How do you cope when uncertainty and change become constant?

A liminal experience is a concept related to an "in between" time in which there is both familiarity and disruptive change.  Joelle and Gillian talk about the impact of the many significant challenges of public schooling in the past five years including the COVID-19 pandemic, staffing shortages, budgetary changes, and the current political context.  They talk through how to deal with all this, with the conclusions that:

• Grounding can be found in one’s values, core beliefs, and goals.  
• Complex communities can create space for varied coping styles.  
• We can be a source of guidance for our students not by being perfect in our responses but through being willing to be a transparent about how we are feeling and willing to learn from our own mistakes.  
• Most importantly, our efforts are to reduce isolation and get curious about each others' experience so we can be the most consistent, affirming and regulated adults possible for the children around us.  
• We take care of us!

 https://hbr.org/2024/11/how-to-lead-when-the-future-feels-unpredictable?ab=HP-bottom-popular-text-4

Find us on Instagram!

Gillian: https://www.instagram.com/clearconnectionpsychology/

Joelle: https://www.instagram.com/joelle.vanlent/

Transcript

Gillian Boudreau: Listeners welcome back to stance of curiosity. Here we are starting Season 2. Hi, Joelle!

Joelle van Lent: Hi Gillian. So exciting. Season. 2. Episode, one.

Gillian Boudreau: Oh, we're thrilled to be here. This has been great so far.

Joelle van Lent: We have new equipment headphones. We're getting fancier in season. 2.

Gillian Boudreau: Indeed, we're hoping to balance out the levels of our voices listeners. You can tell us if we're doing a good or bad job with that.

Joelle van Lent: So today, we're gonna talk about something that I actually learned about more recently. And it sounds like Gillian. You might have been thinking about this for longer, but I was in December thinking about how I felt. Somehow, like lots of things were changing. And there were these sort of like big worries about many things globally and in the world of education. And I had this feeling of like lots of day to day, things feel the same. And yet there's this uncertainty, and aware of how long it had felt like that like since the pandemic. So I felt like, I need like, what is this called? I feel sort of like unsettled, and can't really get to a point of feeling settled, and there has to be like a name for this. And I think maybe, being a psychologist or just a human when I'm feeling something I want to know if there's a name for it, or if it's been somehow understood and conceptualize, because that often helps normalize that for me and helps me re-find grounding. So I was talking to a colleague, and she sent me an article, and it was about liminal experiences which are, from what I understand, a period of time that's ongoing, where things feel simultaneously the same and familiar, but also as though they're changing. And I think this definition that I saw talked about things feeling remarkably familiar, but also alarmingly different at the same time. And then this article, which we will link to this episode, had some recommendations for what you would do if you feel like you're in a time of liminal experiences, and that that those recommendations were very familiar to me in terms of things that we talk about with compassion, fatigue. So I wanted to talk to you about it and see what if that's also resonating with you right now, and and what your reference

point for that idea has been.

Gillian Boudreau: Yeah, okay, that's really interesting. I think my reference point is related but slightly different. So I think mine comes from a little bit like the recovery world of therapy, like eating disorders and addictions and things like that. And I have 2 things that I think about a lot.

One is this phrase of in between the no more and the not yet right. So that gap between. This is how I'm used to operating right? This is how I'm used to things feeling familiar, and you know whether those have been taken away from me, or whether I've moved away from those of my own accord. I'm now in sort of this new middle space, but I haven't yet established a new familiar. And so I'm kind of hanging out in this gap, and then. There's a little bit of a slightly more kind of woo woo way of thinking about that which uses the metaphor of metamorphosis.

And I don't know for a hundred percent sure if this is entomologically true. But I think and hope that it is. The idea is that we think that when a caterpillar goes into a chrysalis they just like stay a caterpillar except they sprout wings, and then they come out right a winged creature. But the idea here, or at least the psychological metaphor is that, in fact, first, what's going on in that chrysalis is the caterpillar has to dissolve into goo.

Joelle van Lent: To, the.

Gillian Boudreau: Totally disoriented. You know no more, but also not yet gelatinous state, in order to transform into its next phase, so that I've heard talked about as like the goo stage of of recovery. Or you know any big transformation where things are going to feel messy and weird and deconstructed, and sometimes quite bad. And that doesn't necessarily mean that we're not moving toward a positive future. But that this middle space between what has worked before and what will work in the future can be really uncomfortable. But it sounds like what you're describing is maybe slightly different where folks aren't necessarily clocking a huge amount of disorientation. It's maybe more, almost an eerie, both of like. Things are normal, but also not, or but also different.

Joelle van Lent: Yeah, I think actually, disorientation is a good word. And so how I've been thinking about it. 1st of all, when I read this article. I was just reminded of the idea of resilience. And so what we know about resilience is that when something big and adverse happens.

People are resilient in that that 1st stage is quite instinctive. It's just like survival. So big things have gone wrong or changed or happened. And I'm just going to adjust to my circumstances to promote my survival and the survival of my immunity. That 1st phase of resilience is fascinating to us at how people have such remarkable ability to adapt to that. Then true resilience, though, is that plus the second stage, which is the one that is not instinctive, and I think has to be more intentional and thoughtful, which is that you want to then notice over time. Did those initial adaptations? Are they continuing to serve you well as circumstances change again. So true resilience is adapting. Honoring that, and then recognizing when those adaptations held value at a time, but might not continue to be in your best interest as you move forward, and things continue to change, which is a lot of our work with children and families. When they have a traumatic experience, they adapt to promote survival, and then they hold dear to those survival strategies and don't want to let go of them when the circumstances have changed like a child earning to be hesitant, to trust caregivers because of trauma in the caregiving system, then applying that to to teachers who are actually, it would be wise to trust a teacher that's very, you know, attuned and supportive and present. So we talk about resilience and being honoring the survival instinct. And then when do you figure out how to maybe adapt again? So 1st it was, no adults are to be trusted, then it is some adults are to be trusted. I have to figure out who. So I was thinking about that. And then I was thinking about liminal experiences is like. If you think about public school in general. The pandemic, you know, turned public education upside down. And and there was an incredible and immediate adaptation to what it meant to have public school in the 1st few months of the pandemic, fully remote, etc. Then we had to adapt again to being back in person, etc. So that, that might have felt like what I understand to be the definition of a liminal experience where some of what your life is feels remarkably familiar and the same. But but lots of it feels totally different at the same time.

Gillian Boudreau: You know.

Joelle van Lent: And and so that felt helpful and grounding. The part that I felt like I was really searching for something in December was, and still. Now, sort of this whole school year is that things keep changing so it's like the we had the pandemic. And then we had staffing shortages

and then we have the the political climate which seems to be impacting education more directly. And now we have a now we have a upcoming season of budget changes that are that feel like they're really changing, you know, schools in a in a bigger way than maybe they have in the past. And so it's just one thing after another that has felt adverse and created the need for adaptation and resilience. And at at a certain point it's like what you know when it felt it's felt like it's become chronic.

Gillian Boudreau: Yeah, yeah, it does feel like it's become chronic. Okay, so I'm gonna bring us back a little bit in the conversation, but only only to bring us forward again. So I'm grasping a little bit here. But there's something about trying to figure out the goal of the strategy during crisis, right so that we can adapt and do that second part to like, okay, what's going to be a healthy strategy now that the situation has changed, though, we still want to honor this life affirming goal. Right? So the idea is that everything humans do is not for no reason right? All of our impulses are trying to help us in some way, right? We just got to help them help us in the ways that we're hoping for. So I'm going to back up and do just an adult example, because it sounds like we're also talking about what the heck are adults supposed to do. As everything changes all the time. So there's a i think there's a poignant adult example of this that I run into a lot as a therapist, where if, as a child, somebody grew up in a house where, in order to stay safe, maintain connection, not get yelled at and not get abandoned. The correct strategy right for a volatile or overwhelmed parent was to not talk about how you were feeling. Or in more extreme households. Maybe even it actually was an adaptive strategy to not tell the truth

right like there are houses. There are houses where it's not safe to tell the truth, and where you certainly shouldn't talk about your feelings. And then what do we do when, through a lot of work and a lot of luck, right by mid thirties, somebody has found themselves in a healthy, romantic relationship. And they're still using those same strategies of don't say what you're really feeling, and fudge the truth if you need to. And now it's so hard, because those very strategies that were there to prevent abandonment and relationship rupture now are at risk.

Joelle van Lent: I'm not.

Gillian Boudreau: Creating the very thing that they're trying to protect the person from right. Because if you've got a healthy partner who might be saying.  I love you so much, and I really want to stick this out with you. But you really have to tell me how you're feeling, and you also need to stop fudging the truth. Right? Those can be things that could upend a relationship. Right? So that's I think that's a really poignant example of just like, yeah. Then we have to shift the strategy. And we have to be like, what's the goal here? Lack of abandonment maintaining connection awesome. The issue is that the context has changed. The level of the game has shifted. And so now we actually need to do the really scary thing, and, in fact share feelings, and, in fact, tell the truth in order to to do what our defensive structure is trying to do, which is maintain a relationship that we care about. So I think if we were to apply that to a school setting where, indeed things are changing all the time. And it's sort of one new potential crisis after another. You know. I wonder if we could sort of think through more specifically, like.

Okay, well, the goals of let's let's talk about the Covid adaptations right? I feel like the adaptations the educators made during Covid had the broad life affirming goals of: Don't harm my own body, Don't harm anyone else's body and Keep everyone sane. I I think honestly, that was about where we were at.

Joelle van Lent: And.

Gillian Boudreau: During like the lockdown part. Right? So that meant that maybe we did not worry a lot about academics, right? Maybe we mostly worried about PPE and strategies around that, as well as how to best maintain regulation and connection and sort of group sanity during that hard time. Right? So then, let's say that it wasn't as intensely covid-y anymore. Right? Maybe we're no longer having to teach through masks. Maybe it is time to start to bring in some more academics, albeit you and I would say, Let's still go slow on that. But we're only 2 people in the world. You know. I'm imagining that somebody and I have worked with educators who for example, very understandably right, might now have a lot of contamination, anxiety and their Psyche might still be trying to do the same defense of like. No, no, the utmost thing is, don't harm my own body or anyone else's body that now feels a lot harder to maintain. Given that we're not in masks. But maybe I'm maybe a part of my psyche is going to want to start compulsively cleaning the desks right? And so then maybe we need to gently take that part of the psyche and be like you're trying to keep everyone safe. That totally makes sense.

Let's remember, mental wellness is also a part of safety, and it might start to be to the detriment of your mental wellness if this spirals into an OCD situation. So let's reframe right? What harm means right? Maybe lack of harm now means beginning to trust to some degree that the school is a safe place again. And you know, focusing on sort of the other safety things that we were thinking about before. Covid. So you know, I I don't know. I wonder what you would think about that sort of. Is there a through line of What it always makes sense to focus on.

Joelle van Lent: Even though we might have to help.

Gillian Boudreau: The defensive structure of our Psyche's update. The strategies they use to further those goals as things keep changing and keep changing.

Joelle van Lent: Yeah, I think that's really wise, because it's sort of like let's not overly focus on the strategy. Let's think about what was the goal of this, what was the purpose and the goal of the strategy? And therefore you might be able to see more clearly that you can achieve that goal now better through a different strategy.

Gillian Boudreau: Yes.

Joelle van Lent: And I think what we've always done is honored, that that initial strategy had

a lot of wisdom at the time and was never necessarily wrong. But the best way to achieve that goal has now changed. And I think so. I think some of the like when you're feeling like okay, there was a big upending change, and I do think disorientation makes sense where you sort of have to like. Take everything apart and put it back together again. And then it feels like it's happened again and again and again, maybe not in such extreme ways as Covid, but in other ways the part a lot of the recommendations are about grounding, which makes sense, because that's sort of like a great thing to do when you're disoriented. So the the 1st step is, what are your values like? What what is bringing you to this work. And if it's about the kids and at the students, and it's about enhancing students, learning and creating a school community where varied people can coexist and even thrive together. Then the circumstances around that value or core, like professional sort of mission, the circumstances keep changing, but the value and the goal and the mission hasn’t. But then so so what is it in order to achieve that

mission? Now, what would that mean in terms of your strategies and your and you know how how you're approaching things and talked about how this discussion talked about. What? What are you gonna hold fast to as as this happens like, what are you? Gonna make sure doesn't change. And then what might you have to let go of that has now become less essential, and I think part of that is feeling like, why am I here? What am I doing? How do I measure my success? How do I measure my sense of purpose in this, because it feels like the landscape keeps changing. And at a certain point you just start to expect that. And whatever's going on right now must be temporary, because everything keeps changing. And so trying. To. One thing I've been really trying to do is create is encourage people to create space, to just acknowledge that if you're grieving a certain landscape change, can you create some time that where you could just acknowledge what that feels like, but then not get lost or stuck in it, so that you're in sort of a learned, helpless place. And so once you feel like I've acknowledged and honored that. How do I climb out of that now? And it's a lot of it is, I think, relates exactly to what you're saying. Why are you here? What is your value? What is your mission? What is your purpose?

Gillian Boudreau: Yeah, yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. There's a lot to grieve. Also, man, just on a human experience level. This is going to get a little bit philosophical. I know we can only have the life experience we have, and we can only live in the time that we're living in, and so  I don't know. I you know I don't have any kind of bird's eye on this any different from anyone else, but it really does feel as though change is happening exponentially more quickly

in our society. I think that just is true, that this is a really interesting time to be alive in our society, and things are really changing so fast, and I I think some of what is to be grieved is

any kind of any measure of stability. Like in my own nervous system, especially as I support educators, I find myself almost going to the day by day for stability. It's like. Well, today in in my, in the 8 hours of my workday, has anything seismic changed? No? Okay, that's pretty. That's a pretty stable day. We'll see what happens tomorrow? Especially now, as we record this particular one in, you know, late January of 2025. So it's yeah. We're grieving some big stuff we're we're grieving stability. We're grieving predictability. To some degree. I find myself, and this gets a little bit deep. I find myself grieving the full knowledge that public schools, as we know them will continue to exist for the rest of my lifetime. I think I was more sure about that 10 years ago than I am now. Though I could be totally wrong, and when that is where I'm at grief wise, right when when I'm at that level of like, I just don't know what we can expect, even structurally. That is where I start to find my deeper values. And I have to go to a kind of a weird place about this. So forgive me, listeners. This is just how my mind works sometimes. But you know, in a world where everything changed right and maybe public school. Who knows? Right may maybe even the structures that we're using.

Joelle van Lent: To work.

Gillian Boudreau: The structures anymore. Well, there will still be a lot of adults, and there will still be a lot of children. And we will still need to gather them in some kind of place right to foster community building, and I would say to keep them calm enough, that their natural, like learning, capacity, and, you know, ability to you know, teach themselves and learn from others about the world is is there? And so if I you know, if I need to go all the way to you know: "What if things are going to change even more in ways we can't even predict?” I just think well there's still going to be a lot of adults. There's still going to be a lot of kids. So I think we're still just focusing on perspective taking regulation and like figuring out what the really important principles of the world are, and imparting those.

Joelle van Lent: I'm like resisting the temptation to laugh while you were talking. But now I can laugh because you're done. What I love about this is. This is sort of a mini example of how groups of people who work together have to create room for completely different coping styles. And this always happens for the 2 of us. You are like, I have this picture in my mind because I found this clip art picture that went with the concept of this article like, when I create a slide, I look for a clip art image. So the image I got was a woman holding onto a tree in a windstorm, and her like body was blowing sideways because the wind was so strong and it was like, hold fast and stay true right to to like your core values. So when you were just talking, I was imagining me like, we're both in this windstorm. You and I have like whatever's happening in public education which has been part, or in large part of both of our careers at different times. By choice, because we both love education. So I have this image of like, there's a big windstorm. I'm holding the tree desperately, and you're just like willing to float off and see.

Gillian Boudreau: Well, where it goes. Guess we're blowing around.

Joelle van Lent: You're like, Oh, maybe we'll go somewhere fun! See you there? And I'm like no.

Gillian Boudreau: But I think.

Joelle van Lent: Yes.

Gillian Boudreau: It's yeah. I mean.

Joelle van Lent: Oh!

Gillian Boudreau: Maybe we will go somewhere, fun. And I and I think more. What that coping strategy is about for me is like: "Okay, if I can't necessarily trust that the tree is going to hold, It’s more like, what would I do if I were blowing through the air?” Like, how? How can I get myself prepared for - How? How far can I imagine things things being different than what I would expect, and what are the principles I would still hold on to if it were that way. And I I want to say I'm I am not hoping that you know.

Joelle van Lent: Right.

Gillian Boudreau: That public schools crumble. I'm not imagining that they will. But I I given that we have been in just hit after hit of unimaginable change even in the last 5 years I'm more just naming. This could also even be like psychopathology on my part. In no way is this any kind of prediction. But I yeah, I think I'm just naming for me. The grief hits, as I truly do not know what to expect at all anymore.

Joelle van Lent: Yeah.

Gillian Boudreau: So. Yeah, I think I do sort of imagine if there were no tree and I were to just be at the mercy of the gust, what would I still focus on.

Joelle van Lent: Right. But I think the fact that we've noticed and appreciated and at times just like just now laughed at the fact that we have very different ways of responding to big change. I think that's a great thing for people to think about, though, because sometimes, if you feel like, I really need to hold on to this tree, and it might not. It might uproot and float away. But I'm going to hold on to it till it does.

Gillian Boudreau: Amen!

Joelle van Lent: You know, sometimes when you feel like that's what you need to do. And somebody else is willing to like blow around in the wind. You get really irritable, or you feel like you. You can't do that because we're holding the tree so cause it sort of feels like this is my strategy, and so there's I. I need you to do the same thing or go away. But I I think one of the many beautiful things I've learned in the past 5 years. Is that in a group of people there is room for many different ways of coping, and you can look at the person around people around you like. Oh, you're you’re you totally just went flight mode. You came up with a complete plan. B, of like that. You'll be a gardener, and you're you're that's what you're doing. And I'm holding the tree, and Gillian's floating around in the wind, seeming to have a good time imagining a world without school, and like I. And and you know what we're all doing, what instinctively seems right right now there's room for all of that. There isn't a right or a wrong way to do this, and then, when we're done grasping the tree and daydreaming and floating, we'll all

go show up at the next scheduled thing and do our job cause we're good at it. Yeah, we're good at our job.

Gillian Boudreau: We'll all return to the work right, having coped in whatever way we needed to. And I think you make such a good point in times of big stress and in times of big change.

I think it can sometimes feel not only irritating, but even threatening. If other people are not coping in the way that, like I would right, because fear makes us kind of clamp down and feel like only one way is, is safe or makes sense. But actually, you know, even if we, it's sort of similar to like, you know, the neurodiversity affirming lens also, thank goodness that we all have different coping strategies, right? And because, you know, it wouldn't work very well if we were all blowing around in the wind right? Or if we were all trying to hold on to the same tree. So we need some diversity of that. And also, I think, given that we know we're navigating a lot of uncertainty. We also need a whole menu of coping and a whole family of humans who are experts on different parts of that menu, because different things will make the most sense at different times. And I you know I love very much what you said as well. We all, and you and I have talked about this in the context of chronic uncertainty and allostatic load. For a long time

we all have different ways that we need to kind of attend to our nervous system, and sort of go with whatever.

Joelle van Lent: For sure.

Gillian Boudreau: Stress response. Uncertainty is bringing up for us. And we need to. Do you know, if we're a tree grasper hug right onto that tree right? If we're a sky flyer, do a bunch of flips in the sky, knowing that that's actually what's going, and even in the short term, to return us to some level of regulation and homeostasis, where we can go back to work. Because I think that's the real mind trip here is that everything is changing. And this is what you started the episode by saying. But in some ways nothing is changing. We still have to go to the IEP meeting. We're still going to do a great job at the IEP meeting. We still have to talk about how to transition between classes when kids are having hard time in line. You know, these are all tale as old as time of public education, but also probably just adults and children. And we all do maintain our ability to really stay in that frame. Right sort of that, like chop would like carry baby adage right? The work is there.

Joelle van Lent: Just not.

Gillian Boudreau: Doing the work, even while grieving the luxury of being able to believe that more big change probably wasn't on the way.

Joelle van Lent: Yeah. And I think, could we? Sometimes we can't pull this off. But lots of times we could appreciate the distraction of the work. The grounding of familiar work. We've done IEP meetings for decades, some of us. So that feels really familiar.  I appreciate, you know, a noisy cafeteria. I got to hang out in a cafeteria in a middle school today. So you, you know, it turns out 6th graders are doing the same things that they've been doing in the cafeteria for 40 years.

Gillian Boudreau: Oh for years yeah.

Joelle van Lent: Right, and it's noisy and fun and silly, and sometimes a little bit chaotic, and

so can we appreciate the distraction, the Fo. And feel grounded in the familiar tasks. Can we really be present in the moments that do feel like this? Feels the same? This feels, like, you know, very familiar, and then cause I think sometimes when we're feeling like we're trying to cope with big deal changes the day to day task can feel like a burden, or you know, may maybe overwhelming, but I think you could look at those as opportunity to be grounded in the familiarity. I also think that related to that. A really beautiful question I got this week was, What if a student asks me a question that I am grappling with myself? And the example was pretty powerful. It was after the inauguration, where a statement was made about a change in the way that the United States of America looks at gender by our President. Which was terrifying, confusing, and very wrong. What if a student asks me about that? How am I to explain that, and I said, I think you would respond by saying that was really confusing to me too.

Gillian Boudreau: Yep.

Joelle van Lent: That was really scary to me, too. That was really worrisome to me, too. I don't think we can explain things like that, but I think we can be honest about where I'm feeling the same way. And then you talk about so what do you do when somebody in authority says something really confusing. How do you? How do you cope with that? I here's what I was thinking I would do. I talked to people who I really respect. We talked about how we would

protect and support those that we were. We're worried about. We got different opinions from different people. I made sure I wasn't alone with it. What do you do when somebody in authority says something confusing.

Gillian Boudreau: Oh, yes, that's beautiful, you know, sort of including ourselves, and.

In the soup with the kids, and I think that that’s very powerful and very normalizing, not of horrible things that get said right, but of the fact that we are truly in this together. And we're all trying to figure it out. But the most important thing is to talk about it right.

Joelle van Lent: This is not.

Gillian Boudreau: Usually, when you know oppression is is on the menu.

Joelle van Lent: Right. And then what if that child says like you? Maybe you said like, well, I talked to people I respect, and I shared my feelings with them. What do you do? And if that student said something very different, I got really angry. I threw a bunch of stuff around. Oh, wow! So we had different ways of coping with that, didn't we? But like we're talking now, I'm really glad you're letting me know how you're feeling. Thanks for letting me know how you're feeling. So it's like that same idea of creating room for people to have different emotions for cause. You know, we are at a time where people have different, very different emotions for the same event create room in our. That's to me. The beauty of a public school is that we have very complicated varied group of people all together for one purpose, which is healthy community belonging, and education.

Gillian Boudreau: Yep.

Joelle van Lent: So you you create room for that.

Gillian Boudreau: Yes, yeah, what an. And you know, when done. Well, what an incredible place to practice that.

Joelle van Lent: So then somebody says, I thought it was great. Somebody said, I thought it was terrifying. So then you talk about not whether or not, it was right or wrong. You talk about the opportunity of being in a small community, such as a classroom, where 2 people have very different responses to the same event.

Gillian Boudreau: Yep.

Joelle van Lent: Because that's really the task.

Gillian Boudreau: Yeah, you know, it's tricky. I think that is largely the task. I also think it's dicey. If the disagreement is about the validity of a whole population of people.

Joelle van Lent: Yeah.

Gillian Boudreau: You know, so I I think that would be a hard one. You know, if I were a classroom teacher, which I haven't been. But you know, let's say I was running like a social skills group or a therapy group on that.

Joelle van Lent: Yeah.

Gillian Boudreau: You know I don't. I don't know if this would be - this would have pros and cons, but I think it would also be hard for me not to say or to recommend saying - you know, you know, especially on the issue of gender, you know something like - “The issue of gender has always really brought up a lot for us humans. And there have always been people who have been really worried about anything other than a pretty traditional view of gender that that has often been scary to many people. However, what we know is that there are many people who exist outside of that traditional understanding. So I would want this classroom to be a place where we can practice making space for and honoring everyone's different responses to to statements, though - you know, though I really do want to be clear that for me, as the adult

in charge in this space, I would want to make sure that we're not erasing or taking away the validity of large groups of people who just do exist in this country, including those who

aren't in traditional gender boxes.

Joelle van Lent: Yeah, that's really important. We have to create a safe island, right? Like we have to be explicitly taking an anti-racist stance explicitly taking a stance where we won't tolerate - you know, transphobia, or you know, whatever whatever that might be. I think that this feels so upending that what teachers are asking me for is scripts.

Gillian Boudreau: Yeah.

Joelle van Lent: For how do I respond? And at the same time that they're trying to process what's happening themselves, they're, you know, immediately turning around and needing to know the right words and the right things to say when students ask really great questions or make unexpected comments. And I just wanna keep you know, you and I have always been willing to get right in muck with the educators and think about well, what would be the right thing to say right. And you could say this. But no, maybe that wouldn't be quite right. What about that? And I think the beauty of that is that You talk about it. You play around with some scripts, and then if you realize that maybe I didn't say the right thing right, that you could circle back and repair for that, right like, I think, based on the exchange that you and I just had. If I had said. you know 2, we could have a classroom where 2 people can feel differently about something. I might talk to you or think about it and realize like that was, too.

I I should have taken a more clear stance right on that. And and so then I might come back and say, You know what I thought about that more. And I think actually. : I think I think I want I would want to answer that question differently if you know if we had it again. So here's here's what I'm thinking. So what we're modeling like, you know, we always say better than to be perfect repair. Well.

Gillian Boudreau: Yes, oh, totally yes.

Joelle van Lent: Yeah. So I think we just have to keep trying our best. And then thinking about what -

Gillian Boudreau: Is, you know you you could say to a student, I don't know how to answer that question. It feels like such an important one that I want some time to think about it, and then and then give you my answer, and then the next day you come back. I have my answer.

Yes, yeah. An an adult who can admit that they don't know everything, and.

Joelle van Lent: Yeah.

Gillian Boudreau: I don't know right now, but I'll get back to you.

Joelle van Lent: Yeah.

Gillian Boudreau: Even just that is such a gift to kids, you know. That's that's so powerful to be surrounded by adults who are humble enough to do that.

Joelle van Lent: Right? Right? Yeah. So we've decided that I'm a tree hugger. And you're a wind floater.

Gillian Boudreau: Yep, that sounds about right.

Joelle van Lent: And we've decided that you don't have to be perfect. You just have to repair well, and that this landscape that we're in right now is tricky, but we're in it together.

Gillian Boudreau: We're really in it together. We're just on this hill of shifting sands. And the ground keeps shifting. But yet here keep being these children who need the same things they've always needed, which are consistency, predictability, respect, and positive regard.

Joelle van Lent: Yeah, absolutely.

Gillian Boudreau: Yeah, thanks, Joelle. This was a really, I got a lot out of our conversation today.

Joelle van Lent: Yeah, me, too. It was really helpful. Thanks, Gillian, thanks. Everybody.

Gillian Boudreau: Yeah, thanks to you as the listeners for being on this journey with us, and we'll catch you next time.

Joelle van Lent: Bye-bye.