The Power of Belonging in Our Schools with Special Guest Tim Shriver | Part 2

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. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Okay, everyone, find your seats and let me welcome you back to School of Thought. I'm Maria Karstarfen, and we are continuing our conversation with Tim Schreiber about the power of belonging in our schools. In part two, we're examining what it takes to create learning communities where every student feels valued and why that sense of belonging can shape both academic success and well-being of young people. So let's get back into the conversation. But uh so you and I, I mean, I would not be, at least in my experience as an educator, most recently in the superintendency ranks of urban education. But when I first met you, Tim, I was in Austin, Texas. And uh this was this is like 15 years ago. So uh and I I have to say, I think if I had not met Ramona Trevino, who was you know doing a lot of work for the lab school or connected to the lab school with the University of Texas in Austin, and um and then subsequently meeting you and others who were interested in investing in the exploration and the research in social emotional learning. I honestly believe I would have not have had the transformational outcomes that we saw in Austin and in Atlanta public schools. Um first I want to thank you for the other. Thank you for you did the work.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

We we we we were you know we were on the tier team.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

With the Collaborative for Academic and Social Emotional Learning Castle did for not just the districts I worked in, but in um other districts, large districts in particular. I was I actually kept all my materials. I was reviewing them with some of my colleagues the other day um as I was writing a uh a piece for a newsletter and uh went back uh not just to Austin, but in 2017, there was a massive effort to uh share the research to grow in this space with urban school districts. And so uh we have a little surprise for you. Uh we have a caller uh from uh Austin, Texas, uh an educator who uh has some questions about this work. They were in Austin when we were doing our work together, and uh so it's just like a voice from the field, and give us some responses to our questions.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

This is Megan Rankin in Austin, Texas, and thank you for considering my questions. First, I'd like to better understand what is school inclusion. I've heard the phrases mainstreaming and integration, but what are the differences between the three? How has the definition of inclusion changed over time? Secondly, what happens when a school says they lack resources to include a child? For that child, how do we promote belonging and peer interaction? What about students who face language literacy or trust issues? Thanks again. Enjoy your day.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

So this is a parent, Megan, from Austin. Um how do you how would you respond to her?

SPEAKER_02 3:18

So I think first of all, it's really good questions uh on inclusion, particularly for kids with special needs or identified uh differences or disabilities. Uh so we've traveled a big journey on in this area in my lifetime. In in 1968, for instance, when the Special Olympics movement was founded, there were over almost 200,000 Americans living in institutions. Uh in a state like Maryland, there would have been six or eight or ten thousand people living in an institution uh for life because they had an uh an intellectual disability. They had Down syndrome or they had autism, or they had so uh and and those numbers are consistent across the country. We come from an era in which these differences were treated as um as curses to be forgotten and uh eliminated. Okay? So starting in the early 70s with changes in public policy, the passage of uh public law 94-142, which said that students with intellectual developmental disabilities had to be included in the least restrictive possible environment. We began to take these children from these institutions, return them off into their families, then back into their neighborhoods, into their communities, and then to their schools. And we had next to no preparation for how to make these children feel welcome, how to teach them academic material, how to include them in the arts or sports. So, fast forward now, here we are 40, 50 years later. We have begun to understand that chill all children can be included in the school, and that all children benefit. This is important. Not just the child who's nonverbal who's included in the school benefits. Every child benefits. Why? Because they're learning a big lesson. Everybody matters. Everybody has a gift. What a lesson. What a lesson. Not to see I'm in the school where only people like me, only people from my only people from my social class or my ethnic group or my culture. Everybody matters in this school. Wow. Ten years old seeing that, 12 years old, six years old seeing that. Powerful lesson for the kids who don't have a disability. That's number one. Number two, all children can learn. We know this now. This is not a question. All children can learn. They learn differently and at different speeds, but all children can learn. You may learn to read at the age of four and a half, or you may learn to read at the age of 24 and a half, but everyone can learn. And that also is a powerful uh message for schools to capture and carry. Because other parts of the culture don't want to know that. You know, they want to know who's if no CEO runs around saying, oh, I really want to hire people at the bottom of the uh IQ ladder. Schools do. We want those kids. Not because they're at the bottom of the, but because we want to prove to them, we want to show them. We're teachers. We want to, we want to, we care so much about the kids, we want to help that child learn. So we know all children can learn, that all children have dignity and matter. The third thing we know is that relationships matter. This is back to what we've been talking about. So this is where your question is important. So mainstreaming, inclusion, these are different terms. In my world, inclusion is primarily determined by relationships. Well, that's why I like to call it social inclusion. Academic inclusion is different. Social inclusion is everybody has a place they belong in the school. Everybody has friends, everybody has opportunities to participate. That's so that it's not just we're helping the child with Down syndrome learn how to read, but the other kids are also helping each other learn how to feel included and be included. So these that requires some attention to the social inclusion. Where does that take me? Back to empathy, back to perspective taking, back to upstand or behavior. When kids are excluded, you learn, am I a bystander when I see somebody made fun of, or am I courageous? You can be courageous at 6, at 8, at 12. Uh, how do I become an agent of dignity for those other kids? So these are these are the pieces of the puzzle of what we call an inclusive mindset, which we've now named and we've we've got research on where it's fascinating. Uh I like to say that if you want a 12-year-old with Down syndrome to be included, socially included, there's only one person who can make that happen. It's not a teacher, it's not an administrator, it's not a parent, it's another 12-year-old. A 12-year-old is the singularly powerful agent of determining whether their peer ever feels welcome. Only another 12-year-old can do it. So I look at 12-year-olds if I say this, I say, you don't have to wait till you're 14 or 16 or 21 to make a difference in the world. You have a chance to make a difference at lunch today. Take a chance on whoever it is that's at that table that nobody likes, who's at that table that people make fun of, who's at that table by herself or by himself. Go to that table. You will become an agent of social, political, cultural change. You will make your country proud at 12. It's true.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

I know.

SPEAKER_02 8:51

We were doing focus groups on inclusion, like trying to understand how inclusion works, which kids are inclusive, which kids aren't, how kids see it. So we did focus groups in a couple of different states, and I participated in the one we were doing in Des Moines, Iowa. So we went to a big school, it's a middle school and a high school, they're adjacent to each other, and we first had one focus group with the middle school students, then with the high school students. And uh so I was asking about so I had about 15 kids, and you know, those microphones, but there's uh it's not surveys, it's just asking people to talk. That's what a focus group is. Tell me what you think. So I was talking to the kids, and I was saying, what about bullying in your school? What who what's that like? And one kid said, Well, we it's bullying's not too bad here. Uh people look out for each other pretty well. So I said, Oh, that's great. I said, but when it happens, you know, do you feel like the teachers are available, like there's places to seek help? And this other young lady was, I guess a seventh or eighth grader, says, Yeah, the teacher's really good here. We don't really have much of a problem. And and I said, Yeah, but when you see clicks and you see people being made fun of and humiliated, what's that like? And she, the same young lady said to me, you know, that's the third time you asked us about bullying. We don't have a problem of bullying in our school. If you want to find bullies, go look at adults. And I was like, okay. And she said, When I go home at night and my mother's watching TV, that's bullies on television. That's bullies in politics. You're looking at for bullies here, you're looking in the wrong place. And that changed me because my life was always investing in kids, right? If we can only help the next generation, they'll grow up. But what she was saying in the rest of that focus group was interesting too. When I got to the high school group, same school, uh, one kid said to me, you know, uh, I'm excited about what I'm doing here. I'm playing football, my grades are good, I'm gonna go to college. Uh young African-American uh boy, uh, and uh uh I'm a part of a lot of different things, he said, but I think like when I get out, this country's gonna crush me. He was saying the same thing the little girl was saying. Like, don't, there's a problem out there with the adults in this culture that we are pretending doesn't exist. We're pretending it's okay for a politician to call another politician a name, especially if they're on our team, to demean and humiliate the other politician. And then we go to the kids and say, you shouldn't do that. I'm telling you right now, on any given day, I can find a politician using language that would get them suspended from any high school in America, like that. And instead of that, they get more likes and get contributions. So these kids were telling me, look at the power structure to change. Look at the way in which we, in, in the in the in the language of these kids, we are being told and treated uh by bullies who are the adults. And look what bullies make us, they make us discouraged, but don't blame us for it. Talk to the adults. And so right then and there, Maria, I was like, okay, I still want to work with kids because I love kids and I love working and I love schools, but we've got to do something to awaken adults to the fact that we, our generation, my generation, have allowed and excused dehumanization, contempt, humiliation on a scale that has gotten out of control. And what we realized when we did a little work on this was that this kind of language, adult bullying, increases the chance of violence, drives division between people, and paralyzes problem solving. And if you look at our politics, look at those three things. Has our politics increased the chances of violence?

unknown 13:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 13:03

You don't need data. Has politics divided us from one another?

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 13:08

Has politics uh failed in its problem solving function?

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 13:14

So we have, you know, what I like to say, our country looks like a dysfunctional high school. Half the kids have their heads on the desk, a third of the kids are gonna drop out. Uh, you have fights all over the place, you have teachers who don't care. That's what our country looks like. So I started out thinking I could change a high school. I wanted to try. Those kids said to me, start focusing on the country.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Well, one of the one of the things that we did change a little bit about the like on the ground in implementation with social emotional learning when I left as superintendent in Austin and started in Atlanta, Georgia, was that um after my first year, I mean we we hadn't completed the first academic year there. Atlanta was the district that had the largest cheating scandal in the history of public education. Things had kind of gone off the rails to say the least, and we were really trying to rebuild the system. But those things that you described were all through the adult culture, um, the kids were acting out too. But we definitely took a page out of the out of the adult book. Um hold on, how can we possibly start talking to students about their behavior when I'm watching adults acting out? It was you know, everything from what was on TV, how things were happening in public meetings, um, you know, it was just really bad. So as a matter of fact, Castle came in uh before I finished that school year and started, and I you know, because I wasn't even sure if we would have the support, I made it volunteer. It was like any any any principal, any anybody in a leadership position just the leadership, the people who are supposed to be modeling it for the teachers, for the students, if you would be willing to show up, you know, because you know it is like you can't you can't work on certain days and your labor agreements and everything else, it's like you just you would be coming voluntarily, and I think all but two people came, like literally two people, and that was because they already had pre-approved like a vacation out of the country. But other than that, they all showed up, and I think we we came to this um this is I don't know, like this is understanding that what you're describing, what we were experiencing was bigger than classrooms, bigger than students. It's about how we speak, how we disagree, and whether our institutions hurt people and humanity even in conflict. And so um for listeners uh who um who are gonna hear about this for the first time, I would like for you to explain your more current work around measuring dignity or understanding dignity in our country in these other sectors beyond education. Um because it's called a dignity index, I feel like it implies that there's some kind of scale and um but it's more than that, right?

SPEAKER_02 16:37

So uh so can you explain like how it's a way of a of uh the way that maybe we see each other, but like explain it to people who what we what we want it to do is take these basic insights that every all of us understand, which is that we want to treat we want to be treated with dignity, we want our dignity respected. Uh I think any mom or dad or grandparent or fan caregiver listening to that, yeah. I want my I want to be treated with dignity when I go to the school. Yeah. And the people in the school want to be treated with dignity, and so do all of us, right? So this is a fundamental thing. But when we started talking to people about how do we, they said, Well, you can't measure that. How are you gonna teach that? That's just a nice, like you said earlier, that's just a soft concept. It's like something you hear in church, and then you get out of church and you cut the person off in the parking lot, you know, and you're like, by the time you get home, you've screamed at your children, and you know, so that was like, yeah, yeah, you know, bless me, bless me this, bless me that, but when you get to the real life, it's hard to hold on to. So we said, yeah, I know we get that. So we said, well, what if we showed you, what if we could, what if we could build a scale that could show on the one end, dignity no matter what, unconditional dignity, and on the other end, violence and hatred. Like, and what if we built like a scale that would show you all the steps that go from violence all the way up and show you how to score yourself on this? So we built this thing we call it the dignity index. And it doesn't score people, it scores what you say, scores words. If you say those people uh are subhuman, they don't belong, that's a one because that's a call to violence.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

I'm gonna give them a zero.

SPEAKER_02 18:25

Okay. A two is those people are evil. It's us or them. We we the this country's not big enough for all of us. That's a two. A three is uh it's us versus them. We're we're good, they're bad. That's a three. A four is uh we're better. You know, we're just better people than the other. You know, we're we Democrats are better than Republicans, we Republicans, we're better than Democrats, you know, we Jews are better than Muslims, or we Muslims are better than Catholics, or whatever it is. That's a four. When you get to a five, you start to hear people say, we're all equal. Uh you have a difference of opinion, I'll give you what I'd call equal time. So the key shift there is we go from demeaning and humiliating up to listening. And a six is a little different. A six is I want to probe. Let's find common ground. You come from X, I come from Y, you think X, I think Y. But maybe there's something we agree on. That's sixth language. Uh that's what I'd call curiosity. Let's let's probe. Seven language is uh I feel strongly, but I want to be open to the fact that I might be wrong. That's humility language. Dr. King ends his letter from the Birmingham City Jail, his long, beautiful treatise on the urgency of action to end segregation. He ends it at the end. If I have made a mistake, please correct me. And if I have, I think I can't remember exactly how he says it, but if I have erred at a fundamental, God, please correct me. So he ends with this beautiful expression of humility. That's seven language. In the midst of the conflict, I'm still open to understanding that I might not have it all. Gandhi uses quite a lot. A lot of people use it. You might use this with your husband or your children or your you know, your colleagues. And you know, I don't agree with you, but maybe I, you know, I could be wrong. Let me hear more. That's seven language. Eight is no matter what. You've done horrible things, but I still see in you uh the humanity, a part of the humanity that's the same as me. So we built the scale.

SPEAKER_01 20:35

What's a 10?

SPEAKER_02 20:36

That's it. It's one to eight. An eight is what I'd call almost, you know, it's like in the religious language you'd call it love your enemies. That's eight.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 20:47

You don't agree with them.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

What was what was your what was your score?

SPEAKER_02 20:50

On what? On how I talk about you?

SPEAKER_01 20:52

It's always eight.

SPEAKER_02 20:53

We don't always agree, but I try to love you, Maria. Same here, Tim.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

Same here.

SPEAKER_02 20:58

But it's not always easy. It's not always easy. We're in the midst right now, as we're recording this, of watching political uh violence, uh loss of life in our own country, um, what feels to some people like terrorism uh within our country, by officials of our country, against people in our country. So these are uh viscerally threatening, infuriating, you know, people of principle. Uh it's hard to say, I'm gonna treat the other side with dignity. Let's say you believe that the law enforcement is doing the right thing to treat those protesters with dignity, or the protesters to treat law enforcement with dignity. These are very difficult skills. But we s we put this in a scale, and then we put some social emotional learning in it so you can learn how to be a better listener. You can learn your listening skills, you can learn how to acknowledge knowledge.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Ever the educator.

SPEAKER_02 21:55

Ever the educator, and we're and all of a sudden, instead of schools, I mean. Schools ask us for it now, so we're training educators in how to teach the dignity index, teach dignity as part of an SEL program. But guess what else? CEOs came to us on with without us asking. Would you come and work with our corporate culture? Two weeks from now, we're gonna have a gathering of faith leaders from all different faith because they want to learn how to preach dignity more in their various traditions and across many different kinds of religions. We have educators, we have politicians inviting us to come and help them raise their name them for the other.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

Well, yeah, say like government.

SPEAKER_02 22:40

No, I can name them because we've been working, for instance, with Governor Cox in Utah, who led through, uh led our country really through the assassination of Charlie Kerr.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

Excuse me, hope, keep naming them.

SPEAKER_02 22:50

Yeah, and Governor Stidd, who's the current chairman of the NGA, who has spoken, I believe, with a good degree of dignity in the mo in the midst of this current crisis, saying we want to de-escalate, trying not to demonize either side, but to say we've got to find common ground as Americans. Governor Moore here in Maryland is a big advocate of this. Governor Shapiro, uh, Governor Polis, Governor Luan Grisham in New Mexico. So there's a lot of people outside of Washington. That's a tough Washington's not an easy place for us. But the state houses tend to have leaders, not all, but tend to have leaders who want to solve problems. Remember, we said violence, problem solving, division, if we can reduce violence, ease division, solve problems. That's that tends to be a little bit more governors and mayors and local officials. Um, and so we're having a lot of success with people who are trying to create a counterculture to the culture of contempt.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

What I appreciate is that to me, what I feel like I'm hearing is that you're not that dignity dignity doesn't mean that you avoid disagreements.

SPEAKER_02 23:58

No, quite the opposite.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

Yeah, it's about how we hold one another and engage with each other while we disagree.

SPEAKER_02 24:07

Yeah. And if that was all confusing, you can go to dignity.us. And funnily enough, you know, one of the nice things about you know social emotional learning skills like listening or self-regulation stuff like that, as I said earlier, you can learn these things quite quickly. The dignity index, we find people can learn in about three minutes. So I'm not telling you to go do a PhD or watch like you can do hours and hours of YouTube stuff on the Dignity Index, but you can also look at the look at the dignity index and just walk through it. And in about three to five minutes, you get the idea.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

I still like I still think practice.

SPEAKER_02 24:47

Some people need more training. Yes, and it's such a hard time.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

I mean, the context right now is so hard. So I can see how you, you know, in a more normal, you know, coming out of the, like you said, the parking lot at church. Yeah. Yes. But when you what we see on TV, what's happening within the last 24 hours is so shocking to me. I grew up in Salma, Alabama. I mean, I I, you know, was born after the voting rights movement and you know, the civil rights. I'm just saying, I still grew up in a town where those issues never went away. I mean, like it was, I was, you know, it was it was the 80s and 90s for me, and I can tell you it was still a very tough environment. And yet I I feel like I never saw what I see today. And and even though I feel like I grew up with probably more balanced conditioning and uh maybe stomach for the tough stuff, which has served me well in public education when you sit in the seat of a superintendency. Um but like even now, I look at what I see, and I don't know how I would react if those things were happening to me or to someone who I was with, who I loved or cared about, and saw the treatment and the violence against them. So I hear the uh you don't have to have a doctorate in it, but it probably does require some ongoing discipline to be able to endure some of what we're seeing today across our country. It doesn't matter where you are, you don't know where it's gonna pop up or begin in your own community. So um Dr.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

King, uh Maria, in that same Birmingham City jail letter, writes about the rituals required for social change. And he includes one he calls self-purification. This is his language, uh, and he did details in that letter what it means to be self-purifying so that you can engage in the battle without needing to retaliate at the level of hatred that you're being treated with. In my shorthand, how do you oppose hatred without becoming hatred? How do you oppose violence without becoming violent? And uh these are enormously complicated human skills, to your point. You can look at them, you can look at a piece of paper and get the idea. But the practices, and he even writes about this, the need for constant practice. Uh, you see this in all great political leaders. They withdraw, they read, they go to the quiet, they go to the mountain, they go to the uh to nature, they go into their room in private, you know. And what what what I think we're seeing in great leaders who manage in the face of great conflict is the need to continually strengthen their inner reserves of dignity and strength and compassion so that they can oppose hatred and not become it.

SPEAKER_01 28:24

God's such a that's a big lift for like a normal person like me. We're not that great leader. Um, you know, you know, like you're just like I feel like it's yeah, but this is what we all have.

SPEAKER_02 28:36

I mean, look, the world is smaller and smaller, it's more complex, it's moving faster, we're all being buffeted by huge amounts of change, huge daily amounts of. Wait a second, I didn't see that coming. Oh my god, technology, oh my god, my child, oh wow, look at this country. Oh, my I what what are we doing? We're invading. What whoa, that's another one. We're buffeted. Everything is unstable, everything is you know, pulling at our sense of control and safety and approval. We so so the new superpower is inclusion. It's navigating difference and being an agent of openness and welcome and trust, so that, not so that you let everything go, so that we can actually work together to make things better.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

So as I think about civic life and uh and what we're seeing, we're seeing people tear each other apart literally physically in some uh recent news coverage. Um opposite aisles, opposite issues, just so much challenge. What happens to a democracy when contempt becomes normalized?

SPEAKER_02 29:57

It collapses. I mean, we you know, here's the way we put it there's no America without democracy, right? There's no democracy without debate. America was not set up to have one opinion. America was established as a democracy to allow for debate. That's not a bad thing, that's a good thing. No debate means you have a king. So there's no you don't have an opinion that's different from mine, okay, that's fine. And if you do, it's crushed, that's no debate. That's a that's a monarchy. So we want debate, and you can't have debate without treating people with dignity. That's why these bodies of legislative bodies were set up so you have these local bodies so that people debate. That's good. School boards, so people debate. Houses of representatives, so people debate, senates and all. So so debate is essential, but you can't have debate if you don't treat the other party with dignity. Then you just have shouting. So the country is at this pivot point. I think we all know this. And both parties are part of the contempt structure. They both uh profit from it, I'm sorry to say. If I were running for uh Congress in the state of Maryland, I would do a raise a lot more money if I really, really slammed and humiliated and got the best social media that just absolutely devastatingly mocked my opponent. Bam! Oh yeah, we like that guy. So that though all those incentives are wrong. Because if I do that and win, I'm almost guaranteeing I won't get anything done. I'm almost guaranteeing that all my rhetoric about justice and truth and transparency won't work. Why? Because I've made an enemy of the other side. You can't have America and hate half of your fellow Americans. You can't love democracy and hate debate. It doesn't work. And so we're seeing this grinding decay of our social life, of our political life, and even of our safety, because we're not attending to the problem. The problem isn't differences of opinion. The problem is treating each other with contempt when we differ.

SPEAKER_01 32:14

What's striking is that the same principles that helped help a child also help a society hold together. That's right. So thank you, Tim, for the other.

SPEAKER_02 32:25

It's a little bit like everything I always, you know, everything I I needed to know, I learned in kindergarten. We're just adding a couple of lessons because any good kindergarten teacher teaches all these basic principles. And I'd love to have a parade of kindergarten teachers in the United States Congress, the United States Senate, and in the halls of power. Uh, because these lessons taught by kindergarten teachers and and by elementary and middle and high school teachers as they follow are the lessons our country needs.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

What stays with me from this conversation is that belonging isn't something we offer after students succeed. It's what makes success possible in the first place. When dignity is protected, learning opens up. When it's denied, the door quietly closes. Tim, thank you for reminding us that belonging is not about avoiding disagreement or discomfort. It is about how we hold each other together, especially when things are hard. Your work challenges all of us, educators, leaders, residents, and citizens, to pay attention to the language we use, the systems we design, and the messages we send about those who matter. Um, to our listeners, the question isn't whether students feel welcome, but whether our schools and our society are built in ways that affirm people's full humanity. That's the work of education, and as Tim pointed out, it's the work of democracy. Uh, thank you for joining us on School of Thought. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at NC underscore Morgan and on blue sky at n seed.bsky. Until next time, I'm Maria Carstarkin. Thank you.