Fall Provider Training Series Session 2: Consultation with School Team Members

All right, welcome everybody to part 2 of our fall provider learning series. We are so excited you are here, and we are thrilled to be hearing from our Director of School Psychology, Social Work, and Special Education, Taylor, so we're very excited to see her. For those of you who are new to us and joining us today outside of our Parallel team, welcome. We're excited you are here as well, and we just want you to know that we are hiring, and we will talk a little bit more about that at the end of the webinar. In addition, if you have any questions during the webinar, please go ahead and put those into the chat, and we'll have a short Q&A at the end. And then one other thing, we will have a raffle at the end of the webinar today, so please stay on to the very end and we'll announce the winner. So with that, we'll go ahead and get started and start off with our Hearts Behind the Mission video.

Hi everyone, I'm Diana, CEO and founder here at Parallel. I'm so excited to welcome you to the Parallel team. It's such an honor to be able to work with each and every one of you. Um, for a bit of context, for those of you who don't know, I started Parallel about 3 years ago, very much driven from my own experience growing up with learning and thinking challenges. I was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD, so I fall very squarely into the population of students we now work with here at Parallel. It is such an honor to be able to work each day to ultimately make students' reality better and set them up for success both in the classroom and outside of the classroom in life. And I'm so thrilled to have each and every one of you helping me on that journey. And I hope everyone feels very good about all the work that they're doing here at Parallel, and I look forward to working with you.

Hey, I'm Johnny Curl, Director of People Ops at Parallel Learning. I first joined Parallel because I have seen what lacking access or even simply awareness of resources available to those with learning differences can do to those that I love and even to myself personally. I want to make sure that every child has all doors open to them wherever possible. So at Parallel, we're seeking to gather the best provider community the world has to offer who can champion student success. Our community of providers, full of experts in their field, are just as passionate about the care and success of these students as I am, and I love being part of that.

Hi, my name is Michelle Feldman, and I'm the Director of Provider Education here at Parallel. And I just wanted to take a minute and share a little bit about me and what brought me here to Parallel. So I spent about 15 years working in education with the County Superintendent of Schools, and then in 2020 left traditional education and went to work for a startup, at a remote startup. And what I found is that in education, things typically move really slow. Changes don't happen really quickly. And then moving into a startup, things were so fast and moved so quickly, and sometimes there wasn't a lot of thoughtfulness in decision-making. And so I was really struggling finding the balance of those 2 worlds. And I found that balance here at Parallel.

Hello, hello! I'm Taylor Vealey, Director of School Psychology and Behavioral Mental Health Services here at Parallel. While you've been enjoying a much-deserved summer break, we've been working behind the scenes to welcome you and your students back for a great school year. I came to Parallel because as a school psychologist and parent of children with learning differences, it's very important to me That we celebrate the unique strengths of each student, and that we ensure access to support for all students. I'm honored to be part of a team that is making such a tangible impact on students both in and outside of the classroom.

All right, thank you so much. Um, my name is Dr. Jordan Wright. I am the Chief Clinical Officer here at Parallel, and I am extremely proud and privileged to be able to introduce Taylor to you. Uh, for those of you who know her, you already know how awesome she is. For those of you who don't know her, you're about to find out. You just heard a little from her, but you're about to hear a lot more. You can see here that she is a school psychologist. She has a wealth of history and experience working within schools across a lot of different school populations. What is not listed here is not only is she experienced and smart, she is extremely wise when it comes to working with schools and working with kiddos. And you're about to hear some of that wisdom shared with you tonight. And I'm excited to hear this. I hope you're excited to hear this because you're about to learn a lot with Taylor like I do every day. And I am very, very proud to work with her. So without any further ado, here is Taylor Vealey.

Well, my goodness, thank you, Dr. Jordan, for that introduction. That is so kind. It just gives me a little chills. So I, yes, I am Taylor Vealey. I've worked with many of our parallel providers, and I'm so excited to have others joining us today. We are talking about collaborative consultation and best practices. And the reason that I picked this topic is because this is not something that came easily to me, even in my early years in education. In my current role, it's something that I continually reflect on and have given a lot of thought and intention to. And it just, it's a big deal because of those personal factors and the self-awareness that we have. We bring that wherever we go and how we show up for our students and our teams. And so we're gonna talk a little bit more about how you can show up with the most empathy and the most authentic self that you can, and how to make that work when faced with particular challenges in kind of high-stakes situations, as we often are in the school system. So first objective is that we're just going to talk a little bit about the importance of collaborative consultation within school teams. I'm sure most of our attendees are well-versed in this, and they're living this day in and day out. We're gonna explore a couple of different problem-solving approaches to consultation, and then we're gonna go through what the research has guided us in terms of what are some specific challenges within the consult and consultee relationship, and then how can we address them? And this is where I'm gonna try to bring some stories and some examples that I've encountered myself or heard from my teammates over the years. Here's our agenda for the day. And as Michelle mentioned, please, please, please give lots of questions. That really helps to turn this into a meaningful conversation, and we welcome that. And you'll have to bear with me. I'm manning the slides and I'm clicking all the buttons. And so there's a lot here that I'm figuring out as we go. So what is consultation? We know that there's lots of different models and approaches to problem solving, and it's inherent in all aspects of service delivery for students and families. So it's something that we unite around as service providers, whether you're a teacher, an administrator, a school psychologist, an SLP, an OT. Inherent in these roles outside of our service provision to students is this need to work with individuals, families, groups, and systems. And what I've come to realize over time is that we're really kind of change agents because what we're doing is building a very systematic and comprehensive process with our teams, and we're all leaders on those teams whether we, we identify that way or not, but we're really trying to build something that is a sustainable system of support not only for that individual student, for that team, or within that And even outside of the school, because what we do in our school buildings directly impacts what happens in our communities. So consultation has a lot of pieces. We have goal setting and teaming. We have multidisciplinary teams. We have interdisciplinary teams. And we have transdisciplinary teams. And these definitions of consultation, they're all familiar to us, but when I was putting this content together, what I was actually doing is going to each of our governing bodies. So whether that was NASP or ASHA or the National Education Association, and looking to see in the different views of all of the stakeholders at a, at a table around a, that conference room table at a school building, how do we all view consultation and are we viewing it the same way? So this tells us that there's a lot of different ways of teaming, always around a certain goal, and really for the purpose of problem solving. So we know that students have complex needs that exist within an ecosystem of a larger community, and at Parallel we talk a lot about this ecosystem because we realize that students are essentially surrounded by all of these other complex factors. And so as a consultant in a school building, regardless of your role, you're working to create opportunities for educators or other service providers to share positive interactions with families and students. And through that partnership, we can really create an equitable system of support for students. So going back to this idea of consultants as agents of change or superheroes, we are really building a space where we can celebrate the diversity of a family, the diversity of a community, and we can really embed those inclusive practices and that cultural sensitivity into the work that we're doing. And a lot of times this looks like us needing to be a bridge between potentially a relationship with a school and a family that has, you know, is in need of repair and it's been a challenge. So we know that our first priority as a consultant is typically our students and families, and we're working toward those positive outcomes. We know that we partner directly with educators who are, I would say, probably within the school day and within the greater school building or system. They're our primary stakeholders because they have the direct influence on that student day in, day out. And we know that can include special education teachers, counselors. And then we have this formal problem-solving process as members of an IEP team. And many of us in our roles also consult directly with administrators, coordinators, individuals that are faced with making decisions not only for a specific student but for all of the students and are relying on us to help identify and implement those multi-tiered systems of supports within schools. And then we're also really working with community-based agencies and community-based providers, whether that is a therapist that the student is seeing or this— I know I've worked with some families who are involved with refugee relief agencies or even a coach or a mentor, someone that's important and is a system of support that exists for the student outside of their school day. We're really kind of the, the common thread between all of these different stakeholders, and it's really upon us to bring them all together. No pressure, but it is a big part of our role, and I think it's one that we all take very seriously. So the goals of our collaborative consultation are primarily to solve problems, and we're looking to give those positive outcomes for the student and the consultee, the consultee being anyone that is involved in this process, anyone who's a stakeholder. And we're trying to ensure that student success in the least restrictive environment. And for those of you that don't work directly in special education as much, that means the environment where the student has the supports they need to regularly attain success without removing them from the general education curriculum, or without you know, limiting their access to peers or experiences that their typically developing peers might have. I think we all know why consultation is so important, but a couple things to highlight here is that it's part of a school process. There's a lot of formal processes that are required as part of the way that we do business in schools, whether it's eligibility decisions, IEP development, Child Find and working on implementation intervention planning. But it's really a little bit more than that. It's really about connection. And I know as a parent and also an educator, and I think many of us would identify with this, especially over the last couple of years, teaching and parenting can be a really isolating profession. And a lot of the teachers— I was reading a study that, um, they surveyed all of the teachers that have left the teaching profession in the last, you know, I think it was 3 to 5 years, and they all cited this as one of their primary reasons for leaving. They felt isolated and they felt that they lacked the support that they needed to be successful. And so that's where coming in and guiding and putting together a cohesive team that has a lot of power and it has an ability to create a a sustainable system of support, not just for the student, but for all of those teachers and educators and counselors and administrators too that are dealing with some really difficult things day in and day out. And lastly, we're always focused on improving student outcomes, whatever that looks like for that individual student. What does effective consultation look like? So the research tells us, I did a good old deep dive into some literature review. This comes from a dissertation-based study in 2018 where they interviewed a lot of different stakeholders within a large school district around what does it look like when you have worked with a consultant and how has that been effective. Some common characteristics were that the consultant really took their time. They didn't make people feel rushed or, you know, focus on how busy they were, what else they needed to get to. They had a presence. So the consultees, the teachers, administrators felt like this person was available to them and was like really invested in what was about to happen. And they really went a long way to support parent and teacher relationships specifically. So increasing those opportunities for positive interaction. And that can be hard, and it's even harder when it's a challenging situation, when— You know, a student has significant behavioral challenges or communication difficulties, and that presents a barrier to having those positive experiences together. So an effective consultant also possesses this objective expertise and maybe can bring new insight to the team. But more than having years of service or specific expertise, an effective consultant was also able to communicate that. effectively to other team members and kind of bring them along with them on that journey. And then consultants were effective when they were emotionally supportive throughout the problem-solving process. And again, that goes back to that realization that it can often be isolating to deal with some of these situations or just the profession in general. And so having a person that you can be vulnerable with and that has empathy and compassion for the situation or the problem can really go a long way. So a couple other things about what effective consultation can look like, and I'm going to use collaboration and consultation kind of interchangeably because what I'm really talking about is a model of collaboration, not an expert You know, passing their wisdom on to a passive consultee, but really that collaborative relationship. So effective consultation looks like presence over perfection. So authenticity cannot be underestimated, and that means practicing active listening and creating a persona. And a persona is a presence. So how do you make people feel when they're around you in those interactions, whether big or small? And so I looked to some different leaders and thought leaders in our field that are doing this well, especially in a virtual setting. It can be a little bit harder to have that presence. So you can do that by creating immediacy, increasing receptivity. Building composure. And what this looks like is showing up with your full self, feeling comfortable sharing emotions, sharing ideas, creating a nonjudgmental space. It also means being aware of your verbal and nonverbal communication, especially in a remote setting. Just the way that you sit, how you lean in your chair, looking at the camera, then looking off camera periodically. It means mirroring the body language of those across from you, whether they're sitting directly across from you or you're in a, a room full of wonderful people working toward a solution. It also means being curious. So I find this to be one of the most helpful things, is especially when things feel tense, going back to that question of Hmm, I wonder why this is like this, or could we look at this a different way? Bringing that curiosity to the forefront can kind of neutralize some of those feelings of defensiveness that we might feel or our team members might be feeling. So problem-solving-based consultation, and this I'm really excited to share. So this is a specific model of problem solving. This comes from Grand Valley University here in Michigan, the Grand Rapids area, and it comes from a project that they started that actually was focused— if I'm remembering back correctly, it was focused on providing peer-to-peer supports with students with autism. But they found that there was a lot of teaming that was needed to really support complex challenges that the students were experiencing, and so they developed a specific problem-solving process. Now, if you Google approaches to problem solving, so many different approaches or models or frameworks will pop up. What is important, though, is that the research tells us that schools in general have not identified a specific approach to problem solving. And so how awesome would it be that you could come into a difficult situation and give the team some, some space and some steps and structure to follow to, to kind of get to those outcomes that everybody is there for? So there are a couple of different steps within this. So one is just the general problem identification. So I'm gonna illustrate this with a real-life example. So I have a lot of chickens. This is weird. I'm, I've become known as the chicken lady, but it's become a new hobby of mine. So I had 9 chickens, and in the last couple weeks, I am now down to 7 chickens. So we have a problem. The chickens are disappearing out of the henhouse, and we're not sure why. So my kids and I gathered around this. All we found were feathers. Okay, so we, we have the problem. The problem is the chickens are going missing, but we didn't actually have enough information to figure out how to even brainstorm how to solve this. So we move into problem specification, and this is a great place for your expertise to shine, because what you can do is really encourage the team And data collection. So this is where you bring in all of those different variables, observations, interview information. If we have specific academic or behavioral data, social histories, talking to the student and getting their perception of the problem. So we put all of this together before we even get to solutioning. And this is a tough thing, because when teams get together, They either want to do one of, of 2 things. They want to admire the problem because they want to feel validated because it's been rough, or they want to move directly into solutioning. So what your role here as a consultant is going to be is to really force them to stick in this uncomfortable gray space of problem specification. So you've got these missing chickens. We decide we need more data. We put out a camera outside of the, the run and the coop. We put a camera inside the chicken coop. We stage an observer over the course of a weekend that is watching the coop and watching the yard at different times, and we gather this information. And lo and behold, we have a fox. Okay, so we have this fox. It's getting into the run, and it's eating our chickens. So now we're ready to brainstorm. All ideas are good ideas. We, we don't really think about roles or accountability at this stage. What we think about is just getting as many ideas on the board to see what's gonna stick. And then, after we've got all of our ideas exhausted, we come back together and we cluster and prioritize those ideas. Okay? So at my house, my kids were very excited to participate in this brainstorm. There was talk of a stakeout. There was talk of, are we going to trap the fox? Let me design a trap. There was talk of, you know, do we have to find a permanent ending for the fox? So then we look at implementation variables, and we look at the resources. We look at the strengths of the team and how to leverage those things, and we begin to assign out responsibilities. So you can see that this Takes us through that same process of solutioning, but it gives us a way to put an immediate plan in action that everyone had input to it in the development stage. And that's really important. Without everybody feeling like they can have equal input, you're not gonna get that consensus and buy-in that you need to really move things forward. So that is one approach to problem solving. Let's see if we can Identify another approach. So this is called the Double Diamond Framework, and I have recently fallen in love with this graphic because I love the way that it breaks out this awareness of problem identification and specification from the impact we want to have, and it's looking for us to develop a way to have a measurable result. So this model comes from actually like product and innovation design, and in full disclosure, my partner is a product designer, a product lead, and this is something, a framework that he and his teams very frequently use, and I think the really cool thing about it is that it can easily be applied to what we do in schools. So the process here is that we're going to discover. So we're going to speak and spend time with those that are most affected by the issue. So a lot of times we jump immediately to this idea that the problem or the concern lies within the child, and sometimes that's not the case, and it might just be the child reacting to other factors. And so what we want to do during that discovery stage, I think it's so amazing, is that we get to listen to all of the individual stories about the problem, all the stakeholder stories. So what this might look like is, let's say you have a child who has been physically aggressive, and they also struggle with communication. So a lot of individuals might make an assumption that this child is unable to control their impulse to hit when they're upset, or they're unable to control their anger or regulate that emotion. However, if we, we talk about the problem, maybe we interview the parent, maybe we interview the grandma who watches the child after school every day. Maybe we talk to the child's soccer coach. Maybe we look at the data that the teachers collected and their observations over time and when this behavior starts to occur. And now we have a lot of information and we begin to piece together a story. And that allows us to separate ourselves from the problem and come to the table with empathy, because now we've connected with everyone that the problem is most affecting. Especially important to do this with the student if, if they're able to. So maybe in our example, we identify that the problem, the behavior that we observe, is actually the aggressive behavior, but our definition of the problem is Changing. We're learning while the student doesn't have the communication skills when they are frustrated, when they're tired, they're not able to tell us what they need. And when they can't tell us what they need, they hit. So that really changed the story from this child has a problem with aggression to this child is struggling to communicate what they need. And we can all agree we want to help. a child get what they need. So then we move through that discovery phase, and we start to think about that measurable result. What would this look like if this problem got better? If we could give a magic wand approach and wish for anything, what would this look like? Then we start to try on different solutions, and this allows some space for exactly that— trying what— to see what works. And whenever we see some success, Working to do more of that thing. So that gives us a way to develop different answers from different people and incorporate that into solutions that we can test out on a small scale, and we can change course at any time. So now, instead of becoming really stuck and mired down in the problem, we've given ourselves steps. We've gathered consensus and buy-in. We've told a complex and nuanced story, and then we have the ability to change course whenever we. need to if we see that something isn't working. We don't have to wait until that student or that teacher experiences yet another bad day at school. We can change course, and we can be there to support one another. So I did find an example of how this might look. So I don't know if anybody's seen this before, but the New York Times has a student platform where they post these really crazy pictures. And every one of these pictures you look at and you're like, what the heck is going on? So my kids and I, over COVID, I, I homeschooled and I had my 3 kids at home, and we would often use this as a way to kind of explore critical thinking skills. So you look at this picture and it's amazing because anybody that looks like it, looks at the picture, they're going to come to a different conclusion about what's happening. And that really does illustrate the Double Diamond framework because we can learn and take value in that every single person is gonna have a different story about what's happening, and we have to take that whole story into account. So what I've done is I've taken one of these New York Times pictures. I think it was originally posted in December of 2017. It's called What's Going On? And I've broken it into little pieces. So if we're only looking at the view that we can see in front of us, and we're only looking at each tiny piece, This might be what we see. So I'm seeing this, this woman, and it looks like she's working with her hands. I can't tell if she's writing or what she's doing. It also looks to be that she may be outside because it looks cold, and she's really, you know, dressed up in warm clothing. She seems focused on what she's doing. So let's take another part of the puzzle. And here we have a— appears to be a deer, maybe on a leash. I'm not sure. Also outside, it's really furry-looking deer, so it must be kind of living in a climate where they experience winter. Still not sure how these 2 things are connected, but be thinking about a student in your head where you sat down for maybe a student support team meeting or maybe an eligibility meeting, and each person is going around the table sharing their perspective. All right. So here's another view, a closer view of this picture. So now we're starting to get some more information. So I can tell that this woman is knitting. Looks like she's counting her stitches. I also see now that I believe what I'm looking at is the, the deer's chest, and I'm now starting to have a lot of questions like, why are these individuals together? What's happening? What's going on? So I'm feeling like I need more information. And now we can see the whole picture. So here we see the deer and the woman are, are together. They're in very close proximity, and it's hard to say what is happening in this picture. And I think Every person could look at this and kind of come to a different conclusion or have different questions. So I'm looking at this and I'm thinking, okay, I think this woman is maybe traveling outdoors with her pet deer, and they like to be near one another. Someone else could look at this and say, this leash of this deer is being held by some other passenger or a person that's nearby, and this woman is avoiding eye contact. Because the deer is staring at her intently, and she's not sure why it's there. So she's just gonna stick with her knitting. Other people might look at this picture and think, okay, this is not right. A deer shouldn't be on a leash. A deer shouldn't be in a city. What is happening here? I'm going to contact my local animal rights activist group. So everyone might look at this differently. But if we look back to the Double Diamond framework, It gives us a way to look at the problem together and to come to a common understanding of what might be going on in this picture. All right, so thinking about these different frameworks, thinking about what makes an effective consultant, thinking about your own role and the part that you play in leading your teams. We're gonna talk a little bit about some common attributes of people that you may be consulting with. So individuals you could be supporting, and this could include parents, teachers, administrators, other service providers. But we know from the research that there are 4 kind of buckets of gap. So whether it's lacking a skill, knowledge, competence, or objectivity. So we're gonna talk about each one of these a little bit more. So sometimes there's a problem, especially when it comes to implementing the solution, because the individual you're working with lacks the knowledge to carry out what they need to do, or lacks the knowledge about how to approach the problem, or lacks the knowledge That would help them to understand the problem better. So that's, that's kind of an easier one to solve because usually you can bring information, you can teach, you can work together. Sometimes the consultee lacks the skills, so they generally know what to do, but they just kind of struggle to do it. So your role as a consultant might look like identifying where they're struggling and how you might give them some support or scaffold. Those areas to help them gain those skills. Sometimes it's just confidence, especially in the way that our school cultures have become. It becomes dangerous to make mistakes or admit mistakes, and so sometimes you'll work with a teacher that has probably tried a lot of different things and they haven't worked, and they just don't know what to do next. And so they're really lacking that confidence to even attempt another solution or attempt another strategy. Sometimes it's objectivity. So this is actually kind of— the research has identified this as the most common bucket that we might have as a way to understand our consultees or our stakeholders that we're working to support. So this assumes that the consultee does have the knowledge, skills, and confidence, but there's something else getting in the way. It could be their perception of the student. It could be this perception that it doesn't matter what we'll do here at school, because when they go home, X, Y, and Z is going to happen, and their parents don't follow through. It could be that there's something else totally unrelated getting in the way of of this individual's ability to move forward with, with the solution or with the student, whatever the case might be. So going back to our problem-solving models gives us a framework to say, okay, how can we reframe? How can we use data? How can we reassess? All right, so now we're gonna get into the nitty-gritty of challenges. So I have found this to be one of the most difficult challenges for myself to overcome is when teammates perceive that the student's challenges are inherent to the student themselves or are some sort of attribute of the family or the broader culture that the student exists within. This just gets me right up on my soapbox, and certainly earlier on in my career I found this really challenging. This became a blocker for me. Because my perception then was that they didn't want to see the student succeed, and that was really difficult for me. So I'm gonna propose a couple ideas, and many of you might have other even better ideas. But what I think can really help is this idea of motivational interviewing, because we know that all humans make assumptions and everything is based on perception, and we also know that perception is really easily influenced to change. So motivational interviewing techniques— there's a whole body of literature, lots of resources about this out there, but it really focuses on asking those open-ended questions, affirming the way that the consultee feels or thinks, reflecting Statements and you're listening and summarizing. So what we wanna focus in on here is creating that connection. So this opportunity for conversation to find those little tiny windows where we can help the consultee see that there could be a willingness to change or an openness to change. And we can learn a lot about what is motivating or what feels Good or what feels bad to the people that we're working with by using those techniques. So handy phrases you might want to use: This is you know a go-to one. I you know I feel like kind of a cliché psychologist when I say this, but it sounds like you and then restating what has been shared with you. How would you like things to be different? What do you want to do next? Which can really help to drive it forward. Some affirming responses would be, I appreciate that you, so I appreciate that you are taking the time to meet with me. I know this is hard to talk about. If I were faced with that problem, I don't know if I could have handled it so well, so really validating and affirming all of the efforts of the person you're speaking to. And also at the end of those conversations summarizing, so paraphrasing main ideas, reflecting on the pain points that they've mentioned and kind of calling them out. Sometimes I've noticed people aren't even aware of what is most difficult for them. So just giving some language to that and really calling that out can be really affirming and can really build that connection and trust between the two of you. And then always asking if there's anything that hasn't been shared or That you should have asked but didn't, and you'll often be surprised at how people will answer that question. So common challenge, and this comes directly from the research: acceptance of the consultant. So not all teammates really get what you do or how you can help. And I have a very specific example to share with this. I was asked by a principal to consult with a teacher who was struggling with a couple of students with some really significant challenges in her classroom. The thing that principal failed to mention to me was that he had not told the teacher that he had asked me to consult with her, and she had not asked him for any help. So what do I do? I just gather up my— all of my colored flair pens and my notebook, and I just You know, march straight down to that teacher's room because I'm gonna save the day and I'm gonna help this teacher with all of the problems and we're gonna get this solved and probably knocked out by 4 o'clock and it's gonna be great. And what I learned very quickly is that you first have to have that acceptance of being receptive to help and knowing how you can help, and that you can't tell someone how you can help. You actually have to show them. So a couple of suggestions I would have is just to be specific. Say, you know, Mr. Ludwig, he asked me to come down. He wondered if there was anything that I could do. I know you've been having a really hard time with— or I know this student's been having a really hard time lately. Is there anything I could help you with? And being very, very specific about that. And then also kind of having a personal mission statement tucked in your back pocket. I know that's kind of like a millennial thing to say, but I was listening to a TEDx talk recently by Marco Salazar, and this goes back to that idea of creating a persona, especially in a world where you might be delivering services virtually. So have a very short statement, maybe 2 or 3 sentences that really capture who you are and the impact that you want to have. So you could say, I'm a school psychologist. What I really love is figuring out how to address really challenging behaviors. It's totally my jam. Here's what I'm thinking. I, I can be available to help you with X, Y, and Z. What do you think? And that coming at it that way, you're coming as a support and not someone to judge, really can kind of change the tone of the conversation. This is a challenge I don't think we have to talk a lot about because I know we've all experienced it very much firsthand. But schools are experts in making do with very little, and that means little time, a few resources, not a lot of materials, not a lot of extra support, not a lot of extra hands where they're needed. So suggestions are just use that to foster your empathy, but realize that you're walking in situations where people often already feel really overstretched. So I love the KISS acronym, which is Keep It Simple, Stupid. I had a wonderful professor that always repeated that. It's really stuck in my brain. The research suggests that having just 15-minute consultation sessions tends to work best. So really think about that. So think about these team meetings that go for hours and how much can actually be accomplished with that, and it— would it be better to just have a really meaningful short time for a connection? Always provide a meeting summary so that it will help everybody kind of reflect and keep on the same page about what happened, especially as people are kind of moving in different directions throughout the school day. It's good for them to have that to go back to later on and kind of Think about it, and then picture a braid and think about the ways that you can braid solutions or interventions or strategies into what teachers, administrators, counselors, everybody are already doing. So if a teacher's already taking data on students, is there something that you could just add as a little add-on as opposed to proposing a whole other process or project? that she then has to be on top of. So what can come off the plate to be added and braided into what is already happening and going well? So just kind of keeping that as a mindset. Here's another big one. So it's not always clear to our consultees, our stakeholders, how we can benefit. So we're not seeing the progress in the time that we would want for the student, or the family hasn't And my, my advice here would be use the data and have a plan of how you will know if it's working before you start giving it a try. Oftentimes I'll hear things like, I tried it, it didn't work. I think that's one that we've probably all heard. So what we can do to address this is, let me help you do this. Let's figure this out together. And let's, let's make sure we have a way to tell ahead of time if our solution, our idea is working. And then we really, just like with our students, we want to set that the stakeholder, whether it's a teacher or a parent, we want to set them up with some really small wins that are going to happen very often, especially at first, because what we're looking for is that momentum and that buy-in, and then that ability then to kind of build on what's working and get rid of what doesn't.

Yeah.

Other common challenges are ownership. So sometimes you'll be working with a large team, and it's kind of unclear as to who owns the student outcomes. We're gonna talk a little bit more about this in a coming slide. Always having written records, identifying stakeholders, making sure that you're getting the story from the right people. And then feedback, and I do want to spend just a little bit of time talking about this. So the literature review suggests that teachers especially, and I would say parents as well, tend to be really sensitive to feedback, and this makes complete sense because they are deeply invested in their student success. They feel like they're at fault if the student is experiencing challenges or is struggling, especially if there's not already a strong relationship between the caregivers of that student and the teacher or the, the broader team. Teachers are also held accountable for student progress in ways that they probably ever had— not ever had before, and they're faced with extreme pressure from parents, administrators, and even the community as a whole. So just like we do with our students, feedback should be specific, timely, acknowledge progress, and always include a next step. And this is an idea that I always— I actually have this on a Post-it and I keep it on my desk: be hard on ideas and soft on people. So it's okay to be curious and ask lots of questions about others' ideas, But you always wanna show that compassion and empathy for others to preserve that connection. Without that connection, it would be very difficult to get the outcomes that we're looking for. The other thing I would say here is even before you begin to work together, really build in ways to assess on an ongoing basis, how's it going? How is this working? Is this too hard? Are we staying true to the intent? of our solution to our plan? Are we staying true to the norms that we established as a team? Kind of build in those feedback loops early because that can really go a long way and give you the information you need to be a good sturdy leader for your team. I'll add here too, check in regularly with all of your teammates, not just about the problems. So not just, you know, those transactional interactions, but just like, hey, how's it going? How was your week? Late night last night, I know you had parent-teacher conferences. Really show that you understand where they're coming from and that you care about them. All right, there's lots of good ways to build trust. Here is one of the helpful acronyms for this, because Lord knows we love an acronym. So we have facilitate. When there's resistance, we can think of facilitate. Which means facilitate, assist. So guide thinking, help plan, give tools, resources, overcommunicate your support and ideas. And I would add to this is always do what you say you're going to do and be sure to communicate that, especially if you're working in a virtual setting. You often need to overcommunicate your intent and then give lots of progress updates. On, on what you've done and how you've followed through. Going back to that connection, interpersonally relate. Empathy, live in their shoes. Inquire, have that curiosity. Teach, be willing to be the teacher, even if it's something you don't feel entirely comfortable with yourself. Be willing to put yourself out there and guide and model and support. Acknowledge when there's multiple viewpoints, when there's conflict, let that be okay on your teams. tolerate multiple viewpoints, and then make sure to regularly evaluate collaborative efforts. And a lot of times the outcome will come later, but if the effort is there, if you have that collaboration, that needs to be celebrated. Alright, so there's a couple tools here to, to, to build trust I wanted to give you. So I did include a link to the Meeting Mechanics Manual resource, and that does come out of Grand Valley. Great resource if it's something that you kind of want to even try out with your teams, or maybe you have a big problem-solving meeting coming up, and you might have some buy-in to try something new. We have another acronym. This comes from Brené Brown in her, her recent book, Dare to Lead, and this gives us a way to make sure before we all leave that table in the conference room in the front office, Who owns the task? Do they have the authority to be held accountable for this? Have we agreed on how they're set up for success in terms of, is it clear? Do they have the resources? Do they have the support that they need? And then do we have kind of like a checklist or some sort of running record of what needs to happen in order to meet our shared goals? There's 2 things from Dr. Brené Brown's research that come into play here, and they can really make or break trust, and that is having hard conversations. In general, we know that we don't like to have hard conversations, and sometimes people will go a long way to avoid that. It's also very difficult to give and receive feedback in a way that moves people and processes And this comes from her book Daring Greatly, where she conducted research asking people, you know, what were the challenges to connection? What were the challenges to building trust? And it really came down to those difficult moments and these 2 things. So I'd like to, before we kind of wrap up for today, give us a way to think about this and think in a reflective way about ourselves. So if you go to the Dare to Lead website by Dr. Brené Brown, there's a very helpful self-assessment there, and it is an assessment of the 7 elements of trust. And what it does is when you answer all of the questions, it shows you the areas where you might want to give more thought, intention, or practice to. And this really is a practice. It's not something that you ever just start like fully fantastic at it, and you're never gonna experience another difficult conflict or situation again. So I think this is especially true when some of us are coming in in that consultant role to an already established team, and we're really trying to build that trust pretty quickly. So firstly, have boundaries. Be clear about what you're willing to do and what's not okay. Reliability. Do what you say you're going to do. And one thing that always comes to me, another professor, Dr. Sandy Ward, she always said under-promise and over-deliver. So really set yourself up to deliver what you actually can. And if you're able to exceed that, great. But the most important thing is you do what you said you're going to do. Accountability, especially in a virtual environment, definitely have a way to show your progress. Toward the things that you've said that you'll support. Stay on top of your documentation the way it's required, and then think about how you can provide visibility into what you are doing. If you make a mistake, just own it, apologize. The vault is an interesting one, so think carefully about how you share confidences, how you share student information, the words that you use to describe your teammates or your students or your families. Integrity, non-judgment, operating from a place of compassion for yourself and others, and then lastly, generosity, and really this means extending the most generous interpretation to others' intentions, words, and actions, and just having that mindset shift, wow, that can be a game changer. It can really take out some of that negativity or defensiveness that we might encounter when we experience resistance. in consultation with others. All right. So we are on to the question and answer session. My teammate Shawna is joining us. Shawna Byer, she is here and she's going to help throw out some questions. Thank you so much, Shawna. You're welcome.

Thank you, Taylor, for such, you know, an incredible presentation. Tons of resources. A lot of the questions I think have been answered throughout and we have You know, just a little bit of time left. So one question stands out in particular, and the question is, how do you stay nonjudgmental and no idea is a bad idea when you feel confident you know a good solution to a team problem?

Gosh, that is— that's a really good question. Yeah. So, Shawna, also you can weigh in because Shauna is an expert collaborator. I've seen it in action many times. I think the idea is that you might have a desired solution in mind. So then your challenge is, how can you weave that into the story? How can you connect to all of those people that are experiencing the results of this problem? And really, how can you use that connection to help them understand why your solution Would be a good one, right? So it's it's gonna be not a quick forward movement. It's gonna be building over time to where it's like, hmm, okay. Have you thought about this way? Or what if we could try a piece of the solution that you have in the back of your mind? How can you take little baby steps and really set it up so that the team is experiencing really quick small wins, so that they'll be more likely then to buy into the next part of the solution?

Yeah, and I agree with all of that and just being a good listener and respecting others' ideas and, you know, and really just openly discuss the implications of, you know, if you go one direction, what will be the result? And I think we deal with that every day, you know, in life as providers. So thank you. One last question and then we'll be wrapping up. And it's really related to, you know, the virtual environment. Consulting and gaining teacher feedback is often difficult to capture in a virtual environment. Do you have suggestions to improve this, especially when you're trying to earn trust and just communicate about a particular student?

Yeah, I actually hear this a lot from From my colleagues, and Shawna and I have actually discussed this, and we— she hears it a lot too. It can be really tough, especially if people haven't really bought into your role working with them virtually. So that might be the first step I would suggest would be like educating them about what you can offer, how you can be a support to them. And then I really love to just pop like a standing meeting, whether that's like a 15-minute phone call at some point. You know, teachers especially, and even, you know, parents, there are very just small windows of time. But if you could kind of have it be like a standing meeting, it builds in a consistent way to check in. Um, the other thing is I've used some tech tools like Google Forms, um, and different polling tools and things like that. If I just am looking for like specific information or feedback from teachers, I found they're much more likely to complete a quick Google Form than they are to answer like a lengthy email, or, um, I don't know. Shawna, have you had any success with any of those?

Um, definitely, and I think it's just finding out what is the best way that the, you know, the preferred way that the teacher, you know, has. We actually have forms that we use in parallel that we can you know, send out regarding interview questions, and then those, I think teachers have appreciated those, and then they sync up with, you know, our, our system and, you know, and giving us information for our assessments. So, um, yeah, it's just really figuring out what works best for the teacher.

But yeah, I agree.

Um, I think that's all we have time for, but definitely Taylor's contact is here on the screen. Reach out if you have Further questions, we'll pass it over back to Michelle.

Thank you, everybody. Great.

Thank you so much, and Taylor, thank you for the amazing presentation. Taylor, just oh there we go. I was gonna ask you to push it through a slide. Just as we wrap up again, we want to thank all of you for joining our current parallel providers as well as any of you. out there who are not Parallel providers but wanted to stop by and check out what we have going on. We also want to let you know that we are hiring. We are hiring SLPs, school psychologists, specialized educators, and school social workers. So if you have an interest in finding out more about Parallel and how we're hiring and what we're hiring, please reach out to hiring@parallellearning.com and we can get you connected with some of our recruiters. The next slide, please. And then finally, if you are a Parallel provider and you have somebody that you know in your network that you would love to refer to Parallel, we do give a $500 bonus for any full-time hires that come on with Parallel and a $200 bonus for any part-time or contract workers. Here are some of the states listed that we are currently open for and actively recruiting for providers for both speech and language pathologists and school psychologists. So if you have somebody you want to refer, please let them know. And then finally, last but not least, our raffle winner today for attending our webinar is Marlene Buttons, and she will win a $100 Amazon gift card. So we will reach out to you, Marlene, and let you know how you can access that. And so once again, we want to thank everybody for joining us. And we look forward to seeing you part 3, where Shawna Byer and Roxanna Patterson, both SLPs, will be talking about mindfulness. So that's Thursday, November 30th, same time, 6:30 PM Eastern time. So we look forward to seeing you there. We hope that everybody has a beautiful evening, and thanks again for joining us.

Thank you.