KIC S3E9 "Navigating the Unexpected: A Blueprint for Trauma-Informed Schools" Featuring Geri Parscale and Darcy Kraus

Toby’s conversation with authors Geri Parscale and Darcy Kraus revolves around the importance of establishing trauma response systems in schools, as detailed in the book Navigating the Unexpected: A School Leader’s Guide for Trauma Response Teams. It explores themes like the prevalence of student trauma, the need for proactive and equitable approaches to addressing it, and the significance of prepared frameworks, such as the Dynamic Problem-Solving Team (DPST) and the Foursquare Focus template. The discussion emphasizes sustainability, communication, and collective efficacy among educators while addressing the physical, emotional, and social needs of students experiencing trauma. Drawing from personal experiences, the authors advocate for schools to anticipate challenges and support students, staff, and families with research-based, adaptable tools and systems.

Navigating the Unexpected Book:  https://www.solutiontree.com/navigating-the-unexpected.html

#TobyKarten  #Karten’sInclusionConversations #KIC #Inclusion #GeriParscale #Darcy Kraus #TraumaInformedEducation #NavigatingTheUnexpected #TraumaResponseTeams #StudentSupport #EducationLeadership #EquityInEducation #ProactiveEducation #ResilientSchools #PreparedNotPanicked #FoursquareFocus #DynamicProblemSolving #TeachersSupportingTeachers #EducationMatters #FutureOfEducation #EdLeaders #EducationInnovation

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Transcript

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Hi, everybody. Welcome to KIC Podcast. Today I have the absolute pleasure of interviewing two authors and renowned educators, Jerry Parscale and Darcy Krause, who recently published a book that I think should be on everyone's bookshelf, because in this day and time, they're centering around trauma response teams. And the title of the book is called Navigating the Unexpected, a School Leader's Guide for Trauma Response Teams. And this is by Solution Tree. So welcome, Jerry and Darcy. And would you mind telling our listening audience a little bit about yourselves? Sure, I'll start. This is Jerry. I am a 38-year veteran of education. I've been an elementary teacher. I have been a principal at various levels. I have been the director of professional development. And then I ended my on-site career as the deputy superintendent at Fort Leavenworth schools in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. That's a military, an active military post. I guess my second act then after that was to become a consultant. And so I have the pleasure and the privilege of being able to work nationwide with teachers, teams of teachers, schools, and districts to better their practice as we work with our students. Thank you, Jerry. And Darcy, a little bit about yourself for the audience to know. Yeah, well, I'm thrilled to be here. I too have been in education for 38 years and had the privilege of serving in various roles and capacities, probably a teacher. The longest, I went into building leadership and then finally district leadership, having retired from Loris Public Schools as the director of elementary education about two years ago. And since that time I have been busy teaching on the collegiate level and being an educational consultant for districts who are wanting to empower their leaders to become rock stars. And so that, and being a grandma is, is kind of my favorite thing. So thank you for letting us share our passion project with you today. Oh, it's my pleasure to have you. And by the way, I also share that other passion with you being a grandma as well. It's a good gig, right? The best gig. The best, I understand. We'll do another podcast just about that. Educators as grandmas, right? That should be interesting. But your book highlights a lot of things that a lot of people feel are an uncomfortable topic. But you mentioned in the book that they're often referred to as the elephants in the room. And there are several of these that you talk about and the thing that you, you talk about. And the fact that I found astounding is that nearly two thirds of students show symptoms of traumatic stress. I myself have worked with kids with trauma. This is nothing that we as educators can change the etiology of, I think, but we can change proactive responses. So, so where do we begin? What's important for the audience to know because we have many educators and leaders who are looking to say, how do we support our children who experienced trauma and how do we prepare the staff to be proactive? You know, I think that our story starts with a personal experience. And so that lends credibility to this very topic. And so my youngest child, Nicholas, was diagnosed with a pineal blastoma in 2016. That's a brain tumor. And for him, it was inoperable. Darcy was his principal. I was blessed enough to have Darcy as his principal at that time. He was diagnosed between his third and fourth grade year. And it just so happened that Darcy and I had a meeting on the books the week after he was diagnosed. And so she was one of the first calls that I made. And our journey is what really was the inspiration, I think, for the book because Darcy and I were living that reality of a child who in this case, it was a medical trauma, but living trauma. And how do we marry our child's education and meet all the needs that he had? And so I'm going to kind of pass it over to Darcy. So Yes, I think, from my perspective as the building leader, when Jerry called the there's the mama heart that goes out, and then you suddenly fall into, how can I make it all better, understanding that schools nationwide worldwide are not prepared for these types of traumas. And we don't have the framework or the infrastructure in place, in order to respond in a timely, confident and supportive manner. I immediately tried to do research on Oh, golly, now what? And there's just nothing out there on how to handle it. Of course, I was behind the eight ball, so to speak. But yet the response I needed to give, I had multiple stakeholder groups that I was responsible for leading through a very uncertain situation. So in our book, it is a comprehensive framework from tip to toe on how you can prepare and have it ready to launch in a manner that is automatic. And yet it's tried and true and steeped in research. Yet each component within the context of the framework has qualities that are standalone, because Jerry and I've been in education way too long, and seeing all the silver bullets that are not out there, but everybody wants to grab on to because we want to do what's best for kids. And we know how much is on people's plates. And if you already have certain elements within a structured system in your building, a communication template, a data dialogue template, then you can utilize components within the book as standalone. I say plug and play, but that's probably doing it a disservice. And yet there are other things that you can say, Nope, we're good on that we got that. So it can be used in totality, or as isolated components, as appropriate. And in each situation, just like a student with an IEP, who has goals and objectives, each student who experiences what is under that big umbrella of trauma, there are different spokes to that from from what you're saying. But if you have a framework in place that such as you have offered, and you have a response, and the event is unexpected, but you're expecting it, because you have the framework already in place, Jerry, you want to add to that? Exactly. You know, I think too, and I was asking, and I think you even alluded to it before, you know, in our pre conference before we started recording is what is trauma? What are we and I had an educator not too long ago, when she was questioning me about our book, and, and she said, Yeah, but Jerry, come on, what is what is trauma really? And I think that, well, let's just look at educators as a whole, and what you do during the year, we are really good at fire drills, tornado drills, intruder on campus drills. And the reason that that those are well in place, obviously, is not just the need, of course, but because it's a system and everyone knows the next step in our system is, and that's what we're advocating for one of the most true statements, I think Darcy ever said to me is after Nicholas's death in 21, we of course, continued to process and and she said, you know, Jerry, I felt like I was building the plane while I was flying it, which that's a scary place to be. And so I think one of the things we have to realize is we're not talking in the book about these catastrophic events, albeit those happen, unfortunately, but what about the child whose family has suddenly lost a major income and is now going without? What about that child who's exhibiting extreme behavior? What about you have a high schooler and a fourth grade who move in from a war torn country? What about a military child whose military member and their family is going on an 18 month deployment? These things are, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. So that's what I think that Darcy and I are advocating for so strongly in the book is let's get those things into place. Let's go ahead and become trauma informed. Let's go ahead and put together our, our dynamic problem solving team. Let's go ahead and know what our communication tool is going to look like data collection, et cetera, so that when it happens, we're ready to go. And you know, in our area, you can see my Kansas city stuff behind me. I'm a huge chiefs fan. We're usually all of us right now. It's really easy to be a Kansas city chief fan, but lo and behold, last year at our Superbowl parade, there was a shooting and it was so telling to me because as I listened to the radio coverage and the TV coverage of that, there were countless educators who were on or who were on my phone saying, what do I tell my kids tomorrow? And so it's, it's again, we want that system in place. I hope that followed up for you. Yeah. Nobody knows what tomorrow is going to hold, but to prepare for the unexpected, which is kind of expected as educators, we were many chapeaus, you know, and this type of support, it can't just be scripted totally, but there are resources. There are protocols. You mentioned research. This is not, Hey, let's try this and think, Oh, maybe it'll work because that's not the time to say, Oh no, we need to shift gears because gears have been shifted on these children too much. And could you tell me more? And I really credit both of you for designing this DPST as you called the dynamic problem solving team. And you said you were, you were also motivated by some authors and that was Mike Mattos and who else was it? Austin buff, Austin buff them. Yes. And they are G I think they're above the head in research and, and, and that, and Sue, could you tell me us a little bit about that? Well, I think that, and Darcy make sure, you know, chime in here. I think that we wanted to use what educators knew well, and that goes all the way back to that. Just the instructional cycle of the plan do study act and having a team around a given trauma that is able to go through the steps of that instructional cycle for that individual child or that individual event. And knowing that you have to have the right representation on that team. It is not a permanent team in the sense of you have to be a member or you don't have to be a member because of course, when you have the need recognized, you may have people, you know, step in and out, but there are certain factions or certain representations that you need from certain groups within your school, depending on the need Darcy, you want to, I think Jerry, you touched on it earlier that it was really important to both you and I, that we leaned into systems or the vernacular that educators are used to. So it doesn't feel like we're reinventing the wheel. When we talk about the areas of concern and the four square focus, which I know we'll get to, we talk about the instructional cycle. Every educator knows about the instructional cycle, but how do we amend it in order to meet our need? And having those conversations prior to the event happening is what allows it to the system to just start rolling out without all of the schema building, if you will, that has to take place. Districts can also use this because oftentimes a big event, you know, a storm or a flood, these types of things will impact an entire school community. And so how do they communicate with myriad different campuses so that they all respond in an equitable way? And I think that equity was a very descriptive lens that we leaned into when developing this entire system, because as educators, we love our kids. We want to immediately reach out, you know, with the casserole brigade. And I think in the book we call it the benevolent grapevine. It's like, how many gas cards can we give them? And all of that has its place and it's needed. But how do we harness that energy and make sure that it is communicated so that if child A receives something, two weeks later, everybody is not, doesn't give child B the same type of response, the same perceived care, because people are busy. So this system allows us to logistically and comprehensively address needs, but with and through an equitable lens, which is super important. And if I can, and it's a quote from the book, we want the DPST to be the captains of harm, not the perpetrators of craziness or chaos. And when you are faced with a trauma or a crisis, no matter what it is, we have to, just like Darcy said, we have to be able to harness that energy into the right direction and ensure, and with that DPST in the plan, you ensure that equity. You are making sure that, again, the next step in our system is. And that's going to give credence, of course, to that equity piece. And I think one other, I'm sorry, but Jerry and I are both Kansas girls and we've worked in, you know, K-12 buildings where there are 200 kids in totality, and we worked in huge urban districts in which, you know, there's 40,000 children. I think what we keep talking about the DPST and yes, we do advocate for that understanding and we make it very clear in the book, we've both dealt with a desert of resources, be it personnel or funds or whatever else. And the DPST can be a building leadership team. It does not, if you're dealing with a staff of certified teachers and you have 14, you're chief cook and bottle washer too. And that's okay. That doesn't preclude you from being prepared because your kiddos in a 2A school deserve the same preparedness as the kiddos in the 6A. And that was super important that every element that we drafted within this framework could be applied regardless of the environment or resources at the availability of the district. And I think what you also emphasize when I've seen from what I know about the book and there, it is said that it's a collective effort. Although there are people at the helm, you have to have the support of a team to do this. And that not only includes the people under the school building, but perhaps the families as well, who are ill-prepared to deal with it because they might be too immersed in the situation, personally dealing with the trauma themselves to be objective about their response. Is that part of it? Or you want to speak more on how you would respond to that or with the preparedness? You know, I think that, and I speak from experience on this, I am sure that there were days when Darcy knew that the information she was getting for me, albeit again, still the best that I could give, was clouded with chaos because he had had a difficult night or whatever, pick something. And I think that leads us into one of the, I think our favorite protocol. I shouldn't say that for Darcy, but I think it's our favorite protocol within the book because if you think about it, if you frame it that Darcy as the learning leader of the school is my main contact as the parent, she is trying to relay information on a daily basis because sometimes the child who is in trauma, his or her situation changes on a dime. And one of the things that I think Darcy, and I'm going to speak for you here, would receive a call from me saying his platelets are low, he's not feeling well, but he's going to try to come to school and we need to relay that information. So she would go down the hallway to let his fourth-grade teachers know, but in between she is interrupted four or five times. Do you have two minutes? Do you have two minutes? Do you have two minutes? And by the time she either gets there and relays the information, you know the drill, right? And so one of the things that we wanted to do was to be able to prevent that. So we designed something that we believe is very unique called the four-square template. Thank you. Four-square focused template. There we go. And designing it in the way of we are really looking at behavioral interventions, social-emotional interventions, physical interventions and academic interventions. And it so happens that on my social media feeds, those are the things that teachers are clamoring that they need help with. They don't know what to do when a child is in trauma. So Darcy, I'm going to turn it over to you if you don't mind and have you. So the one thing that we knew again, timeliness, confidence in response and that collective efficacy that you mentioned, how do we systematize that yet make sure it is nimble enough to customize it for the needs of each child? And so we came up with a color-coding system. So once the DPST works their best, it determines the supports that are necessary in the various quadrants. And not all quadrants need to be used each time. You know, you may only need social-emotional. In the case of Nicholas, we had all four going. We just didn't know it at the time. And we come up with those research-based supports that will allow for Nicholas to be his best self when he's there. But in the example that Jerry used, when he has had a physically demanding or when he had a physically demanding day or night, the last thing we wanted to do was make this poor kiddo take his math test. There were usually anywhere from 12 to 20 individuals that would touch Nicholas each day. And getting that communication out in an efficacious yet confidential manner was difficult because it changed all the time. So color-coding those quadrants with a key, again, that staff is familiar with. So if it's a red quadrant, we don't touch it that day. We do not make that child do anything in that quadrant. Supports fall to the wayside. We just let him. And a lot of times with Nicholas, it was the academics, right? We're just glad he's here. We're going to love on him. We're going to work on his social-emotional and his physical. And so those two quadrants would have remained green, right? It's like, guys, throw everything you got in these two quadrants because that's what this kid needs today. Tomorrow could be different. This afternoon, it may be different. Five minutes could be different sometimes. But allowing the liaison from the family and the administrator in charge to quickly and effectively communicate when needs shift to Nicholas's care team or any student's care team becomes kind of a game-changer in our book. Especially, we foresee several of these plans going at one time, especially in a bigger school. And our teachers are pedaling fast. But this would allow them the communication from the office, the supports that are already in place, and so everybody is on the proverbial same page in supporting the child. And if I could add really quickly, I think how important that will be for the educators as well. You know, I don't know if there's anything more frustrating than trying to help a student do something that they are incapable of doing for that individual day. Yet, as an educator, I know a priority for me is learning multiplication facts. And by golly, it's my role to help him learn his multiplication facts. But if we know, as educators, if we can pull up that Foursquare Focus template every day and know that it's going to be color-coded, and I see red there, I'm good, and the weight for myself and for my team is now lessened. And so I don't feel a failure because I know that the DPST has designed good interventions, research-based, and I can feel good about what I'm providing knowing it meets his needs on that given day. And that, I guess, is from an educator's standpoint, it is just that calming effect of, okay, I have a plan. Because, you know, let's face it, we're planners. And that helps calm the waters. And it helps calm the waters of every student I have in there when I know what I'm doing. So this book is an aid not just for the DPST, not just for the students, but for the teachers with whom they work. Yeah, and I always say that there's these three kinds of planning. There's the pre, the inter, and the post. Nobody has halos on their head, nobody here is perfect, but it's the reflection and knowing the response that the student has. Behavioral response, physical response, emotional response, and all of these are part of who that student becomes. Not defining the student by the trauma, but maybe, I don't know if you two would agree with this, like teaching the students and the staff resiliency and the ability to face things that might be kind of unknown at the time, but we know it's going to happen. We know that our students, you know, when I started this podcast with that two-thirds statistic, I mean, it's boggling that educators, like you said, would walk in and we just need to teach fractions or what's the difference between a simile or a metaphor. Yeah, we still want to teach that, but we still want to make sure that what we teach reaches because the students could be physically present and mentally elsewhere. And you talk a lot about creating that plan through the, and chapter five is about that, through the lens of an instructional cycle. And not only the terms involved, but the actions needed, the data that you have to take, and you have many resources and templates in here. Just like you buy a picture frame in a store, you could put lots of different pictures in that frame, but the frame itself helps guide and contain all of the things that need to go inside of it, the structure that's there. And I think that you said this, Darcy, with that structure, but yet the flexibility. I always say rulers and rubber bands, right? You want the structure, you want to measure, but you want to have that kind of flexibility and also compassion. Compassion for some things you might not know and need to know more about, but with the framework that you're putting out there, you're offering proactive approaches instead of that knee-jerk response, which might be from the heart, but might not be appropriate. Do you have any other specific examples that you think might help our listeners to understand why having a response to trauma ahead of time is so important? I got one. I thought you might. That's why I asked that, Darcy. Yes. In the book, we talk about a palette of precision versus a canvas of chaos and paint-by-number versus paintball. And so many times in education, we're throwing the best colors we got at the wall, but when we get done, we kind of have a mess. Instead, honing in and being able, like I loved your analogy with the frame, and when we get done, we have a beautiful picture, right? A masterpiece if we all put in our specific colors. I'm going to kind of teeter back to that equity point. And this is at a secondary level. I worked with a district that unfortunately had four suicides in one academic year and the first suicide, understandably. It was at a high school and all the things came out. All the supports were given. The second one, yes, again, all these supports. But by the third and fourth, these supports, their emotional bandwidth was exhausted in being able to address it. And they were in the kind of fear, the fight, flight or fight mode kind of thing. And so the child and the family, that was the fourth tragic event, did not get the same response or care and compassion that the first did. And the school officials knew and understood, but you have to create supports that are sustainable. And so when we started doing things for Nicholas, I wanted to do everything for him, as did everyone in my school. But the leadership component reined me in a bit because I thought, what am I going to do if in two years from now something else happens? Will I be able to replicate it? How? When I'm just sitting here saying yes to this, do that, let's do this. And I say in the book, and I told Jerry time and time again, getting it right the first time is our only option. We don't get a second chance at this. And so to your point earlier about the fire drills and the tornado drills and the shooter, yes, we have those in our country and around the world, but chances are our students aren't going to experience a fire in a building. Yet we practice it every month. We have all kinds of systems in place, same way with tornado drills. We practice that because the devastating results of not practicing it are unthinkable. But yet we have this two-thirds number out there, and yet we have no systems in place that we can immediately initiate to amplify our practice and response. And our families need us. We are the hub of those communities, and they look to us to say, it's going to be all right. I got you. And how do we do that? If I could add just a little bit, because you had referenced saying, you know, what the outside resources, etc. And we do, we talk about several outside resources giving not only our templates, not only our ideas, but research-based areas where you can go and find help and just information on students with trauma. But one of the things that we did, I think, really, really well is we accessed what it is we had. And that was with his condition and bringing in, he received his medical treatment partially from Children's Mercy Hospital, which is in Kansas City, a very well-known hospital in this area. And their team was able to come out and have conversations. At that point, Nicholas was in fourth grade, but with the fourth graders, involving him as well, and being able to talk about, here's what you can expect. And so that was, I would say that we would advocate for that because we want to make sure, again, through the DPST, so it's not paintball again, pew, pew, pew, but we're reaching out and saying what resources do we have that we can help the other kids in the class with well, or the other kids in that grade with as well, so that we are able to get the information out that is pertinent so that we can be proactive and so that we don't have more trauma on our hands. He was in, I find this very typical of Nicholas, but very funny. He was at school one day and they were taking a math test and they were sitting together, he and his partner, and all of the sudden he looked down and there was hair, a lot of hair on his test because his hair was falling out from the chemo. And she just, his partner just looked at him and said, Nicholas, get to the nurse, you know, because everybody knew. So I think that speaks, that little moment speaks well for the overall concept of our book, is if you know and are clear, then you're going to be able to be prepared and everything that comes with that. The other thing I had to balance, again, that caught me off guard, and I'm a systems girl, it caught me off guard was the amount of communication to the various stakeholder groups that I was required to do or facilitate. You don't talk to a 10-year-old the same way you talk to adults. You don't talk to your staff with the same points and communication modalities as you talk to parents in the community. But everybody comes to bear, again, with wanting to help. So how do you control that? Harness it, which is, and sustain it. So we do have a communication template that talks about working hand in hand with the family liaison to make sure no information is shared unless it is approved by the family. And then, you know, you get your talking points out there and then you identify what group needs what talking points. And it's a simple template that in my brain I had to do or with post-it notes that I tried to do, but to have it all in one space so that, again, it's a system that you roll out is beneficial. The other point that, unfortunately, we live in a litigious society, we don't ever want to think during these types of situations that that type of response would occur. But for districts to have a preparedness plan, for school buildings to have a preparedness plan in place, it mitigates the impact of you did it wrong when emotions are high or you responded in a way that was inappropriate or confidentiality or we just keep going. And some people might not know that that is an inappropriate response because they lack that awareness in each situation and the facts. I don't think anyone in our circle, speaking as the mom, there was no one who was trying to do it out of nosiness or anything. It was never done with malicious intent. But like Darcy said, if you are pre-planned, if you have the template, whether it's the template that we're speaking about and the communication ideas that we share, or if you have your own, everyone, though, then knows, here's the way that we handle this, from the media to Facebook to everything as far as that. And Darcy brought up such an important point, is the legality of it. You would hope that this would never be an issue, but in the world in which we live, we just want to do it right. And so we want to make sure that we have those things in place because during a crisis, when we're talking about, and again Darcy and I both live in the Midwest, but Joplin, Missouri was wiped off the map a few years ago from a tornado. And when there's nothing left and you're starting from ground zero, if you're not, or if you, even if, and we bring this up in the, well, as a matter of fact, Darcy and I have a friend who was principal of a school in Florida when the Challenger accident happened. And he has shared that he wished he had had this book when that happened. Now, not everybody is going to have those media-centered responses, happenings. But I think that if you take in the template, you know, the communication template is a good example. If you are starting from ground zero, our book is for you. If you have a system that you're pleased with but need to augment it with something else, just to tweak your system, our book is for you. Whether you are a team of teachers, a school, or a district, our book is for you simply because it's a playbook that's going to help you, help yourselves to ensure that you're as prepared as you can be to navigate it. I think this, of course, on speaking to you ladies, I didn't think about this before, but I think it should be a pre-service course that educators have. I think that would be a wonderful thing rather than waiting for it to happen. And what does that action look like? I mean, I was on a school campus when 9-11 happened, and here I am in the New York area, right? My husband's working in the Empire State Building, and I knew that wasn't there. But then they banned any planes from flying, and we heard planes in the sky, and I looked at each child who heard that plane with fear in their eyes, and I said, no, it's no problem. The government owns the skies. Now what did that even mean? But it was just my way of saying, and they looked at me, oh yeah, the government owns the skies. They were like fourth graders at the time. Maybe some of them bought it, maybe some of them did, maybe they quieted them down. But there was no framework in place for what if, what if, what if. And in each situation, you wish none of that trauma happened to any individual of any age, but the reality is, it does. And the reality is, we can't always stop it, but we could be one of those people, as Mr. Rogers says, you know, the helpers. Look for the helpers, look, you know, and be that type of person that does that, and with respect, with respect to the staff, without overwhelming them, with respect to the families, with confidentiality and support, and for their level of comfort, and to respect to the individual child who was going through this, who never chose for any of this to happen. So it's just, it could be overwhelming, and we can change that part of it, and take a big eraser and make it all go away, but what we can do is what we always do as educators, we pick up a plan, and from what you ladies have here, it's empowering. It's empowering to have things like data templates, communication templates, trauma-sensitive response assessments. These type of things weren't in people's vocabulary years ago, but they need to be on, unfortunately, this is our reality of our world, and the reality is, we figure it out, and we don't have to figure it out in the moment always, but we have to figure out and be proactive, which what you were advocating for, you mentioned two words, maybe you could speak more of it on assessing sustainability and support, isolation and indecision. Well, I'm going to, because you had mentioned it, as far as the assessment of your systems that you have, and I think that we of course have that in the book, because again, I think we've referenced this, you may have pieces in place, but what we offer, I think, is to be able to take a critical look at that, and be able to say, is this, is having this helpful? And bottom line is, we had a colleague of Darcy and I say to us, that in talking about the book, she is, you know, when she talks to schools, she's going to ask the simple question, are you ready? Are you ready? Because if you're not, that's going to be a problem. So I think that we include that assessment, so that when schools are in a situation where they feel like they have things, let's go ahead and assess whether those things are actually in place to do what it is you hope that they do, whether that's to calm, communicate, assess, or intervene. I would like, if I could, speak to the isolation part. I'm a big believer that a rising tide carries all ships, and teachers often feel isolated in their rooms, right? And they have a little one with trauma, and the principals got trauma all over the building, and I think sometimes it is easy to drop in, drop a nugget of wisdom, and then go and forget it. Not because you're a horrible person, but because there's a lot on everyone's plates. And so allowing this collective efficacy is, I always told my teachers, especially when we were with Nicholas's situation, I said, you know, we may fail, we may be on the Titanic, but I'm going to glub-glub down beside you. And I wanted to create a system after this experience where I could wrap my arms around the staff and say, you are not alone. You're not alone on Monday, and you're not alone on Friday. And this allows for us to put in place a continuous response loop. There are some traumas and some kiddos that you are going to implement this, and the whole thing is going to run its entire cycle, and you're going to be back to business as usual in three weeks. There's going to be some kids that this happens, and they will have some form of this their entire academic career. And one thing I was talking to Jerry about yesterday when we were discussing our excitement at being on the podcast was our kiddos with exceptionalities, with special needs, and they're in the four quadrants that we talk about. Again, that vernacular is very familiar, but we think about collecting data and testing them, and it's this long process that we have to go through in order to create these legal documents, be it IEPs, 504s. We don't have that luxury when a trauma hits. We just don't. But that doesn't mean that we are off the hook with having to provide sustainable supports, with an equitable presentation of our efforts. Darcy, so well stated, so well stated. Darcy and Jerry, are there any other points you'd like to put forth for our listening audience about navigating the Unexpected School Leaders Guide for Trauma Response Teams? I think that two different things. It's an easy read, and it's only about 135 pages, and we wrote it again as a toolkit. You wrote it with passion, first of all. I feel that coming through. We did. And again, learn our experience. I won't even say mistakes, because he had a wonderful experience. But learn by what we learned by doing, I guess. And the other thing is, once you've read the book, once you've gotten the book, contact us. We would love to be able to help you navigate the unexpected. We would love to come out. Both of us consult, and we would just love to be a part of your planning and can offer our wisdom, because we've kind of been there, done that. And so please, we are on various media platforms, social media platforms. Reach out through Solution Tree and get the book. Read the book and tap us, because we're here to help. Thank you. Thank you. Darcy, anything you'd like to say or closing remarks? I think in the epilogue, I think one of the things I wrote was, hop on the lily pads where we fell in the pond. And that is true. Jerry and I walked through this together, and it started as a conversation, a reflective conversation between two educators and how we processed how we did it, and then our passion to pay it forward as we're in the third act of our career and allow a way for leaders who are coming after us to do it better. And I think that's, and it evolved into this fun book with a really cool cover. We really like our cover. You know, just the fact that you said the trauma is a fun book with a cool cover, you know? I mean, it just speaks volume to your positivity to say, yes, trauma is going to happen. And if it doesn't happen on your campus, that's even better. But when it does, if it does, be prepared. This is not something, I mean, why do they come on the plane and tell you how to do all these things with your vest and things, you know? It's not going to happen, you say, why do they do it? We want to be prepared for the unexpected. I like that analogy as well. Ladies, I want to thank you, Jerry Parscale and Darcy Krause for being in that third act. You know, I'm in that third act also. And I think that we coach other people with our knowledge and we coach. We don't have definitive answers, but there's a lot of wisdom in your years of teaching and that I think need to be shared with people who are willing to say, hey, maybe I don't know everything. And hey, maybe collectively we're better together to help each other through any circumstance. And thank you both for being professionals and for writing this book, Navigating the Unexpected. Thank you. Thank you. He can feel the stairs and hear the words unspoken. Not so unaware of a world that thinks he's broken and who never even knew a kid with a different point of view No, they never really knew a kid with a different point of view Copyright 2024. Karten's Inclusive Conversations. Thank you for listening. Check out other episodes on all major platforms.