Episode 324: Creating Safe Environments for Children

No need to whine and whiney palooza. Have some wine and join us on the Winey Palooza Podcast with Rebecca Greene.

Welcome to the Winey Palooza Podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca Greene. I'm a wife, mother of 3, and licensed clinical social worker. I also have 3 fur babies at home too. My passion has always been to help children and their families. I always dreamed of being a wife and a mother. Parents are always learning through their struggles, failures, and successes and joys. I am no stranger to this wild ride of parenting, and I know behind every great parent lies a team of supportive friends and family. I want to be part of your support system. I want you to know that you are not alone. We are in this parenting world together. Join me every week for insightful discussions with experts on parenting and marriage, as well as other parents who have found the secret to successes in parenthood. You'll learn tips and tricks to make life with your family better than ever. I hope you will follow along with me while we dive into what it takes to achieve a happy family.

Hello everyone, this is Rebecca Greene for the Whiny Palooza podcast, and I am very excited today because I get to talk to Joanne Freiberg. Joanne, thank you so much for doing this with me today.

Oh, I'm thrilled.

Well, this is an exciting topic. Joanne's gonna tell you all about it. Her bio is super impressive, but I'm gonna let her tell you. So I wanna know what your background is and why I brought you here today.

Well, thank you, Rebecca. I'm happy to tell you and all of your viewers, listeners, because I think I have what you say is an impressive bio 'cause I'm old. But beside—

No, you are.

But beside that, I've been very fortunate to work for my entire professional life in the area in which I received my education. I learned very, very early when I was, you know, a young child, actually, I grew up in California, the importance of community and relationships in creating safety. And so that kind of brought me forward. I always wanted to be a teacher. And, um, I went along that pathway, uh, took a couple years off working in theater, which is my undergraduate degree. How cool. And gradually moved eastward from where I grew up in California, and I now live in Connecticut. Very proud to live here. Um, I have worked in countless universities teaching every kind of teacher education stuff. I have, uh, a master's degree as well as my doctorate in what we call philosophy of education, which is— don't worry about that. But my concentration was ethics about how people should treat one another. And that has always excited me. So I founded a little nonprofit many years ago called Operation Respect Connecticut. And that led me to being put at the State Department of Education here in Connecticut, where I worked for 14 years. And what I did primarily at the State Department of Education was an incredible amount of training and education, which was the, the love of my life, to help schools and educators as well as parents understand what it took to create safe places for children. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] And when I started the State Department of Education in 2005, we already had a bullying statute, which here in Connecticut was passed in 2002. The first one was passed in 1999, 2 or 3 months after Columbine. That was in Georgia. But not only did my job allow me to work directly with educators in schools, But I like to say my job security was answering the bullying complaints that came to the state level. And I did that in that official capacity for 14 years. And I learned a great deal about bullying, about that dynamic in schools and so on. And I retired finally in, from that day job, On August 1st, 2019, I call that liberation because I was allowed to do a lot more talking directly with legislators who legislate around this, this topic, this arena. And I, my colleague and I founded a little company called School Climate Consultants. So I'm working harder than I did at the State Department. We do an awful lot of training, education. I serve as an expert witness on some legal bullying cases, and I'm still advising administrators and parents and so on. I do, again, the love is to help people get it right, but things come up. And so I've been doing that in that capacity. I don't see any, anything in the horizon that says I'm going to retire because I love what I do. And it keeps me going. And so is that enough?

That is. Oh my gosh. I have my— is my jaw up? Did I pull it up? My jaw just kept dropping. I told you it was impressive. I mean, the work that you're doing, you and I talked about this before we started recording. It is so needed. I love what you're doing. I have been so excited to talk to you. I have told you that I have heard a lot from friends about bullying, and that's part of what drew me to look for you. And, you know, I think there's a lot of misconceptions about bullying, and I'm wondering if you could tell us any that people might have. What are you hearing about misconceptions?

Well, I think the first misconception is that bullying is a behavior. It's not a behavior, it's a label. It's a label for a whole lot of different behaviors. It's also the potential conclusion of an investigation. And what's interesting, the history around this is, is pretty fascinating. And I'm serving as an expert witness currently in a case, and I had occasion to go to the dictionary and look up what the dictionary said was the definition of bullying. And this dictionary predates Columbine. Now Columbine is like a 12-lane highway around the arena of bullying because prior to Columbine, which was April 20th, 1999, there were no statutes around bullying.

None.

We can go back in literature and see the word and the term used centuries before. I mean, the word bully and bullying has been used forever, but it wasn't in our current, especially American vernacular, the language of bullying. I like to say we're now in bully mania. And, um, so right now, and I'm kind of answering your misconception questions and meandering around because everyone should know that Currently, as of September in 2015, every single state in the nation has an anti-bullying law. There are no federal anti-bullying laws. Now, Rebecca Greene, you can say that's awesome. I look at it slightly differently. I think we should have laws around creating safe places for kids, which I love. That it's the spirit of these anti-bullying laws.

Yeah.

What happened is that legislators, without knowing what they're doing, have said, "Stop out bullying." But bullying is such a negative concept. And again, it's a label. If a child gets off a bus or comes in from recess or a locker room and says, "I've been bullied," the person receiving that comment has to say, "Tell me what happened," because bullying is not a behavior. And so prior to Columbine, and I have lots of video to demonstrate this, prior to Columbine, if somebody came in from one of those venues, they'd come in and said, "He pushed me. He called me names. He wouldn't let me play with them. She, you know, teased me." We would hear the behaviors. We wouldn't hear the label. Now, and it's one of those unintended negative consequences from all of the statutes— everybody says it's bullying.

Yeah.

Either bullying or it's not bullying. And that's a huge problem because parents unfortunately believe— another unintended negative consequence from these statutes— that if they don't wave the bullying flag, that the school won't do anything about it. And that's really unfortunate.

Which isn't true from my experience.

It's not true. It's not at all. And actually, because these bullying statutes are so prescriptive and detailed and, um, you know, go into all kinds of procedural things, when a, when a parent comes in or a student and says, I've been bullying it, bullied, it kicks in a whole host of things that don't have to happen to help the child be safer.

So I have a question from what you're saying. So is it more helpful as a parent that if something happens, that I go into school or I call school and I tell them exactly what happened versus labeling it that I might think it's bullying?

Yes. That's a very astute observation. And, and we kind of get the impression both in written articles, as well as just what's in the ether, that we have this epidemic of bullying. The problem is, and I'm going to share my bias here, I do not see any benefit whatsoever in labeling any child, adolescent, a bully. I don't know what the benefit is. It's something that says you're bad. I think that, you know, prior to these statutes, schools worked diligently to help children feel safe, be safe, and so on. Now we label children bullies. But let me ask you, Rebecca Greene, a question, and your listeners can kind of think about this as they're hearing this. What do you think? I'm going to use my state as an example, but I think that it's, it's pretty You know, I had to look at things nationally, not just here in Connecticut. But what do you think the percentage of children in any given year in our schools are labeled bullies? The percentage of children that are labeled bullies. Think about that for a second and give me a number. What do you think?

I'm going to say— I'm going to hope that I'm not wrong— 10%.

Okay. So that's an interesting number. Some people will say, "Oh, 30% of kids are bullied." Yeah, it all depends upon how it's defined. And of course, who's coming to the conclusion that it is bullying or it is not bullying. The problem is, first of all, all 50 states have a definition of bullying, and all 50 states have different definitions of bullying.

That's a problem.

That is a problem. I'm going to answer my own question in a minute. But what's interesting is that the dictionary definition that I looked at, which was from, again, a dictionary that was published prior to Columbine, um, says that it's about cruel behavior, uh, of somebody who engages in cruel behavior towards someone who is weaker than them. Now, the only common denominator, the commonality around bullying is that it's about abuse of power. And some of the state's definitions recognize that, some don't. Um, but when you go and look at the actual numbers of children who are labeled bullies, it is not 10%. It is not even 1%. It is 0.13%, and that's been very consistent here in Connecticut. I'm sure it's going to vary a little bit, but the point is schools are loath to label children bullies.

And I'm glad I was wrong. I thought you were going to go higher.

No, no, no. Now, does that mean that in terms of abuse of power— and by the way, adults can abuse Children as well can bully, but almost all the state statutes only talk about students. Nobody wants to police themselves. Adults make these laws. They don't want to hold themselves accountable. That's a problem too. That's why we have workplace bullying, school bullying, you know, community bullying, and that kind of thing. Because again, bullying is really about abuse of power. And if you think about children in schools, almost no relationships have to do with power. I mean, really, there are some, sure, uh, bigger to smaller, older to younger, and so on. But most children claim they're just joking around, and sometimes schools will put in the word intent. There has to be intent to hurt. It, it's a mess. It's a huge, huge mess. And I'm glad that we label as few children bullies But do I think there's probably more than that? Yeah. But when administrators call me for advice, when they've got a difficult case, I try to talk them out of labeling, but giving the students what is needed to help make them safe.

Oh, I love that. I love that. And I think that schools are facing a lot of challenges with this.

Oh, huge.

Right. So can you talk about the challenges and how you're helping schools?

Well, the challenges are, again, this— excuse me— push-pull between do we label something bullying and make the targeted child's life or parent happy? Nobody else is happy. No schools want to have any bullying. No child wants to be labeled a bully. No parent wants their child to be labeled a bully, and nobody sees themself as a bully. So you have that, but you also have these statutes, and schools are very worried about lawsuits. And so let me just tell you something that we were able to do in, in Connecticut this past legislative session, because there are an awful lot of other states that have their eyes on what we did. And I'm very proud to share this, and if anybody is interested in knowing what we've done, I have the documents, I have the statute, and so on. But once I left the State Department of Education, I went directly to, with my colleague, we went directly to legislators. We went to, we have something called the Education Committee, which is made up of Connecticut senators and representatives, and we have the legislature as well. And we said, could we talk to you about bullying? Because, and I'll use Connecticut as an example. Because I know it so well, but it is no different across the country. Connecticut first passed their anti-bullying law in 2002. It was reacting to a particular very tragic, uh, student suicide of a 6th grader in one of our middle schools here. And then let me just throw in that suicide is never a one-path thing. This little guy had a horrific home life, and so he came to school dirty, and he was teased for that, and so on. But his suicide was not directly— it was contributory. And there is— I'm not a qualified expert on suicide, but I've worked with people who are. And if you ever think that a child commits suicide just because of how they're treated at school, that's a mistake. It's always very complicated. But in any case, he was bullied at school, at least that was the, the press, and we passed an anti-bullying law. It did not change the landscape, right? So, in 2006, it was amended and the definition changed. Again, the landscape did not change, just as many complaints, just as many, all of the kinds of markers of what is going on, and the legislature amended again in 2008. Change the definition. In 2011, once again, sweeping changes brought in very, very onerous investigation requirements and so on. Change the definition again, didn't change the landscape. In 2014, many legislators wanted to say, I'm against bullying. And so 3 additional statutes were passed. Again, didn't change the landscape. Uh, there was attempts to do it in subsequent years. I want to say 2000 and— well, it changed again in 2019, again with differences in definition. I think between 2014 and 2019, Superintendent stood up and said, stop. You're not even giving us time to implement the last set. So give us a break.

Yes.

Task force and so on and so forth. But anyway, in 2019, which is the year that I retired, it was passed a little bit before that. So then we went and I want to say stormed. We didn't. We were very polite. We were, but we said, could we really educate you around this topic? And we said that the only solution to this beast we call bullying is to focus on what we call is the school climate, the environment in which kids are in. And we want to help educators, or what's going to help educators is to take their eyes off of investigating bullying, which for some administrators principals means 70, not 17, but 70% of their time goes into investigating bullying complaints, which is crazy. And, you know, anybody who has children in schools knows how important school administrators are to support teachers and parents and so on. But if all they are doing is investigating bullying complaints, that is really a waste of resources. So we explained that if we keep trying to go at this problem by playing whack-a-mole and just dealing with bullying, we will never get it right. So there is something called the School Climate Standards, and these are national school climate standards. They've been in effect since 2010. And Standard 4 says the school community will create an environment where all members are welcome, supported, and feel safe in school socially, emotionally, physically, intellectually, in every possible way, culturally, sexually, and so on. And what would help schools is to say, do that. So 10 years ago, my colleague, who was a former superintendent in one of our districts here, worked with her board of ed to create the first in the nation school climate policy. And so we took that to the legislature, and we said, if you can obligate through statute schools to adopt the school climate policy, which says create safe places for kids in 10 pages, but you get the drift. Yeah, um, their students will have a better chance of having that happen. And so what the legislature did this past session, so we're— it was about 9 months ago, they passed a statute that said, schools, by July 1st, 2025, you need to adopt the school climate policy, the Connecticut School Climate Policy. And once you do that, you are out from under the existing bullying statutes.

Wow. And how, how do you feel about that? You must feel pretty awesome.

I— we feel really proud of what we've done, and we have schools thanking us. And there is a— they're working. We didn't want to— we explained to legislators, if you say this has to happen yesterday or tomorrow, that's not fair. Yeah, we begged them to provide a window to prepare boards of ed because many, many individuals, as you and your audience knows, Board of Ed members are parents. They're community members. They need to be educated. They think the way to do this is by, you know, adopting anti-bullying policies, but that's not the way to do it. So we needed time to help school boards be educated and supportive of exchanging a school climate policy for an anti-bullying policy. So we're the first in the nation to do that. And again, I have all of that. If anybody is interested, I'm happy to share. But that's kind of where we're going.

So you're starting quite the amazing trend that I'm sure will bubble out to other states. And so tell us, I know you, you can't tell us the 10 pages, but tell us what schools can do to start to create this positive environment.

Well, I think that one of the things they should do is, is, it's very simple to find, but the, the National School Climate Standards. I'm happy. I don't know if you ever post any documents, Rebecca Greene, but I'm happy to send you the Connecticut. We've sort of updated them and made them our own, the Connecticut School Climate Standards, which very clearly puts the environment or the climate uppermost in importance. And then we also very importantly within this policy say that we, when there are issues, when anything rises to the level of compromising the safety of a child, we will work restoratively. We will seek to restore. And most of the training that we do is around what is known as restorative practices. And talk about misconceptions about what that is.

Oh my God. Well, and you're reading my thoughts because I was taking you there next. So thank you.

Because there are two words in that phrase, restorative and practices. And actually, the least important part is the word restorative, which means to restore. The most important part is about practice. It's about day-to-day practice. And the most important part of this body of work is building positive relationships and community. Because if you don't do that, then there's nothing to restore when there are conflicts or harms or whatever. And what's also very interesting, and I work with parents in forums, whether they're virtual or in person, and when I talk about this, parents I love it because it makes you a better parent. You can do this in your homes. This is—

yeah, this is for school.

Yes, about listening to children and figuring out together within the context how we're going to fix it. So instead of using what we call our context-blind consequences— in other words, if you look at a student handbook, it says if you get in a fight You're suspended for a week. Well, that doesn't take into account the age, the circumstances, you know, what the limitations or particular circumstances are, and that is essential. So working restoratively is context-dependent. In other words, the context matters. And so when there is an argument, a conflict, you know, somebody shoves somebody else. The goal is to bring those individuals together and figure out together how they're going to fix it, how they're going to get back into relationship and community, get on the other side of it.

Can I ask you something about that?

Sure.

Okay. So I would love your expertise on this because what I have heard about this, I have heard wonderful things about it, but I have also heard that sometimes the child doesn't feel safe meeting with the child who did something to them.

Excellent point. And that, first of all, when you bring children together, you never force them. Cardinal rule, you can never force them. And when you're kind of bringing together the bullying arena and this arena, I mean, I have learned so much over the last couple of decades, really 25 years since we've had these anti-bullying laws, where the, the first rule was you never bring a bully and a target together. Well, that made sense when you were thinking it was a power imbalance, but relatively few instances that get labeled or alleged bullying are that. It's kids getting into it. It's kids having an argument or think they're joking around, and they don't understand the difference between intention and impact because they can intentionally think it's a joke, but the impact is anything but that. So almost no circumstances, whether it's with adults and children or children with children, wouldn't be better off collectively solving that problem. Now, sometimes children don't feel comfortable and they have the opportunity, again, trying to bust some myths around this work, to bring somebody with them. They also, once you start working this way, they tend to trust the facilitators, the people who are working with them. It's not a mediation. The person person who's working with them doesn't offer the solution. The solutions come from the, the context, but we always try to work hard to make it safe to have that happen. Now, my colleague and I are called in very often for very high-end kinds of conflict, not simple day-to-day kinds of things. And I remember one where it involved a huge off-campus— as middle school fight that got out of control. 100 kids saw it, you know, 2 kids were really into it. And the young man who happened to be the target was ready to meet with the young lady, and she was not ready. And so we were kind of waiting until she would become ready, and she had some additional mental health things and, and needed to have those dealt with. So to this day, as far as I, I know, although the principal could have brought them together this year— this happened last year— that didn't happen. But don't force them. But if you trust the adult that you're working with, or the adult would say, you want to write it down, I'll speak for you, and then we can— but there isn't a one-size-fits-all recipe that you bring. You never force people to come together.

That's really, that's really good to know. Um, just based on everything I've heard, that's, this is where all the questions are coming from, from all the parents that I talk to. And, you know, I hear complaints all the time. You know, this happened and what do I do? So my question to you is, when a parent is upset upset with what they're hearing from their kid. You have the parent, you have the teacher, you have the principal. Can you walk us through the ideal situation of what we would want to do?

Well, um, I will with one caveat, and that is that every situation is a little bit different.

Yes, I knew you were going to say that.

Okay, so just understand that there is not one size fits all.

I agree.

Okay, what you want to do is hear everybody's perspective. And the ideal way to work restoratively is to listen to each person separately so you know what their story is. And that would include the alleged perpetrator or the person who caused the harm. And I avoid the B words completely. And let me back up here. You asked, you know, what would you advise parents in, you know, do you come in without, um, you know, using or alleging bullying? I would highly recommend that with your children, with colleagues, when you're watching soccer games, wherever you are, treat the B words— bully, bullying, bully— or any iteration of that as you would a four-letter word.

I love that.

Don't use it because it doesn't help, and again, it describes nothing. So anyway, you wanna listen to everybody's story and you wanna figure out, um, who was impacted, what the impact was. And then with permission, you wanna bring those people together and let them hear the same things that, let's say I'm the facilitator, that I heard in each of those individual conversations, because what's important is that, and let's say it's 2 children on the bus. Somebody, you know, starts saying, what do you have for lunch or your snack? They open it up, ew, and they start throwing the backpack around, and then something gets, you know, that kind of thing. Somebody ends up crying, the other one, you know, maybe he's hit in response. You want to hear what was going on. And so the student whose backpack was opened and rifled through, needs to explain to the person who did it what the impact of that was. Not only how it ruined his stuff in the backpack, but the laughter that happened and so on. And the other one needs to assume responsibility for that and, you know, also say, well, you kind of challenged me. You said I'm not going to tell you what it is, I'm not going to sh— because most of the time It's not a one side or the other. It may be 90% and 10%, could be 50/50. It doesn't matter, but they need to hear the impact of what they did, correct any misunderstandings, and then importantly, how are we gonna fix it? How am I gonna show you that I won't open your backpack again? And you're gonna show me that you won't bait me. Now I'm using adult terms, but— and yeah, let me give you a very, very simple example. This is a real example, heard about it a few weeks ago, um, with a school that we're working with. Two little third graders were calling each other pretty inappropriate racial names. I'm assuming one child was, um, African-American, one child was, was white. It doesn't really matter, but instead of saying, okay, you guys are in lunch detention, which is, you know, easy for somebody to say. Oh, you call somebody names, you're in lunch detention. The psychologist and the principal pulled these two little 8, uh, 8-year-olds, 9-year-olds, third graders together, and in 8 minutes found out from both of them that they were mirroring, repeating what their parents were saying They also recognized, with both of them in the room, that that wasn't appropriate. They didn't like it, and they agreed that they wouldn't do that anymore, and it's over. And that took, that took 8 minutes. Oh my gosh, that's such a good example because it is restorative work is about fixing it and about healing and importantly about education. How can we help these youngsters learn a different way? When you put them in lunch detention or in-school suspension, they learn nothing. And much of the time the behaviors escalate because now they have real reason to be angry. So this is— I mean, we do it in families. I call this the family model. If your kids get into it, whether you do it well, you do it poorly, somehow you bring them together and figure out how you can fix it, because you can't suspend out of a family, right?

Well, and just sending them to their room is not teaching them anything.

No, it's not teaching. You may want to do that. I call it chill time. We all know—

chill time. I was going to say cool-off period is always good.

I call it chill time, but I like to say Kids may need some chill time, but they don't need to do time.

Yes, yes, I love that.

And so that's the perspective. And for me, the best synonym for restorative is healing. There is so much trauma out there, and, and there's trauma— that's a whole other topic— but there, there's so much trauma out there. And since COVID everybody experience something. So, and we're seeing the behaviors escalate because of it. And so we need to create healing environments, environments in schools where kids can take a deep breath and know they're going to have a great time and know they're safe and know they're going to, you know, be able to work collaboratively with one another. And that's the practice. And so for me, it's about healing environments. And when those inevitable conflicts, harms— because that's what kids do, they figure it out, but they have to learn different ways. Some of them don't have great role models at home.

True.

If they don't learn it in school, they're not going to learn it anywhere else.

Such good points. Well, and I think that— so the ideal situation, and I'm just asking you for other mothers because I, I am going to knock on wood, I had a fantastic experience, and I love my children's schools, and I did contact them about something that happened in September that my daughter was very upset with. And the teacher, the counselor, the principal, I mean, it was taken care of. They talked to each other. The kid apologized. It went exactly how you would want it to go. However, okay, I'm the ideal situation, and I have heard other stories where the behaviors continue. So when the behaviors continue, what should these mothers, parents do?

Well, first of all, they should be communicating with schools.

Yes.

And I, I recommend not demanding but working as collaboratively as you can. Um, when you're truly working restoratively, most of the time it's managed and it's over with. And it sounds like, Rebecca Greene, that that's what's kind of happening in your school. But let me use an analogy here, because when you're working restoratively, and this may either get some quizzical looks or upset some people, you never, you know, have that conversation, figure out how you're going to get past it, you have 2 or 3 of these 'cause it keeps continuing, you say, "Okay, enough, now I'm gonna suspend you." That's not the way it works. [Speaker:DR_REBECCA_GREENE] Right. [Speaker:DR_LISA_GORANSON] There are definitely times— I may be old, but I'm not crazy— there are definitely times when children are so unsafe to self or others that they can't be in the classroom, and they may not even be able to be in the school. But instead of focusing on the fact that they're suspended, and technically that would be a suspension. But you say, look, I can't trust you right now. I'm not feeling comfortable that allowing you back into the classroom or the school is going to be productive. So I'm going to give you a couple days. I want you to think about this. I'm going to think about this, but we're going to come back together on Monday morning and we're going to figure this out. So it's always this particular pathway. But the analogy I was going to use is, let's just use a simple kind of example, academic example. A child struggles in math, and some kids are really good at math, they get it, and so on. Others, addition, multiplication, whatever, that could be algebra in middle school or, you know, calculus in, in high school, um, Some kids don't get it the first time and they need practice and they need more education and more support and so on. Um, we don't— when they fail a test or do poorly on a quiz, we don't say, okay, math off your radar, we're not doing that ever again.

Oh, that would be nice.

I'm putting that in your file. You're never going to do it again because you failed this test. Oh boy. That's not how academics works. We just layer on more support. And that's the best way to think about behavior. If they don't get it right the first time, you go at it again and again and again, understanding that if it's a safety issue, you don't allow kids to, uh, be unsafe with others. Again, I'm not crazy. But the goal is always education and restoration. And most of the time it works well.

And comparing that to math is perfect. That makes total sense to me. And I think you said a super important word. You said collaborative. Okay, so, you know, just for the parents listening, teachers listening, how can they have the best collaboration? What do they need to do? Because I have seen it go south.

Well, um, I like to say that individuals, whether it's parents or educators, I'm talking about adults now, can't be blamed for not knowing how this works and how to do it. Um, if you don't know what you don't know, and we're basically as good as what we experienced in our homes, in our schools, and so on. And there, if you were to Google restorative practices, you know, 20 years ago, you would not have found so much. Today you're gonna find a ton. And certainly we have a little website called schoolclimateconsultants.com, and we have descriptions of, under our services, of the training sessions, which give you a good sense of it. We also have quite a bit on our resources page that also explains what this work is. But I think that you need to know what it is and you need to know how to do it. It's very, very simple. It's not complicated, but you— it requires a shift in thinking. It requires people to understand that changing behavior is not about punishing. And that goes down hard for an awful lot of people. I mean, the pushback we get in schools is from people who believe and don't wanna, don't have an open mind, wanna believe that it says here in the handbook, you shove somebody, you get, you know, a week of lunch detention. It says right here. So part of this journey to become restorative is changing handbooks, is doing all sorts of things so that everything aligns. It's bringing parents along. It's, it's really coming at this. It's a paradigm shift in thinking. But the reason why Connecticut is now obligating virtually every school district in this state to work restoratively is that the data doesn't lie. I'll give you one high school example. I know we're getting toward the end of our time here, but we have a high school here in Connecticut that a few years ago came to our school climate training, 2 days, came to our restorative practice training, 2 days, the administrators, and they came back totally changed in terms of their perspective, and they transformed their school, which had a 23.7% chronic absenteeism. Think about that. A quarter of the kids were chronically absent. And within a year or two, again, it's not, you know, you don't flip a light switch, that chronic absenteeism rate went down to 3.1%.

Oh my goodness.

And then the state honored them as a high school of distinction for academics. Wow. Because the kids were there, they were learning, they wanted to be there. They couldn't think of a better place to be. And that's not the only bit of data we have. And so you start to look at the data of kids cutting suspensions down to almost none, because instead of throwing them out, we're solving the problems. So in any case, the data doesn't lie, and the legislators here in Connecticut are very smart people. Yeah, got it. And they said, Yes, we have to start working this way. So, you know, that's kind of, that's the reason, because it's better for kids.

And that's what we want. We want it to be better for kids. We want a better climate for kids. We want to teach kids the skills that they don't have. You know, I have to tell you that when things happen, my thought process is, what is going on for that child?

Yes.

That, that happened, right? What is going on? They're having a bad day. Something happened at home. I mean, you're on it. You are on the right path. And I am so honored that you shared all of this with us.

Well, it was a thrill to do it. Thank you.

We're going to have to do this again because 47 minutes with you went by. It feels like 5 minutes.

Well, it would be an honor to continue this conversation because I think you can tell I'm very passionate about it.

Oh, I love it.

Yes. It, it is so transformative for children, for families, for schools, and that's what this work is all about.

Well, I love the difference that you're making, and, and you really changed my thought process on so many things. So I know this is going to help a lot of people. And tell everybody where to find you.

Well, again, we have a very nice website, and it's schoolclimateconsultants.com. Plural.com, and you can reach us through there. It says contact us. You can see the trainings that we're having where we don't just work in Connecticut. We're going to Kansas City in the end of April, May. So there's places all over. We, we travel, we go to New Jersey, we go to— that's awesome— we're going to Tennessee. We're good. So we, we work virtually. But we love to bring this work to families, to schools, to communities. And if there are any people who are tied to government and want to know what we have been able to do, certainly we have legislators who believe and who've said, we think this is the most important legislation that they've done in their um, entire, uh, tenure. And that's— for some of them, that's decades because it, it is so transformative. So amazing. That's—

you're gonna, you're gonna make a difference for a lot of kids.

Well, that's the goal. It's all about the kids.

Well, I can't thank you enough for your time and expertise.

No worries. I'm glad to do it. If we can do it again, that would be awesome.

That would be wonderful. This is Rebecca Greene, and I want to remind everyone to spend every day laughing, learning, and loving.

Thank you for tuning in to the Winey Palooza podcast. If you like what you heard, please be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. While you are there, leave a review. I love to hear your feedback. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.

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