Join us for a special discussion with McAlister Greiner Huynh the educator also known as The Neurodivergent Teacher.
McAlister Greiner Huynh is a National Board Certified special educator, behavior support specialist, consultant, and international speaker who calls North Carolina, USA home. She has been working with and learning from Neurodivergent individuals professionally for twelve years, steadily growing in her passion for neurodiversity, disability culture, and radical acceptance. McAlister is the educator behind “The Neurodivergent Teacher” on Facebook and Instagram, where she connects with families, professionals, and neurodivergent folks worldwide to share philosophies around teaching, self-advocacy skills, accessibility, and coping strategies.
Join us for a special discussion with McAlister Greiner Huynh the educator also known as The Neurodivergent Teacher.
McAlister Greiner Huynh is a National Board Certified special educator, behavior support specialist, consultant, and international speaker who calls North Carolina, USA home. She has been working with and learning from Neurodivergent individuals professionally for twelve years, steadily growing in her passion for neurodiversity, disability culture, and radical acceptance. McAlister is the educator behind “The Neurodivergent Teacher” on Facebook and Instagram, where she connects with families, professionals, and neurodivergent folks worldwide to share philosophies around teaching, self-advocacy skills, accessibility, and coping strategies.
Well hello there and happy Thursday or whatever day of the week it happens to be that you're watching or listening to this. This is the alliance against seclusion restraint Live series. My name is Guy Stevens. I'm the founder and executive director of the alliance against seclusion restraint. If you're not familiar with the Alliance, we're an organization that started really to look at a lot of the punitive things that were being done to kids in schools, restraint, seclusion, suspension, expulsion, corporal punishment, often things that are being done in the name of behavior often being done to disabled children, black and brown children, children with a trauma history, we've kind of set out on a mission to try to influence changes in not only laws and policies, but the way that children are supported in schools across the country and beyond. always really excited to say we've got an international audience. And I hope you will keep me an honest person here today and tell me who you are and where you're from. And I look to see some of our friends from across the globe. But please, in the chat, tell us who you are, where you're from, and we'd love to know who you are watching today. As always, I am really excited to have our guests today. I was just because we were getting ready to go on, you know, talking to our guests and saying how excited I was. And I really mean that it's such a pleasure to talk to all the amazing people that we talked to, and have the opportunity to share them with all of you, and I hope that we're able to make some positive change. So today, very excited to have Macalester Greiner hun joining us for a special discussion, we're going to be having kind of a interview discussion, hopefully, learning a lot, Macalester course is the educator behind the neuro divergent teacher. So I'm sure as I say that you're like, Ah, okay, neurodivergent teacher probably have seen some of the amazing work that McAlister has done, probably seen some of the videos that have been out there, and really great stuff. So as always, I want to remind you that our session is being recorded. And as always, it's available after the fact on Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. We also make an audio only podcast version available that you can listen to on iTunes, Spotify, any of your favorite podcast software. So with all that, let's get to the good stuff. I'm so excited today. Let me introduce our guest, and I'm going to bring up McAllister here and give us a little bit of a background here. So McAllister is a national board certified special educator, behavioral support specialists, consultant, international speaker, who calls North Carolina USA home. That's not too terribly far from here. And a place that we frequently travel through is we're going family in Florida, so we go through North Carolina a lot, usually good traffic in North Carolina. She has been working with and learning from neurodivergent individuals professionally, for 12 years, steadily growing her passion for neurodiversity, disability, culture, and radical acceptance. Macalester is the educator behind the neuro divergent teacher on Facebook and Instagram, where she connects with families, professionals, and neurodivergent folks worldwide to share philosophies around teaching self advocacy, accessibility coping strategies. And if you're like me, and follow Macalester on any of these platforms, there are are just, you know, these moments of brilliance that come across and you're like, ah, that's, that's it. So it's always great McAllister to welcome someone that is doing this work, doing this work that I really believe is making a difference in the lives of many kids and many adults. So it's such a pleasure to have you here with us today. Great to be here. So we're going to have a conversation today and hopefully not only conversation, hopefully we'll have a lot of fun. I do want to remind people that are watching tell us who you are and where we're from. And I see a couple of people already weighing in here we've got Becca, an educational advocate from New Hampshire. I've got our friend Floyd. Floyd is tuning in from Tulsa, Oklahoma. And we've got Susan here, a advocate and parenting coach from Denver, Colorado. And we've got somebody here also from Washington State autistic parent and two autistic girls with IPS. My youngest is a emerging high tech. AAC user. That's fantastic. Another teacher here joining us from San Diego so and as I promised you, we tend to have people from all over the world. So I'm hoping that my New Zealand friends are not still sleeping. Because tomorrow is like Friday morning, I think in New Zealand and Australia. We've got somebody here from Long Island, New York as well. It's so exciting to have you, you know, I've kind of followed you on social media for a while. And you know, they're just these things that would pop up and, you know, these videos that you would do a lot of the like the Tick Tock kind of videos and and, you know, it's it's 30 seconds of brilliance sometimes that you're just like, yes, yes, you know, this is somebody that gets it. So I wanted to start by law learning a little bit more about you kind of your story. You know, how did you kind of get down the road of education and being a special educator? So can you start off by telling us a little bit about, you know, what brought you into education?
McAlister Greiner Huynh:Yeah, so I'm from a family of educators, my mom has been a teacher for 35 years. I have amps that are that are in education as well. And so I kind of grew up in the education system. And like, I never had that weird moment where you realize teachers don't sleep at school because like, the teacher that I've known for forever sleeps at my house. So it's kind of a weird thing that you realize when you grew up in a family of a teacher, all these things that people are like, What do you mean the teachers outside of school like da, but yeah, so my mom's in education. I knew I wanted to be in education. When I was in high school, I was in North Carolina Teaching Fellows Program. In college. I originally wanted to teach high school English and history. I started out my degree that way. And then I ended up working at a summer camp in Black Mountain, North Carolina, for autistic individuals. And I applied for that because my brother is autistic. And I was like, He's okay, so like, I could do that as a job, right. And it was like the highest paying summer camp job. So I figured that that was a good fit. And I ended up just falling in love with it. And like the culture of that camp. It's called Camp Leakey gap. And it it's where I learned about neurodiversity. We watched the film, neurotypical by Adam Larsson. I don't know if you're familiar with that documentary, but just kind of learning about what like true acceptance and appreciation and embracing of neurodiverse people looks like. And so I went back to college, and I had my first internship and a high school English class. And I was like, Oh, I don't like. And so the like, Friday, before classes for the second semester was starting Monday, I dropped on my classes, added all new classes, and special education changed my major. And that kind of started me down the road of wearing.
Guy Stephens:So you already had kind of a lens from the experience that you had. And I would say that, wow, what a fortunate experience, right? Because not every camp that is like that, that you described, has that lens has that kind of thoughtfulness behind it. So it sounds like with that, and your own experience personally, you know, we often find, I think, you know, many people that get into special education, have a, you know, a brother or sister or someone that they love, and get into it, in part for that reason that they want to make a difference. In fact, my daughter is now 13. But I remember when she was probably, gosh, seven or eight years old, telling me that she wanted to be a teacher, and that she wanted to help kids like her brother, who is neurodivergent. And, you know, it's just an amazing thing. And I think kids sometimes are so insightful, but it's great to hear kind of about your journey. So you get through your college program. And, you know, one of the things that I've been talking a lot to a lot of different people about recently, is the fact that a lot of our university programs are not really preparing educators for some of the things that they're going to see in our classrooms. They're not necessarily preparing them for having a background or understanding around disability or neuro divergence, they're not really preparing them to understand, you know, if you're an elementary school teacher, you know that you may have a child that's yet to be identified as a child with a disability, that might be having some really big behaviors due to kind of a nervous system that's having a difficult time. And I think that does a real disservice when educators aren't getting that, that background, and things that would really be helpful and necessary. And as a result, when a teacher begins teaching, and they come into a school, they're very, I think, easily, well, they're going to be influenced by what the culture in the training is around that particular school. So if they're very punitive school, that might be kind of what they're introduced to, at first, if they're not neurodiversity affirming, you know, that certainly is going to be something they're they're supposed to do you did you have that experience in your college program? Did you did you feel that even looking back now, you know, Was there enough focus in those areas? And, and if not, what can we do about that?
McAlister Greiner Huynh:Um, I had one class on behavior in my undergrad program, and it was all it was like behaviorism behavior, so not like positive, like certainly focused on positive behavior supports but like through a behaviorist lens, a really affirming lens, not through the lens of disability culture and any of those pieces. So, and it was not a great class anyways, but I feel like even then, I wasn't, I wasn't to the point where I am Now, I really reject what behaviorism is at the stands for and claims. And I wasn't there at that point. But even then I was kind of like this. I don't I don't know about this.
Guy Stephens:It didn't necessarily feel right. But I mean, this is your your I mean, you're being taught this in college, I must be right, right.
McAlister Greiner Huynh:Yeah. Well, and it's interesting a lot. A lot of people do not know that after I finished my undergrad, I went to get my Master's at the University of Texas at Austin in BCBA preparation program. So I did all of the the coursework to become a board certified behavior analyst. And kind of after my first half a semester there, I was, like, I don't, I don't like, I don't think this is all it's cracked up to be. And I actually ended up my last course for that program, I advocated for doing an independent study with one of my professors instead, and I actually wrote a thesis about how different intervention programs for autistic students and how they are rated if you're looking at them through a culturally responsive lens through the lens of autistic culture. So like, which evidence based programs are really affirming for our students. And
Guy Stephens:I'm imagining,
McAlister Greiner Huynh:this is not good, by the professors working with was great, because he was, he was just like, the class that we took with him was like a culture and like equity class. So kind of my first shift and thinking one of the articles we read was about disability culture, and how disability disability a culture is included in classes, and like in the public school system. And so that's kind of the lens that I went with for that. So,
Guy Stephens:you know, it's really interesting. You know, as a parent, we never did ABA, it was recommended to us at one point, but I'd like to tell you that I knew more knew better and didn't. But the truth was that when it was recommended to us in the same breath, we were told, Well, your your son's probably too old for that. When we started the Alliance, we very much were focused on moving away from compliance based approaches moving into, you know, connection and brain science and trauma informed approaches. And, you know, neurodiversity firming approaches, all of those things. But you know, it wasn't until, you know, I began to hear the lived experiences from autistic self advocates who were part of our community that I really learned so much about, you know, ABA, you know, kind of prior to that we hadn't done, I didn't have much experience, I knew that it was highly, you know, kind of out there in terms of being recommended. But the the lived experiences of the many autistic members of our community and what they shared, really informed what became my my thoughts on that, you know, I had thoughts on behaviorism, you know, kind of all before that, but it's tough, it's tough, because I think, you know, many people are led down that road by well intentioned providers and others. And I think change is coming. I am thrilled to see the voices of self advocates in the case of ABA, many Autistic Self Advocates, who I think are really changing the conversation, and are beginning to be heard. But like you, I mean, I think that didn't know much until I really began to learn more and dive in and understand, you know, what were some of the issues that were problematic about some of the approaches. So when I was reading your, your bio, and knowing what I know about you, I saw the X behavior support specialists. And you know, when you see the word behavior support, you often think behaviorism, we often think I mean, going back to what you said, you learned in college, you know, a whole lot of, you know, BF Skinner and operant conditioning and rewarding consequence. And I think we're probably both, you know, under that idea that that's not the way that we should be heading with things. But wow, I mean, in behavior support the realm of a behavior support specialist, you're, you're going up against a system, if you're coming in there with different thoughts. So talk to us a little bit about like your evolution. So you get your degree, you start off in a school, you know, there were gaps, and maybe what you knew, but you had these instincts. Tell us about your journey early on. I mean, how did that journey shift and change as you became a teacher became the person you are today?
McAlister Greiner Huynh:Yeah, um, it's, it's hard looking back on my like, first year teaching. It's really rough that like, I had a couple of people that I was close with in the school, but otherwise the school culture was very much in my my teaching experiences and like a self contained, special education classroom with students accessing an adaptive curriculum. And it was very much like those students and then The rest of the school you know, and that was, you know, my first year my first school and I only see there for one year, I had a lot of difficulty with some adults in the adult support that I had and how people were trying to support students in my classroom that like I was really not okay with. And then kind of the expectations of like, there are some students with some safety needs. So basically, you just have to stay in your room all the time, you're not allowed to leave for the last like two months of school that was like, I'm not okay with this. And after trying to advocate a lot, I just decided it was not a good environment for me to to be in and I made a shift and went to different schools in a different district. And there I had a lot more positive support, there was a lot of push for just like a school culture of inclusion. So while I was still teaching, in a self contained classroom, there was like an elective, like their specials classes. Every Friday, they had electives. And kids signed up to kind of do like a peer class with my students where they were then able that they like came and helped us at Special Olympics. And in a really, like, authentic and positive relationship way and not in the like, Oh, you're our little little like that buddy helpers for kids. Age, you know, like, No, we're peers. Um, but like, I have a picture from my first or second, not my first, my second or third year teacher, my first and second year at that school. Have one of my students who loved collecting like little things, so like Little Acorns, or little pebbles, or like he comes to school with like, his parents keys and mom and dad would be like, did he bring the keys to school? So you just like at love to collect all these things, and have a picture of him. And five other fourth graders he was in fourth grade collecting acorns on the playground, and he would bring they would bring them to him and be like, is this a good one is this and like, they were just all hanging out collecting acorns because it was something that he really enjoyed, and they wanted to do it with them and just like fostering those positive relationships. And that was really important for me and I stayed at that school for a really long time. We, you know, at that school did a school wide autism acceptance celebration, that's where we started our autism acceptance spirit week, where all the kids got to dress up in different ways to kind of learn more about like, what it meant to be autistic. And really developed this culture of inclusion. They learned about neurodiversity. We actually did a pre and post assessment for autism acceptance month of like, learning, you know, like, how can you be a friend to someone whose brain is different than you? And like, what, like, what does that look like? And of seeing like, afterwards, they knew what neurodivergent meant. And for the longest time, the kids called me or that brain lady that came and talked to us about brain. Yes, that is me. I am the brain lady. Thank you. Yep.
Guy Stephens:worse things to be called. Right?
McAlister Greiner Huynh:Yeah. Well, and it's definitely better than like the teacher with those kids sometimes. Right? I really liked the like, Green Lady.
Guy Stephens:So just let me interrupt you for a second. They knew us rain lady, what were you teaching them about the brain that gave you that label because I'm a big proponent of a little bit of brain science goes a really long way. And I'm a believer that teachers, parents and kids need to know a little bit of brain science, you don't need to be a neurologist, but a little bit of understanding about how our own body works in our own brain and nervous system marketing is so critical. So tell me what what were you doing that gotcha known as the brain lady.
McAlister Greiner Huynh:So we did activate, we read that Todd pars book, it's okay to be different. And then we illustrated our own brains to illustrate how they all work differently and wrote why our each of our unique brains was, like, important or helpful or whatever. And then we talked a lot about, like, sensory perception and how like it can spike our, our nervous system in different ways. And and like, kind of that perspective of like, if you are experiencing this information differently, how is that going to impact you differently? I think if I go if I could go back now or like the lessons that I tried to support teachers within now, I like looking at more of that, like polyvagal lens of pulling in a lot of that more like, you know, this is what you're like, here's your window of tolerance. What does it look like when you're hypo aroused? What does it look like when you're hyper aroused, and all of those different pieces,
Guy Stephens:your brain is actually wired to keep itself alive and safe. And there are behaviors that are not in fact, thoughtful behaviors, and are misbehaving but, you know, children are sometimes having stress related behaviors, getting people to make that mind shift. You know, there's this assumption that all kids behavior is just, you know, they're choosing this void. Yeah. That's right. That's right. I want to dig into that more. But before I do, I just want to call out a couple of things here. One is, you know, kind of a friend and colleague out here that's joined us to see so great to see Greg. Greg says with the behaviorists mindset Being so prevalent in schools and Macalester means so successful making change in her school? What pushback did she get? And how did she address it? So? That's a great question. That's kind of where I was heading with when I said, you know, you're a behavior specialist, and your ideas are different. So tell us a little bit about that, you know, in throughout your career, you know, again, you know, kind of with that title, a behavior support specialist, but coming from a different mindset. What's it been like for you? And how have you made progress?
McAlister Greiner Huynh:Um, well, it's interesting, the actually, the entire reason I started my account and my, like, social media presence was there was someone at my school that started selling those like puzzle piece ribbons for Autism Awareness Month. And I went to my administrator, and I was like, Hey, this isn't okay, here's all the reasons why this is not okay. And like, here's some alternatives. And the response that I got was like, Well, then why isn't the district putting that information? If you're saying, this is all this problematic stuff? And this is what we should be doing? Why isn't someone higher up? Like, why isn't that a district wide message? Like, okay, well, then fine. I'll tell everybody what it needs to be. And I'll figure that out. And so that's the began kind of my journey online. And then eventually, here, when I got to the point where I was like, Okay, I've done everything that I can do at the school level, I would like to go to a different level and see what other kind of change I can make.
Guy Stephens:Yeah, but But no, I mean, I have no doubt that, you know, when change is hard, and when you're bringing in different ideas. You know, I mean, frankly, what's being taught today, you know, you know, many years, you know, not one, not many, but a number of years after you graduated, and, you know, went into teaching, what's still being taught is a lot of behaviors, um, a lot of reward and consequence. A lot of things that aren't I mean, really are from a decade or excuse me, a century ago, you know, we're talking 1930s and 1950s. Yet, we've got this body of neuroscience, this body of work on trauma, that haven't made their way into so many schools around the country. And, you know, I'm sure, in fact, I saw some audience members here that I know are in North Carolina. In fact, here's one of them. Senator Don, who is in Wilmington, I know a lot of that knowledge has not made it to a lot of the schools in North Carolina or around the country. So it really is tough to feel like you're sometimes going up hill. And you know, people aren't always receptive to, you know, what you might be bringing in in terms of some of this. So imagine that that was difficult at times for you.
McAlister Greiner Huynh:Yeah, and I think it's, um, there are a couple of things that have been really helpful for me, I think, one in North Carolina, we have the Teach program, which I think is a generally speaking, very neurodiversity affirming way of supporting autistic individuals. It's about increasing accessibility, and independence and setting up systems that allow people to succeed in their environment. And so that like peace in North Carolina, I find very helpful because people already have this underlying like, piece of of that, like background. And like Eric Schaeffler, who was kind of the pilot behind teach, spoke a lot against a lot of the behaviors, things that were coming out in his time, and, you know, the 1900s. Gosh, that's weird to say.
Guy Stephens:Yeah, but I think like that,
McAlister Greiner Huynh:that foundation is a little bit helpful. I have found in North Carolina, so there's a nice like cluster of kind of neurodiversity affirming people from just that that exposure. And then with my kind of transition to behavior specialist position i i came to a space that they were doing a lot of equity work and a lot of work on redoing their systems for supporting students. And I was kind of able to come in at a good time to get give the lens of diversity affirming disability affirming support and how are we looking at this through a trauma trauma informed lens through an A typical developmental lens, and making sure we're not just saying okay to gain or to avoid, because sometimes, like there are behaviors that like it is I'm hungry and so I'm trying to gain food and I'm like, I'm gonna engage in this behavior. But even then, it's just like meeting an unmet need, right? But like then there are also these like, I am completely out of control of what's happening right now. Because it's a stress response or, like my filter my impulsivity is a typically developing because my brain has no diversion. And therefore, like, I do not have the capacity to like not blurt this thing out. And it's not because I want your attention. It's just because the words are here, and I can't stop them from coming out. And so we've been able to bring a lot of light to those different facets, when kind of assessing behavior and providing stuff So I think a lot of just good timing has been really helpful and helping approach from a lens of providing additional insights and additional information. And giving, you know, examples what when I, when I was talking with some of my teammates about like, but what if it's not just to gain or to avoid, like, what if it's other things, and I talked about, like, I have ADHD, I have significant time blindness, I'm gonna not remember what time it is, and whether I'm doing something that I want to be doing, or something that I hate, I lose track of time, and I'm late for this meeting this meeting that I really want to be at, because I like these people that I meet with, I like the work that we're doing. But I lost track of time. And instead, I was doing all this data that I didn't want to be doing. And I'm not late, because I'm trying to escape this meeting. I'm not late, because they want to do this for longer. I'm late because my development is different. And my understanding and perception of time is different. And that has nothing to do with our black and white view of to gain or avoid. And I think when I was able to give some of those like examples, it helped, kind of I think shed some light on like, Okay, well, there are these alternatives. So what what do we list that as when we're talking about behavior? How do we help teens express that and identify that? And then what do they do with that information?
Guy Stephens:So, you know, one of the things that we know is that if we look at, you know, kids that I think are more often at risk of being misunderstood kids that are more often, you know, restrained, secluded, suspended, expelled, subjected to corporal punishment, kids that are often on the wrong side of, you know, discipline and behavioral plans that aren't working. Certainly neurodivergent kids are highly over represented on that list. Black and brown children, kids with a trauma history, thinking about the the practices and the things that you've done, I mean, you know, again, there's a lot of well intentioned practices, a lot of well intentioned practices that are not only not helpful, but if you really stop and think about them are harmful. And, you know, I'm thinking about things I've know, I've heard you talk about as well, whether it's a, you know, a clip chart or or, you know, you know, other kinds of and even things like PBIS, which is positive behavior, interventions and supports, which is sounds like is really positive name, often the interventions that are part of that are very behaviorally driven, very rewarding consequence driven. And, of course, you know, I'm, I'm a believer that, you know, kids, you know, kind of in the Ross Greenbank kids do well, they can, you know, it's often, you know, they don't have the skill, the ability, maybe it's about the experiences they've had. So thinking about all these things, thinking about the the kids that are often on the wrong side of this. And the phrases are kind of funny, where I'm trying to think it through still, but, you know, what would be some of the neuro neuro divergent teacher approved ways of a better supporting classroom? So, you know, if you were to come up with a couple of strategies and tips, so, you know, for other educators are out there, and we tend to have a lot of educators in our audience, what are the things that you would recommend? Or if parents are listening? What might you recommend that they bring to their team to share? What are some of the things that you found can really make the biggest difference in helping to change the culture and the approach in the classroom.
McAlister Greiner Huynh:Um, one of my kind of go to first things and I share about this a lot is teaching regulation in very direct and structured ways that are that are designed in ways that complement our students brains and how they're thinking. So you know, telling a kid, remember, we can take deep breaths in the middle of like an escalated situation is not going to help anyone.
Guy Stephens:Somebody Calm down, right?
McAlister Greiner Huynh:It's not that big of a deal. Calm down, when has that helped you ever? So one of my biggest recommendations is like your tier one intervention is, every day morning meeting for a week, you're going to do a week study of a strategy that's structured, and I love to have my little like boxes. This is how I love to structure it for like younger elementary students. But like if we're teaching, deep breathing, for example, and we really want it to be meaningful, we might have these little pinwheels and we're gonna take one at a time and take a big deep breath and we'll finish spot and then when all the pinwheels are gone, we're done taking our breaths, and then modeling that per class and having students demonstrate it for the class. And then Okay, after they've demonstrated it, we're now going to put it in our class regulation station, where you can go use it so that's our Tier one is like introducing and directly teaching all of those strategies and having them openly accessible for students. And then the tier two of that is like okay, you have your students that are significantly experiencing or frequently experiencing dysregulation. So what then so then my kind of tier two recommendation is okay, those kids need scheduled times every Every day, in that regulation space with an adult, to practice those skills to practice co regulation when they're de escalated. So this shouldn't be, oh, you get upset two times a day. So we're gonna send you every time you get upset? No, it's like, when they're calm, have them come choose a couple of activities, incorporate their interests as much as possible schedule time in that space, that's kind of your tier two, or tier three is additional breaks, and how are we kind of individualizing those structures more like if this isn't meaningful to them? What What else can we do that's meaningful to help structure kind of those reports? So that's like my, like, number one go to have a regulation station in a way that your teaching strategies, and you're giving them the same amount of layered instruction that you would an academic skill? Because it's
Guy Stephens:so important, right? You know, if, if we handled kids that weren't able to read in the same way, we handle kids that, that are having a difficult time, you know, behaviorally, nobody would ever learn to read. I mean, it's just the expectations are so different. And you know, kids often need, they need to be, you know, they need to be helped to learn the skills or the abilities or, you know, kind of work through things that may have been traumatic, whatever it may be. So I love what you're talking about. And of course, you know, that's quite a bit different than, you know, putting a kid in a seclusion room holding the door shut, and hoping somehow magically, they come out the other end.
McAlister Greiner Huynh:With their big feelings. That's
Guy Stephens:right. That's right. That's right. Yeah, you know, of course, we do a lot of work around trying to change laws and policies around restraint and seclusion. Our feeling is that seclusion, it's never an appropriate practice putting a kid in a room against their will holding the door shut. But it happens around the country. And, you know, the thing is, kids go in those rooms, and it is terrifying. You know, they beat they scream, they eventually might shut down and might go into dissociative state. It's really tough. So I love what you're sharing there. I want to take a break for a second and go through there were a couple of those quite a few comments, people are really jumping on here. And I did just want to address this comment too, just because we were talking about, you know, changing the law, testified earlier this week in Washington state, who is working on legislation to ban the use of seclusion, and actually they call it isolation, same thing. So making some progress. Maxine said, Thank you for your education and conversation. My 20 year old autistic daughter has PTSD from treatment in the educational system. Yeah, unfortunately. You know, we've seen that where there's, you know, trauma that happens in a school based or systemic setting. And there's often a blind spot to that, you know, I mean, you know, we think we're helping kids and how could that possibly happen, but it certainly can happen. Let's see a couple. Okay, so Rebecca said, this was when we were talking about kind of what you were teaching about the brain, said, I love that I've done some similar things using aeroclassics. My brain story, love neuro classic, they do some great, great work there. Let's see what else we have here from Kirsten, how do you help teachers see that a kid's window of tolerance is a kin slash can't issue versus a will slash won't issue. It's mostly a brain difference, not a skills gap.
McAlister Greiner Huynh:Um, that is a hard conversation. I mean, I think a lot of paradigm shifting has to kind of happen when you support that. I think a lot of it starts with conversations have kids do well when they can, that I gotta bring up the rescreened quote again, of that, no kid wakes up and is like, ah, you know what I want to do today, like, I want to piss off my teacher like that. That's what my goal is, there's no one no child that wakes up. Like, this is what I'm gonna do today, kids are doing the best that they can with the skills that they have in any given moment. And I think part of that kind of belief and shift comes when you start start to show here, here are the ways that we can support this your the accommodations we can give, and then we start to see kind of increased time and their window of tolerance instead of in hyper or hypo arousal. Like, oh, okay, like, I see that this is effective.
Guy Stephens:Yep. Yeah. And of course, the first thing, the biggest change that has to happen is not the kid right? It's the adult mindset. You know, and I think
McAlister Greiner Huynh:my behavior plans are I tell people all the time behavior is not for the kid. It's for the it's telling the adults what you need to do to support the
Guy Stephens:right that's right. But but a good behavior plan should talk about the adult behavior as well and what adults are doing to support a kid. Greg just came in again said, Hey, what's up brain lady? So that's your new, that'll be your new URL. And see, I'm not exaggerating here we have somebody from Queensland, Australia, joining us, which is always great. Let's see, Gina said, my concern is getting the family more realistic support, especially with more children being diagnosed with autism. So I guess that's probably in response to some of the conversations we might have been having around behavioral approaches. One of the questions that we sometimes get It is kind of a well, if not ABA than what we actually I've done a couple of programs on that to talk about some of the alternatives. Do you have any ideas in that space of, you know, if you're not going to do some of these behavioral approaches what to do?
McAlister Greiner Huynh:I think when we look and assess behavior from a whole child lens, instead of from a behavioral lens, there are a lot of strategies that we can implement, how accessible is the environment for our students, starting with accessibility is huge. Like if you okay, I walk into this classroom, and I see clutter everywhere. And I know my students with specific neuro types that are going to see all of those pieces instead of the big picture and immediately be overwhelmed. First thing we can do to increase accessibility is helping that teacher get things organized and cleared off. So it's not so visually overwhelming for a student. And as someone who looking around my office has clutter everywhere. I know that's really hard for some people. I'm so like providing support to teachers, I feel like is a big piece that I think teachers in general, speaking as a teacher, want to do well and right by their kids, and sometimes they don't have any more like, time and capacity and energy to give. So kind of helping them get started is something that I really tried to do have like here, let me bring you these resources that are helpful here. Let me introduce them to your kid. Because it's hard. I mean, public school teaching is really, really hard in general, but like right now, it's, it's, it's really, really tough.
Guy Stephens:And then, like we've said, kids who wealthy can teach teachers to wealthy can, no teacher goes to school thinking, I want to restrained or secluded kid or I want to, you know, punish this kid, you know, people get into teaching because they want to help and they want to support kids. But, you know, it is a tough time. And, you know, I think one of the problems is if you can't imagine another solution to your problem, and this is the only thing you know, it's really hard to move away from that, even if you know, it's not working. But I love what you're saying, which is really, it's more, it's more than just focusing on the kid, it's more than just focusing on the behavior. It's about looking at the environment, it's about understanding individual differences, it's about so much more. I'm a proponent of kind of a social model of disability over the medical model, which I imagine you're as well, which is a totally different mindset as well, which is saying, you know, let's not pathologize and say, you know, this is a deficit, or this is what's wrong with somebody, but let's look at how we can make changes in the environment to support all people, you know, which sounds kind of, you know, along the vein of what you're saying as well, like, how can we appropriately accommodate I remember Watson's Greg's here, having a conversation with Greg when he was on at one point, and I'm like, you know, it's not the functional behavioral assessment that's needed. But maybe it's a, you know, it's an environmental assessment. You know, before we look at the kid, let's look at all the other factors that are around and see if we can figure out why. Stuart Stuart Shanker from self reg wrote a great book. He often says, the important questions are, why and why now, right? It's not just why, but why is it happening now. And there's so much that can come from so many different sources other than the child.
McAlister Greiner Huynh:I have a kind of SEL and behavior tier one Self Assessment Checklist thing that I provide to teacher sometimes to take time to look at, okay, like, here, here are the things that we know we search based increases success for students. So like, how many of those things are you currently doing? And like, what areas do you want to kind of try to target to help improve that that piece, and that, you know, includes things from the castle SEL framework? It includes things from, like the Teach approach, as well as culturally responsive, culturally informed trauma responsive trauma informed practice of just like, how are we hitting these pieces of what our classroom community and culture and setup should be, so that we're taking away as many barriers as possible to help increase student success? Yeah,
Guy Stephens:absolutely. I've got something here from again, senator who's in North Carolina there with you. And Sandra says, I've seen a lot of pushback from teachers, particularly general education teachers, that they should not not be expected to deal with many of the student behaviors present in the classroom. And many times I've seen children particularly special education children vilified, leading to a push to get some children out of the classroom. How can we promote inclusive learning spaces and help gen ed teachers understand that our children belong
McAlister Greiner Huynh:I'm a big recommendation that I like to give teachers in schools and programs that like is kind of met with mixed mixed results that kind of depends on the kind of culture is instead of when you call in any help in your classroom and asking admin and admin coming in and taking the kid away that needs behavior support. I have always recommended have your administrator take over teaching the lesson and then the teacher sit and CO regulate and help that student get back to the space that they need to be because Then the teacher not only is developing that, like supportive relationship with that student, the principal doesn't become this punitive thing where they come when I'm having a hard time. And it helps keep the kid like where they need to be. And it's allowing the person who knows that child best their teacher, instead of the administrator, be the one that's supporting them through it and helping them get through whatever tough thing they're trying to manage in that moment. And I think if, if schools can make that switch, instead of pulling the kid out, and let's go to the office and have a conversation, whatever, and then come back, if it can be like, let the teacher take over what they have already started supporting that kid through, I think it would help with a lot of that kind of like vilification of our ECE students and like they just removed because they're disrupting the class No, like, administration can take over your lesson plan, any good administrator can pick up and kind of do whatever, while you're supporting the kid that like really needs the most support in that moment.
Guy Stephens:Yeah, no, I love that, you know, relationships are so critical. And, you know, I think there's often this thought, like, I can't deal with this, and, you know, the come pick this child away, and, you know, that never solves a problem in the long run, right? I mean, that's a great idea what you're talking about. I love that. And, of course, you know, teachers need to be aware of their own nervous systems. And if they're really in a state where they're not going to be effective at doing it. Maybe that's not the moment for them to do it. But I think, you know, there's so much potential in doing something like that. We have a lot of a lot of people coming in here. Class regulation station, I love that no more quiet rooms or calming rooms. Yeah, absolutely agree with that. I want to shift gears for a second, we still have a lot of comments, but I want to shift gears for a second. And I want to UPS bear with me here. I want to introduce you to a student here. So bear with me, I'm gonna I'm gonna bring this student up. student's name is Larry, by the way. So you might, you might you might know, Larry. And I wonder if you could talk to us a little bit about Larry. And well, what we'll start out with UPS, here we go. And if all has gone, well, I should be sharing my screen. So hopefully everybody can see that. To get to tell me a little bit about this whole body listening, Larry. You know, many people may have seen this before, may have seen it hanging in a classroom or otherwise, can you tell me what this is? And and what's concerning about
McAlister Greiner Huynh:it? Yeah, so this is Larry from about I had like 1010 or 11 years ago. And he was telling students how they it was, he was trying to explain to students what teachers mean, when they say, You need to listen and what teachers mean, when they say they're not actually saying they want you to listen, they're actually saying they want to see these observable behaviors. And that's what Larry is saying. And unfortunately, it very quickly became like, your, you know, what I mean, and it was presented as you're not listening, if you're not looking at me, you're not listening, if your hands aren't folded in in your lap, you're not listening, if your body isn't still. And one of the examples that I think is often misunderstood of like your heart, your heart is listening, when it's connecting with other people. And the only appropriate way to connect with other people is to listen and not to share your own experiences and provide neurodivergent style empathy. It's very standard based. When I feel like, we all understand that listening isn't a standard, it's just kind of a thing that you do. And everybody does in their different ways. I have my images sitting here talking to you. And listening doesn't have to look one way because listening isn't an outward observable behavior. It's an internal experience.
Guy Stephens:And of course, one of the problems with this is that, you know, like you said, it's not just one way, but these things are still really prevalent out there. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I hear things like kids are put into seclusion rooms, and they're told, quiet hands and feet, you can't leave until you have quiet hands and feet. So you, you, you know, stress the kid out beyond belief. And now, the the only way out is by having quiet hands or feet. My son, I'm kind of ashamed to say very early on had in his IEP, a goal about eye contact, and that was not uncommon, probably still is not uncommon. My son did not need to make eye contact to probably hear everything that was going on in the room. You know, he was a kid that could be listening while doing something else, while also hearing the conversations that the teachers had about their weekends. And I know that because he'd come home and share those with. There's a lot of problems with this. And you know, I mean, a lot of ableism as well in terms of kind of, you know, putting neurotypical expectations on all children. So you and I'm going to go ahead and get rid of get rid of Larry here, but we're gonna bring Larry back in a second. But we're gonna bring back a different a different layer. Right. And I wonder if you might talk to us a little bit about this. So bear with me, just sharing my other screen here. And hopefully we'll have There we go. All right, perfect. All right. So this is a different version of this. Can you talk a little bit about this? How it came to be?
McAlister Greiner Huynh:So this is a new library. And so I don't know a little while ago, I posted about how whole body listening is ableist and how it has all these problematic expectations. And around the time, where that had kind of it wasn't when I originally originally posted about it kind of resurfaced was people were talking about it again. One of the original creators and authors of whole bio listening, Larry, Elizabeth reached out to me and was like, hey, what will you consult on this project? We'd like to make some changes, can you help us like we're not really sure where to go. And that kind of consultation then became a partnership. And we worked on developing the new whole body listening, Larry, part of that process included focus groups with neurodivergent people to say like, Hey, like, what? What do you like? Do you want Larry to just go away? Like, we could just take them away, and Larry could be gone forever. And a lot of people like no, like, Larry, Larry has like a name and a presence in schools. Like, let's use Larry, to change this, this presents and show how we can know better and do better how we can evolve, and how there are ways that we could teach listening, because listening is a skill that needs to be taught. And that was the need they were trying to fill. But how do we teach that we teach that through learning, regulation, learning how to read your body's signals, learning what you need to be the most effective listener? So our new poster that came out, and I don't know, November or something like that, um, we, we designed to be a collaborative process. So it can be printed for individual students to fill out. Or if you get like a big classroom poster size of it. We envision it being used as the whole class talking about, okay, let's collaboratively build this, what are our, like listening needs? And how do we ensure that all of our needs are being met, right? Because if you have the student that needs to echo and repeat to process, what's being said, we probably don't want that neck that students sitting next to the person that needs complete silence in order to get the auditory information. And so thinking about collaboratively, how can we as a class community, make sure all of our listening needs are met? What ways can we problem solve how we're all working together to listen in this space? Together? So yeah, that's the new poster.
Guy Stephens:That's great. And I'm going to stop sharing this real quick. My understanding from talking to you earlier, before we went on, is that there's there's something else exciting happening around around Larry, I wonder if you might be able to share that with our viewers.
McAlister Greiner Huynh:Yeah. So Larry, in his original iteration, had two books, he had whole body listening, Larry at school and whole body listening, Larry at home, and when at school became really popular as paired with that poster. And so we are kind of redoing, and revamping those books, they're supposed to come out the most the one for school is coming out in September. And we hope to do additional work with that as we go. But, um, it's all about Larry, learning and kind of being corrected of like, actually, this isn't how everybody learns, here are all the different ways that we could listen here, all of the different examples. And maybe you do something like this, or maybe you do something totally different than what you know the examples we provide, but like how there are some times people are gonna listen best when they're fidgeting with something, some people are gonna listen best when their eyes are closed. So they can process the information without having the visual input, that there are all these different pieces that tie into listening. And it all comes back to how we're able to regulate and read our body.
Guy Stephens:So you're an author on this book that's coming out in September, which is really exciting. And I told you earlier, like, when it comes out, not only do we need to get a copy, we want to, we want to interview on you and talk about the book. So hopefully, you'll be able to join us again, when the book comes out and talk about it. But you know, that's really exciting, what I love most about what you've shared. And there's a couple really things, the things that are that are promising, right? The fact that people were coming to you for input, the fact that you had summer and so many neurodivergent individuals that got involved in the process, you know, big believer in kind of the Nothing about us without us, right. And it's great to use the right words and say the right language, but if you're not actually, you know, working with and involving, you know, the right people, you don't get the right results. So it's really exciting that that work is kind of going forward and kind of moving in the right direction. Rebecca mentioned autism level up has bumped and I've seen that as well. I'll just see if I can find that and share that. Well, that's really exciting. That's exciting. Exciting work. Let me shift into a couple of more questions because we when you have really gotten people excited here we have a lot of people weighing in with different questions and thoughts. CASS said my daughter's kindergarten class literally clips kids down on the public clip chart for not sitting crisscross applesauce, hands and lap size on teacher and they have students scouts who are selected by another oh gosh. To monitor other kids for this behavior. Oh, this is terrible. In public school Gen Ed kindergarten classroom in Washington right now this school year. Macalester tell me what you think about that tell me what you think about clip charts.
McAlister Greiner Huynh:Which why are we talking about the city Miss way are we talking about the clip charts because
Guy Stephens:rant on both.
McAlister Greiner Huynh:Okay, well that with the crisscross applesauce sitting however, whatever that said, a lot of people call it gimme five, like criss cross hands and lap feet this eyes looking whenever we there will be a new poster that's coming out soon. That goes with the whole body listening that says whole body listening can look alike. And it has all the many different ways not all that expensive. But some examples that listening doesn't have to look one way it looks lots of different ways for lots of different kids. So CASS I hope you can give that poster to your your child's school to say, hey, look, we can look a lot of different ways while we listen.
Guy Stephens:Yeah, we'll we'll try to share that when it comes out. So I'll keep my
McAlister Greiner Huynh:clip charts are being of my existence. They I just publicly shaming kids for when they're having a hard time. I mean, it's always the same kids that are clipping up in the same kids that are clipping down. And it's like, how many times are we going to do this before we learn? Like it's not? We're not doing anything but publicly shaming students.
Guy Stephens:I guess if you want to do it for all the teachers and staff and they think it's a good idea after that, then you know,
McAlister Greiner Huynh:yeah, we did it our staff meeting and people didn't like it so much. And it's just like, what, what is the purpose here? Are we instructing if we're just pointing out, like you're not doing what I want? That's not instruction that's not providing support? And I think you also have to consider like, what are your, like, things that you're clipping up and clipping down for? Like, are you really going to clip the kid down? Because they're not sitting criss cross? Is that worth saying? Like, ooh, you're gonna be on Orange now, because you're, you know, doing this one thing? Like, what does it relate to? Like, what is the true goal of it? Is your goal for them to be sitting the Certain Way? Or is it to learn the content? So yeah, no, not?
Guy Stephens:I mean, in my mind, it's the goal is to manipulate behavior, right? It's, and you want him to do? That's not okay. Right? I mean, you know, kids can add, I mean, kids can have 100 different ways of sitting, you want a kid to be comfortable, you don't want to tell them exactly how they sit, maybe that's uncomfortable for them. You know, sometimes I think expectation adults expectations need to be checked. I mean, you know, my son may have been the kid that storytime was running in a circle around everyone else. And, you know, maybe that was disruptive. But the bigger disruption was probably the adults, you know, making a big issue out of it. My son was still listening as he ran in circles, you know, I mean, sometimes people, you know, get on that hill and say, Oh, well, this has to happen, you know, they expect compliance for compliance sake, rather than again, is this actually getting in the way of, you know, what we're trying to accomplish here? You know, yeah, it's tough. And the idea oh, gosh, you know, I think I think the one of the worst parts about this is if the clip charts aren't bad enough, in the sitting isn't bad enough. The scouts, the other students, you know, and again, I think about this having an urgent son, you know, I remember being in situations where there was always the kid that was drawing my attention, anything my son did, that was not typical. Oh, gosh, it was the worst, you know, but it's worse for a kid to I mean, you know, every moment somebody's, oh, he's not doing this, right. He's not doing that right. Now, kids internalize, and kids begin to feel like they're a failure. Like they can't meet the expectations that are just really sometimes hard for them to even meet
McAlister Greiner Huynh:so many tangential thoughts. When I talk about the kids that are always on green on this clip charts, also want to talk about peer mediated interventions. And and, yeah, we're gonna I'm gonna start with that I was, my mom is also a behavior specialist. She became a specialist right after me. And so we often call and give each other consults on different things, trying to figure stuff out. She was like,
Guy Stephens:okay, join us for the next event.
McAlister Greiner Huynh:But she was like, what, why do you think about this, like peer mediated intervention? Like I think about it the same way that I think about how parents are not therapists, their parents, and peers are not interventionist their peers. And it's so often like One sided, like it's the neurotypical peers that are instructing the neurodivergent kid, instead of it being a mutual exchange, which we know from the double empathy problem. It's not a neuro divergent problem of communicating, it's a cross communication issue neurotypicals struggle to interact with neurodiverse people neurodivergent people struggle to interact and socialize in unexpected ways with like neurotypical people, we just don't mesh very well. And so yeah, the whole scouting and like, oh, you you be this kid's helper, or you watch and make sure these behaviors are happening is terribly frustrating. But I also wanted to touch on, I feel like another piece that people don't talk about often. And one of my posts from a while ago has recently resurfaced about the kids that are always on green. But they're always on green, because they are doing their very best to hold it all together all day, because they are so afraid of being clipped down, and they're just doing their absolute best to hold it together. Which means when they get home, they're exhausted, they've run a marathon all day just trying to keep it together, because they're told, if I do things differently, I get clipped down, and I'm wrong. And I feel like we lose those kids so often. And, you know, they experienced significant burnout, lots of anxiety and depression and CO occurring mental health conditions. Oh, yeah. And just like, because we have these, like standards that aren't real.
Guy Stephens:Right, right. Right, right. Yeah, Rebecca just said mascot and burnout. And certainly that can be that can be a part of it. I mean, you know, some kids are externalize, or some kids are internalized, there's the externalize there's might be acting up might be getting clipping up all the time might be getting in trouble. The internalizes or just, you know, have the the weight of the world on them might even go into kind of a productive state of shutting down. I mean, that's not a good place to be there. You know, so anybody that has a classroom right now out there with a clip chart, there are there are plenty of great articles out there on, you know, ditching the clip chart and doing other things. And again, you know, I mean, I guess, I mean, I could ask you like, well, what would you recommend instead, but I don't even know, the motivation behind having a clip chart, like you've had has started with a valid motivation. And, you know, I can't even really think of what the valid motivation is other than, yeah, I mean, maybe you can help me here. But well, I
McAlister Greiner Huynh:mean, I think it's a it's a shift in the lens of, they're not doing what I want. So I have to make them want to do it, like, so I have to externally make them want to do it more, versus they don't want to do what I want, how can I make How can I help them enjoy this more? So they want to do it? So instead of like, How can I force them to do what I'm telling them? It's like, How can I inspire them to be engaged? Does that make sense?
Guy Stephens:Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That's, that's an interesting way to put it. So what's the answer that?
McAlister Greiner Huynh:Well, I think the answer to that is is looking at that accessibility piece, that engagement piece, like what what is the barrier that's preventing kids from wanting to get because kids are naturally explorative and curious and want to learn? I'm a big fan of Maria Montessori is work and I just
Guy Stephens:think of the exact same thing. Yeah. I was just thinking you wouldn't want kids to love it, then get their hands on things, get them enjoying things like, you know, sometimes, you know why you know why Johnny's not attending to this activity is it's boring, it's not engaging. And it's not, that's not a front of the educator, I'm not trying to say, Oh, they're doing a terrible job. But a lot of what we're doing, I remember when my son was in first grade, really struggling, and thinking to myself, like, I knew how my son learned and I knew how, how capable he was. And I remember thinking, like, he needs like, an adventure school, like somewhere where he's really doing things and experiencing things. And, you know, I think all kids, you know, that Montessori, you know, kind of ideology, I think all kids benefit from that kind of approach. But it seems like we keep heading in the wrong direction, we keep heading to meeting acted, you know, kind of arbitrary academic standards, to show that, you know, children are passing tests. And
McAlister Greiner Huynh:when all of the research shows the more time that's spent in SEL, the higher academic progress, likes, it's directly related to the progress you're able to make academically, my Wow, you're building these social emotional learning skills, because then you have all like, you're you are more able to learn if you are more well regulated, if you have.
Guy Stephens:Well, I mean, yeah, and you know, I think about, you know, Bruce Perry, Bruce Perry, and kind of the neurosequential model, right? The neurosequential model, you know, it's regulate relate reason, right? You're not able to reason you're not able to reach your prefrontal cortex. If you're not regulated, you know, you're not able to really successfully reach your prefrontal cortex if you don't feel connected and relating to people. I mean, it's so critic Call them and we have that science out there. But we don't seem to be a good do a good job of bringing it into our classrooms.
McAlister Greiner Huynh:It was a quote from I think it's Natalie Turner, but I might be wrong but stressed being stressed brains can't learn in a constant state of stress, like you're not taking anything in?
Guy Stephens:Yeah, well, you know, I'm a firm believer that. And I mean, it's true. I mean, it's not even a matter of belief, it's, you know, if a kid doesn't feel safe, a kid can't learn. If a teacher doesn't feel safe, a teacher can't teach. So let's shift gears for a second, because these are difficult times. Okay? These are probably some of the most challenging time in education that we've seen for decades, I think on the heels of the pandemic, having you know, everyone collectively go through this trauma. I mean, honestly, this was a traumatic event for us all to go through, you know, for kids, especially, and, you know, we're seeing a lot of the effect of that on on young teenage kids, you know, a lot of kids that are suffering from that, but even missing that critical socialization, and other things were happening. So we knew, and probably you knew, a couple of years ago that when kids went back to school, things were going to be tough, because here they had had these experiences they had lacked other experiences. And we could have predicted that, we're gonna see an increase in some challenging, you know, behavior, we're gonna see an increase in people not feeling safe. And then not just talking about the kids, I'm talking also about teachers and staff. So these are really tough times. And unfortunately, I think those that were kind of, you know, predicting this could happen weren't wrong. And we're seeing this, we're seeing this around the country. And as a result, there are people that are focused on probably the same things that you are in terms of social emotional learning, in terms of, you know, the the trauma informed approaches in terms of the neuroscience and all of these things. But then there are people that are looking at the behaviors, and thinking that they need to double down on the things that don't work, like, you know, suspension, expulsion, you know, all these negative things, despite the fact that we've got this body of evidence around the school to prison pipeline, and all these other things. We've seen this year, a district in Missouri that brought back corporal punishment after having been gone for 20 years. So these are tough times right now. And, and I honestly believe that the same solution that's going to help kids is the same solution that's actually going to lead to an increase in teacher satisfaction, and an increase in or a decrease in teacher turnover. I think if we can get the right things in our programs, we're gonna make a positive difference. But what do you think about all that? How do we, you know, about where we are right now, and what we can do to get out of it. I mean, and even social emotional learning. I mean, as you talk about that. There are places across the country where social emotional learning has been turned into a bad word, where people have some really interesting ideas around what social emotional learning is, and are targeting social emotional learning as programs that are trying to, oh, gosh, I can't even think of the words they use, like brainwash kids into all sorts of things. So I'll stop, because I've said enough, and you've probably already got five ideas queued up in your mind. But where are we now? And how do we get out of it? Question, we can put it in a book and you're gonna
McAlister Greiner Huynh:vote all over the world, the public education issues?
Guy Stephens:It's probably not a fair question. But I so value your perspective on things and just kind of curious what your perspective is on the problem.
McAlister Greiner Huynh:I think one of the biggest successes I see and looking at different schools and setups not only in like, the schools I'm working with, but like across the country of when a school leadership team decides that it's a priority, that's when the actual change happens. And that's when schools I mean, the school that I taught in, before I came into this position, the administrator decided we're not doing suspends anymore. We're just not going to do it's not going to happen. And, you know, we went from I don't know how many we had for the last four years I was there, we had zero suspensions, which is how all elementary schools should be. There's very, very few reasons I would ever say that more as a suspension. But when the leadership team takes that approach, that's how teachers then feel supported to make those changes. If it's not coming from a higher level with if kind of your school leadership is like, you got to get these scores up got to do this got to do that. If they are taking that approach. Teachers don't feel like they have the support to prioritize that in their lesson. So like, well, they're gonna come in and for the first 15 minutes of my period, we're doing connection activities. We're building our social emotional skills, we are having opportunities to We'll build relationships. And it gets to like, if you don't feel supported by your administration, right? Like it just it doesn't work out well, and when versus when a school leadership prioritizes that and it's like, okay, like, for the first half hour of our day, this is what we're doing. And this is what this looks like. And like, here are the resources. So I think a lot of times, it's also teachers are expected to, to just like make it up, like there's no, there. There exists curriculums for social emotional learning, of course, but most districts don't, either. And it's really hard. If you're a teacher, and you're like, well, well, like what does that even look like? Even if your school is saying, Well, we're going to spend this time on social emotional learning, but they don't give you anything to do for that. It's like, I don't know, like, what does that mean? Like, we're going to talk about our feelings? I don't know. I don't know.
Guy Stephens:Just out of curiosity, is there a curriculum that you like, out there for any of our educators that might be out there that are listening?
McAlister Greiner Huynh:I love the C bridges curriculum. It's about SCA C bridges.
Guy Stephens:Somebody just commented on that I loved another Cal says experience around SCA bridges via the bridges learning system. Yeah, yeah,
McAlister Greiner Huynh:I love it. I connected with their creators and was able to kind of explore that program. And then I got to observe an amazing lesson being taught by one of my other district support people where she co taught, or she taught a lesson on comparing and contrasting, see bridges with super flex. Because the kids had brought up to them, they're like, We really didn't like that, because it just taught us that everything about us was wrong. And so they did a compare and contrast about the priorities and the approaches. And when it's helpful, and like, what pieces are helpful, what pieces do you think are missing? And it was just an incredible lesson to listen to these elementary students talking about how helpful that like affirming curriculum was for them, because it told them that your way is okay. And we're all different rather than saying, Oh, if you think about things this way, then that's the bad way to think about things. That's the villain that you have to defeat.
Guy Stephens:No, that was the point Rebecca just brought up at some of the curriculums are actually harmful. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
McAlister Greiner Huynh:I've also explored a little bit that s e curriculum. It's social, emotional, and ethical. And it's actually a free curriculum. And it's elementary through high school. And I really enjoyed what I have seen through that. And it's, it gives like, really structured lesson. So if teachers are looking at trying to find something to start implementing, it's free, you get free access to it once you do like their, I don't know, like four hour module or whatever of training of how to use it. So that's another curriculum I really recommend.
Guy Stephens:So you're talking about the importance of changes at leadership at a leadership level? And of course, those can happen in a couple of ways. I mean, you know, so I'm going to ask you from two different perspectives, if you're a teacher working in a system that could be improved. How do you bring your concerns up to the leadership to have them heard? Or have you had experience with, you know, having that kind of bottom up? Change?
McAlister Greiner Huynh:I think the first kind of step in that is trying to implement as much as you can in your classroom, the results in your on your own, but yes, and then showing the results. And, you know, if you're like trying this curriculum, you're like, I'm doing this, it's going well, I really like training on this can me and one other teacher go to this training, and often looking at like Title One funds or any other kind of state based support funding for peds because your schools actually do have that you should ask them occasionally, but seeing what funds are available for training, and just starting with one or two people and kind of like trickling out from there is how I have seen, you know, a school go from one teacher is implementing Conscious Discipline in their classroom to now the entire school is implementing consciousness, and how that like kind of transformation can happen, but it kind of starts with you implementing and then you like, sharing all those pieces? Yeah,
Guy Stephens:I love that. And, and, you know, I think as an educator, I'm sure it can get really frustrating and seem overwhelming to like, change the system. But, you know, just beginning by changing what you're doing in your classroom, can and you know, I've worked with a lot of educators who have done that and have been able to influence change. I've worked with others who have done that in creating positive change in their classroom, only to have others not value and appreciate what they do. What about the parents? I mean, we have parents, we have self advocates and others that will go to a board meeting and speak up. If you if you as an educator, you know, if there was something could help you by parent going to a board meeting and speaking up, what would you ask them to talk about? I mean, what might a parent to I mean, because you know, we do we have now mind you some of these board meetings. They're not as productive as others. So a video from one in North Carolina actually just yesterday, that was rather explosive. But there are some parents out there, they're going to board meetings and they're advocating for positive changes. You know, in my case in my son's school district, we were able to get the policy change around seclusion and restraint by working through the board. So the board can have some influence any anything there in terms of like, how can how can parents and teachers? I mean, we should not be on the other side, you know, we should not be we should be working together, right? How do we collaborate to, you know, a well supported teacher is going to be much better equipped to support our kids. Any thoughts?
McAlister Greiner Huynh:I think, on you know, on the whole piece, like just thinking about like, Okay, we really want to eliminate restraint and seclusion. Part of that also comes with how do we provide the resources of the what else right, like you talked about of like, if not ABA, then what? And so I think, kind of advocating for those pieces as like a joint force of, we don't need this, we want to remove this because it's harmful. But like, here's what will help with the problem that you're seeing that you're trying to use this as a solution. You're trying to use restraint and seclusion as a solution to this. This is what would be helpful, let's put these two pieces together. Let's take this out. Let's put this in. Because I think a lot of times, teachers feel like things are taken away, and nothing's put in in their place.
Guy Stephens:Right, right, right. No, no, I hear you. And I think that's critical. I mean, it's part of the work we do around restraint, seclusion, but I think even just more generally, anytime that parents and teachers can support each other, it's a good thing. And you know, there are opportunities for parents to go to board meetings and share concerns. And you know, there's a lot of movement right now around the country with some parents organizing and sharing concerns that might not align with with everyone. Whether it's about, you know, banning books or getting rid of SEL programs. So, you know, I think given given what we know about some of these programs, some of these social emotional learning programs and their value, we need people out there advocating for good programs, and good support for kids. So just just kind of thinking out loud about how how we can collaborate together, I think anytime we can get, you know, educators and parents and families together, I think it's a positive, positive change. So we have gone about to the end of our time here today, and you knowing what you shared with me about time, you know, time behind this, I wouldn't be I wouldn't be making it making sure that I'm responsible here, and keep us to what I promise in terms of our time, but this has been a really fantastic conversation, we've had a lot of me far more comments, and I was able to get to in our conversation, you know, the things that you're doing, the work that you're doing is, is really, I think making a positive difference, the shift that's happening, and it's people like you that are, I think really helping to lead some of that shift is so critical, and, you know, supporting individuals that have not been well supported in a lot of our systems. So, you know, I'm really appreciative for all that you're doing out there and the change that you're bringing about? Do you do any consulting with other school districts or training or other things that people might be interested in that, you know, kind of want more of this?
McAlister Greiner Huynh:Yeah, so I do provide consultation and training on kind of a case by case basis. Sometimes it's it's a good fit, and sometimes it's not. So yeah, reaching out to me, usually through Instagram, and Facebook is actually the most the easiest way to get to me. I do have an email, but it like it gets checked periodically. So I usually keep up with messages more and then you know, I can like come back to them because they don't build up as quickly.
Guy Stephens:Yeah, no, I hear you. And Sandra, who has had a couple comments here said, Yes. Can we ever come to New Hanover County School?
McAlister Greiner Huynh:Sandra, I'd love to come to New Hanover. My grandma lives in Wrightsville.
Guy Stephens:New Hanover needs some help. I don't know if you've watched the news around New Hanover. But there's been a lot of things going on. For some time. They they've been a lot of issues around restraint seclusion. Recently, it was what a five or six year old that was put in handcuffs at a New Hanover County School. Yeah, there's a lot going on there for sure. But this has been a really great conversation. And I definitely want to encourage people to reach out to you to follow you on Instagram and Facebook. And certainly want to have you back as well, when the book comes out. And so that's really exciting. Any final words you want to leave people with any final thoughts that you have for today?
McAlister Greiner Huynh:Feels like a lot of pressure.
Guy Stephens:I don't feel pressure. Just you know, I mean, I asked you to solve the problem in our schools today. How much more pressure could there be? So don't don't feel like pressure. I just, you know, really value the the lens that you're using in the work that you're doing. And, you know, even in the example the Larry, you know, posters, a really great one. When you take something that's broken, that's harmful. You know, to be a able to come in and bring about a positive change is really meaningful to to our kids and our educators and our families. So the work you're doing is really critical.
McAlister Greiner Huynh:Thanks. I didn't I didn't mention and I should say, the Larry poster is free at everyday regulation.com. For anybody who wants to download it, you can send it to your local printers and get it printed blown up. We also do offer like a printed thing, but it's like, it's pretty much six or a half dozen, the cost wise of whether you order it or you send it to a local printer. So if you want to gift those to any of the teachers in your life, I totally recommend that it's free, download it, use it.
Guy Stephens:Yeah, that's great advice. You know, we always recommend to our audience, you know, if you're an educator, you know, there are things that you can share with the parents, if you're a parent to share these things with your educators. And again, I think, you know, one of the words of wisdom that you had is like, you know, make a difference for your classroom, right, you know, start start with what you have influence over make a difference there. And, you know, I mean, it sounds like that's been kind of the story of your career is like, starting off and making the difference where you can and that's expanding to a bigger and bigger audience. So thank you so much for joining us today. I'm gonna go ahead and wrap up our broadcast here, but really greatly appreciate it. Thank everybody. That was on with us. We had a good, good group here. Very active, and I'm sorry, I didn't get to all the comments and questions. But please come back. And if you have others, you know, don't hesitate to reach out. Of course, we've shared my counselors information as well. neurodivergent teacher, thank you so much, and we'll see everybody again next time. Thanks, everyone. Bye bye.