Let's Talk Kids
Conversations with influential legislators, officials, experts, educators, entrepreneurs, parents, attorneys, and others who want to help give every child a chance to grow up safe, healthy, and educated.
Anticipated Coverage:
Education: Early Childhood Education (ECE); Early Child Care (Daycare); Special Education; School Environment; Education for Children in Foster Care; and Automation in Childhood Education
Protection and Welfare: Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention; Child Welfare Systems; Juvenile Justice; and Positive Youth Development.
Health and Hunger: Health Insurance Access; Mental Health Services; Nutrition and Food Security; and Maternal and Infant Health.
Family Supports and Economic Stability: Economic Mobility; Support for Kin Caregivers; and Affordable Housing
Special Needs: Developmental Services and System Navigation.
Values Based Families: Building Values Based Families; and Religious Institutions, Clerics and Child Advocacy.
Let's Talk Kids
Stop Teaching Students Without Doing THIS First! | Let’s Talk Kids
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Dr. Maurice Elias, Rutgers Psychology Professor and Director of the Social-Emotional and Character Development Lab, explains how teachers and administrators can positively enhance their school environment and educational methods in order to engage students, improve their mental health, and set them up for success rather than contributors to the rising rate of absenteeism.
Learn more about Dr. Elias and his book below!
Reinvigorating Classroom Climate by Maurice Elias - https://shorturl.at/vJUgA
Rutgers Social-Emotional and Character Development Lab - https://www.secdlab.org/
Social Emotional Learning Alliance for New Jersey - https://sel4nj.org/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you so much for watching. See below for more information on Let’s Talk Kids and ACNJ.
SOCIAL & WEB LINKS
LTK Linktree - linktr.ee/ltkacnj
Advocates for Children of New Jersey (ACNJ) Official Website - acnj.org
- ACNJ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/acnjforkids/
- ACNJ Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/company/advocates-for-children-of-new-jersey/
- ACNJ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ACNJforKids/
PODCAST LINKS
- LTK Linktree - linktr.ee/ltkacnj
CONTACTS
- mcoogan@acnj.org - Mary Coogan - Host of Let’s Talk Kids | CEO of ACNJ
- vjabon@acnj.org - Viggo Jabon - Editor of Let’s Talk Kids | Multimedia Specialist at ACNJ
Welcome to Let's Talk Kids. I'm Mary Coogan, President and CEO of Advocates for Children of New Jersey, and the host of Let's Talk Kids, a conversation with experts, policymakers, and community organizations about issues and topics that impact children and families. Today I'm pleased to be joined with Dr. Maurice Elias, longtime professor at Rutgers University, practicing psychologist, and also social and emotional and character development lab. You're the director, right? And also the co-director of the Academy for Social and Emotional Learning in Schools. And also an ACJ board member, right? So Very important. Great to be here. Thanks for coming. But given all your experience, right, and many years of working with students, because we used to have students come to ACJ as interns, working in the community and at schools, all the conversation we hear about increased level of stress and anxiety and depression in students, are we facing a mental health crisis in New Jersey?
SPEAKER_02Well, I think we are facing a crisis. I see it in my college students, actually. My college students are undergoing tremendous amounts of stress, uncertainty. They don't know about their futures, they don't know what the work environment is going to be like. And this is something that happens and starts back in the elementary school, middle school, high school days. Our kids really do need to be able to learn without having to worry at the same time.
SPEAKER_00So this is not a COVID thing.
SPEAKER_02It's it, you know, COVID opened it up for us, I think. I think COVID made us see things that were there to be seen. We couldn't ignore them after COVID. And I especially noticed that with my RUCTRA students. They would be telling me about their responsibilities, the issues they were facing because of COVID. But then when I asked them what were things like before COVID, they were also pretty bad and pretty stressed with the fact that they had to work along with being in school. That very so many students had to care for siblings. They had to care for parents, and then dealing with immigration-related issues. So I think what COVID opened up for us is an understanding of just what the stress levels are that are affecting our students. And then we learned about the stress level affecting our teachers and in our schools.
SPEAKER_00So what's causing stress levels for teachers?
SPEAKER_02Well, what teachers had to, teachers are always having to deal with new things. They had to deal with remote learning. They had to deal now with artificial intelligence. They have to also deal with the fact that their students are more stressed, and they're not necessarily ready for that. So we have this sort of perfect storm. You've got schools that are being asked to do more, create this thing called portraits of a graduate. I'm not sure if you've heard that term.
SPEAKER_00No, I'm not familiar with that.
SPEAKER_02I'll come back to that in a minute. Create portraits of a graduate. And their resources are typically being threatened or taken away. And at the same time, you've got students who are dealing with families that are under stress. And so you've got educators under stress, you've got students under stress, you've got higher demands being made on them for achievement and accomplishment. That's a perfect storm.
SPEAKER_00So you're describing different things, but let's just go back first to the portrait of a graduate before we lose touch. What is the portrait of a graduate?
SPEAKER_02So many schools now and many districts now are creating what's called a portrait of a graduate, which basically means what do we want our students to be like? What do we want them to achieve when they graduate from our school or from our district? And of course, everybody wants to be achieving at our above grade level. We want proficiency for all our kids. We want them to be mentally happy and healthy. We want them to be engaged. We want them to be great future citizens. So this is what we want for our kids. Now, it's one thing to want this. It's another thing to put the resources in place so that we get this. And it's another thing to make sure that when we talk about portraits of a graduate, we're talking about all graduates, not just some graduates.
SPEAKER_00Well, I was going to say that's what you described is impossible. I I mean, when you think about the thousands of kids who go to a university, that they could all be overachievers and successful and balanced and making, you know, a great income and be happy. That's to me almost impossible. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_02Well, maybe it's impossible at the top level, but it's not possible at a minimum level. We should be able to guarantee that all our kids are academically proficient. Okay. They don't have to all excel, but they should all be proficient. We should aspire for our kids to be mentally healthy, not necessarily the fantastic health elation and joy all the time, but they should be reasonably healthy. They should be also reasonably engaged, and they should have some notion that they should be participating in citizenship in school and out of school. That's not too much to ask. Again, it doesn't mean every kid's going to be president, every kid's going to be the local mayor or run for the local town council. But they they should be aspiring to something.
SPEAKER_00No, that makes sense. And I also think when you talk about if some people would equate happiness with being content, right? And I think people should come out of school feeling that they can find a job, that they can make a living that's reasonable, that they can be content with their life, right? That's true. And so and your other points in terms of being competent, absolutely. And the civic engagement, I think, is something we've lost touch with in more recent days, right? Okay, so let's back up a little bit, not say understand that college kids may have issues, but let's talk a little bit about the younger years. So I know from our kids count data, which is data on a variety of indicators to sort of track trends in child well-being, that less than 50% of the children in New Jersey are reading at grade level by third grade and are not proficient in math, either at third grade or levels at eighth grade, with with even kids who necessarily don't go on to college need to have basic reading and math skills, right? So we talk a lot about stress, but we don't talk about those basic skill levels, right? And why is it you think that we've lost touch with basic competency skills in the younger grades and are so focused on the emotional problems that kids are facing?
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell Well, I think we have to ask ourselves, what does it take to do well academically, especially if you're not doing well academically? And so if we're saying that a lot of our kids are behind, and I hate to use that term, but if we say that they're behind, then they have to catch up. Well, you don't catch up unless you exercise a certain amount of effort, you don't catch up unless you believe you can catch up. You don't catch up unless you've got some skills for persistence. You don't catch up unless you've got some skills for stress management. In other words, academic success requires a certain social and emotional skill set. And if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter how smart you are. You're not going to accomplish. Okay. And so unfortunately, what education tends to do is double down on the content, double down on the academic details, and not think about the emotional life of the child that has to carry out those academic details. So we end up in an odd way increasing the pressure on the kids without giving them the skills to deal with that pressure.
SPEAKER_00What I'm hearing you say is kids wouldn't necessarily be behind if they had those skills to deal with the pressures as they were moving through school. Right. So you wouldn't always be playing catch up at fourth and fifth grade if when kids came into school at first and second grade they had those skills to learn how to read.
SPEAKER_02Right. And it's not only the skills, it's what kind of an environment schools provide for kids. So kids come into school for 180 school days, and they need to feel welcomed. They need to feel like people are excited for them to be there. Then they get excited for being there. And, you know, what their home life is like is very difficult for schools to control. But for 180 school days, for a lot of hours, every one of those days, we put the kids in an environment which can be like an oasis for them. And they can look at it, feel comfortable, feel confident, and then they're more likely to do well academically. You know, um one of the things that we've asked kids when we do surveys of school climate, we ask the kids, how happy do you think your teachers are to be in the school? Oh, that's an interesting question. Isn't it an interesting question? And then we ask the teachers, how do you think the kids will answer that question? And the teachers say, well, they they think we're really happy to be in the school. And the kids answer, we don't think they're particularly happy to be in the school. Because I think teachers don't realize how kids pick up on small cues from adults. Kids are very attentive to what adults do. And so when the teachers are not happy, the kids know it. And when the teachers are not happy being there, well, that doesn't lead to the kids being happy to be there. No, it doesn't. And when you know, it's it's like any work environment. The better the work environment, the better the work. It's true for adults, true for kids. And so the the climate that we create in the schools is of essential importance. So when we were working in New Brunswick, the New Brunswick Middle School has about 1,500 kids in that middle school. And every one of those kids goes through a metal detector before they go into the schools. And so when we were sort of first getting involved in the New Brunswick schools, the process was going on, and the kids felt like they were being treated as guilty until proven innocent. And so after they go through this metal detector, they would then go into their classrooms and they wouldn't be happy campers. They would be sort of primed for trouble. We talked to the security folks, and we basically said to them, you are the front line. You are the welcomers, you are the greeters, you are the mood setters. The vast majority of these kids are not bringing anything in to the school that's a problem. The vast majority of these kids don't want any trouble whatsoever. So if you become the welcomers, you become the cheerleaders, you become the greeters, you're going to set up a whole different school day. And you'll benefit from that school day because when you're dealing with security the rest of the school day, there's not going to be a lot of problems. So they, in essence, shifted their attitude, engaged the kids positively. The kids then went from the uh metal detectors into the classrooms in a positive, receptive mood. Teachers could capitalize on that, build on that. And in a couple of years, uh a middle school that was deemed to be an at-risk middle school, a persistently violent, dangerous school, whatever the, you know, the different labels we give to problematic schools, became a state and national school of character.
SPEAKER_00Wow. So what you're saying is a lot of it is attitude, and things can change in some instances with very little effort.
SPEAKER_02Well, I wouldn't say very little. Oh. But nothing happens with very little effort. But but some. But not a lot. Not a lot. And by the way, the school's academic scores increased significantly.
SPEAKER_00Right. But what you're describing is probably something that the security officers didn't even realize that they were creating the more.
SPEAKER_02And it wasn't, it wasn't just the security officers. It was like a relay race. Security officers handed the ball off to the teachers. The teachers then were able to hand it off better to the lunchroom staff and various other staff. So the whole day got better for everybody. So it wasn't just what happened in the beginning, but how you start does make a difference.
SPEAKER_00Right. Because I think about when kids start school, they are genuinely nervous, but very excited. Absolutely. Right. Because they've heard wonderful things about school and that they're going to learn. And most parents do build it up, right? Because they want their child to be excited. So it makes a difference. Right. What other policies do you think schools put in place, maybe unintentionally, or maybe out of necessity, like a metal detector, that creates a more, I'm going to just say negative environment. I don't know if that's the right term, but that's not conducive to kids coming in optimistic and excited to come to school.
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, it starts with the adults. It starts with the working conditions for the adults. If the adults are feeling like they're respected, if the adults are feeling like they're supported, if the adults are feeling like they have a say in what's going on in the school, they become different to the kids. They become more welcoming, more positive. Again, it's it's just like like like we said with the kids. If you're resentful about being in school and you're resentful to about the school administration, the kids are going to pick that up. And when they pick that up, they're not able to learn their best. And so what happens really is that the adults need to, and and it you know comes all the way back to the administration of the school and how the and the tone the administrators uh set for the staff and the district administrators set for the principals in the schools. It's a it's uh it's an entire ecosystem that we have to think about. And the kids are at the bottom. They are they are subject to what happens in all other parts of the system. I had a colleague, Marvin Berkowitz, who said that that in a in a normal situation when you have a system in the earth with this increasing pressure, the resulting pressure can create diamonds. But when it comes to people, the resulting pressure doesn't create diamonds. It's not like more and more pressure leads to better results. It doesn't work that way. And all the pressure works its way down to the kids.
SPEAKER_00What have you found in schools that were so obvious that you could say you need to change this versus maybe what the administration didn't even realize was problematic?
SPEAKER_02Right. Well, I I can give you an example from South Brunswick. South Brunswick's done a lot of good work in social and emotional learning over the past years. Things, of course, unfortunately can change there as administrators change. But one of the things that we worked with was their uh visual and performing arts faculty. And they were not finding that their kids were kind of getting the arts as much as they hoped that the kids would. We said that the answer is not really to increase the sort of content and formal instruction in the arts, it's to recognize what do kids need in order to be successful artists. And when I say arts, I mean any of the visual and performing arts, music, theater, dance, right, poetry, anything. Okay. And it turns out that what they need is to recognize that in order to become a successful performance artist, there are a lot of skills you need. One of the things you need to learn is planning. You have to learn how to figure out, well, what is it that I'm going to be required to do, and how do I organize and prepare myself for what I'm going to be doing. And if you don't have that organization, you can have the skills, but you won't be able to put them into any organized, feasible practice. And so what we worked with the teachers, and this was in this case, two middle school teachers, we work with them to bring more of this social and emotional instruction into their arts instruction and to talk to kids about how they were going to manage the stress, how they were going to organize themselves, how they were going to plan out their work. We also had them focus on a very interesting angle that we leave out a lot, and that is what is the purpose of this work? Where did this work come from? You know, when we ask kids to study things, we sometimes just ask them to do it, and we don't ask them to think about why they are doing it and where did it come from? You know, kids often think that mathematics was a torture invention from the Middle Ages, right? But there were reasons why we have mathematics. There are actually reasons why it's good to learn algebra and calculus and geometry, but kids don't get any of that. They just get the content. So we had the teachers talk to kids about the arts that they were learning about. When was this painting from? Why was this painting created? Who created it? The fact that there was an artist. What did the artist go through to create a painting? You know, kids see the products of things and they don't know the process that people use to get there. So they look at a finished work of art and they say, I can never do anything like that. But they think that the artist one day walked into a studio, painted exactly what they see, and then that was it. They don't understand the process. And so as kids learn about the process, they then feel, well, I can do that. They feel like, well, I can make mistakes along the way. And so then they become more willing to engage in the artwork. And so what ends up happening is it's not like these skills make kids better artists. They enable the kids to perform closer to their optimal level. Right? I mean, if you're a kid who's tone-deaf, having good social and emotional skills is not going to make you have a perfect pitch. No. But it's going to help you deal with being tone deaf and be better. And that's really what this is about. How do you bring in to your academic instruction the skills that the kids need to be successful in whatever your subject area is?
SPEAKER_00So is some of this also, kids also learn how to fail, learn from failure and build on that, which maybe they don't get so much anymore. There's just comp very competitive nature. You must succeed.
SPEAKER_02Well, and you learn and you and you learn from failure or shortcomings, and not as part of a test, but just as part of the process. Now just imagine, how could anyone be a successful artist, again, dance, theater, anything, painting, sculpture, if you can't deal with negative criticism? You're going to get negative criticism. It's just in the nature of art. And so learning about that as part of the process makes kids better artists. It makes them more willing to hang in, more willing to persist. Same and same, you could say the same thing for math. If kids understand the fact that making errors is a part of math. And how do we respond when we make a mistake? If that becomes part of the process, then kids don't get devastated by mistakes. It's just part of the process.
SPEAKER_00When did we lose this ability to laugh at ourselves and to make mistakes and learn from these mistakes? Or did we never have that in schools?
SPEAKER_02As we started thinking of testing as such high stakes, it ratcheted up the pressure on everybody. And then COVID came along. And COVID sort of blew everything out of the water because there was a lack of progress on testing, because there was a lack of structured educational opportunity in our schools. So you started hearing about how kids are behind and how we're gonna how how we're gonna make up for lost time. I mean, this is the most destructive kind of way of thinking when it comes to learning, is to think that you can accelerate normal developmental processes. Kids take a year to learn something because it takes a year to learn something. And because you want them to catch up, you're not going to get them to catch up two years in one. And in fact, the opposite will happen. By pressuring the kids to accelerate, when they're not ready to accelerate, they'll do worse.
SPEAKER_00Okay. I mean, that makes sense. I think about a school when we were doing school breakfast here at ACNJ, and we were at a school in Trenton, and you walked up the street to the school, and there were kids, I don't know, fifth, sixth grade, saying, Good morning. Hi, ma'am, whatever. And you got to the front door, and the principal was standing at the front door and welcome everyone in. And I we initially thought it was because we had a program there. And it turns out, no, they do that every single day. And you go into the school and there's a lot of artwork. There's there were a lot of signs for Ivy League colleges. They all had a certain day of the week that they all wore their school colors. I mean, you could just tell there was a lot of enthusiasm. Would you say that's the type of school where kids have better opportunities for learning because they're they're engaged?
SPEAKER_02What we've learned is that what you've described is best practice. It's not exceptional practice, it's best normal educational practice. To greet kids when they walk in the door is essential. We know it's essential. There's a lot of data from places like the Northeast Foundation for Children in the Responsive Classroom that show how kids respond to how they're greeted, which was related to the story I told about the metal detectors in New Brunswick. We hosted a group of educators from Singapore in New Jersey. They wanted to see what we're doing in our schools for social emotional learning and character development. And one of the things that was fascinating to us was that even though we were talking with them, their eyes were looking up at the walls. And we kept wondering, why are you spending so much time looking at the walls? And they said, in our schools, the most important things and messages are on the walls. And we started, huh, that's interesting. And so we started going into these classrooms. And in the schools that were designated as schools of character where things are going well, they had a lot of stuff on their walls about friendship, about how we get along with each other, about steps to calm yourself down when you're upset. The walls spoke. And in November of 2025, I went to Singapore to do some work with their Ministry of Education, and I visited some of their schools. But all over, stuff all over their walls about character, about citizenship, about the kind of citizen we want you to be, and the expectation of every student to be able to be that kind of citizen. And then they recognize students who participated in different things. I mean, their walls were just covered with stuff.
SPEAKER_00That's wonderful. So I know I read about that visit because of your book, The Reinvigorating the Classroom Climate, right? And in this book, you do put in a lot of examples of schools. So what does it take to create that climate in which kids will thrive and then learn?
SPEAKER_02It takes the belief that creating that climate is fundamental to learning, that it's not an aside, it's not an extra, it's not even optional. It is absolutely essential for academic achievement. And I'm going to say, I want to put one last, one additional word on there for lasting academic achievement. Because I think we all of us have had the experience of cramming for a test. No. And doing well and forgetting everything. So you can have achievement. You can get your test scores up. There have been examples in the news about schools that have gotten their test scores up miraculously, and then you don't hear about them anymore because it was just the flash in the pan. But if you want lasting learning, you have to create the conditions under which kids are truly learning, identifying with the material, bringing it into themselves. You know, there's a lot of talk about culturally responsive learning. And what that really means is that kids learn best when they see themselves reflected in what's going on. That they're learning when they see examples of kids like themselves, people like themselves, in the learning material, they internalize it more. They take those lessons to heart. And that's what we want our kids to do. So you have to believe that for lasting learning, to create the kind of graduates that we want to have, to become the kind of citizens that we want to have, we have to realize that their social, emotional, and character development is as important as anything else. You know, Teddy Roosevelt once said to educate a person in mind and not in morals is to create a menace to society.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's interesting.
SPEAKER_02Isn't that interesting? And if you think about it, the last thing we want are really smart people with very poor character. We we see them in government today a lot, and uh it's not doing anybody any favors.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So let's think about how, in in these examples in your book, how people created those environments, right? So there's a role for the administration. They have to kind of make the commitment and allow it to happen, right? Right? What else do they need to do?
SPEAKER_02They need to give teachers the opportunity and space to work together to figure out how are we going to do this in our classroom? How are we going to create environments where our kids can feel more welcomed, more engaged? You know, a lot of teachers are already doing this to one extent or another, but they often don't have the opportunity to share and talk about it. And so giving that opportunity leads more teachers to get different ideas about what about the kinds of things they can do. You know, it part of it comes down to the way we greet kids when they walk in. Part of it also is how we get the kids to explore their own personal agenda for learning. So one of the things we talk about is the importance of kids identifying with their sense of purpose. When we were working in New Brunswick, we asked the kids, how many of you thought you were going to have a happy and healthy life? And during one of our surveys, 50% of the kids thought they would, and 50% of the kids thought they wouldn't.
SPEAKER_00That's very sad.
SPEAKER_02It is very sad, but also it's a call out to us because how can you expect a kid to want to learn something if they don't see any value in it? If I'm not going to lead a healthy life, why should I worry about my eating habits? Why should I avoid taking drugs? Why should I avoid smoking? It's I'm not going to be around that long for it to be an issue. So we need our kids to feel like they have a sense of positive purpose. We need to be talking to kids. As part of what we, the subject matter that we talk about, is to talk about who does that subject matter. How does history is not just a set of facts, it's people taking actions in different contexts. Science isn't just things that get discovered. There are scientists that work in laboratories that went to schools like they go to school. And this artists, mathematicians, writers. We need kids to be able to identify a sense of positive purpose for themselves so that they will feel motivated to want to work. And also, one of the other things that we find in schools that are successful, and we have lots of examples in the book, is kids working together. In our academic circles, we're very big on individual grades as a way of knowing who did what. But in the world that we're all living in, nobody does anything by themselves. Everybody works in a group, everybody's part of a team. And we need kids to have that experience of learning as part of a group, learning as part of a team, and being able to be open to your classmates' ideas. So one of the things we find that's very interesting that we've asked kids to do is when they're about to be introduced to a new unit in school, let's say they're going to be reading a group, a book of fiction, give them a statement. I think I'm going to understand this book well. And then you ask them, how many kids agree with this statement? How many of you disagree with this statement? And how many of you are not sure? And so you're asking a kid to sort of look into the future and think about, hmm, how am I gonna am I gonna figure out this book? Some kids say yes, some kids say no, some kids say maybe. We get all the kids who said yes, no, and maybe together. And the yeses talk to each other. Well, why do you think you're gonna be able to understand this book? The no's, why do you think you're not gonna be able to understand this book? Kids who aren't sure, well, why aren't you sure? And then they share their reasoning. And so all of a sudden we hear, why I think I'm gonna understand this book. I have to articulate my hesitations about why I think I'm not gonna understand this book. And I also hear from the people who aren't sure. And all of a sudden, when when kids get the opportunity to hear their peers what they think, their uncertainties, their certainties, their reasons, it opens up their way of thinking in very positive ways and helps kids feel more engaged with the work that they're going to be doing.
SPEAKER_00So that raises two questions for me. One, what do you say to a teacher who says, we don't have time for that? And also, what do you do for a teacher who doesn't or may not think they have the skills to have that conversation in class, or they might feel they're gonna lose control of their class if they really let kids have these open conversations. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, we've you know, we've done lots of this stuff over many, many, many years. And there is nothing in that kind of conversation that is beyond what a competent teacher can do. Okay. I mean, teachers are supposed to be having conversations with their kids. And these aren't difficult conversations because you're not arguing with the kids. You're simply letting the kids formulate an opinion, share their opinion. You're not saying what's right and what's wrong. You're basically giving the kids an opportunity to think differently and to learn what their peers are talking about and to connect with their peers in a different way. Is it worth the time? Doesn't take that much time, first of all, to do. And second of all, it's it's like a down payment. And so if you do invest this time, all of the subsequent lessons about this book are going to go better. They're going to go more smoothly. You're going to get back instructional time. This is one of the things that people often don't realize. And it's one of the problems with prevention, right? If you take out the time to try to prevent something, well, then you're not dealing with the difficulties later on. When you say I don't have time to prevent something, well, you're going to pay the price later on in the work you're going to have to do because you didn't prevent difficulties. The typical situation is dealing with kids' stress management, right? I don't have time to teach my kids a stress management strategy, a teacher might say. Well, if you don't have time to teach them the strategy, you're going to be spending much more time as the kids have these bad stress reactions. Once you invest a little time up front in teaching the kids stress management techniques, it pays off because you can have them use those techniques throughout all the rest of the day. So, you know, that's that's that's where I think the administrators become so important in giving the teachers the permission, if not the requirement, to invest in these preventive strategies.
SPEAKER_00And you could teach those strategies to the whole class, right?
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Every kid needs to have a stress management strategy.
SPEAKER_00Is that the same when people talk about mindfulness training? Is that stress management?
SPEAKER_02It's one approach. It's one approach to stress management. But yes, it's the same kind of thing. And there are schools that begin their school day with a mindful moment across the entire school population. And they find, and data supports this, that the day goes better. Because it makes kids sort of focus. It makes them focus, and it also serves as a transition from whatever they're coming in with to school to the learning tasks ahead. It's like a like a cleansing breath.
SPEAKER_00So I think of sometimes we've talked in Trenton and Newark to groups of dads, and they're street teams, they call them, right? And they really are just out a block or so away from the school saying to kids, it's okay. Everything's okay. So that's sort of that same thing, checking it in so they leave whatever was going on on the way to school outside.
SPEAKER_02Right, right. And because they can't really leave it outside. No. You know, it's not like it's not like they put their books in the locker, they put their feelings in the locker, they have they bring their feelings with them. But if we create other environments, those positive feelings predominate. I mean, kids, you know, kids are like adults. They don't really want to be miserable. If you give them half a chance, they won't be miserable. And so if we engage them in school and we create a positive environment and we create that sense of appreciation and welcoming, they respond to that. Now, again, there are some kids for whom it takes a lot more for them to feel that sense of welcoming and engagement. And that's why we have school counselors. That's why, you know, we can't expect that this is going to work for every kid. Some kids are dealing with extraordinary stress. You know. One of the things that we've taken to saying is that there's a lot of talk now about trauma-informed learning. And this is something that honestly I learned at Rutgers through feedback from my students during COVID, that students that I wouldn't suspect what was going on in their lives would share with me what was going on in their lives. And then I'm thinking, you know, in a typical classroom, if you don't have that vehicle for sharing, you don't know what's going on. Right. But such a high percentage of students were dealing with trauma that the default, in my opinion, is to think that these kids are dealing with trauma and everything isn't fine. And we have to make the extra effort to help them feel welcomed and supported and cared for. Because if we don't, their feelings from outside are going to remain strong inside, and it just serves as a barrier to learning.
SPEAKER_00So you had mentioned early on, and I made myself a note about resources, right? And you talk about school counselors. Well, I know, again, from some of our kids' count that, and I'm just looking here at my notes, that there's sometimes the ratio of school counselors to students is 300 students to one counselor, right? Or 400. So how does how does that person even begin to identify the kids who might need extra help? Or do we need more school counselors? Like what's the answer?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, I mean, we definitely need more school counselors, right? The the job of the school counselor is made easier when these kinds of social and emotional actions are being taken by the teachers. They don't eliminate it, but they they they reduce the flow. Counselors unfortunately have to do more group work. They there's no choice for them. They can't see the volume of kids individually. But one of the things that we encourage the counselors to do wherever they can is to try to go from a deficit-oriented approach to a strengths-oriented approach. So I'll give you an example. You got kids who are angry, upset, et cetera. Put them into an anger management group. Try to teach them anger management skills. In my experience, that only tends to make kids angry because they don't want to be singled out, they don't want to be told to manage anger. So what we suggest counselors do is to create a positive context in which the kids can learn to manage their anger. So, for example, one of the things we've done is to have them create a newspaper club. So these kids who would otherwise be in an anger management group are told you are in a newspaper club and you are going to create a newspaper for the school. But before you can go out and do this, we have to ask this question: what skills do you need to be a good newspaper reporter? And so the kids then start to answer. Well, I need to be organized, I need to be responsible, I need to listen. We also say that it's probably not a good idea to smack your interviewees. It just helps build rapport. The kids end up, when you ask them, listing all the things that they would do in an anger management group. But instead, they're being asked to learn these skills so that they can run a newspaper club. It's a complete positive reframing for the kids. They respond far better. It's far easier to do, far much much more fun to do. And the kids feel much better about it. I mean, you never have a waiting list for kids wanting to get into an anger management group.
SPEAKER_00No.
SPEAKER_02But you do have kids on a waiting list who want to be part of the newspaper club.
SPEAKER_00Interesting.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And the kids then all of a sudden look different to the other kids. And they're not going off to the anger management group. They've got some responsibility, they've got some status, right? Wherever counselors can reframe into a more positive approach, a service-oriented approach, where the kids are being seen as contributors and not deficits, they'll have an easier time with what they're doing.
SPEAKER_00Makes sense. So what role do the students have in creating a school climate that's a positive? Do they Have their own role, responsibility?
SPEAKER_02They have a responsibility in the sense that they become part of a classroom where they want their classmates to succeed, where they don't see their classmates as a threat to their success, but that all boats rise together. And so I have a positive approach to my classmates. My stance is to be supportive to my classmates, which means I'm not going to tease them. I'm not going to rid them, jeer them, put them down when they make comments. I'm going to be supportive. I'm going to learn how to ask constructive questions. We have more opportunity for kids to work in small groups, to help each other, to learn how to support each other, to take leadership, to learn to take followership. All of those skills are so critical that make the classroom a better place. I mean, in the university, I tell the students how the class is going to go, my class is going to go, depends more on you than it does on me. If you do the reading and you participate, and when we get into small groups, you're actually talking to each other and sharing with each other. This is going to be a fantastic class. If you don't participate and I have to do all the talking, it's going to be a miserable class. So, you know, it's, I'll do, I'll do my share, but if you do your share, we got a better class. And that's true at every single level. The more we get the kids engaged and involved, the better the class goes. The better the class goes, the more the teachers like it. The more the teachers like it, the happier they are to be in the school. And then the kids, when they do the survey, say, oh yeah, my teacher's happy to be in this school.
SPEAKER_00That makes sense. I also, and I think I was reading in your book examples over kids are buddied up with maybe kids who are struggling with something, or kids working some activity for a group of disabled children, or children who have some type of a learning issue or whatever, right? So I would assume that encourages that cooperation, but also builds the confidence of the students.
SPEAKER_02Right. And it's not just for kids with disabilities, it's just being able to help just an orientation to help kids help their peers. It's a very positive thing for kids to be able to help their peers. And they feel good about it, and their peers feel good about it when it's done in the right way. So this gets into the issue of the fact that you can't just say, oh, go help, go help that kid with the man. You take a little time and talk about, well, how do you be helpful? What does it mean to be helpful? What does it mean to be supportive? And when kids learn that skill, they use it with that particular classmate, but then they use it in every other situation that they're in because it's a skill. And so this just goes to the fact that when we take the little bit of extra time, it's extra time, but we take that time to give kids a skill, pays dividends throughout the whole school day.
SPEAKER_00So do parents have a role in improving the school climate?
SPEAKER_02That's a tricky one. I mean, obviously, the more supportive the parents are to the school, the better it is for everybody. But um schools can't depend on parents. Schools, again, 180 school days, many years, many hours. My own view is that what the school does with the kids can be extremely powerful, extremely meaningful, and can offset severe difficulties at home. It's harder, obviously, when the parents are not supportive. But I think schools have tremendous potential to create good for the kids.
SPEAKER_00Okay. I mean, it makes sense. I guess I was just thinking that if parents who want to be supportive or at least trying to explain to parents what you're trying to do, you want to engage parents.
SPEAKER_02Schools should always always be explaining to parents what they should do. But you know, when you've got parents who are afraid to come to school because they're afraid of potential deportation, you can't do anything that makes those parents feel like their lack of presence in the school is a problem.
SPEAKER_00Oh, no. No. Right. Or parents who are working too. Absolutely. Right.
SPEAKER_02So that's and you and so you also can't depend on that because we have some communities in New Jersey where that describes a lot of the parents. And so you basically want them to know what's going on in the school, you want them to know what you're doing, but you can't you can't have what you're doing in school depend on the parents.
SPEAKER_00So I'm going to switch a little bit, talk about bullying. Now, as you know, we have a lot of laws to protect kids against bullying, I think mixed bag from the cases we receive here at ACNJ in terms of the effectiveness of some schools to deal with the bullying. But would you say that changing the school climate should have an impact and maybe reduce any type of bullying? Or is bullying something that's totally separate?
SPEAKER_02No, bullying is not separate. Bullying is a function of the climate that we create in the school. It's about how we agree we treat each other. And there should be no thought that kids should be harassed, intimidated, physically, verbally bullied in the school. It should never happen. Adults should be dedicated to making sure it never happens. There shouldn't be any, oh, boys will be boys. I've heard that in schools. Oh, boys, this is just the way they are. No, this isn't just the way they are. And they shouldn't, they should be given no support in that. And the rules should be very, very clear. There should be literally zero tolerance of any harassment, intimidation, bullying behavior in the schools. Kids should come to school and feel perfectly safe. I mean, how how can you let the kids enter a home that would be unsafe for them? Same thing with the school. It's not up to the kids, it's up to the adults to create an environment where mutual support is the norm and not any kind of put down, diminution, lack of acceptance, exclusion. This should this just shouldn't happen in a school.
SPEAKER_00I know you feel very strongly about it, and I do too, and I totally agree with you. I think sometimes people don't know what to do. And so they will kind of say, well, it was just an isolation, an isolated incident, or as you said, boys will be boys, and they kind of let it go, which I think sometimes just gives the message that it was okay. You're right.
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, you know, it's not a perfect world. And there will be an occasional incident that might get through, but a repeated incident? Absolutely not. Right? You shouldn't, and when we see schools that have gotten in trouble with regard to bullying, the history is unbelievable. For years, things have happened that haven't been dealt with. You know, it's it, I I don't recall seeing an incident where something happened once and a school got in trouble. The cases that I'm aware of are just they're unbelievable how they could have been allowed to go on. So I think you know, we have to acknowledge that there may be a situation, unclear who did what, what happened, you know. I mean, there are situations like that, but any kind of persistence needs to be dealt with. And also, the question has to be asked: why is this persisting? Right? It's not just the fact that it's not it's not that that a kid has some sort of deficit. Bullying reflects the fact that we all want to matter in life. We all want to feel like we've got some importance, some significance. For some kids, they do not have a positive or see a positive pathway to matter. So they take a negative pathway to matter. Bullies matter. And so even though we would say we don't want that to happen, we understand that it happens. So you have to look for pathways for all kids to matter positively, to feel they have a positive purpose in being in school. Because if they don't see any positive pathway, they may well take a negative pathway.
SPEAKER_00So that bully who does the minor infraction should probably be sent to the school newspaper club.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. Exactly. Right? And, you know, and and in the school newspaper club, one of the things they'll learn is you can't bully people into doing anything if you want an effective newspaper club. Right. Now you think about kids who are the class clown, right? We've all grown up with kids who are the class clown. Why were they the class clown? It wasn't exactly like they were loved and respected, but they became meaningful because they took on that role of being the lightning rod for all kinds of teacher negative attention, right? That's not the best place to be in life. But if, you know, if if you're dealt a hand and those are the cards you think are your best cards, you play them.
SPEAKER_00Do you think the whole um increase in terms of young people using social media has added to the problems that schools are dealing with in terms of kids' um lack of attention, depression, being anxious?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, social media hasn't helped. Um, social media cuts down on the actual person-to-person interaction that kids engage in. And you know, you learn to interact better by interacting better. But cyberbullying is another element in this. And that's that's one of the most vexing difficulties for schools because in many cases cyberbullying occurs what might be seen as outside of the school's purview. So schools have had to define what their purview is. And I think they've basically said, many schools have taken the opinion that if you direct any of the negative stuff toward your classmates, even though you're not in school while you're doing it, it counts.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_02Right? And that's basically like putting a protective net over your kids. And you know, it is the case that when kids go on school trips, they're away from school, they're off school grounds, but they're considered to be representing the school. And cyberbullying is similar. You're off school grounds, but you're still representing the school. And so if you're harassing and intimidating and bullying and being negative about your classmates from another place, it still counts. So, I mean, that's one, but but but but more generally, kids who see uh stuff on social media that involves social comparisons very often feel inadequate. And that's that's not helpful for kids, especially in the teenage years where kids amplify any inadequacy to be earth-shaking to them. So it doesn't help. But here again, schools can and should be talking about social media. Kids should understand how social media work. Kids should understand that they're basically being victimized by algorithms. And it's not just a coincidence what they're seeing on their phone screen. The kids need to have those conversations. That should be part of instruction. Now, should they have, should we have to do this? Ideally not. But we do have to do it because of the situation that we're in. I think the fact that kids are having their phones taken away during school time is a good idea, but it doesn't change the impact of the phones when they're out of school.
SPEAKER_00No, but I know I was out of school and I can't remember where, but um they had removed all the phones. And uh one of the seniors got up and he said, for the first, I don't know, three to six months, it was horrible. But he said, then we found we were talking to each other, which again goes back to your skill building as opposed to kids just texting, but they're actually having conversations, meeting their classmates, understanding their classmates, and it did create a better atmosphere overall. Right. Right. So that does make sense. I also think that um when you talk about the algorithms, we just did something um in terms of safety, online safety, especially because of the World Cup coming in. And the gentleman who came and gave the presentation, it was it was scary in terms of how many kids um wind up getting engaged with strangers on their phones and really need a lot of education in terms of safety management. Right. Um, because it is can be a dangerous world out there.
SPEAKER_02Right, right, right. And you know, again, some some people feel like, well, that's for the parents to do and not for the school to do. But it comes right into the school. It affects the kids and it affects them in many ways. And and so the school can't just sort of uh ignore that.
SPEAKER_00No, but uh it but goes back to just thoughtful decision making. What in just general decision, life decisions, right? In terms of who do you engage with, people you know, versus people you don't know when it's appropriate, when it's not appropriate. Um, and I do I find even just some of the skills that we learn just generally picking up the phone, making phone calls, that a lot of young people are not comfortable with those skills. And part because they never had to do it. Right. They've just been texting, right? Right, or looking online or asking Dr. Google. Right. You know, right.
SPEAKER_02I mean, one of the things we found is that very often kids don't have problem solving strategies. And kids can learn problem-solving strategies, and when they actually have problem-solving strategies, they use them. Right. But we don't, we sort of want our kids to be good problem solvers. You know, portrait of a graduate all should be good problem solvers and decision makers, but we don't teach them skills for doing that.
SPEAKER_00No. Or give them the opportunity to try.
SPEAKER_02That's right. That's exactly right. It's the opportunity you you can't develop your skills without the opportunity. You have to have the opportunity and then make sure the kids are getting the skills.
SPEAKER_00Do you think things are getting better? And I ask because I do read a lot and hear a lot about school budgets being cut, right? And so that's causing another stress on administrators, teachers, et cetera. Um, but that feeling again, we don't have the resources to implement these changes. We can't make this happen. And there seems to be more of that. But from what you're saying, these are critical, these skills, right? Right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it there's a little bit of a catch-22. It's it's not that we lack the resources, because it doesn't take a tremendous amount of resources, but it does take time, does take some time, and it does take some focus. And when you're under stress, time and focus are not so easy to mobilize. And so that's part of the issue. When we were dealing with COVID, we were in what's uh often called a VUCA environment. A VUCA is a term that's actually named in the military to describe the fog of war. So VUCA stands for variable, uncertain, chaotic, anxiety-provoking. And when we're in that kind of situation, it's very difficult to function at our best. And we feel very uh threatened. We feel like we have to just stick to what we've already been doing. But what it turns out is that, and learning this from the history of battlefield work, is that the antidote to being in a VUCA environment is innovation. It's not doing the same old, same old in this increasingly stressed environment. It's coming up with new ways to do things. It's coming up with ways of communicating differently. And so I think that's what we have to help our schools realize that in this stressed environment of budget cuts and everything else, we can't just do the same old, same old thing. We've got to be willing to innovate. And the innovation in this case is to focus on the social, emotional, and character development of our kids. Because once that is being dealt with, everything else becomes easier.
SPEAKER_00All right. And I'm gonna say I would recommend any teachers who are listening or administrators, Reinvigorating Classroom Climate by Maurice Elias. It's everyday strategies to inspire teachers and students. A lot of great examples. Thank you so much, Maurice. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for watching. Visit the description to find out more information about today's conversation. Be sure to leave a like, subscribe, and hit the bell if you enjoyed the video and want to be updated when our newest interviews are released.