The Power of Belonging in Our Schools with Special Guest Tim Shriver | Part 1

What if better conversations could change our schools, our communities, and even our politics? This episode  explores the power of speaking—and listening—with dignity.  Join Dr. Meria Castarphen and guest Tim Shriver as they  discuss creating spaces where every voice is treated with respect in our schools and communities. 

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SPEAKER_01 0:02

Schools teach students every day, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not, a quiet lesson about whether they belong. It shows up and who is called on, whose stories are centered, how discipline is handled, and whether students believe they can show up as themselves and still be respected. Long before test scores or transcripts, that lesson shapes how young people see themselves and whether they believe learning is for them. Welcome to School of Thought. I'm Maria Karstarfen, Director of the National Center for the Elimination of Educational Disparities at Morgan State University. I've spent my career serving in and leading school systems, and I've learned that some of the most powerful drivers of academic success aren't only found in curricula or standards, but in daily human interactions, the ones that communicate dignity, care, and belonging. Today we're exploring what belonging really means, not as a slogan or a program, but as a condition for learning and for life. I'm joined by Tim Shriver, a lifelong educator, disabilities rights advocate, chairman of Special Olympics, and chairman of Unite. Tim's work has shaped how we think about social and emotional learning, and more recently, how we disagree without dehumanizing one another through the Dignity Index with implications for schools, higher education, workplaces, and civic life. Tim, thank you for joining us.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

It's a pleasure. Big pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

I'm grateful for the chance to think together today about belonging, your bold work and dignity, and what institutions are teaching, whether they intend to or not, so that we have the courage to see one another. You've spoken openly about growing up in a family deeply shaped by public service and political life, faith, and about learning early what it meant to be in rooms when power, disagreement, and moral responsibility are always present. How did that upbringing and then later raising your own family shape your understanding of dignity and belonging long before you had language for it?

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Yeah, well, it's a wonder, it's a really interesting question, Maria, because I think we all are shaped with messages around human dignity, each of us. If we've uh if we've had the the the great privilege of having a mom or a dad or a caregiver who looked at us when we were real little and saw us and marveled at us, and and if we had people looking over us even in our infancy saying, look at the beautiful baby, and wow, isn't your child gorgeous? And I can't wait to play with your baby, with your child, with your toddler, and so on. We we we learned that we mattered. We learned that we mattered to people, that we mattered in some way beyond whether we were strong or smart or tall or short or Republicans or Democrats or black or white. We mattered. Like those lessons came to all of us. In my case, those lessons did come. I had a loving family, uh, tumultuous, um uh demanding, uh uh ambitious, but loving. Uh but I think the interesting thing as I look back on my childhood was that my parents were involved in what in the 50s and 60s was called social justice work, civil rights work, disability rights work, anti-poverty work. But the common thread in all that work was that there were people in our culture who were not being treated with dignity. And the common thread in their response was to marshal, to get people to work together to end the contempt that were, that people with Down syndrome were being treated with, that people of color were being treated with, that women or that uh indigenous communities were being treated. These were all communities that my parents in particular were really fiercely committed to. But the reason they were committed was because those people had lived on the other side of dignity. They'd lived uh often experiences of contempt and humiliation and degradation. Uh and so my parents were like, we have to end that. And it sounded like we have to work for civil rights, or we have to work for political change, or we have to march for this or march for that. And we did all those things. But the underlying thread was uh a country is not its best if it is treating certain groups or even individuals with contempt and dehumanization and humiliation. So as I grew up and became an educator, which no one in my family it at least formally was, uh I started to realize this was the thread, this was the message schools needed to. We needed to hear that same message that all kids need to be treated with dignity. Not all kids will learn the same, not all kids will behave the same, not all kids were will grow at the same rate, not all kids will love the same subjects, the same arts, the same sports. But all kids, without exception, need to be treated. We need to learn how to make sure we treat them with dignity. When their behavior is problematic, we manage the behavior. We don't dehumanize the child. When the when the when the when the conduct is out is out of what's acceptable, out of line with what's acceptable, we help repair and restore that conduct to wholeness. But we don't humiliate and degrade the child. These were lessons that uh, you know, I I think I learned from my parents without the language, to use your way of putting it.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Yeah, so you um you've spent your I mean your life alongside not just your parents, but other people and other organizations. Yes. But but you spent you you you mentioned a little bit about um your experience uh working with students with special needs who are often told either subtly or explicitly that they didn't belong. Yeah. Um when do you think, when you think back to the athletes and Special Olympics with whom you've worked, or even any young people in your experience as an educator, what were the earliest signals that um you started seeing that maybe inspired you to do more work in this space that they did matter? Or that um, or even if people were implying that they didn't matter, but what were you starting to see that you believed would really make a difference in this space that would allow students to be more included in school or more embraced as um as part of just what it means to be growing up as a kid in education?

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Well, when I started in education, I was working in the New Haven Public Schools in New Haven, Connecticut, and the Upward Bound program in the state of Connecticut. And we were working, I was working with high school kids, and uh I was taught to you know make sure they knew how to place the comma, how to capitalize sentences, the dates of the Civil War, the periodic table, the you know, these were all the things kids needed to know in order to get to college because that was, you know, we were very big. If we can get help these kids be college-bound, then they can build an uh economic future and they can build a stable family life and they can break out of the cycle. So I was like, I've gotta teach these kids to study harder and work harder and learn more, and and that wasn't wrong, but I was in the words of scripture like a clanging symbol. The kids didn't feel they felt they knew that I cared. They knew I had demands, but they didn't feel connected. And you know, there's this uh I heard it I think at the age of 24, it's probably well known to many people. Uh those students will not care how much you know until they know how much you care. And it sounds like, oh yeah, everybody's heard that before. But when it hit me at that age, it changed. And I started looking, wait a second, do they know? Of course they know how much I care. Why would I why wouldn't I, you know, they see me, I'm doing home visits, I'm in the neighborhood. I mean, but I I needed to establish some degree of trust and some degree of connection and some degree of realizing and understanding them for where and who they were. Then I could start talking about how to capitalize the sentence and the dates of the revolution or the civil, whatever it was. Um and so I studied, you know, with James Comer, who was at that time and still is one of the leading, if not the leading, child psychiatrist who's been in the work of education reform for almost a half century. And Dr. Comer was very clear. He said, you know, Tim, you're working with kids from from challenging backgrounds, from kids who have dealt with a lot of exclusion, marginalization. They've seen their parents humiliated by this culture, by this city, by the state. Uh you've got to recognize that the most important thing for those kids is whether or not they establish a good relationship with their teachers. He said to me, Teaching and learning is a relationship. It's not a transfer of facts, it's a relationship. And that gave me the first inkling that there was a science and an art of relationship building that I had never learned in my teacher preparation. I mean, I just no one had taught me that. Everybody taught me how to teach history, everybody taught me the classroom methods, they taught me how to discipline students, they taught me how to use multi- multimedia and all that kind of stuff, but they never taught me the science or the art of strengthening relationships. That depended on learning things like empathy and problem solving and listening skills. Uh I had never learned those things. And so this was the opening for me to see that I kind of had it backwards. That if I I I thought knowledge and information produces gains, it it actually was relationships and trust produce knowledge and gains. And that changed the course of my career. And I, you know, we we ended up calling this new field social and emotional learning because there was all of a sudden new practices we could teach kids, like, and we can do this. So if your child is having a temper tantrum, the child could be two or the child could be twenty-two. We all have temper tantrums. Uh even superintendents sometimes have temper tantrums.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Someone's got jokes.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

But we can teach each other how to calm down in in the midst of a time. We can teach children at an early age, we show them pretend you're a turtle. And pretend like you go into your shell and you take deep breaths and say something positive to yourself. I can handle this, I can calm down, I will be okay. Then come out of your shell and try to respond. Kids can learn this at seven years old. I wish we were teaching members of Congress how to do that. I wish we were teaching uh uh, you know, a lot of our law enforcement. I mean, these are and and they all we all need these skills. It's not like they are they're bad people, so we all need these skills. But this the this was all of a sudden uh the study and the science of how to strengthen relationships. Because if a child is having a temper tantrum, screaming at the child, disciplining the child, expelling the child, does not work to help the child. Helping the child learn how to self-regulate, that will help the child. So we started to build these skills into the curriculum and show teachers how to use them so that kids could learn, not so that they would be distracted from learning, but so that they could be attentive to learning. Now what that does, Maria, in in a kind of uh almost seamless way is it helps the teacher to resist the urge which we all have to start to label. You know that little kid, Timmy, he's always having he's a bad kid. Make sure you don't get him in your class next year. If I'm the first grade teacher, I tell the second grade, try not to have him in your class. He's always a problem. Instead of teaching him how to self-regulate and moder moderate his behavior, which would strengthen the relationship and make him a better learner, I, as the teacher, often slip into labeling the child and trying to move the child. That's what happened for a hundred years to children with intellectual disabilities.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

So, you know, there's been some resistance to embracing these concepts. I mean, you helped build the movement for social emotional learning. Uh, a lot of other people were involved, but many people, educators, uh, policymakers, uh, you know, it a lot of folks dismissed it as soft. Yeah. And I know that research has started to um emerge and has been for the last couple of decades. So this isn't new, but I still feel like every time I talk about this, it seems like people are surprised that um that when you embrace these concepts of social emotional learning belonging, that it correlates with higher graduation rates, better academic achievement. They've even shown that you know, there's an increase in letter grades like A's and B's, and a decrease in D's and Fs, and even um like completion rates.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

Even standardized test scores, which we have like if you're teaching relationship skills.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

Your feet to the fire fork.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Of course, but if you're teaching relationship skills, someone would not be forgiven for saying that has nothing to do with a standardized test. It has everything to do with a standardized test. Because there's no reason for the child to be motivated if the child doesn't feel connected to the person trying to motivate them. Think about that.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Yes, and I mean, which leads to persistence rates, you know, ensuring that um that students have uh better attendance. I mean, it's just so much evidence that it is beyond the original labels of soft skills that may or may not have quantitative value in these things like test scores or academic outcomes. So um, so what do schools still need to understand? Or what are they misunderstanding about belonging, about social emotional learning, about demonstrating empathy? I mean, all these things that you just talked about. Um, why are they not doing it as a daily practice? What is it about our behavior thinking in practice as educators and decision makers and leaders that just doesn't have that horse drink the water?

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Well, uh, I'll go back to something Dr. Comer taught me years ago. I'll take you and me as examples, Maria. I have uh I have higher education degrees in education. I actually have three. Now I'm not bragging. How many uh uh what's your high what's your advanced training in education? You have a PhD?

SPEAKER_01 14:51

Yes, and I have two masters.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

And two masters. So you have three degrees, and I have three. So between us, we have six advanced degrees.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

And yet I don't feel that smart.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Well, let me ask you this question. How many classes do you have on relationship building?

SPEAKER_01 15:03

None.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

None. Same here.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

I can't recall one.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

One. Okay. So here we are. You're one of the country's leading educators, have led large school districts around the country, have produced enormously positive gains for kids, but you came into and you're leading with not a single class in the fundamental science of relationship building. Me too. So when you say why don't teachers get it, uh, it would be like telling a doctor to uh operate on someone's leg and they've never taken anatomy. They don't know what's in there. How would you be a doctor if you don't know anatomy? How could you how can we expect people to be great educators if they don't understand relationships? Uh just understanding science or language arts or history or social studies or civics, great. But that's not enough. So we haven't trained our educators at all. I mean, I some places do.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

I don't mean to make it a I mean it has been evolving a little.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

Yes, yes, and we're doing better. I I but so one problem that we have is our workforce is not trained in the most contemporary ways of thinking about how to optimize learning. Secondly, politics. Politics is used to divide people and create political advantage for politicians. It is not, I'm sorry to say, I come from a political family, often designed to create advantage for children. Now, uh, so many people have demagogued this issue, maybe on both sides. I don't mean to be partisan here, but people I've been in Oklahoma, I've been in Utah, I've been in Florida. These are all states that have been very critical of social and emotional learning. I've talked to the senior most people, including the most adamant critics of social and emotional learning. I was just last month in Utah, and I showed the skills. I said, uh, listen before you respond, self-regulate, uh, acknowledge knowledge, be curious, not furious, all these skills. With the sharpest critic of social and emotional learning, and she said to me, I agree with all these, all these should be taught. So we have a political divide that actually has very little to do with the substantive work that educators need to do. And that pulls people away from the work. They're scared of it, or it's not funded, or it's not being recognized by their principal. But parents can can can not when we poll parents, 90 plus percent of parents say they want more of these skills for their kids. Why? Because they see their kids anxious, they see their kids disengaged, they see their kids struggling to get along with other kids, they see their kids bombarded by bullying behavior on social media.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

Not to mention the mental health issues. All these mental health issues.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

And so the parents are saying, school, pay attention. Help my kid strengthen their inner life, help my kid resist these pressures, help my kid bond to people, help my kid become motivated. And the schools are like, what is that? And we're like, that's social and emotional learning, gang. So we've got to become advocates without politicizing the issue. The vast majority of teachers would like to be good at this if they get the training. The vast majority of programs that have evidence are unknown to many people. So they think to themselves, what am I supposed to do for social? Maybe I should have an assembly. Uh that should take care of it. Absolutely hopeless. That's not gonna take care of it. I'm all for assemblies, but an assembly does not educate the heart so that the heart can educate the mind. It just doesn't work that way. We have to put in evidence-based programs, make them sustainable, make them scalable over time, build scopes and sequences of curriculum that we can use to instruct uh over C over multiple grade levels, kids in these very important skills, and then we'll we'll we'll have a much better shot.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

Well, I know that uh a lot of educators will say, because they are concerned, that it is very programmatically oriented, that it is another initiative that's being added and layered on to so many other things they are responsible for doing. Um but uh the daily experiences that students have in school, I just feel like there's an opportunity here for those, especially those who've been historically pushed to the margins, who have not ever been treated well in school and continue to uh not be successful because we have not created the right structures for them. Um, but what does it cost? I mean, it just seems like, you know, if you're not communicating dignity, you're communicating doubt, you're communicating a lack of, you know, safety or clear identity or whether a person, a young person feels like they're even worth the effort or it's worth the effort of going to school. So when the belief is shaken, I think learning just becomes harder. And while I hear the I hear your piece about the politics and everything else, I mean at the end of the day, when a teacher closes the door to the classroom or a principal, you know, starts the school day, a lot can happen without all of those other influences really spilling into what happens behind that closed door. So what would you say to the educator, just the teacher who's engaging with the student every day? What would you what would you say to them about here are three things you can do to make it better for the students you have who have often been marginalized?

SPEAKER_00 20:57

Well, the first thing I would say is this I've talked to maybe thousands of teachers, colleagues in my career. I've never met a teacher who says relationships don't matter. And maybe listeners would say, Oh, I know a teacher who says that. I've never heard of a teacher. I don't know if you have.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

No.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

Uh, who says, oh no, relationships don't matter. And almost nobody, I nobody that I have ever met says that. So all of us know as teachers, if we're in the classroom or if we're surrounding or supporting the classroom, we know relationships matter. So the issue isn't, am I gonna add something or take something away from my to-do list as a teacher? And teachers are overwhelmed with too much to do. There's no question about that. But the issue isn't, am I gonna address this or not? The only issue is whether I'm gonna do it well or not. Because one way or another, we're addressing in my in our behavior here, you and I are building and strengthening relationships or hurting or or or uh wounding relationships in the way in which we address one another. So teachers are doing the same thing. What social emotional learning does is give you the best chance. To develop those qualities at the highest possible level of success. So we're not adding anything, we're just giving you a better chance of succeeding in what you're already doing. If you could teach kids help seeking skills, for instance, this is a fundamental thing teachers uh you know, teachers will say, there's no wrong questions. Please be comfortable raising your hand. Please ask for help when you need it. But that's a skill that can be taught. You can role model that, you can practice it, you can do role plays with kids, uh practicing how to seek help. We know that if you actually learn help seeking, if we learn help seeking, it's not just good for our learning. It helps prevent mental health problems, it helps reduce the chances of addiction. Because when you see people at risk, they ask for help instead of saying, oh, I have that myself, which often leads to very bad outcomes. So help seeking, these are basic skills, right? Self-regulation, help seeking, dialoguing skills. They're fundamental scientists who need those skills, right? Historians need those skills. So we can introduce those skills as part of the curriculum, teach children how to disagree with dignity, so that when they're studying the Civil War or the Harlem Renaissance or the Civil Rights Movement or uh, you know, the eras of colonization. So they can they can tangle with the material, challenge each other, debate. You can take one side, I take the other side. But I learn how to make my case based on facts and policies without dehumanizing you. That's a powerful skill. So these are these are skills that are easily translated into academic experiences. But when taught didactically, when taught specifically, uh, help us all. So I say to parents, you know, uh, we have little things that you can find in social emotional learning about. Uh taking a deep breath, put it on your refrigerator. I know that sounds old fashioned, but you just put it on your phone. I say put it on your refrigerator, you know, put it on your front door. Uh when you uh have a problem, stop, calm down, and take uh 10 deep breaths. If parents can do that to them, and they can model it for their kids. Uh when you have a disagreement, say to the person you're disagreeing with three words. Tell me more. I promise you, if you say that three times in a disagreement, you have a completely different conversation. Tell me more. Tell me more. I want to know more. If you say that three times, then say what you think. You will have a much more uh uh healthy uh conversation and problem solving. So these are, you know, have to be curious, ask questions. Don't, you know, try to reduce the effect that hostility has. I think if it's healthy, if it's used well, but use it to be curious and to be forceful about your position, not to demean or humiliate others. So these are these are basically parents can practice these things. They're not complicated. I mean, you know, teaching them well requires some training, but we can all practice them like our parents to say, hey, I heard this guy uh talking with uh school of thought at school of thought, and he said that you should be teaching my kids how to listen. Are you teaching to the second grade teacher? Fourth grade teacher, twelfth grade teacher, are you teaching my kids listening skills? Here's three questions about the listening skills. Repeat back what you heard. Use the last thing someone said and say it back to them. And those are those are little tricks of the listening skills uh toolkit.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

It would have been helpful. Thanks for joining us on part one of my conversation with every driver. And part two, we'll go deeper into what the power of the money really looks like in our schools and what it takes for every student to build clean, valued, and connected. Make sure you follow us on Instagram at nce underscoremorgan and on blue sky at nce.bsky.social and visit us online at nce.morgan.edu for more news and videos about NC. So it's just about time for the bell. I'm Maria Karstarfen for School of Thought, and I look forward to having you join us next time.