Rethinking Education: From Survival Mode to Flourishing Through Emotional Intelligence and Personalized Learning

When children feel honored, when they are given the opportunity to be educated in a way that matches up well to how they naturally approach learning, then we'll have children that will follow a pathway of wellness. But when children are put into the scripted one size fits all and it's biased against most of them, then they follow survival. And when you work with children that are already coming from survival, that can be quite volatile.

Welcome to becoming wiser with Dr. Robert A. Rome, author and world renowned public speaker, as he shares stories involving his experiences and lessons learned in a good, spirited, positive and fun way. Here's Dr. Robert A. Rome.

You are in for a real treat. Jeanine Fitzgerald and I have been friends for over 20 years. She is an educator par excellence. I have had the opportunity to do seminars and training with her. The thing, I don't know so many things about her I like. And y' all know me, I'm on the little bit lighter side of life. I think the thing I like best about Janine is her Boston accent. And so, you know, she and I are on the two ends of the, of the same continent, but she's up in the northern part. You'll catch on to it real quickly. And of course, people are always in forever talking about my Southern accent. And of course I don't hear it. I just think it's normal. But seriously, if there, if I could just wave a magic wand and straighten out the educational system in the United States of America and even the world, I put Janine in charge of it. That's how smart she is. JJ always says she's, she's freaky smart. That means she's so smart sometimes it's scary. But I see many of you who have the heart of an educator, whether it be in school or in parenting. Janine just knows kids. She understands children. I could do this for eight hours with her. She is, you know, some people are a thousand miles wide and an inch deep. Well, she's a thousand miles deep. She really, really knows stuff. So, Janine, welcome. It's good to see you again, my friend.

Thank you. Nice to be here.

Yeah. Well, tell us a little bit about how you got started in the field of education and why it's been such a passion for you over your career.

Well, I got started in the field.

In the 70s.

And I'm not really.

Sure why I came into the field other than going through school myself.

I was the child with challenging behavior. And so I had spent a lot.

Of years of my elementary education in.

The coat room in the back because that's what they did with kids like me. And.

You know, I wasn't intentionally trying to be challenging, but.

School for me was boring. Like there was nothing that I connected to.

And so, you know, when you have.

A CDS blend, those D tendencies come out when things get boring, and then we make it a little exciting for people. And so I spent a lot of time in the coat room, which I really liked, because you could move in the coat room. And so as you know, the model, those of us that have those outgoing tendencies in the blank like to move more than some other folks. And so I was that kid and really didn't know, you know, where I was heading in life.

But I had a question and my.

Question stayed with me and it drove me to do a lot of research as I went through life. But my first question is like, what really matters? Like when all is said and done, what really matters? And so I couldn't find the answer to that. So I really didn't know. I had a high school guidance counselor that told me, don't apply to college because you're not college material. Even if you get in, you probably won't make it.

You know.

And, and so, you know, my, my passion became moving, basically. And so my first degree became physical education. Because I had heard my whole life that from my mom in particular, that.

You'Re your father's kid. And so my father was an educator for 35 years. So I thought if I'm my father's kid, then maybe I should become an educator. And then I went to physical education. I finished that four year degree in two years and then they wouldn't let me graduate. And so I had two years left to go. So I took another degree, which was a four year degree in special education, and I finished that in two years. So in the time that most people will finish a four year degree, I had two degrees plus 13 credits toward a master's degree. And so part of that was my own choosing because I knew that if I didn't stay engaged with things that I was going to get myself in a lot of trouble. And so I went on and finished another degree. That 13 credits turned into a degree. So I've spent most of my career, all of my career basically in the field of education and mental health, working with particularly the children similar to me.

And helping children that are at risk within the current system to achieve more. And that became my passion.

When you talk about children at risk, explain that a little bit better for our audience. What kind of risk are they at? What does that mean.

So there are children within the traditional system of education that thrive within that system. There are a great number of children that survive despite the system, and then there are children that don't survive within the system. And so they're children that are just basically housed in an educational environment, but they're not really educated. And so when I look at children at risk, it's those children that have had some level of adversity in their life.

And that adversity then has put.

Them at risk within the school system because they're not naturally committed to learning. And so a lot of the kids bring into the classrooms, you know, things that are really good for their survival because they are trying to survive despite the system, or they're not surviving at all within the system. And so what they're bringing in for survival is really good for them, but it's really not good for education. And there's always been that disconnect. So I decided to do 37 years of international research to find out what the, you know, some of the best practices in the world were, and created a framework. And that framework is now called Education with Insight.

So basically, you know, I think at.

This point in time, we're really in a race with catastrophe on one side and education on the other. And I think there are major changes that need to happen. And I think that, you know, the. The foundation under which that shift needs to happen is you can't reform this system. The system is. Is so outdated and so antiquated in so many ways that you really have to reform, I mean, transform the entire system. And so I think there are values that undermine that. And so I opened a school 10 years ago to show people that it can be done. And so I own a preschool through grade eight school. And the values of that school begin with honoring and transforming.

So honoring for us, basically, is that I believe that each individual, whether it's a child that's a student or whether it's an educator or whether it's an administrator, that each individual needs to be honored with integrity and that their dignity needs to be preserved.

And so in my mind, honoring becomes.

A way of being. Being in the life of people, being in life itself. And it's. It's really what is going to close the door, has the potential to close the door to things like alienation and dissonance and, you know, having to navigate for a sense of belonging.

And the kids that I've worked with for all these years, which is well.

Over 5,000 of them.

Didn'T feel like they belonged.

And so the principal says.

Because, you.

Know, high C people are principal people.

The principle says that any human that becomes disconnected from its community has the potential to become a weapon of mass destruction. And so I think that's what we've seen in education, that there are a lot of children that are, that are trying to do the best they can to survive, but nonetheless have created a lot of disruption and destruction, sometimes toward themselves and sometimes toward other people. And for me, that's not okay. I've said for a long time, surviving is not the goal of thriving is. And so how do we help these children to begin to thrive?

How do we begin to replace what.

Has been well intentioned practices, but nonetheless very naive practices? Things like, you know, reward systems and detention and those sorts of things. How do we replace those with, you.

Know, something that is going to show some increased proficiency? And so my goal became 10 years ago to begin to frame a school and then to implement that school. So we were accredited two years after.

We opened the school because that's the requirement in Massachusetts. You have to be open for two years and you have to demonstrate that you meet all the same frameworks and benchmark marks to a higher or equal degree of that of the public schools. And we have exceeded the benchmarks every year.

That's amazing. That's amazing. I, I want to kind of ramp this up a little bit. I, I know you so well and just love you and honor you, but I want our audience to understand something about Janine. And she can't divulge everything that she knows because of legal reasons. But Janine has been working with children whose parents are in the witness protection program. In other words, these pieces of bad dudes out there, and they have been moved around or incarcerated, but they have children and the children still have specific needs. And Janine told me one time, she said, the reason I'm attracted to those kind of kids is because I was one of them myself. Now I don't think her parents were having the witness protection program, but she's very much attracted to kids who have learning challenges or are at risk. So they tell us a little bit about that as much as you can without divulging anything that's illegal or unethical.

So like I said, I mean, we, we operate off of principles. And so the title of this came from a principle. And it's, it's foundational principle of work that I've done over all the years. But it's the principle says teach, transform and transport. So what that means is that we have a responsibility as educators to teach children the skills and the attitudes that they need in order to be able to transform their lives in the best possible way so that they don't repeat sort of the sins of their, their parents or those that have, have brought them into the world.

And I believe that, that both for.

The parents as well, that if, if we provide them with the tools that they need to transport their, themselves in the best possible ways toward, and in.

In a way that they can transport.

Themselves to their definition of success, then it's a win win for everybody. And so we also have a program called Parenting with Insight. And it parallels our education with Insight. And so I do as much work with parents and families as I do with children. And I think that combination is a very powerful combination that when you get the parents aligned with understanding.

Rather than judgment.

It'S just a win win. So I've worked with children as young as 9 years old that are gang members. And I worked in an underperforming school. There were 15 children that were gang members. All the parents were really struggling with their own, their own sense of belonging.

And we had one year to turn that school around to a high performing school because it was an underperforming school as a result of those nine kids. And we turned that school around in one year. And it's a blue ribbon school today. And in that community, it was the school that nobody wanted their child in because it was so dangerous. So, you know, these children are coming in from, you know, a variety of different lifestyles, a variety of different.

Family structures, a variety of different cultures, a variety of different values. And so, you know, despite the fact we've been talking about diversity for a long time in this country, I don't think we get it. I think it still challenges us. And I think the solution to that is two values. I think the value of honoring and the value of transforming. And if we could commit a system to those two values, it truly could change the entire system.

Those words are easier understood than practice. So why don't you talk about what does it look like in the realm of honoring students or honor a school that produces or focuses on honor and then follow that up with what does transformation look like?

So there's, there's three parts within the framework. The first part is, is the whole profiles relationship piece. So it really parallels all the work that's been done at Personality Insights.

So we start off with the profile.

So when our students come into the school or any of the schools that.

I consult with around the country, the.

First thing that we do is the.

Bots, if, you know, if they're young kids. So at our school, the bots is done over the summer with the parents and the child. And we get the results of the.

Bots two weeks before school starts. We then put it into a pie graph so that our educators have an understanding of who are the children that.

Are going to be walking through this door.

We also ask the families to write on an index card.

You know, what.

Is your child's primary interest? So you have to explain that to the parents.

Like if your child could choose to do something, what would that be? And so we ensure that those things are present on the first day so.

The child immediately finds some sense of connection as they come in.

And then we do a lot of.

Work with, with our kids.

So the first six weeks of school is really about social and emotional kinds of things.

We introduce to our preschoolers into our.

Elementary, lower and upper elementary kids and.

Our middle school kids the concept of, of the temperament.

And so our older kids basically understand.

The model because they started off with us when they were younger.

But we teach the preschoolers that, that they're superheroes. And you can be a dis or c superhero and each superhero has superpowers and we would like you to use.

Those superpowers to, to help other people to be part of this class.

And so that's how we begin. But as they get older, we're into doing things like connecting the disc model to like literacy. So if you look at like Harry Potter and the four different houses of.

Harry Potter, they very much align to disc stuff.

And so the kids, so it's embedded, the whole framework is embedded into everything that we do.

So we start with honoring their profile that starts before they even come in as preschoolers, as three year olds, because we do the bots.

But then we start looking at their sensory profile, we look at their cognitive.

Profile, which is things like multiple intelligences.

Where are they n gifted. We aligned our discipline and our discipline policies to what we understand about disc. We have aligned. So I have a nature based school. So we have children that are outside for two and a half hours a day minimum learning and it's project immersion. So they're working on real life projects. For example, when we were in Covid, we were one of our first graders heard somebody talk about food insecurity. And so he came to school and asked Maria, the learning coach, like, what is food insecurity? And it led to a year long.

Project called the friend Fridge.

And so those kids built like the encasing for the friend fridge. They did fundraising to get the commercial outdoor fridge. They did lots of work to secure.

The food to put in the fridge.

And so every week our first and second graders were going to the friend.

Fridge in town and it's open to the community. And today that friend fridge is in multiple communities and we partner with 45 different businesses who are contributing food. And so our kids learned math through.

All of that, they learned woodworking through all of that. They learned how to work as a team through all of that. They learned how to give back to their community.

And that's the work that we do.

So I know it can be done because we've done it for 10 years successfully.

You are just such a breath of fresh air. I hope everyone's listening to see how easily Janine has incorporated the DISC model of human behavior at school. Talk about that just a little bit. I know you just did briefly. But share with everyone. Do you really think it's possible to educate or to raise children or to be a successful person without understanding the DISC model of human behavior?

Well, I can tell you with all the people that I've worked with.

So I, I'm working.

I'm in the second year of a contract with Nantucket, the Nantucket Public schools.

And this was the second year.

So the first year we, we introduced for a whole year the leadership team within the elementary school. And then this year we did a lot of work with the entire School. So 45 professionals within the school.

And next year we're going into the classrooms and doing the direct application.

And so one of the things that I keep hearing over all the years is I don't know how you can go back to teaching the way we used to teach once you know this. I've also heard over the years like, why isn't this mandatory for every person to be who is going to become an educator? And honestly, if, if I had the power within, within the states like some people do, I would go to the.

Colleges and I would reshape the entire college preparation program.

So that year one, if for anybody coming into a human service field education or whatever, year one would be nothing but the intrapersonal sides of emotional intelligence. So you would spend year one doing self awareness, which is the DISC model and other things, getting people to understand.

Themselves first of all.

And then it would also consist of.

Self regulation, because there are a lot of people in this field that are.

Unregulated and trying to teach children how to become regulated so that Would be year one. Year two would become the second part of emotional intelligence, which is social awareness. So very much paralleling what we learn in the disc model. Like I went to Atlanta in the 1990s. Dr. Rome wasn't even there the first time I went. It was like Julie and Rick and he was in England. And so I just kept going back so that I could meet him and have lunch with him. You know, it parallels like we learn in the model. Apply it first to yourself and then second apply it to others. And so I would align all of college education to that. So the second part, the second year would be the social awareness piece. Like how do you interact effectively with people who are different than you? And even how do you interact effectively with people who are the same as you? Because both can be challenging. And then the, the second part of that second year would be all the social skills. Like the relationship management piece. Like we have educators that don't know how to greet students. It's like I call them weaned on a pickle. It's like, like sour puss all day long. Like, hi, come on in. We're glad you're here. Hang up your backpack.

We got a lot of stuff to do today.

Like there's no joy and the kids know it. And so that would be the first two years and then the second two years you would start to go into education. But I would have it be a survey of different types of education so that somebody can then choose based on their profile what type of education they are best suited for.

So there are some folks that are.

More suited toward Montessori, which is a very peaceful, quieter, self directed, individualized approach to education. And there are others that are more gifted toward Waldorf, where there's a lot of arts involved. And then there are some people that are gifted to a traditional education and there are other people that would be gifted to a nature based and some.

Of the forest schools.

And I think what happens is a lot of people come into the field wanting to educate children, well intentioned, but then they get into a system and.

I was one of them.

So I taught in the public school for two years and quickly learned that was not the environment for me.

And I thought, well, this was a.

Waste of like all these college years. Like I had spent so much money and so much time studying. But then when I decided to become a therapist and went to work in a mental health center and I could see the connection between what educators were struggling with because we were asking educators at that time to take on the Expertise of a mental health professional without any credentials to do so, plus also be teachers. We were seeing a huge increase in challenges in the schools. And when I started to see that connection, I thought, this is cool. I'm just going to create my own framework and I'm just going to go out there and see what happens. And so my business developed as just word of mouth.

I never advertised, ever.

It was just word of mouth that people were looking for. What it was that that you have. And I said that to Carl Smith years ago. I said, Carl, you have to understand that you hold the cookie and everybody is looking for a bite of that cookie. The dance of interaction is the framework. And so as we went into this work, you know, I learned that education is a people industry. It's just the government that turned it into a task industry. Like it's all curriculum and outcomes now. And that's why we've lost so many people and why 40? The stress level of educators today is 40% higher than that of healthcare workers. It's 30% higher than that of the military. And so it's because you took people that were very people oriented people and very interested in empowering people and you turn the profession into tasks. And so I think it's time we bring the people back. So the framework says a child, but you can put whatever you want in there. It could be a parent, it could be a colleague, it could be whatever it is. But it always starts with a person. We look at the person. There are two critical questions that we first ask as you roll out the framework. So the first critical question that we ask is who is this child? And we're talking about who is this child beyond a learner, like who truly is this child?

How are they genetically wired? What is their temperament? What is their behavioral style that's related to their temperament? What is their sensory profile? And how does that impact their ability to function in life? What is their, their cognitive style or where are they naturally gifted in, in terms of learning? What is their passion and interests? Those are the things that we start with. And so the second question that we then ask is, and what has this child experienced? So I think we can all agree that we've all experienced a story. And some of these children have experienced things that do not position them well to be educated. They're not interested, they're just trying to get through life. And so you know that child, who that child is, and then what they've experienced is going to then interact with the environment. So as educators, one of the things that's critically important is not to try to fix. So one of the principles we operate off at the school is don't try to fix or change me because I'm not broken. Instead, understand me and teach me because I'm full of greatness. And so that's what we begin from. We begin from a strength space, which, having studied a lot of four model approaches before I went to Atlanta in the 90s, when I sat and listened to Rick and Julie and whoever else was there, I thought, this is the model. This. This is the one that truly has an ability to cross all bridges. That truly is a prevention model that doesn't label. And I thought, this is. This is the model. This is. Of all the ones that I studied, and there was over 200 of them, I said, this is the one, okay? And so what I tell educators is not only don't try to fix or change me because I'm not broken, but understand me and teach me because I'm full of greatness. But then you have to cultivate the conditions of the environment for that greatness to be invited. So in human behavior, there's only two purposes to the environment. One is to invite patterns of behavior, and the other is to inhibit patterns of behavior. And so, because every educator also has a disc profile, their teaching style is aligned to their disc profile. That, however, can bias against the majority of students in their class.

So there's a lot of work that gets done with cultivating the conditions of the environment. And what is the behavioral flexibility we need to see from an educator in order for them to be able to honor who the child is and what they've experienced? Okay. And so they go from there to a developmental pathway. So when children feel honored, when they are given the opportunity to be educated in a way that matches up well to how they naturally approach learning, then we'll have children that will follow a pathway of wellness. But when children are put into these scripted, one size fits all, and it's biased against most of them, then they follow survival. And when you work with children that are already coming from survival, that can be quite volatile. So I think there's three things that need to be adjusted. I think the first thing to be.

Adjusted is the quality of the relationships.

Now, we talked about that. Adjust the relationships according to the profiles. I think the second thing to be adjusted is the surroundings, the physical environment, and how, you know, where is it that we're actually educating these children? And then I think the third thing that needs to be adjusted is the whole programmatic piece or the skills. Like how are we teaching these children the skills they actually need to learn and what materials are we using? What is methodology we're using? I can remember Peter and Hosa saying to me years ago, we were up in Vermont and he said to me, janine, he said, my district just spent almost $500,000 for somebody to come in to teach us differentiation of curriculum. He said, I sat with you for three days at this conference and I learned how to differentiate curriculum environments and relationships. And you didn't charge close to $500,000.

And I think it just gets too complicated. It doesn't have to be complicated. It's really very simple. So the very things that lead to wellness can also be the very things that lead to survival. So it's about the quality of the relationships, it's about the quality of the surroundings, and it's about the quality of the teaching, the quality of the methods and materials that we're using. So if we use those that align with and honor our students, we get better outcomes than when they don't. But either way, you're going to end up with outcomes. So if we don't honor, if we don't create that shift, that paradigm shift, and believe in the strength based, the prevention based and all of that, then you're going to have children that are incredibly disempowered, eventually are going to become disconnected from education, have great potential to cause harm to themselves, others or others. And if we do honor, then they become empowered. And so those 15, 11 year olds that I was working with, that were gang members, all at the age of nine, many of them had been hospitalized quite a few times. It was their last shot. I was their last shot. Like I was told when I went there, if you don't reach these kids, they go into lockup. And so I said to the principal, wonderful woman, I said, elsie, you're not going to get me up at the hour. You need to get me up to drive two and a half hours one day a week for the next three years to ensure that we end up with 15 prisoners. And so we did a lot of really different things within that program. One of them was I said to her, like, we need two empty classrooms on the second floor when I come back next week. And she said, I don't have two empty classrooms. And I said, of course you don't, because it's not next week yet, but when I come back next week, we'll have two empty classrooms. And so I did. There were two empty classrooms. And so we told Those kids that they were leaders and we taught them leadership because they were already leading. They were leading in very violent ways on the streets. And so we taught them how to be leaders. We also built a crossfit gym so that they could get the movement they needed to be able to become self regulated human beings. And literally within a three month period, 320 on average, behavioral referrals to the office went down to zero. And we maintain that until April. And then in April, high stakes testing came along. You started to see some of the angst rising. The number went to 15 over a month, referrals to the office and by June it was back to zero.

So I know the framework works.

People have asked me, does it work? And I give them three answers. Yes, it works if you apply it consistently. The second answer is, it might work if you apply it inconsistently. And the third answer is, nope, it doesn't work if you never apply it.

You choose. That is, that's the framework.

I want everybody to know a couple of things here we begin to wind this down. Janine was the first one that taught me. Even though she came to the disc training in Atlanta back in the 90s and, and we got to know each other and become colleagues and friends, she is the first one that I ever heard make this statement. If you don't have this statement, you need to write it down somewhere. This is powerful. Janine was the one that taught me this. The following statement. DISC is a wellness model. Disk does not tell you what's wrong with you. The disk model of human behavior tells you what's right with you. Now you just gotta put that and think that through for a minute. DISC is a wellness model. All of the other ones that are out there tell you what's wrong with you. I took the MMP out the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory twice in graduate school. It tells you if you have emotional disturbances. I think they're probably still trying to find out where all my emotional disturbances are. But the truth of the matter is, DISC is a wellness model. Learn to use that when you're talking to clients. When you're sharing that with someone, just smile and say, just a heads up, DISC is a wellness model. This does not tell you what's wrong with you. It tells you what's right with you. I love that Janine was the one that taught that. And another thing that all of you need to have at your fingertips. A lot of times we get this, well, we don't have time for salt. And I'm going to ask Janine to address this, we, we don't have time for soft skills here. We really just don't have time for, you know, we have to go with our hardcore skills. History, English, math, science. We don't have time for these soft skills. Listen, learn to squeeze lemon into lemonade. The next time someone says to you that these are soft skills, look at them and smile and say, actually we have learned they are core skills. They are core skills. I don't care how much history, English, math and science, you know, if you don't know how to get along with people and you can't have understanding in relationships, you don't know core skills and core skills and soft skills and soft skills and core skills are the essence to life. Janit, if you would, as we start to wind this down, talk about the value of these core skills and how they have been the ones you have used to change people's lives.

Yeah. So you know a colleague of mine who passed away a few years back, but his statement was like, when all we have left is what can be tested. We have lost the art of humanity. And I think we have lost the art of humanity. And so as you look at wellness, because you're going to be challenged, like we don't do wellness here. The definition of wellness. Wellness is a science of optimal development. And so if education is not about optimal development, then why are we in the field? It's a science. So they can say all they want about soft skills, but it's a science. And part of that science is directly connected to emotional intelligence. And all of the work of Daniel Goldman and some of his colleagues has pointed to the fact that 85% of success in life is based on the four components that they describe as emotional intelligence. And so I think what's happening is that, that we truly have lost the art of humanity because people don't value, they see it as a waste of time to, to teach those things. But the reality is if you don't teach those things, then you're not going to have kids that are able to grasp all of the content because they won't have an understanding as to why they even need to know it. We do a lot of work. We have a wellness coach at our school. We have a year long curriculum that she implements. It's called Building a life. And so from the age of three years old, we step back and say, what are the actual skills that a.

Three year old needs to have in.

Order to be successful as they move on in life? By the time they're in seventh and eighth grade, it's like, the skills are very different. So we just did a. Finished the whole thing with the. With the older kids, and it was about looking at attitudes and looking at their character and their choices and their habits. And we broke it down into a jigsaw puzzle, and every child built their own life. We did one piece at a time for a series of lessons, and when they mastered that piece, they got to put the piece on the puzzle, and it was an actual puzzle of them when they finished. And so there's great value in that. There's a lot of research out there that says, you know, kids that. That have, you know, the. The social and emotional skills do far better in school and in life than those without them. People can say whatever they want. My mindset has always been like, that's your opinion. And then in my. The back of my head, the D type comes out and says, even if it's wrong, it's still your opinion, and you're entitled to it. And then I just keep moving forward. When I started in this field, people said to me, you will never make it because you're too far out of mainstream. And 48 years later, I am still here. And most of those people are not.

You know, I. I just think this work is too important. It's too significant. And I think when a person, regardless of age, background, whatever, when a person starts to feel significant, that's where the rubber meets the road. Okay? And part of helping kids to feel significant is letting them know that they are valued for who they are and what they are naturally designed to become.

Like, there's a child at my school. He's in fourth grade.

He came to us two years ago, did miserably in another environment, came to us. And I was working with him this year, and he said to me, will you help me? And I said, sure, I'd be happy to help you. And he was writing out some sentences and things, and he skipped one. And I said, did you notice that you skipped one? I don't know if it was intentional or if it was. If you just skipped over it, but I'd like you to go back and review it. And he said, no, it was intentional. And I said, why don't you want to write that? He said, because I don't want to.

Write what I want to write.

And I said, it's just you and I. And honestly, Nate, if you don't want me to see it, that's okay, too. There'll be a day that you'll want me to see It. And he said, no, you can see it, but don't tell anybody. And I said, okay. And he wrote, I want to be smart.

And I said to him, you want to be smart? You don't think you're smart? And he said, well, my brother calls me sped and he tells me how stupid I am. And all the teachers that I had before told me that I couldn't be educated, that I was a dumb kid, like. And so I said to him, nate, listen carefully, babe, okay?

Listen carefully.

Everybody's smart in some way. Everybody is. Part of building your life with, with Miss Peggy is to figure out how you're smart, because everybody is smart in some way. And just because you might not be smart in everything that other people think you should be smart in. Nate, you're never going to be world class in everything, babe. You're never going to be world class in everything. But you can become world class in something. And once you find what that is, pursue that and learn as much as you can about it, because that's going to be your future. And he started to cry. And I thought, like, that kid is a different kid in the two years we've had him. A different kid.

So that's the work.

I mean, there's so much fulfillment in the work.

Yeah, yeah. You know, you not only speak to our mind, you speak to our heart. I just so grateful for you. I, I look at people on this call, you know, I know some better than others. I see Karen Wagner and the work she does. She has such a heart for kids and parents and educators. Mary Catherine Williams, Ben Smith. I've been to his school when he was principal there in Utah, and they're just so, so many people who love the field of education and want to be difference makers. I want to leave it on a high note if you could tell all of us the field of education is so big. There are millions of students. There are million, hundreds of thousands of schools, and everybody's got their own opinion. Tell us what you would encourage us to do to be able to make a difference in the lives of, of young people, our own children, and others we come in contact with.

Yeah, I think the, the best thing to do is well, in education. I think the best group to work with is the parents, because the parents have the voice that can shift the system to go in. Education is a closed system. So they don't like, like the secrets getting out.

So they don't bring in a lot of people. It's like. But it's a highly competitive business as well. Like the superintendents compete against each other, who has the best district, all that kind of stuff. So I think the, to break into a system may not be the best route, but to get the ear of parents and to educate the parents on what education could be. Because right now we don't have a system of education in the United States. We have a system of schooling. And so like, I talked to Arne Duncan, who was the federal secretary under President Obama. I've done a ton of work on the border with all the immigration coming in through, through Texas. I've been going down there now for 18 years. And I talked to Arne Duncan and basically what he said to me is, Janine, we sent you down there so that you get outcomes. He said, education no longer is about the student, it's about testing and outcomes. And I thought that's a really sad statement. Like, I think there's parents that probably feel passionately about the fact that it's about kids and their kids. So I would work with some, some of the parents and try to get the parent voice to start to speak up. Like, here's some simple changes that you might want to think about. Even if it's a one to one with a teacher. This is who my child is. This is how they learn best. You know, if you ever need my help, I'd be willing to, to come in and volunteer kind of stuff. So it does, it doesn't become like an antagonistic kind of relationship, but truly a partnership. And so I know at our school, like, we couldn't function without the, the parent voice. Like we couldn't function without dead boys. And so I think that's a place to begin. But I also think, you know, talking to the kids, I think if you can get into a district and talk with the children, you know, I have applied this to bullying situations. I have applied this to, you know, academic situations. I have applied it to restorative practices. I mean, it's vast. There's so many opportunities, but I would start small. Like, I know when I started, I was working in some Head Start programs and somebody said to me, do you ever talk to parents? I said, nope, never talked to parents. Like, I don't like to talk to people actually.

But they said, well, you know, would you come to our church? We have on Sundays, we have like a half hour coffee hour after the service and we would just love to have you sit and talk to some parents. And that's how I started. I just started talking to parents and then I found out that parents have jobs and the next thing I knew I was in the court system. And the next thing I knew I was in this school district. The next thing I knew I was like, so now I just stop at coffee shops and I always talk to the people and that leads to something. So I think it's just a matter of knowing you have what education is talking about what education discusses in professional development. You have the system available to you that encompasses all of that supervision, leadership, all of that can be addressed through this system.

Wow, that's such powerful. And you basically have taken the disc model of human behavior. For those of you that don't know, her book is called the Dance of Interaction. If you do not have a copy of that, the dance of Interaction. And the whole idea is you got to learn how to dance with someone and keep in step. And the only way you can do that is by understanding personality and learning styles and those sort of things. Tell us about your two new books that we're going to be publishing as we can talk about this for you that you've already written. What are they called and what are they about?

The one that's with the editor right now, it's called Educating the Heart. And so it's looking at all of the out of control tendencies of the fun book and the areas of dysregulation.

That go along with temperament and how do you actually strengthen those. So the idea becomes you don't have to wait until a child needs like.

Some sort of plan or some therapy or whatever. People think they need that.

If you see a child that comes into your class with high D tendencies.

You know that there's going to be.

Some, some dysregulation around anger, possibly around.

Activity level, you know, so you just follow the model. So it's. Every chapter is related to an area.

Of dysregulation within the disc model and.

How you actually teach that. The second, the second book coming out, which will be probably by the fall.

Is called through the Eyes of a Child.

And so that's the work that we did in, in the school turnaround and the story of one child that was part of that school, that was a gang member, had been hospitalized three times, had experienced electric talk, shock therapy. Lots and lots of things going on for that child and what we did for that child and how today, two years ago, he graduated as a valedictorian of his class.

And so it's going to be the story of that child and what we actually did on the day to day basis working with a team of incredible administrators.

Incredible.

To achieve the work that needed to.

Be done for those children.

So every one of those kids is.

No longer a gang member. They all graduated from high school and I lost track of them after that.

I'll tell you something that I've been doing this 33 years full time. In 1971, I was a high school math teacher. So you know, that goes back a long, long way. That was my first job. I taught high school math, just basic math. And I learned real quickly, even though I didn't know disc to keep your D and I students busy because if you don't, they will get in trouble. Your S and Cs are going to pretty much come along and go along. So I taught math and I had all my D's and I's up at the board constantly doing work and I, I pretty much kept them out of trouble. I remember my principal, Mr. Garland Watkins, he used to walk by my classroom and look in and he would just walk off and laugh and shake his head because he knew I was old school. Old school when I grew up was you read out loud, you go to the board, you get everything and you get embarrassed by everybody and then you eventually learn how to do it. So, but here's my theory for all of you. This is Rome ism. I can't prove it, but if I could wave a magic wand, I would have kindergarten and elementary age kids all be taught by eyes and and S's. Eyes and S's would be fun and exciting and they would love them. Then when they got in middle school, they would meet a bunch of D teachers because the D teachers would let those middle school kids know, you are not going to run over me. And then when they got in the high school they would have all C teachers because C's like Patrick actually are smart enough to teach information. So in high school they would meet all of their C teachers so they could actually learn to get an education. Now I know that's ridiculous, but in a perfect world that might play out pretty well. And, but we all need some of all of these teachers teaching us all along the way. So just a little fun note there that I've been thinking about in my spare time. I'll, I'll give you the last word on this. Tell us if you would. Maybe something that would be valuable to know. You have some trainings coming up. How can people keep in touch and follow you? That'd be the best way.

Yeah.

So my, My website is www.janine fitzgerald.com and I do professional development all over.

The country every day of the week somewhere.

So the schedule is pretty full. You know, you can email me. My email is T as in Tom, P as in Paul Fitz, f I t z45o l.com and if you wanted to call, it's 978-413-4372.

And I think the last thing that I. I think is important. It's two quotes, one from E. Cummings, and it says, to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing.

Its best night and day, to make.

You everybody but yourself means to fight.

The hardest battle which any human can fight and never stop fighting. And I think there are a lot of students today that are in the fight, okay? They're just trying to be them.

And I think the last is the.

Last slide in the packet.

And that slide says when our students are not honored and respected for who they are, then they are going to grow up disenfranchised from their authentic selves and are going to seek to connect in many, many afflicted ways. And we are right now, in a.

Time in our history with the highest rate of anxiety in our students, the highest rate of depression and suicide in our students.

We have seen an increase in stress.

A decrease in resilience. We have seen an increase in entitlement and narcissism and less empathy, more peer cruelty.

And so I think this soft skills, as you called them earlier, are not soft skills at all. Like the teaching of these things are.

Actually going to save lives. And so this work is so incredibly important. And I thank you all for your commitment to the students that you serve, the families that you serve, wherever you.

Are in the country.

Education is not a valued profession today. There aren't many people coming into it. It's put a lot of stress on all of us to pick up the.

Slack when there's openings and we can't find people to fill them.

But in from my heart, as the child with challenging behavior, you are my hero.

And that's why I will never retire.

From this profession, because it was an educator, two of them in fact, that literally saved my life.

Okay?

So use your power of your influence well.

And it was a pleasure to be with you.

And if I can be of any assistance, please let me know.

Well, if ever anyone was a difference maker, it's you. Thank you all for being part today. Janine, again, you can see why I started out by saying she's one of my favorite people in the world. She is so deep with all the information she shares. And we'll be following up and sending you some more information about her upcoming books. And if we decide we'll have another educators conference in Atlanta or in New England somewhere, we'll keep you posted about that as well.

For more information about this podcast, please visit www.becomingwiserpodcast.com.