily because of pay, but it's because they did not feel valued. And so those of us who are in positions of leadership, we have to get better at how we are showing appreciation for, giving them adequate resources, and valuing our teachers.- Yeah, I think that's a really good point. It's something that when I'm in schools, I hear a lot is just not feeling like people are seeing them and seeing what's really going on. Shelby and Rodney?- I think we wanna talk about the elephant in the room, the fact that these issues were there.- Yes.- Have been there for years. There's a smoldering fire. And what the pandemic did was just threw gasoline on the fire, and so now everything has gone to level five. How do we deal with this? And it's just bigger, you know. Everyone says pay, pay teachers more. It's bigger than pay, you know. I'll give you an example in my district. In the past couple of years, we've increased teacher pay by over $15,000, but we're still seeing teachers leave. And so it's a bigger issue and so we started something called the Teacher Retention Task Force, where we can sit down with a group of teacher leaders and we talk about some of those issues. Some of those issues were, number one, respect. Teachers don't feel that they've been given the autonomy to teach the way they see their students need to be taught. Another thing is the workload. We are piling more and more of society's responsibilities on teachers. And by doing this brings up the fourth issues, teachers are not trained to deal with the issues that are coming into their classroom every day. One thing that blew my mind when we did the task force where teachers were asking for more professional development, for professional development to help them deal with students of trauma, help them deal with the growing ESL population, to help them deal with more special education requirements. And so the teachers have the love. They want to help their students, but they're begging for the system to give them the tools and the support they need to make it successful for everyone.- Yeah.- Yeah, I joke often with--(audience applauding) Yes. Please. Yeah.- Please. Absolutely.- That when a teacher becomes a teacher and goes through orientation, or any educator for that matter, they should take the love language test and they should hand their results to their administrator or their supervisor.(Shelby chuckling) Because I think a lot of this comes down to communication. And if our principals, our supervisors don't know what we need, they don't know what they don't know. And so I encourage you if you're in this room and you haven't had a one-on-one with your supervisor lately, to sit down with them and let them know, hey, I know I am a good educator and I wanna be in here. I wanna be here for the long haul, but I need a little bit more words of affirmation. I need a little bit more chocolate in my mailbox. I need a little bit more, just some feedback from you. We need that. We're human beings. We need those types of feedback.- Yeah. Yeah, and this feeds into, I'm gonna build off of some things that you all just said, specifically you, Rodney, about professional development and helping teachers. And I wanna talk about an article that I recently read, and it was titled,"Healing-Centered Environment Fill Gaps in Educator Wellness by Jacobe Bel. And it was published in April of 2023, if you wanna look it up in"The Learning Professional". And she writes,"In schools, we often talk about trauma-informed practices or social and emotional learning for students. But we don't explicitly address how the environment influences educators or how it could better support them. We talk about it with regards to students, but never about teachers. As we saw in the video, teachers are tired. They're frustrated, they are working with students and families who are coming to them with fewer and fewer resources, and who enter their classrooms on day one, functioning at months, if not years below their current grade level, and oftentimes, it's the teacher who gets blamed for this. We rarely talk about the inadequate social systems that grossly contribute to the troubling outcomes we see in our schools and classrooms. How do we better communicate to our larger communities, local, state, national levels that learning, teaching, school behavior, school activities, etc., don't happen in a vacuum. They are part of our larger communities. How do we get people to see the bigger picture?" Any of you. Who wants to take that one?- I'll jump in. I think the bigger issue is, what we've seen over the past I would say 40 years, is the elimination of the social safety net in society. The problem is schools are now the last place for the social safety net. Kids come to us and they need medical care. Kids come to us for food. Kids come to us for mental healthcare. And simply, we're not equipped to deal with that. So in a sense, the system is failing. But what we can't do, and we were talking about this earlier, we can't blame the parents and the students. I see a lot of folks, especially on social media, talking about the kids are behind, the parents aren't doing their job. Society has failed. The system has failed. We can't blame our biggest partners who are parents, who are students for the failures of society. We have to sit down and we have to have open communication. We have to be willing to admit, hey, this has failed in society, but we're gonna do our part together to make it better. We can't keep blaming one another. And that's just everybody, it's not teachers and parents, politicians, everybody. We all need to come together and decide what's best for our students rather than blaming one another.- [Kari] Yeah, building those relationships.- I was at a training recently and the presenter said,"Schools do not rise to the level of their goals, they fall to the level of their systems." And I just, I really soaked that in. And the first thing I did when I came back was go to my principal and say, I told them this quote,"You do not rise to the level of your goals." We cannot sugarcoat and just throw out these keywords and things."We will fall to the level of our systems," so we have to get systems in place that are built for longevity of great educators, safety for our students, community culture building for our families. It's tough work but that's what has to be done.- [Kari] Yeah, so you just quoted the person who I wanna meet the most right now. He's like my top, James Clear.- Yeah. Yeah.- He's like at the top of my list. I love this man.(ladies chuckling) Yeah, I couldn't agree more with you. And my boys hate it when I say this quote to them. I have it written.- Oh, yeah.- In my house, throughout my house, actually. And it's true. Whether it's personal systems or school systems or community systems, we will always, the system is what drives the outcome, always, always. Did you wanna add anything to that?- Yeah, just very quickly. I think of the perspective that I'm gonna offer is through the lens of a superintendent, right, someone who certainly is often looked at or referred to as the system, it's the superintendent. And we have to take that responsibility very seriously. We have to make sure that we are willing to pivot from this narrative that says, we are student-centered. I'm a student-centered educator, right, as cliche as that sounds, and I'm proud to say that. But during COVID, I think I had an epiphany when I was able to sort of think about the role in which I'm serving. And I say with a lot of pride that I am an educator-centered superintendent. Because if we do not take care of our teachers or our school counselors, our social workers, all of our related service providers, then our students are not gonna see the benefit of the health that we are creating for them. Oftentimes when we fly, if you fly with a young person, the flight attendant always reminds you, in the case of emergency, I want you to put your mask on first before you can take care of a young person. If our teachers aren't well, if our social workers, or our counselors, our nurses aren't well, we're not going to be able to take care of the young people who are in our charge. The last thing I wanna share about this is, there's a Japanese concept, the Japanese word gemba, or gembutsu, which refers to the real place, the real place where the work is happening. My commitment to the gemba walks is to make sure that myself and every member of my cabinet spends an inordinate amount of time in schools, in classrooms, so that we can not only see what is happening, but we can hear from teachers, social workers, and counselors, understand what their needs are, and do something to meet those needs. That's the way we're gonna disrupt the system that is failing our children and our teachers and leaders.(audience applauding)- Yeah. Yeah, we actually have a really good question that just came in from the audience too. So Adriel writes,"What is the role of the community in shaping a culture of caring in schools? What models do your districts use to engage community and families in building positive relationships?" So we keep talking about the system, system, system, system. We keep talking about building these relationships, but I love this question because now you're digging a little bit deeper. So what are the models? What are the models to network and to partner with and lock arms with different organizations in our communities that can reimagine and reshape systems that feed into our school systems, our smaller school system, to really do the work that we need to do to support our teachers and our families? Because Rodney, as you pointed out, schools are becoming this place where you get all of the services. Well, they want it to be that way, right, but then there's not enough resources to actually do that. And that includes enough teachers, enough paraprofessionals, enough school counselors, God forbid, school counselors is a huge shortage, you know, enough funds. So this is a great question. What are the models?- Well, I know in RPS, we have Dr. Shadae Harris, has a very community-based family engagement model. For example, we have hubs around the city at various locations where we know our community gathers, whether it's the community center, the Boys and Girls Club, just different places and we have school employees there. And they contact and come face-to-face with everyone in the community. And also what that does, see, what you have to understand is for a lot of our parents, schools are a place of trauma to them. And so when you're inviting them into a school, you're inviting them into a power dynamic where they are uncomfortable. So let's remove the building. Let's go out. Let's come to your door. We have community walks. We have community events, events that aren't just centered around education, events that let parents and let the community know, this is how you can help. And it doesn't have to take place in the school. It doesn't have to take place in central office. We're gonna come to you. We have vans where we drive through the neighborhoods. We do popups. We just go to certain neighborhoods and we let out all of our community liaisons. They go door-to-door and they tell the parents everything that's going on in the system, how you can help, any extra information they need, and you really have to go to where the people are. The school is the heart of the community, but the school can't be the one place where the community exists. The community exists everywhere. So educators need to leave the school to find the people in those communities to help every child be successful.- Yeah, I love that answer. It reminds me of, we just hired a community coordinator,(Kari chuckling) Bailey Baker. Bailey, where are you? And I'm wondering if that's one thing that we need to start thinking through, like putting people in positions. Community coordinator positions is basically what I'm thinking of, like how we can start to build these gaps, and that's that person's job to do that.- And be intentional about hiring folks from the community. You can't hire folks who really don't know the people that they work with. You need to hire people who grew up. One of the things we have is every community liaison,'cause the city is divided into different hubs, that person grew up and went to schools in the community. They have connections, and so that eliminates a lot of those barriers of communication that exists.- Yeah. Did you wanna add, Rodney?- Yeah. I can certainly build on that very quickly. Here in Des Moines Public Schools, I believe it's one of those sort of models that over the years we've had some intentionality around it and we are getting better. So we have community service coordinators as well as student success work workers or teammates in pretty much all of our schools. And there is some intentionality about hiring individuals who come from our communities. And while we still have some gaps in how we're sort of hiring those individuals, we're getting better at it and so that's a huge deal. I think, secondly, we have to make sure that we're opening the doors for all the partnerships, from business community members, from politicians, from legislators, as well as our faith-based community, right. Because too often we have this sort of dynamic where it's an us versus them. We're not going to be able to serve our students, our teachers, and our counselors, and social workers well, if those of us who are in a position of influence are not collaborating with each other. There's a proverb, an African proverb that says,"When elephants fight, the grass gets trampled on." When those of us who are in positions of power, perceived power and influence, if we are not able to get along, we are just gonna step all over those individuals like you who are working hard each and every day. So the community approach has to be one whereby we have a spirit of collaboration, as opposed to really being in a combative or a cantankerous relationship.- [Kari] I love that quote. Yeah, thanks for sharing that.- I'll just add that, Kari, you mentioned that there is a lack of resources and I agree with that but I also do think that there are so many resources available that just families and students might not know about. So we cannot ever assume that our families and our students know about everything that we have available in the school. We have to be constantly marketing those things. We are opening up. We have in-person parent-teacher conferences next week for the first time in a long time, and I'm excited about that. We're inviting families in. We are going to, as a counseling department, go over all of the resources that we have at our school. Because, right now, I serve as the school counselor for all students with 504s and our at-risk seniors, the ones that are the most credit deficient. And when I have those conversations to make attendance contracts or anything like that, sometimes when I'm listing off things that we have in our building, their eyes light up. They have no idea some of the things, some of the people. They don't know what a student family advocate is. They don't know what the NEST is, where, it's a place where if you're on the verge of a anxiety or panic attack, you can go and you relax and we have resources there. They don't know that we have a class that, a DBT class that is offered for trimester credit each trimester. So they need to know these things and we can never just assume that they do, and say, well, we have it there. I remember in grad school, a professor was talking once and said that, well, this man said,"'Well, I taught my dog Chinese.' And someone said,'Oh, what can he say?''Well, nothing, but I taught it to him.'"(audience laughing) And we can't assume that people know and we have to bring it to them. We have to really open their eyes to it.- Yeah. That's also a really great comment.(people laughing) That's really cute. Okay, so let's dive in a little bit deeper about this idea of systems, because, whereas I know the conversation about systems has to happen, right, because we're trying to work in a system that seems to be not working well for all of us. And I always say, you can't wellness your way out of a toxic environment. It's never going to happen. There's not any amount of self-compassion, of physical exercise, of healthy sleep pattern that's gonna work your way out of a toxic environment, and that's when you have to really have some tough conversations with yourself about what are my next steps? And I think one of the things about toxic systems that can be really difficult for our students and our families, and you started to talk about this, Rodney, is the sense of belonging. When I'm going in and out of schools and when I'm talking to students and to teachers, there seems to be this disconnect or this feeling, this, I guess, trend of conversation about, I just don't feel like everybody feels like they belong or that I belong, I really belong here. And it made me think of another article. It was a 2008 article titled,

"If Dr. King Were a Principal: 32:42

Building the Beloved Community in Schools". In this article the authors assert that"The central organizing principle for absolutely all of King's ideas and activities was his idea and dream of a beloved community." Which is, they define as,"An inclusive community that respects the sacredness of human personality and environment of freedom and the solidarity of human connection or family, giving everybody a sense of belonging to that community, a real sense of belonging."(Kari breathing in deeply) How do we make that happen for our educators, for our families and for our students? I mean, we know that students, they're not coming to school.- You're absolutely right. When we look at the fact that 72% of schools and school districts across the country are struggling with chronic absenteeism, it tells us that students are voting with their feet. They're telling us exactly how they're feeling. We have to pivot, right. We've had this belief for a very long time, and you hear us sort of perpetuate this when we talk with students or their parents, and that is students need to become student-ready, sorry, school-ready or grade-level-ready. Well, the shift that has to be made is where we are creating schools that are student-ready. The way we serve children, BC, before COVID, cannot be the same way we're serving them now. And one of the reasons that they're not showing up in large numbers is because, one, sometimes what we're delivering to them on a daily basis is not that exciting. The punitive model, for example, pushes kids away. We're not listening to them enough. We have to stop the top-down dictatorial way of interacting with students and parents and listen to their voices. Truly listen to and elevate student voices is the only way we're gonna start to see some increases in them showing more enthusiasm about why they wanna be in schools.- Yeah. Yeah, and that connects to a conversation, Rodney, I think that we were having. You opened up a, was it a TED Talk where you opened?- Yeah.- Yeah.- Yeah, talking about back in the day.- Back in the day.- And how I hate that phrase, back in the day. So many people are like, well, back in my day we had... Back in the day wasn't good for everybody. You need to understand that. The things that work from when we grew up, they don't work with today's generation. And what we have to do, we have to start doing things different. We have to start imagining, looking at things different. And also, I talked about earlier, teachers having the skills and professional development. We have a leadership in education right now that is woefully out of touch with what our students need, and more importantly, what our teachers need. So we need them to actually go back and get a little bit more training on how to deal with mental health of students and teachers, how to lead a staff, how to motivate. The days of, hey, do this, read this, those days are gone.- Yeah.- You have to inspire. You have to motivate. You have to lead people, you know. I don't know, one of my favorite podcasts is "The Pivot". It's really a sports podcast. But if you check out the episode with Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers, he talks about so many things about leadership that are so potent and important in education. One of the things he says is,"You can't have extraordinary results with ordinary relationships. You have to have extraordinary relationships if you want extraordinary results." And so that's what we have to do. We need to start building better relationships with our kids, with our communities. And the principals and school leadership, you are the leaders. You need to create ways for those relationships to build and then teachers will follow your lead. Everybody needs to sort of look at that mirror and say, what skills do I need, and go about getting those skills to lead people. Because education is not what it was 10 years ago. Education isn't even what it was five years ago.- No.- And we all need to adjust.- [Kari] Yeah.- Yeah, I couldn't agree more. In a perfect world, we could change graduation requirements and throw those out and invite kids into our building and throw paint up at the wall over and over and over and over with them and see what sticks, and then help them build on that. So there's just so many things that at the deeper level, I think, that are hard'cause they're barriers that we constantly are up against, you know, still trying to get every student through, exposed and passed in algebra II. Well, what will that do for them in their future? We have to start asking those tough questions and readjusting and making some changes on a bigger system. One of the most enlightening conversations I've had recently is with two parents of a student who has autism. And she is in school. Her parents' number one goal for her is belonging, and they said that clear as day."We don't actually care if she passes or if she gets a high school diploma. We don't actually care." She's brilliant and we're gonna foster her learning, and we're gonna do whatever we need to do to help her be, to reach her peak and to be a wonderful young woman in the future. So we're just in it for the belonging."We want you to quite literally just help her to soak up everything she can while she's here for four years and then we'll help her after that." And that was such a, just an empowering conversation to have, and sort of made me wishful thinking that we could do that with every student.- Okay, I love what you just said. If we could reimagine what these credits are, what these requirements are, who came up with them, are they necessary? I wanna disrupt. This is the conversation that I like. We're still using some of the same measures and some of the same ideas around what our students need to know or do. And I get it, I'm not saying that they don't need to learn how to do math. I'm not talking about that. But I'm talking about the sequence of courses and the kinds of credits and when they earn those credits and what does that look like and do they have to do it in a school building? I love this question. And I think it's really scary for everybody because those credits, I get it, feed into a larger system and even more powerful system, which is college.- Postsecondary.- I'm not sure that system wants it. And I can say that because I work in a postsecondary environment. I'm not quite sure that system is ready for this conversation.(people chuckling)- I know it's not ready.(Kari chuckling)- Well, I do too Rodney. But this is what I wanna talk about. I think that this is something, a factor that's contributing to chronic absenteeism, that's contributing to frustrations that teachers are feeling and experiencing, that's contributing to these frustrations that parents are feeling and experiencing.(Kari inhaling deeply) How do we, where do we go with this?- Yeah, in Des Moines Public Schools, we have, of course, as every other school and school district in the country, a set of goals that we are sort of aspiring to achieve. But I think one of the revolutionary approaches that we've taken is there are also five guardrails that accompany those goals. And one of the guardrails with a deep level of specificity talks about cultural responsivity. Since the fall of 2015, we have seen a significant shift in the population of students who we serve in public education in this country, right. We had about 51 million children across the United States in public education, but 50.5 of them are students of color and from a diverse set of backgrounds. But what we have not seen is a shift in those who serve them. And we need to see that shift, not necessarily in one's physical appearance, race or ethnicity, but in our practices. And we know that the tenets of cultural responsivity is something that we have to embrace, right. It means that we are ready and willing to highlight the cultural and lived experiences of all the students that we serve. But equally as important, those of us who are in positions of leadership, principals, superintendents, we need to also make sure that we are creating cultures and environments that really focuses on belonging and not necessarily just on fitting in. We have to make sure that we understand the nuances, because when we are expecting our teachers to fit into a system that we've created, or students to fit into a system based on a curriculum, it means that they're not able to bring their full, authentic selves to the conversation. Conversely, when we think about creating spaces of belonging, it tells people and sends the message loud and clear, it doesn't matter who you are, what your lived experiences are, what your identity is, you belong. And until we start to be intentional about creating those spaces, we're gonna keep preparing students for a future that they're not adequately ready to embrace.- I love what you just said and I couldn't agree more. And Brene Brown does a really good job of explaining this difference between fitting in and belonging. If you haven't listened to this and her explanation of this, she talks about it in several of her books and a couple of her podcasts, and you did a great job of articulating it too. And I do think probably all of us sitting in this room right now can think of a time and a moment where you walked into a space, and it maybe isn't even in a school space, but maybe it's somewhere within your community, whether it's your church or a club that you belong to, or maybe it's your home, or a neighbor's house where you walk into that space and you immediately feel like you belong, and you can be yourself, and you can show up in an authentic way, and you're gonna be loved and supported no matter what. And I am convinced that right now when we walk into schools, that is not what educators and families and students are feeling. This is one of the reasons why we are not keeping teachers, why students aren't showing up to schools, why parents are not interested in joining parent, teacher conferences, Shelby. So this feeds into another question for me about belonging. How do we do this? And I do think that part of it is a higher education issue too. Our teacher ed programs need to be.- They're terrible- Critically analyzed in terms of what we are requiring and how we're prepping educators. And again, I'm allowed to say that.(Kari chuckling) I work in a teacher reparation program.- One thing we have to talk about is, I'm a firm believer in we need to diversify the teacher workforce, because as we know, 80% of educators are white. But when you go to higher ed, that number jumps up to 92% of educators. So the people who are teaching educators no longer represent what society looks like. And so that's a major, major issue. And so we really need to make sure we're creating those spaces where everyone belongs. I mean, I have a program called RVA Men Teach about male minority teachers. One of the things people haven't talked about, really, is since 2015, the number of male minority teachers in America has dropped by 30%. It was 2% of Black men teachers in 2015. That number is 1.3% now. And so, what is it about the environments that are telling Black men and Black boys that you do not belong? We really need to hold up that mirror and ask ourselves hard questions and be honest. You know, I remember Ed Week, about a year or so ago, posted an article that said,"85% of the teachers consider themselves anti-racist and culturally responsive." If that was the case, we wouldn't have such large gaps between the races, between the groups in our schools. And so that's why I say,(audience cheering) we have to have honest conversations. We need to look in the mirror every day and ask ourselves some core questions. And sometimes you're not gonna like it. There are days when I looked in the mirror, it's like, yeah, you really dropped the ball today, you know. But it's okay. The goal of an educator is to be a better person tomorrow than you were today. And as long as we adopt that mindset and we're willing to work, we can make schools a place of loving and belonging for not only students, but for teachers and for everybody who wants to get involved and help.- Yeah, I mean, that's why Angelou, right. What is that famous quote?"We do our best until we know better and then we do better," or something along those lines. Yeah, it's exactly like that. Shelby, did you wanna add anything?- Yeah, I just keep going back to, I think we have to look at our K through 12 system, and really, what is our ultimate goal for kids? And we hear talk about initiatives, postsecondary preparedness, college career ready. You know, we hear these key words, but we want our students to belong in their schools and that looks different for so many kids. And I've been sitting here thinking about, you know, an algebra II teacher that I'm frustrated with right now because I feel like they're caring more about their content than the student that I'm working with. But I also think about what that algebra II teacher goes through on a daily basis, teaching kids who want nothing to do with algebra II. Sorry, I keep talking about algebra II, but it's just hot on my mind right now. And having a room full of kids and maybe a third of them wanna be there and wanna learn that, and the others don't want to, they don't care, and how challenging that is. I hear, I see them, I used to be a teacher before I was a school counselor, so I know what that's like. And so it just goes back to the bigger picture of what are we really, what is our ultimate goal with students, and what do we really want them to leave high school with? And we have to dig in there. We just do as a school system, we have to dig in there.- Yeah.- Well, one mistake we made during the pandemic is we let students know that everything is a made-up concept.- We did.- When we eliminated seating requirements for graduation, then all of a sudden now we have to go back and tell those students who just saw two groups of students graduate without going to school, now you have to be here every day to graduate. Well, these kids, Gen Z is a totally different generation.(people laughing) They're quick to pick up on things and they say, wait a minute, if they didn't come to school and graduated, why do I have to go to school and not graduate? So we as adults, we need to actually change our mindset, change the way we interact with young folks, to meet their needs. Because they're learning, they're just not learning in the school building. And so we actually have to find ways to bring the school building, to bring all the resources to them. But then it goes back to creating an environment that they want to come into. We need to look at all of our policies, all of our procedures and actually have conversations. Why do you not come to school? What can we do to help you out? What can we do to make you wanna belong? What can we do to make algebra II more interesting, or can we find you another class that gives you a similar skillset that you can use in your daily life? We have to rethink and reimagine what we're doing because it's not working right now.- Yeah, no it's clear.(audience applauding) Yeah.- I also think what you just said kind of brings us into this, and I was hoping we would kind of organically start to step into this conversation, which is one that I think is on the minds of many, many educators and parents right now, and I actually think even our adolescents and children. April Flanagan, where are you? You have a good question, and it feeds into what we were just kind of starting to talk about where their students are learning, right. They're getting information from all sorts of places. April wants to know or she comments,"What about the effects of media consumption, social media? Belonging is suffering because people are so easily offended and consuming negative media." Your question is really targeted and focused on the impact that social media is having, maybe not just on our students, but parents and educators as well. Does anybody wanna take that?(Kari chuckling)- Yeah, so everything from, again, you know, I think Gen Zers may have created a cancel culture as well, right? So everything from cancel culture to the resistance that we are seeing from technology immigrants, versus the natives. And when we think of technology natives, we believe that our young people, they were born into this time where they know a lot about social media. They're using it to their advantage. And those individuals who are more of the natives are resistant to social media. They're resistant to sort of the newest technology, AI, ChatGPT. We have to find a way to utilize social media, AI, ChatGPT, and infuse it into our instructional programs, into our education system. It's here to stay. It's here to stay. We cannot keep creating rules and policies in the student handbook that penalizes and punishes students. We have to find a way to make sure that we are looking at the positives that comes out of this. I know for our mental health providers, our social workers, our counselors, you all have a heck of a job when it comes to navigating this space for young people. One of the data points that really causes me to lose sleep at night is, again, the numbers that I shared earlier about the number of students, about 51 million who attend public schools in this country. A survey pointed out at about 20% of them in the last three or four years have identified as LGBTQI+. Of that number, 41% of them stated that they have considered suicide. So the suicide ideation rates and so much of that is so aligned to what is happening with social media. And because of that, I applaud each and every single day the work that our related service providers are doing. And as a school district superintendent, I'm committed to make sure that I partner with legislators, community members, so that we can have adequate resources to meet the needs of those students.- I really appreciate that comment.(audience applauding) I think a lot of other people appreciate that as well. I think it's really difficult to sit up here and for us to have conversations about belonging, when we know that there's legislation being passed, when we know that there are rules and guidelines being promoted that is very targeted to certain groups of people and who they identify as. And so I think, you know, if we're gonna have this conversation about belonging and about creating spaces of belonging, it's for everyone. We cannot be exclusive. We have to be making spaces for everyone. Everyone.(audience applauding)- Yeah. Thank you. And as adults, we have to model proper behavior and usage of social media. When we have politicians and other folks using social media to bullet and target marginalized populations, that behavior is only gonna go down into the classroom. You're gonna see those increases. And then, of course, earlier this week I had a teacher who posted on Facebook that these kids are always on their cellphones during the day, during school hours. She posted this(audience laughing) and she didn't understand the problem with that, you know. You know, as the educator, you need to model the proper usage of social media, and then you must not fall into the social media teacher's lounge. The teacher's lounge is a place where bad ideas go to spread. Unfortunately, it is no longer a physical place, it's on social media. There are so many teachers on TikTok, Twitter, and all these places that are just toxic and they promote toxic ideas. They blame students, blame families, and they found other teachers who want to support those ideas, to cheer them up, to tell them they're doing no wrong. We as educators, we need to stand up to those folks. We need to tell them, no, that's not a good idea. You're not gonna talk about my students like that.'Cause imagine if somebody made a video telling you that your kid is three years behind and that their parent don't know what they're doing? And then you're upset that the parent is now coming up to the school, talking about, you know, upset that you have now insulted their children. We as adults, politicians, legislators, school leaders, administrators, we need to model proper behavior on social media if we want our students to learn the right way.- Rodney, I wonder, and this may be unpopular, right, I wonder if for our teachers, our school counselors, those who work in pre-K, 12 education, the social media teacher's launch is therapeutic for them.- It is. It is.- Right, because it's a struggle.- Yeah.- And I wonder if that's the sort of therapy place, place of therapy for them. Because individuals like me, we are not creating the environments where they can share their concerns, their challenges and their struggles. And so something for us to think about as well, the fact that teachers, in spite of what is happening right now in our communities, in our society, are still showing up every single day.- Yes.- To serve the children that are knocking on our doors. I want us to be more thoughtful and intentional, but listen to them to hear what their struggles are.- Yes.- We have to res be responsive to their needs, yeah.- Exactly. Exactly. You have to create spaces. And what we have in our school, every school has a wellness lounge in their building where teachers can go, they have mindfulness, they have all sorts of activities to provide relief. And also, one of the things we do on the Teacher Retention Task Force, is we go and just sit in those rooms all day and just talk to teachers. We make sure that their mental health is put at the forefront. One of the things we did right now is we had to delay our open enrollment period for health insurance because we had to get a new vendor for flex spending so that teachers could have an option to use that flex spending toward mental health, give them more flexibility.- Wow.- And so you have to be creative to provide those spaces or else it will end up on social media, in different places where it can become toxic. So it is up to the leaders to provide that. I agree 100%.- Yeah.- Shelby, you have to get a lot of social media questions.- Yeah, concerns I would say more than, and it's just, it's a different world now for kids, kids who struggled in the social setting. And in the past it was in a timeframe from eight to four or whenever they were in school and now it just goes on and on and on throughout the day, it's never-ending. And yeah, I don't have a whole lot of positive to say about social media right now for kids, just because I see every day the negative impact that it's having on our students. So I wanna go back to something that Dr. Roberts said earlier about the percentage of kids who have suicide ideation and I think the number right now is one in four, one in five students has considered that. And that's a really scary thing to think about, and also something for us to really not be quiet about. Because in the school system, if one out of every four, one out of every five student was below the reading benchmark, we would hire a more reading specialist. We just would. That's what we would do. And I think that we need to continue to talk about that high number of mental health concerns because we need more school counselors, we need more social workers in the school. We need counselors in the school, mental health counselors in the school and we just have to keep saying that until it happens. Because that has to come first. They have to put their mental health, their face mask on first before they can help anybody else or learn algebra II. That's the last time I'm gonna say algebra II.(people laughing)- We're not talking about algebra anymore, Shelby.- Okay.(people laughing)- Also, one thing we're noticing in our district is a number of suicide, I guess our team is dealing with more of those issues from teachers.- Yeah.- At least once a week, twice a week, we are sending out our, I don't know the official name, but we have a special team that if someone puts out a mental health call, they go deal with. We've seen just as many reports from teachers as we are students. So what are we doing wrong? People got into education to help and now this job is pushing them to the point where they're having these thoughts. So we really need to reexamine what we are doing as a system that so many people are seeing death as an alternative to the way things are currently going. And this is just not sustainable at this point?- No, clearly it's not. We have a long question from Marcus."So I'm a minority male engagement specialist in a big high school with a large population of minority students. There is one other male minority in my building. There are many times where I feel like my office is a revolving door where teachers don't really give an effort to build a relationship with these students. And instead of acknowledging and trying to understand these kids, they just send them to my office because they think it's easier for me to talk to them. Lots of kids I'm meeting for the first time. Is there any advice, any suggestions, or have you had a similar experience? I feel like if this keeps happening, it can lead to burnout."- How much time we got left? Literally.- I knew this would get a response.- This is literally my work right now, man. Former secretary of education, John King, actually called this the invisible tax that's on educators of color, that we not only have to be pedagogical leaders, but we have to be cultural experts who protect our kids from a society that don't welcome them, while dealing with those same issues that you're not welcome into society. And so it's leading to incredible burnout. And that's what I was talking earlier today. We went from 2% to 1.3%, this is why. He's being burnt out because he's having to deal with everything that goes along. Every student, every Black boy or Brown boy in that school goes to him'cause that's their safe space. What that also means. he doesn't get planning. He doesn't get extra time. He doesn't even get a chance to make copies because he's constantly protecting kids from the system that does not love them. And actually, plug, if you come to my session after this, we're actually gonna talk about that and how you can be a co-conspirator. Bettina Love talks about, we don't need allies. We need co-conspirators with this work, people who will sit down, people who would get their hands dirty and do the work necessary to eliminate the systems that are targeting our young Black and Brown boys and girls. And so, it's really a very complex issue and I could talk about this literally till, like, five o'clock today, but we have a short time. But I'll just put that out there. We hear you. We understand you. And there's no way to get out of this until we get more people like us in the system, advocating, making decisions. I remember someone asked me during my teacher of the year, year, they like, "Are you going back into the classroom?" And I said to myself, I feel there's a bigger responsibility here.- Oh wow.- I can't go back into the classroom.'Cause people like me, we don't usually get the microphone in big educational conversations. We don't get a seat at the table. And so I feel it's my job to have that seat at the table and to invite other people who have similar backgrounds and similar experiences to share their stories. Because if not, that's the only way we're gonna change it, is if we get more people and create more spaces for folks to talk about, share their experiences, and let everybody know that every kid in that building is your student. There's no such thing of, this isn't my kid. He's not on my roster. Every kid who walks in the building is your student. You have to view them as your own child. You must have the same responsibility and expectations for them as you have for your own child, or else, I hate to say it, you need to get up out the pane. You need to get out the door if you can't treat every single kid as if they are your own child. We have a motto in our district called "Serve With Love", and that's the epitome of it. We serve every child as if they are our own child. We can't put them off on other people. We have to step up and do what's necessary for all kids to be successful.(audience applauding)(audience cheering)- Yeah. I couldn't agree more and it's also then coming off the heels of this conversation that we're having with educators, when we're also recognizing and telling them that you feel completely burned out and you feel like you don't have an ounce of energy left in you because you are having to show up, try to show up every single day for every single student as if they were your own child and day in and day out. And then we have some teachers who are having to do it even more so than others potentially, just because of who they are or how they identify. It's a really difficult and complex conversation and situation that we're in.- Yeah. I would posit that while I don't even know who the teacher is, that he or she truly cares about those students.- Yeah.- I think the onus is on us, right, and those of us who are the part of the big system, who are decision makers, to make sure that we create targeted and differentiated professional development opportunities so that those individuals learn how to build those relationships. The calvary isn't coming. So although we're seeing the shift and an increase in students who are considered minority students, again, we are not gonna see the numbers of Black male teachers increasing any time soon. And so, the 80 to 83% of teachers who are white female teachers that are teaching our students, we have to make sure that we are exposing them to the tenets of what it means to become culturally responsive. They're showing up in large urban communities to teach, not because they're coming in there and they wanna be hurtful, or they're wanna target Black and Brown children. I truly believe they want to do what is right. It's incumbent upon us to make sure that we are providing the teachings to them. Three quick thoughts. As we think about what it means to become a culturally responsive person, teacher, or educator, there are three dimensions. The first one is important. That personal dimension where every single person, every educator ought to get a better, a good understanding of what their implicit and unconscious biases are, because those will influence the decisions that they're making. I often plug, take Harvard's IAT. Find out what are your biases. The first time that I took it, I mean, I had a revelation. The first time I took Harvard's IAT, one of them revealed that I had an unconscious and implicit bias against Black teenage boys. I used to be one of those. But that was revealing to me. You have to make sure that you are looking at why are you showing up the way that you do. The second dimension is the personal dimension. How are you interacting with and engaging around your peers, especially those who do not share the same identities as you do. And then the third dimension, which is the one that falls into my wheelhouse is, the institutional dimension. What are those policies and practices and protocols that we've had in place in school systems for the last 20 years that are not meeting the needs of all of our teachers, our staff, and our students? As a superintendent, as a district leader, as an educator, we have to start to prioritize people over politics, past practices, and protocols. It's the only way we're gonna change what happens in public education. People must come first.- Yes.- People must come first.(audience applauding)- Absolutely.- I would add to that, we are in this together. And like Rodney said, he knew at the moment in his life that there was more for him to do than in the classroom. Sometimes it doesn't feel like there's anything more rewarding and special and important than being a classroom teacher. But if you're in this room and you're living and breathing in the school every day and you have realized that that's not the place for you for whatever reason that might be, at least stay in it together with us, because we need good educators in and outside of schools. We need everybody to be in it. We need everybody to be part of the team to make this improvement. So if you can't be in the classroom or you can't be in the counseling office or whatever it is, but don't leave the school system altogether. Just keep talking, keep bringing your good ideas to the table because we're in it together and we have to be for change.- I think that's just a fantastic piece of advice. I was just gonna ask you, actually, all of you to give one, it's the beginning of the school year, we're gonna be sending you off into your last couple of sessions for this conference. I was gonna ask you to give one last final piece of advice to all of our educators today and wishing them well into their 2023, 2024 school year? Do you want that one to be yours?- That'll be mine.- Yeah.- I ran into a really good friend from grad school today. Angela. Love you. And she is no longer a school counselor. She is doing something else that's bigger and and better for her right now, but it still involves changing the lives of kids and that's the most important thing. So I'm happy for her and I'm happy for anybody who makes that decision as long as it's just, it's continuing to better the lives of our children, our future.- [Kari] Okay, we have one minute. Rodney, do you wanna give a piece of advice or words of wisdom to send them off?- I would say, make a moment to have positive contact with a family that you've had past negative contact with, you know. If you have a student who's been struggling or student that's provided some challenges, I want you to call the family and have positive contact. Say some of the great things, say some of the good things about the student, and that's it. Don't bring up any other issues there are. Just have positive contact. That will go a long way because if this kid is causing issues with you, they're causing issues with every other teacher, maybe, in that building. And so when a parent gets contact from the school, it's usually negative. So just something that simple. Make positive contact with a student with whom you've had a negative relationship or a family with you've had a negative experience. Just be positive and see how much better the relationship goes from there.- [Kari] You wanna finish us up here?- Yeah, absolutely. You know, instead of Iowa, when we think about pre-K, 12 education, for many, many years, Iowa was one of those preeminent school systems that districts around the country valued. I still believe that we are in a place with a lot of change in leadership with the commitment and dedication that each of you have that we can get back to that place. Very simple ask of you. I wanna make sure that when you go back to your places of employment in the pre-K, 12 systems, it's for you to make sure that there's some intentionality that you are leading, teaching, and serving from a place of empathy. Make sure that you're committed to making sure that every single peer, every colleague, every student feels seen, heard, and supported. Two ways you can do that, very simplistic, wouldn't cost you anything. One, pay a compliment to at least one person in your building every single day, even if you have to tell them, you know, I like the way you tied your shoes today.(people laughing) I don't know. If you are working directly with students or you're surrounded by them, I wanna ask you, I wanna implore you, I wanna plea with you to introduce yourself to at least one student whose name you do not know every day of your life. I do it and it means the world, not only to them, but to me. Those of us who are in this room, pre-K, 12 education is going to be on the rise again. All of us cannot run off into the sunset. Let's stick together, stand shoulder to shoulder, and keep fighting the good fight. And remember, let's prioritize people over politics, past practices, and processes. People matter. Thank you.(audience applauding)- Thank you, everyone. Have a great conference.(audience applauding) That was such a privilege to have a conversation with three people who are so deeply passionate about education, about their students and about their teachers. I feel so privileged to be part of that conversation. And when I've been reflecting on that conversation in front of all of those educators in the room that day, the thing that keeps sticking out to me is just really how complex our system here is in the United States, our education system is here, and how complex the issues that we're experiencing are that are feeding into our education system and are impacting our educators, our students, and our families. I think one thing that is really important to highlight in this conversation is that PK through 12 schools don't operate in a vacuum. They they are just a small part of, or a big part of a much larger system, community systems. They're part of environments that feed into all of the different issues that we are experiencing today in our schools, things like food insecurity and housing insecurity and stress that has to do with healthcare, access to healthcare, how we're able to access clean water or healthy foods. All of these different things impact our teachers and their ability to come to school and show up in their best way, and also our families and our students and how they're able to come to school and show up and be prepared and ready to learn. I just truly believe that from higher education, and I'm allowed to say this because I'm now working in higher education, to our politicians, to community organizations, to our healthcare systems, it's cliche that might sound, the future of education depends on how well all of these different systems are able to come together and create a healthy system for us all to work in, not just survive in, but a system that really allows us to thrive. It's complicated, it's gonna take a lot of people. It's gonna take a lot of negotiating. It's gonna take a lot of uncomfortable conversations. But I truly believe that until that happens, we're gonna be just kind of spinning our wheels. I guess with that, I'd like to leave you all with a couple of questions. What does caring for educators mean to you? When we say that, what does that mean to you? What does that look like for you? What is that gonna have to feel like for you? And then, the second part of that question is, what do we need to do as a profession to help systems come together and reimagine schools in 2023 and beyond that truly center the wellbeing of all educators, all students, and all families? I really invite you to share your thoughts, comments, and suggestions with me at S-C-S-M-H, dash, main, M-A-I-N @uiowa.edu. Until next time, team, I'm your host, Dr. Kari Vogelgesang. Forever cheering you on.(upbeat instrumental music)