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Two vastly different educational consultants, one white female practitioner and one black male clinician, discuss current trends in education considering diverse perspectives of families, students, and educators in today's field. This dynamic duo lends professional and personal experiences to become the greatest black/white team since Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder!
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Two vastly different educational consultants, one white female practitioner and one black male clinician, discuss current trends in education considering diverse perspectives of families, students, and educators in today's field. This dynamic duo lends professional and personal experiences to become the greatest black/white team since Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder!
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The transcription is about a conversation between two educational consultants discussing trauma mismanagement in schools. They talk about how trauma can lead to certain behaviors in students and how teachers sometimes enable these behaviors instead of helping students manage their trauma. They emphasize the importance of recognizing and resolving trauma instead of avoiding it. They suggest that writing and talking about the trauma can be helpful in the resolution process. All right, we are back. Welcome to the Ed Doctors Perspective. We are two vastly different educational consultants, one being me, a white female practitioner currently in the superintendency, and Dr. Jessie Jackson, our black male clinician who is helping us to discuss current trends in education, considering diverse perspectives of families, students, and educators in today's field. So, get ready to listen to this dynamic duo lending professional and personal experiences to helping us become quite the dynamic duo, a great team, since Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. What do you think about that, Dr. J? Go stir crazy. We get together and get stir crazy. We're the only people in the gang that can tackle the tough issues properly and not try to sound smart doing it, but be smart doing it. Woo! I like that. I like that one. And we do this not practice, so we're authentic. Very authentic. And we even, folks, so y'all know, we didn't do any practice. We just agreed upon a subject and said, we shouldn't even talk about it before because we waste too much material just talking, so we just cut and record. We do. So, the topic that we talked about talking about today is trauma in general, but what you started to lead into that I had to stop you so we could hit record is trauma mismanagement. So, from an ed practitioner perspective right now, we got some kids coming to us with trauma who are struggling in the classroom setting and teachers are struggling in how do I manage this behavior that we're seeing. So, talk to us a little bit about trauma mismanagement because when I said student behavior is an issue, you said, well, that is a result of trauma that kids are experiencing. So, talk a little bit about that from your clinician perspective. So, here's the deal, and it's this trauma, and so for all those that follow me, we should always have a good definition of trauma, deeply distressing or disturbing experiences. And so, once deeply distressing or disturbing experiences kick in, you either have to manage the trauma or the trauma escalates into further behavior or we can actually manage it to where the person improves. Trauma mismanagement occurs where, for example, this is a real good example, let's say, what's the top trauma, randomly, you give me what's the top trauma that we've seen, did you personally experience, I personally experienced, give me one. So, like fleeing from a classroom? No, no. No, you mean like. The trauma itself. Oh, broken families. Broken families. So, let's say for the sake of discussion, let's just say death of a loved one. Okay. Death of somebody you love. What trauma mismanagement looks like is that anybody that's ever worked with somebody that's lost somebody, there is a way to manage the death. What they say is everybody's different, but the truth is, if a person is about to manage grief, then there's some very foundational things you don't do when you're grieving. One is what? Isolate. Isolate. What is folks' tendency? People don't want to bother you. Like, okay, well, you know, he lost his mom, I know he's dealing with it, let's kind of let him be alone. Anybody of the clinical side is very aware and understands that it's hyper-danger for you to be alone once the feeling of grief and loss kicks in. But it is a common mismanagement to think we're doing you a favor by saying, hey, I understand you don't want to be alone right now and everything, let me just leave you alone, and we isolate. So, what happens? Let's go to broken families. A kid will come from a broken family, jacked up situation, and then the teacher, doesn't matter, male or female, is like, oh, well, they're just over-stricted with grief, oh my God, they come from heroin, oh my God, their parents are horrible, locked up, X, Y, and Z, disconnected, and we think that we do you a favor because that's the distress to send the soul to you. We think we do you a favor by not going as hard on you, coaching you hard, we're not talking about being a jerk to people. We're talking about, oh, bless his wee little heart. Oh my God, he's going through so much. You know what I mean? People are saying teachers don't care about kids. They are lying. I am that one teacher that didn't care about the kids. That's a bona fide lie. These teachers care about these kids, man. Stop saying these teachers don't care. They do. They don't know how to help you manage your issues. So they actually, if I help, if I push you towards mismanagement, I become an enabler. So if my personal problems is the reason why I don't have to do what I'm supposed to, when will that habit stop? It doesn't. And so we become professional enablers, and now after you've been crying all them tears, bought all them snacks, lost all that air freshener, spraying air freshener and giving hugs, kids still can't read and then graduate. So explain to me how you help me because you cared about me. People are like, these kids don't know you care about them. Listen, I'm tripping right now. If I hear this statement again, I'm going to snap. The kids don't nobody want to know how much you, what do they say? Don't know how much you care. Don't know what you know, so they don't know how much you care. Correct. You've heard that. Yeah, that's what we live by in education. Kids don't know how much, you won't know how much they know unless they know how much you care. We've been taught that. We've been taught that and we've also was taught that poverty is money and poverty can be money. Poverty is mental. So once again, flawed ideology that believes that caring can heal when the truth is it is equally as much caring to hold me accountable, coming from a horrible background and coach me hard so I can beat my circumstances. As it is to give me a hug and let me have some of them snacks that these teachers, I know they do for their kids. So I'm a mismanager. Absolutely. The situation will determine how you treat me. So I lost my parents young, you're not going to coach me hard. I don't have food at home, you let me steal out the lunchroom. I'm stealing milks and you're going to turn your eye to it. You think you're helping me. And every situation, the kids get worse. Because you're enabling and not holding accountable. It's love to hold people accountable. That's trauma recovery. You okay, your mother died but that's the reason you went and got out and got drunk and did stupid stuff and hurt people. Now you're treating your wife bad because you caught a bad break at the job. It's trauma excuses. We don't understand. When distress hits us, that's when we got to become more aware, more accountable so we can solve it. That's why so many people have compound traumas. Because they never learn to deal with the distress so they create an additional distress. And then people that want to help you, that love you, don't know how to do it so they become an enabler. And they just can help you be permanently traumatized. I love that. Wow, that's deep. What were those few things that you wrote up on the board over there? The four things that, what were we talking about there? Trauma process, right? So in our practice where we've always done as a teacher and as a counselor and as a coach, one thing about trauma, you've got to be able to recognize it. Most people are in denial about trauma. Like most people don't even recognize their trauma. They say I'm good, oh no I'm good, that happened to me when I was four. No that happened to me my first year I was teaching. Oh no that happened to me on my first marriage. So that's avoidance. Period. First rule, trauma, are, recognize it. Two, we're looking for a resolution, right? I can recognize it, so key, how do I get better? That's resolution. Alright, how do I come to a resolution? I'm going through a divorce right now, where's the resolution? Do you know what I mean? People just end their life in a bitter divorce and that bitterness follows them to their next relationship. Did anybody ever think of that? They don't. Nobody hits resolution. They don't recognize it, then they won't seek a resolution, but they just keep the trauma going. And they think their trauma stops because I stopped speaking to you. So say I don't mess with you, you're a relative I don't mess with, so I can just stop talking to you. That's a resolution. I hope they don't believe that. That's foolish. But this is what we're taught. So I just don't mess with you no more. I can't stand him so I leave the room. I never resolve what's going on and why I feel that way. I just avoid it. And I can see a person. This just happened to a friend of mine the other day. They seen a person they ain't spoke to in seven years. And they was right back in the hate spot they were seven years ago when the person walked in the restaurant. And I got Dr. So and So. I got to calm down. We got to get out of here. I'm about to get up and smack that such and such. That happens to me in real life. I'm like what is the deal? Why are you tripping right now? She's mad at her from seven years ago because you ain't spoke to her because she's hanging out with your husband. Okay so while we're on resolution and because you're saying that and because I know that people in our profession do that avoidance tactic and think oh I'm just going to not talk to you. What's your recommendation for resolution besides avoidance? The resolution is not me talk to you. The resolution is me process it out. So I can process it out with writing. I can write to you. I can write to you. Now I can decide whether I send it to you or not or I can decide whether I burn it. The intermuscular activity I must talk it out of my system or write it out of my system and get you out of my system. That's why I'm writing so much therapy for people. That's why if you're doing therapy the right way and you're getting that mess out of you the therapist should be guiding you to intermuscularly releasing the toxins that I feel when your name come up if you wronged me. That's why people write memoirs to heal. It's freedom. Yeah and I think that's why we also have EAPs available through our insurance. Absolutely. And that's a point of administrative being able to have that resource to have available to staff when they're dealing with that part of trauma. Absolutely. Talk it out. Write it out. Talk it out. Write it out. Working with the guys in juvenile why didn't I have such a good re-entry record where my kids didn't re-offend. When we were in treatment I made them write. I made them read books every day. Write how you feel. Don't be just keeping that in your head. People that can't do that that's not seeking a resolution. Talking about how you feel. Expressing how you feel. Sometimes you get to talk to the person but most of the people that violate you allow violence and make an excuse if you confront them in person anyway. And if you confronted some parents that did you wrong they ain't going to do nothing but get mad at you and flip it on you anyway like you was a horrible kid. So you're wasting your life. You're wasting energy talking to them. Resolution. I got to get this out of me. Forgiveness is for me not for you. Right. Resolution. And then you get the most important part which is what? Recovery. Recovery takes time. So after I've been hurt, busted up, didn't lost somebody I love I need a moment of recovery. Some losses don't require no recovery. You got some toxic spouses that may not get away from you. I don't need a second to recover because I've been checked out of this marriage for a decade. What's up education? They're like oh my God. Hello? What are you talking about? Sometimes you need some recovery. Recovery is a process. When you healing give yourself time to get back from being patched up. People move too fast when they're broken and injured. You need some time to recover. Healing requires recovery time. And you need to be patient to make sure you heal properly. You don't want to re-injure yourself. And people will walk into another relationship, another employment opportunity with fresh trauma and really get re-injured. That was pretty good. That was good. What's that fourth R then? You said recognize, resolution, recovery. There's three. It's the three. It's the recognize, resolution, recovery. Okay. You got a fourth one on that board up there. No, it's trauma. Oh, that says trauma. So there's three. Yes, three R's. Three R's to the trauma process. Recognize your trauma. Create a resolution surrounding it. Whether that's through writing, send it, burn it. Whatever you want to do with it or talk it out. And then the third R is recovery. Allow your time for some recovery. And I like that you said we move fast when we're broken. I mean, think about that with students, with teachers, with administrators. Very common. Very common. Trying to thrive through chaos and rush through. Allow yourself to recover so that you can mend with that. Listen, I mean, we could do a podcast on a nation of people who got burnt in one job. And notice how freely today, you know, the term post-traumatic PTSD used to be reserved for veterans. Correct. And now, so now I received a diagnosis not too long ago with CPTSD, childhood post-traumatic stress disorder. Yes. So you're right. Why do we think that that was reserved for veterans and now it's so global? It's very common because it is true. It is post-traumatic stress. So just because we used, go ahead. You know what? You just triggered me because we just went and talked to an educator today that had said she had PTSD from a previous work experience. Yes. And so just because we didn't use it before didn't mean it didn't exist. It was, that was equally as close, you know, getting beat up for a job or cheated for a job that you earned and dealing with gender bias. And, you know, no matter which way it goes, you know, and gender bias is big for females in our business where, you know. Not enough of us. Not enough of the qualified, and I've always said this, being a person who helps school boards elect or pick superintendents, I have personally learned that unfortunately in 2024 we still have boards that would prefer to hire a cute guy than an overqualified young lady. Wow. Cute guy, coach, energy, bravado, cute shoes, talk real good, polished, overqualified. What did that girl say today? Work dog. Work dog. That girl's going to outwork, outperform that contractor, put this district on the map. We'd rather this guy, he's cute and he's a jelly bag so we can control him. We'll hire him, not the woman that's going to bring us the data and hold us to the fire. That's a whole other episode and we're going to talk about that next time. We're going to talk about females in this male-dominated world. That needs to be laid out because that's trauma in itself. Well, and because what she was saying today is her level of trauma and PTSD came from watching kids not succeed, whether it be physical violence or even just not succeeding in the classroom because she felt it was her job to set them up for success. She said it. She did. And she wore the scar. Yeah. And she's in a new healthy spot but when she brought it up, that's where the resolution trauma. She doesn't work there. It was two or three years ago. But I would be in and just ask questions and set her right back up and you could see it. She was explaining it. She was right back in that unhealthy work spot. Oh, yeah. She said still around Christmas, she gets anxiety and a feeling of trepidation because of the responsibilities she has as an educator when sending those kids home for that break and then reentering them back afterwards. She said that. She sure did. It happened today. So not only are we talking about the trauma on the kid's side, it's the trauma on the adult side. So then I guess I've never thought about trauma mismanagement from the admin perspective of what happens when we have those teachers that are dealing with that PTSD or that trauma that we don't even know about. Well, to your point, and we could find a layer for it because we could fly for a minute. Admin trauma mismanagement toward employees. So let's go both sides of the equation. You'll have an admin, and you know this. You've been around. You'll have an admin that over-invests into the employee's situations, right, where you'll have employees take advantage of the fact that you say as a superintendent, go tend to your family, okay, go see about your mother. We don't even have to ask when it comes to family. Just let me know you're gone. Go tend to that. But then you'll get this branch of employee who understands your sensitivity to the matter, and now all of a sudden you're getting these eight-page texts at four in the morning, and boss, I won't be there because this is what's going on. You're like, okay, wait a minute. And then you start seeing it like, wait a minute, this is not an honor code anymore. It's a resource to get out of work. Trauma mismanagement. So the boss's initial was to help you, was to be empathetic to your needs and what you need. Then he gets taken advantage of, and now all of a sudden workplace is bad. So now flip. Then you've got somebody that don't care. That's trauma mismanagement as well. Okay, there's somebody dealing with something right now. I think yesterday had a death in the family, and the person was like, okay, sorry to hear that. You'll be here tomorrow? Like didn't even skip a beat. So if you say, hey, you lost your husband or something, we were paused. The person didn't miss a beat. They said, oh, boy, I'm sorry to hear it. You're going to be here tomorrow. Well, let me get you before you leave. The person that just happened, scratched, didn't, went right over their head. That's trauma mismanagement because in the long term, that person's not going to forget how you treated them in a delicate moment. And the lady said to me when we left off, did you see that? Yeah, we saw her. It was weird. Trauma mismanagement. So I over-invest or under-invest and just keep it with the business. And you work here, do what you're supposed to do. Hey, we're kind of not in your business. We still need you to be here. Your kid is sick. We need you to be here. Okay, you've got a kid that just lost a leg. We need you to be here. Okay, your mother's in hospice. She has probably another hour. We've got a meeting at 3. We really need you there. These are things I heard. You better not have heard that from here. No, I'm just joking. I know you didn't. I know you didn't. You have to have a little bit of empathy. I understand creating an environment of professionalism and having high expectations, but you're right. You have to create that piece of empathy that comes with not having trauma mismanagement as far as the admin perspective. Trauma mismanagement is global and huge. You can see that also in various race trauma, and you can see where there is a need to correct a lot of missed wrongs in race, but you can see where while you're trying to correct it, you actually make it worse. Yeah. Because now you start creating this enablement when we were at our strongest peak, we were in an accountability phase where internally we pushed you towards accountability. Okay, we've got a lot going on as a culture, but what are we going to do about it? That was the attitude. But then in your need to want to help, you can actually mismanage good intended help. Yeah. And it's happening frequently. Absolutely. Racism is trauma, and you can mismanage making race issues right. Yeah. Do you see what I'm saying? Absolutely. You can absolutely mismanage trying to do right. So this is a big topic. This is dominating our field right now because we've got a lot of kids that's not ready to learn. They've got learning trauma. They're not ready. They're two to three grade levels behind. The trauma is influencing their behavior, their ability to give up ADHD. I can't concentrate. I don't want to do school. And our teams that teach our kids and manage the behavior do not understand trauma. They don't understand what has to happen. Okay. Absolutely, 100% agree. And I love when you say that, that people need to start realizing that trauma influences misbehavior. Trauma is not a misbehavior. Trauma influences misbehavior. That's where it comes from. That's where it comes from. So then what resources and where do we go as educators to find, like you brought up the example of the death of a loved one. And the total opposite that you would want to do would be to isolate that person. How do we know based on these different misbehaviors or these different traumas, I guess, how do we then remediate these misbehaviors that are coming from that trauma? Where do we go to find that? Let me just do a one, two, because the real answer is you got to get educated and then get trained. So if you're in an institutional spot, having trauma awareness training is mandatory for every school today. And I can be more specific. If you have schools that are in rural areas, mandatory. You have schools that are in inner city, mandatory. If you have schools that are in the suburbs, mandatory. If you have any schools that have, they have showed up in the last five years, mandatory. If you have any schools where parents have gotten divorced and don't live together, mandatory. So did I leave anybody's school out? No, that's it. Everybody, because they're what happens with this. People start saying like, well, we don't have that problem out here. Everybody has trauma. Now is there different levels? Yeah. So the first thing is get educated. You should be doing some training. There's some phenomenal books on trauma, trauma-informed care. First of all, it'll give you some great information that will take you where you need to go. We have to move beyond trauma-informed, so that is a good start. But I would recommend some books to read. I wrote a lot of great ones on that. But I also, if I was reading about trauma, the book that comes to mind is Dr. Don Colbert, Deadly Emotions. Pure classic. Pure classic on what emotions will do to your behavior. Dr. Don Colbert. Pure classic. Deadly Emotions. This guided a lot of my thinking. So I'm going to do reading. I'm going to learn about, what is that term that we use now very freely? Narcissistic personalities, things like that. That comes from hiding from trauma. That's all trauma. Selfishness in the behavior. These breakups are so toxic. I'm going to get educated. So where am I going to start you? With education. If you're a principal, you've got to get your staff some help. You've got to read the books. And that's what this is about. I learned and became a trauma specialist not only from study, but from the devastation of the trauma in my life. I'm a trauma survivor. I'm not a victim at all, but lost all my parents, siblings. More than I can imagine, grandparents and everything, a couple hundred friends from high school murdered. I'm a trauma survivor. And I learned some things about trauma. And that's what I share in addition with the practice, because this is something we have to understand. This will not get better by theory. This is going to require education and awareness, not a lot of opinion. We need some serious guidance. This is a very serious matter. It requires some training and some great education. Absolutely. Okay, so just to recap, because we're about right at the time, and I'm going to coin that phrase that you just used as well on trauma survivor and not a victim. I never said that before. I know, and I like that. Because you know I just published that book, and a lot of people have referred to me as a victim. And I'm like, wait a minute, I don't consider myself a victim. I am a trauma survivor. Absolutely. So we talked in this episode about trauma mismanagement, and the big takeaway from that is how to know how to manage that, you've got to get training. You have to educate yourself to be trauma aware. Start by reading some books, reach out, try to find some trainers. I do believe you are a trainer on trauma, correct, Dr. Jackson? I believe I'm the best in the world that's non-medical. A medical guy will give you the science. I add the science, I add the clinical piece, and I add the education piece. That's why I believe I'm one of the best, because I have all three disciplines combined, and I just believe I won't fail you. So thank you for the shout-out. Yeah, and through that training, we're going to learn how to manage issues by holding kids accountable, because then that provides trauma recovery instead of enabling, like a lot of us do, because we don't know no better. Like you said, there's not a teacher that doesn't care about kids. We care so much that we do enable instead of oftentimes holding them accountable. Love that. And then we talked about the trauma process, which I think is important for us to remember the three R's, recognize, prevent, prepare, and provide resolution, either through writing or talking, and then the recovery phase. Very good episode in teaching us a little bit about how to deal with this distress of trauma. You got anything left to say to head us out of this episode today? Everybody needs to be, what's the rule on the airplane, secure who's mad first before helping others. Broken adults cannot help broken kids. It's time for everybody to be aware of their wounds so they can get some treatment and not walk around as a functional, wounded professional and adult. Love that. Until next time, thank you for joining us on the Ed Doctors' Perspective.
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