Taking Social Emotional Learning Schoolwide: The Formative Five Success Skills for Students and Staff

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome back to the show Dr. Thomas Herr. Tom is the Emeritus Head of School at the New City School in St. Louis and a scholar in residence at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He's the author of numerous books on multiple intelligences, grit, and SEL, including his new book, which we're here to talk about today, Taking Social-Emotional Learning Schoolwide, the Formative Five Success Skills for Students and Staff.

[00:42] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:44] SPEAKER_01:

Tom, welcome back to Principal Center Radio.

[00:46] SPEAKER_00:

Wow, Justin, I hear that and I think, I don't know who this guy is.

[00:48] SPEAKER_01:

Well, it's an honor to, uh, to speak with you again and to, uh, have the chance to catch up on your work. Now, you have been busy. Like many, uh, experts in our field, you seem to be bad at retirement. You've been busy with this new research project. Uh, tell us, uh, where your travels have taken you and, and what you've been on the hunt for.

[01:06] SPEAKER_00:

Well, I mean, you're right, but retirement, you know, is a state of mind. I mean, I'm busier than I ever thought I would be, but I'm having fun, and I feel like I'm making a difference, so who can argue with that? So, with my last book, The Formative Five, and now with my new book... You know, a couple times a month I go out and I talk to people.

[01:24]

I've been to Dubai, I've been to the Philippines, I've been to the United States a great deal. And it feels good. Every time I get on a plane, I'm like, why am I doing this? And then every time I get back on the plane, I think, hey, I was helpful. So it's hard to argue with that. In my role at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, I'm a scholar in residence and I'm teaching in the head leadership program.

[01:44]

So I'm basically preparing young people who want to be principals It's really fun, because as part of that job, I go into probably 20 schools a year, and I'll talk with them, I'll talk with their principal, and the issue of culture, which is a model in my new book, really overwhelms me. And, you know, the listeners and you, we all know you walk into a school, and within 45 seconds, you get a feel for it. And that's become even more powerful to me now that I've been visiting schools, and I see culture as a wonderful tool to help support social-emotional learning.

[02:18] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so in this book, you're looking at the role of culture and how culture is shaped to support students and staff's social and emotional learning. And, you know, this is something that we've heard a lot about, I would say, over the last, maybe, you know, two to three years. SEL has kind of become the big, uh, you know, the big watchword. Why do you think schools are gravitating toward SEL as a concept? Or, like, what is drawing people to SEL?

[02:45] SPEAKER_00:

Super question. I think there are two issues which come together. The first one is, I believe we're feeling a bit of a reaction from Ronald Reagan's talk, getting test scores as the number one thing in the 80s, no child left behind. For many, many years, educators have felt constrained. I think we have grown tired and weary and weary ...of looking at kids very narrowly, so I think that's what's happening, and SEL is a way of saying, hold on a second, these kids are more than percentiles, uh, they're more than just numbers.

[03:18]

The other factor that's happening, and this, I think, is really tragic, is you look around the world, and, uh, things seem to not be getting better. Uh, there's a lot of discussion that's not helpful. Here in the United States, we've become very polarized. And I think one way to look at that differently is by saying, well, what can we do to make the world better tomorrow? In my new book, the mantra, the statement that I've got over and over again, is who you are is more important than what you know. And I think every educator that I know would agree with that.

[03:48]

The question is, okay, what do I do about it? How can I cause that to happen? And that's where test scores, while they have merit, you know, our kids need to do well on them, the reality is they fall very short of helping us prepare kids to be good people.

[04:01] SPEAKER_01:

Let's talk about those formative five, building on your previous book. So, when you say, you know, it's much more important who you are than what you know, you have, you know, five traits or five characteristics that you believe, you know, that we can develop in students and that we have a responsibility to help students develop. What are those, just briefly?

[04:23] SPEAKER_00:

Well, yeah, and I call them the success skills in their empathy, self-control, Integrity, embracing diversity in grit. And, uh, when I give presentations, you know, one of the questions is often, well, how did you get those? And, like you, I'm fortunate. I've worked in schools. I've seen kids, and I'm old enough that students I had at age five and ten are now adults. And I can see what they're doing and who's making a difference.

[04:48]

And, to me, those success skills really are what we need. Um, for your viewers, this might be a tip that they would enjoy. Like many of them, like you, I've done back-to-school nights years and years and years, you know. And the parents come in, and I've got them, and they're welcoming. And, you know, the reality is they want to get to the classrooms. They don't want to hear me.

[05:08]

So I've got about a 20-minute window. And I always talk about what a great school year it's going to be. A few years ago, what I did is said, let's change the model of it. And when people came into the theater...

[05:19]

Uh, auditorium at our school, they all got a three-by-five card, and I, they, you know, looked at me puzzled, and I said, before we, uh, go any further, on that card, write down what are the qualities that you want your children to get when they graduate from our school. And people wrote, and then I said, turn to your neighbors and a little sharing. Well, Justin, I knew it was successful, because I couldn't get the crowd to stop talking. And then I said, call out, what, what, what are you talking about? What are you saying? Well...

[05:44]

Hardly anybody said, oh, I want my kid to be a good reader or writer. Now, to be fair, they probably expected that. But what they talked about was they wanted kids who left who were kind, who were confident, who could work with lots of different people, who were excited about what they were doing, who were responsible, all these kinds of social-emotional learning skills. And what Ivan did is said, hey, thank you. Let me tell you why you're going to be so pleased about what we're doing this year. And by doing that, I was trying to, if you will, minimize the disconnect.

[06:15]

So often, we only talk with parents about their children's academic progress, and then we wonder why they only wonder about their academic progress. And it seems to me we need to change the dialogue and help them see that the goal is not a success at the end of the semester or a Dean's List, both of which are very good, But the goal is really helping these children become good people.

[06:38] SPEAKER_01:

Do you encounter any pushback from either parents or educators who say, you know, actually, this is a great list of characteristics, empathy, self-control, integrity, embracing diversity, and grit. Those all sound great, but those are for families to worry about. Those are outside of our scope as a school. What do you say to that when people say, that's just not our business?

[06:58] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I hear less of that than I anticipated, but I do hear it. And then I say, well, let's step back. What are we trying to develop in our schools? What do we want? And we come back to the same place. And I think that the fine line is, when you talk about social and emotional learning, there are two kinds of success goals, if you will.

[07:17]

There are moral characteristics of character and performance characteristics of character. And we all buy into the performance characteristics. We all want... grit, if you will.

[07:28]

We want self-control. We want kids who are going to work hard. The moral, we tend to sometimes shy away from, because we think, oh, that's church, that's synagogue, that's mosque. And I'm saying, hold on a second. We're talking about good people. Uh, this transcends whatever your metaphysical belief is.

[07:43]

This transcends what's happening at the home. And it seems to me that too often, by avoiding the dialogue, We have sold ourselves short and our kids short. And as we talk about it with parents, they get on board and do teachers. The hesitation that I get from teachers more often is, Tom, this sounds really great, but I don't have enough time. And they're right. Uh, you know, we educators are great at adding new programs.

[08:07]

We're terrible at getting rid of them. And there's always more to do than time allows. And so, that's why in the new book, one of the things I tried to do was use school culture as a tool, so it's not only, okay, uh, at 10 o'clock we're gonna work on self-control, it's what can we do using the halls, the walls, Well, Tom, as we've...

[08:39] SPEAKER_01:

SEL has been a hot topic for a couple of years now, and of course, school-wide, PBIS has been a hot topic for a decade or more. Um, but I think a lot of educators think of SEL as something that we worry about in the individual classroom, and you've written this book to help us see what schools can do school-wide, you know, at the culture level. What are some of the implications for educators who want to go from, you know, this is just something that individual teachers work to develop with their students, to actually a school-wide approach that we can do more systematically?

[09:15] SPEAKER_00:

First of all, that if you're a teacher and nobody else buys into it, absolutely, you're better to do it than not to do it. Having said that, the more we can work as a collaborative, the more we can look at school-wide messaging, the better we will be. And let me give you a very specific example of that. In the book, I use a model of culture by a man named John Coleman, and he talked about vision values, practices, narrative, people, and place. And I've got a chapter on each one of those in my book, and I talk about how they can use, uh, we can use them to support SEL. So let me talk about place.

[09:47]

Um, when you walk in a school, if you walk in a school at midnight... Years ago, I wrote an article for Educational Leadership on the schoolhouse at midnight, and I said, aliens get a principal at midnight, take him to the school, what's the messages? And it seems to me that's a, a underutilized aspect. And so, first of all, When I walk in schools these days, I see lots and lots of stuff on the wall, lots of kids' artwork.

[10:10]

Uh, there's a yes, but coming, and it's really great, yes, but if I look closely at that, too often, the stuff that's up is only representing the top 20% of the school, of the kids'. The artwork is great artwork. The papers are great papers. But there's a whole lot of kids who aren't on the walls and halls. And I'm thinking, hold on a second. What's the message there?

[10:29]

If we talk about inclusion, if we talk about growth, what does that look like? And so, looking at your walls and halls as a way to help develop social and emotional learning by valuing those traits. Empathy. Everybody says we need more empathy. What a wonderful faculty dialogue it would be To convene a committee and say, empathy is going to be important. How can we show that on the halls and laws?

[10:50]

How can we get kids to participate? What would that look like? I, Tom, her, don't have the answer. The answer that's best comes from the faculty. What a powerful kind of a discussion that would be. What a dialogue we could develop by doing that.

[11:04]

The other thing that I'll say, and this is a mistake that I made for years, and my guess is many of your listeners have, too. I worked in schools for, well, over 40 years, and every year, the day before school started that night, the building was crazy. Uh, everybody was in there getting the rooms ready. Uh, the last school that I led, teachers had keys, so they'd be there at 10.30 midnight the night before. So, on that first day of school, kids came in, the building was beautiful, it was perfect.

[11:33]

And I was part of that. And now, as I think about social emotional learning, I think, wow, that was a missed opportunity. Because what happened is those kids were walking into rooms that weren't really theirs. They were the teacher's rooms. What if, instead, I had been wise enough to say, hey, this is great. Let's get our rooms ready 75%, 80%.

[11:52]

And let's make sure we have space so that when those kids come in, they can make it their room. I didn't do this. I should have had a space for family photos. How do you define family? What does it look like? If kids don't have photos, let's draw it.

[12:06]

Let's talk about who we are. Let's bring in photos of kids younger. Let's have measurements on the wall, how high we are. If we talk about social-emotional learning, we're really respecting the individual. When we talk about empathy, we talk about a couple levels of it. There's cognitive empathy.

[12:23]

which is knowing about other people's feelings, there's emotional empathy, which is understanding, and then there's actionable empathy doing it. If we believe in that, how can we reflect that in the classroom, in the walls, in the halls? And by doing that as colleagues, by working together, all of a sudden, it's a little less of a teacher working alone, feeling overwhelmed, or a principal feeling like she's pushing uphill. The team is always stronger than the individual.

[12:50] SPEAKER_01:

Tom, I don't know if you've come across any schools like this in your consulting work, but I sometimes will hear from teachers who get expectations passed on to them from their administrators about how they need to, you know, be attentive to SEL and care about their students' holistic needs, and yet, as teachers, it's very clear that their needs in terms of social and emotional and, uh, you know, their, their kind of psychological safety and, and well-being are being neglected. Um, so how does this, how does this play out for teachers and administrators? You know, it's, it's not, it can't just be about the kids, right?

[13:26] SPEAKER_00:

Unfortunately, the dilemma you describe is not a new one to me. Uh, we hear that a lot. And in my book, one of the things I say is we can't leapfrog the teachers. If you're a, if you're a school leader and you're gonna get into SEL, and I hope you are, what you need to, do is begin by thinking, how can I engage the teachers? How can we involve them? The kinds of activities that we expect, hope, teachers would do with their classrooms, I would argue, should be happening at faculty meetings.

[13:51]

Faculty meetings shouldn't be one way with me telling you what I know. They need to be engaging, interactive kinds of experiences. Social-emotional learning, everybody in the building will benefit if we work on it. Uh, another example, Jess, that I'll give you, and I was guilty of this, and I had a couple teachers confront me on it, uh, thankfully, is I would always talk to people about how school year is a marathon, it's not a sprint, make sure you take time for yourself, take time for your family, and one teacher said to me, you know, it'd be a lot easier for us to do that if we saw you doing that. And I was very humbled, and I thought, you know, you're right. Uh, if I believe this, I need to practice it, and I need to show it.

[14:32]

Uh, if I believe that we should all be learning, and I'm learning, I need to show you that I'm learning, too. And again, it's a very different cry from the leader telling people what to do. It's the people, the leader engaging people so that we do it collaboratively. One of the things that I'm particularly pleased about with the book, and I think that I have lots of good ideas, comma, but...

[14:53]

Then I reach out to other people, and there's lots of better ideas out there. So, so in this book, what I've done is taken, uh, ideas and examples from schools I visited. Uh, schools in Washington, Iowa, Maryland, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Missouri. And these are all schools that are working on the formative five, that are working on social emotional learning. So I've got examples of how they did things there. There was a school in Tennessee, and the fourth grade was responsible for helping...

[15:22]

It was fascinating to me. The teacher said that when they began asking the kids, of course, fourth grade kids thought that what fourth grade kids want is what everybody wants. And they use this as an opportunity to teach empathy by having their fourth graders survey the other children in the school, went up to eighth grade, what do older kids want, what do younger kids want. So, again, what we're getting is an activity, a teaching tool using that. I've got a story from a teacher in South Carolina who read a book about museums not reflecting diversity and wound up with his classroom having children bringing artifacts and each child doing a little museum of things that were valuable to them. Uh, there's a school in Washington State, the Ella Baker School.

[16:03]

They don't talk about faculty meetings. They have learning meetings. And so in my book, I've got over 70 educators, thankfully, who took the time to share their thoughts with me over the phone, through emails, uh, social-emotional coaches. And so the, the, the ideas are in there. And to me, a way to start would be to take some of these ideas and throw them to a faculty committee. Would that work here?

[16:24]

How could we improve? What would be different? And again, the key is the synergy that comes from folks collaborating and learning together in a... in a good school, everybody learns.

[16:34]

And I think in a school that values social-emotional learning, the formative five, candidly, everybody's social-emotional learning increases as well. Um, last thing on this, and this is another one of these obvious in retrospect, when I went to the school, uh, at Ella Baker School in Redmond, Washington, where they're implementing the formative fives, spent a day there. They had an assembly. I talked with the teachers. I visited classrooms. It was wonderful.

[16:59]

They had a time, uh, for me to meet with the support staff. the playground aides, uh, security, bus drivers, to talk about what they're doing with social-emotional learning. And we know those are important times in kids' lives, and too often those folks aren't part of the solution, and that's a missed opportunity.

[17:16] SPEAKER_01:

Let's talk about support staff, because it's interesting. If you think about who's watching the playground, you know, recess, who is monitoring the lunchroom, who is monitoring bus loading, a lot of those transitional times when issues tend to arise between students or, you know, as students are arriving and leaving, you know, it's just a time of day when teachers really are not in control of the environment, and that's when a lot of things tend to crop up. And yeah, the staff that we have supervising in those areas, you know, if we're not personally there as an administrator, often it is the staff that we most leave out of all of our training and all of our discussions. How do we enlist that group of staff, knowing that sometimes time is an issue, maybe they're not on contract for faculty meetings, maybe they're supervising the buses while we're still meeting? What can we do to bring them in and truly make them a part of that culture and shaping that culture?

[18:11] SPEAKER_00:

You're absolutely right. And the short answer, and it's going to vary by school, is we need to engage them. They need to feel part of the solution. They need to feel ownership. And you're right, during staff meetings, I mean, if I could, not every meeting, because they wouldn't need to be there, but I would certainly invite them a lot of the times. Um, you know, if you've got a school where you celebrate staff birthdays, is that everybody's birthday?

[18:33]

So as the custodian's birthday gets celebrated as well, uh, what does this look like? What's the message? And I... And again, forming a group, a committee, and talking about what does this look like?

[18:42]

How would this work? It's powerful. While we're on this, Justin, let me kind of make a left turn here and talk about another issue. Uh, that's very relevant. You made the case that often problems arise because we're not there, and you were referring to the playground or the bus, and you're absolutely right. An issue that I've been talking about in class, and I've written an article about it, if you're a listener, send me an email, I'll send them the column, was basically about restrooms.

[19:09]

And the case I make there is that restrooms are really an ignored area in our school, basically, and that's a problem. I was at a meeting a couple of years ago with administrators talking about issues, and it cropped up, particularly in the high schools, that restrooms are where problems occur. Nobody has ownership. And if you walk in a restroom in a school, often it's not a restroom that we, the adults, would want to use. What's the message to the kids there? So where I've been coming out is restrooms should feature student art Um, they should be areas that we show the respect of the kids, just like we do in the halls.

[19:44]

And it seems to me, when we talk about social-emotional learning, we're talking about children being the kinds of people we want to live next door to. We need to be thinking about all of their school experiences, not just in a traditional classroom.

[19:57] SPEAKER_01:

I love that theme of ownership that has come up several times in our conversation today, Tom, that giving faculty ownership of, you know, of these discussions and including support staff and giving students ownership of more of the, you know, the physical space around campus where they are experiencing their education. And I love that kind of takeaway statement of, are we cultivating the kinds of students that we would want to live next door to? Because I think none of us would say, you know what, I really want to live next door to people who had high test scores. Like, that's not really what makes a good neighbor, right? I want to live next door to kids who met standard in the eighth grade. No, we want to live next to people who are good neighbors, who have that empathy, and who have that integrity.

[20:41]

So, Tom, uh, as I often do on Principal Center Radio, I wanted to close out our interview today by asking, uh, what you would have school leaders do. You know, just based on your message in the book and the research that you've done leading up to this book, uh, if you could wave a magic wand and get school leaders everywhere, uh, to take a particular action, uh, what would that be?

[21:01] SPEAKER_00:

The first action is I'd have them buy my book. The second action is I would have them ask a question. And what I would do is ask that question of their faculty, their staff. How can we help our students become better people? And by asking that question, there's a couple biases. The first one is it's not something I can do alone, no matter how good of a principal I am.

[21:23]

The second aspect of that is it's something we have to do collaboratively, and we don't know the answer because it's going to vary by school. My school is different than your school. And while we want good neighbors, we want good kids always, it's going to vary by our context. And so, to me, starting off by asking that question, Inevitably, we're going to get other people around the table. Inevitably, we're going to find a solution that works for our school. We're going to make some mistakes.

[21:48]

It's not going to go as well as we want. We're going to be frustrated, but we're going to be a whole lot better off because we tried and we learned and we worked together. And if we didn't go down that road...

[21:57] SPEAKER_01:

So the new book is Taking Social-Emotional Learning Schoolwide, The Formative Five Success Skills for Students and Staff. And, Tom, if people want to learn more about the Formative Five and maybe bring those to their school, where's the best place for them to go online to learn more about you and get in touch with you?

[22:13] SPEAKER_00:

Well, you can go to my website, thomasrherr.com, recognizing that I'm not as good as it appears. My mother would disagree, but it's a website, so it promotes me. But anyway, if you go there, there's a lot of my writing. You can send me an email. We're all on the same team, so if I can help, I'm happy to do that.

[22:33] Announcer:

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