Lindsay Lyons on Navigating Hard School Conversations Around Inclusion, Equity, and Neurodivergence

Debbie:
Hey, Lindsay, welcome to the podcast.

Lindsay Lyons:
Hi, thanks so much for having me, Debbie.

Debbie:
Thank you for reaching out and sharing your work with me. I was super intrigued when you just connected and said, hey, I do this really interesting work and helping cultivate cultures and schools and facilitating conversations. it just seemed very timely for me in terms of where we are in the world and a lot of the thoughts I have about how to foster more neurodivergent affirming cultures in schools. I don’t know where this conversation is going to go, but I’m super curious to just kind of get into it. So would you take a few minutes to start by telling us, kind of setting the stage for the work that you do in the world? And I’d love to know why, like why you do this, how you got into this.

Lindsay Lyons:
Absolutely. So I am a former high school teacher. I was a special education teacher. I am currently a parent of a preschooler. So there’s kind of the range of ages that I’m thinking through when I talk about this stuff. I mean, I think my deep why, like the really deep down is that I don’t want any child to feel so like not right or that there’s anything wrong with them to the point where it leads them to harm themselves or someone else. I mean, that’s like my deepest, darkest, like, thought that I would like to just remove from the world, that possibility for everyone. And then on a more like generative, positive level, just that we, I think struggle, particularly in the United States at this moment, to see great models of conversation and seeking to understand instead of this is my position, I’m entrenched in it, I am in an echo chamber, I am right, you are wrong, there is no value in you as a person, right? Like that’s the kind of dynamic that we’re seeing. And so I’d love to kind of create these spaces in our families, in our schools, where we find a better way forward. And I truly believe that kids are the ones who are gonna find a different way because we all are struggling as adults.

Debbie:
So true. Yeah. So what does that actually look like? Can you describe your, I don’t know, it’s a job, I assume, but it seems like it’s also your kind of your passion and your purpose. But explain to us exactly what you do and how you work with communities.

Lindsay Lyons:
Absolutely. Yeah. So I think it is. It’s exactly that, right? It’s my passion. So it’s how I show up in just my interpersonal and family spaces. Like this is what I’m trying to do. I never purport to be an expert, but like I’m on the learning journey. But also professionally, it’s very much, I usually call myself an educational justice coach. thinking about how we can as an instructional coach or consultant coming into a school from the outside, like look at some various ways that we can be more inclusive, affirming, equitable of all brains and spaces and identities in the space of learning. And I think it often starts with just noticing what is not what we want and then thinking through ways together in partnership with students and families to get where we’d like to be conversationally or otherwise in the learning space.

Debbie:
And do schools bring you in and when you’re doing work, you work with the student body? Do you do teacher training? What does that actually look like?

Lindsay Lyons:
That’s such a good question. So right now it’s very much like we have a professional learning day and we want you to come in and do a workshop for our teachers. And I love that. But I also think for true sustainable growth, we need to have like year long touch points. So I’m currently, I’m learning a lot right now, but there’s this fascinating space of, it’s called outcomes based contracting. And so basically the providers of professional learning are paid in large part by the actual student outcomes that are produced which is fascinating to me. I would just love to do more of that. And so that’s inviting a lot of conversation of like, well, what does it actually look like to make sure that when a teacher sits in a professional learning space that they actually feel supported to implement beyond learning this thing and leaving the PD binder on the shelf at the end of the day and not touching it for two years, which as a former teacher, I can say is very much something that happens.

Debbie:
One of the things that I was thinking about as we were preparing, as I was preparing for this conversation is this idea of challenge days. Like I remember when those, when I first heard about them, I don’t know if like, this was an old Oprah episode or something like I distinctly remember watching a challenge day at a school where students got together and they really kind of broke down barriers and identities and had this real sharing of experience in a way that transformed students and throughout this experience. don’t know what the, I you would probably know what the research shows in terms of how effective those are over the long run, but is there some kind of thinking about this idea of challenge days, is that an inspiration for you or is that something, a model that you’ve explored in the work that you do?

Lindsay Lyons:
I’ve actually never heard the term challenge days. Can you say more about this?

Debbie:
Really? Yeah. I’ll have a link in the show notes page, listeners, if you want to check it out. But yeah, challenge days. I wasn’t even sure if it was still around, because it really was an Oprah. I’m certain of it. So this is aging and dating myself. But essentially, a team of coaches come in, and they will work with the student body, not the entire student body. They might pull together 30 students and spend the day together. And it would be students from different you know, again, like identity groups and peer groups and athletes and jocks and, you know, these people. And then it’s a way to kind of see where the common humanity is through different experiences. And so people kind of break down their walls and they actually see each other as people, not as these groups.

Lindsay Lyons:
Got it. Okay, so this actually reminds me of Diana Hess. She is a person who studies a lot of political discourse at the college level and then can recommend to people how you could structure a conversation. So I think there’s value in this both for educators and for families in terms of what’s the architecture almost or situational context for a good conversation. And one is, yeah, let’s get people together who actually do have a difference of opinion, as well as a difference of background experience, identity, all the things. And she talks about something that I absolutely love and have been exploring more is this idea of tension of good values. And so she’ll say the prompt for discussion, what we usually want when we bring folks together, is to invite them to explore a concept that has two competing values that are both good. So I think often of like, in the United States, we talk a lot about gun control, for example. And so there’s two tensions here. I think one is freedom, which is valuable, right? It’s valuable to have the freedom of choice in various things. The other is safety, right? And so there’s kind of this other polarity you could name. It’s like the individual and the collective. Like we have responsibility or desire for both and both are valuable, but they are intention. We need both of them and it’s more of the nuance of like how do we get to a place where we can come to almost a consensus or at least an understanding of the other person’s position on where on the spectrum we as a society collectively should live. One of the things Diana has talks about is we’re always discussing the question of how do we live together and I really like that because that’s usually important conversations. It’s like how do we exist together? How do we live in community? So I really like those ideas from her.

Debbie:
Thinking about safety and freedom, those are things that probably everybody wants, but our picture of what that looks like and how we can experience that could be very different. Yeah.

Lindsay Lyons:
Totally. Yeah. And to be able to find that and how it underlies the conversation is a skill that we can teach kids to do, right? Instead of being like, you say, this is the law you want and this is the law I want. You’re like, I see you really value freedom. Well, I really value safety. And like, just that switch is like really transformative to a conversation.

Debbie:
Let’s take a step back. And I just want to think about this idea of hard conversation. So what is kind of the landscape? Like when you think about working with schools or what’s happening inside middle schools, high schools, what are some of the themes that bubble to the surface as the tough conversations that teachers and other adults don’t really know how to navigate?

Lindsay Lyons:
Ooh, that’s good. Okay, so current events anywhere from like what is happening on the front page of the paper today, all the way to like cyber bullying and things that are happening online that are almost hidden from adults. So there’s almost not an understanding that it’s happening, it’s behind the scenes. I mean, down that kind of avenue is also the idea of radicalization of young kids, particularly young white teenagers, male teenagers on YouTube. There’s like this whole bunch of research that’s being done about when kids don’t have a place to go to, they go there. And then the algorithm is like radicalized into white supremacy and white dominance, which is like not where we want kids to go. 

And so, I mean, even more of a reason to create this space. That’s usually part of the why that I’ll actually say to teachers is yes, it can be scary to have these conversations about topics like racial injustice or white supremacy or even hard history. So I’m a social studies teacher and literacy teacher and so issues like enslavement or imperialism in the United States are tough conversations. So there’s a third grade curriculum. I was just in a PD yesterday with someone who said, you my third graders are grappling with the doctrine of discovery where the Pope was like, yes, you can go take land. And these third graders are saying, well, my identity is one of Christianity. I am a Christian and I’m not bad like that. That’s clearly bad. And so it was this grappling and sometimes teachers don’t want to touch it because it has something to do with religion or it has something to do with identity or race or whatever the thing is. But really the grappling is where the learning is happening and it’s,ripe for learning. They’re going to go somewhere else if they don’t have you as the space to talk. And so that’s why I think school-family partnerships are a really good space to actually dig in deeper and say, we are the space for you. Please come to us. Don’t go to the internet where who knows what’s out there.

Debbie:
So just to circle back to something you said and speaking to the fear that a lot of educators have, like, I don’t want to touch this. I don’t want to go there now. And I think that it must be incredibly challenging, again, in this time in the world, especially this is probably a very US-focused conversation, although I think this is happening everywhere in terms of there’s just this kind of not knowing how to navigate certain topics. And there is a concern of.
there are concerns to even talk about and broach certain things. And so I’m just wondering like on a personal level, how do you think about the work that you’re doing within this context?

Lindsay Lyons:
Yeah, that is such a good point. So I think there’s a variety of things. One is that I’ve been trying to really get clear on my values and when I coach teachers to get clear on their values. So there’s usually like a why behind why did I get into teaching or how do I want to live out the value? So one of my core values is justice. My sister, even she’s one of my inspirations. She has a post-it on her, family’s fridge. That’s like her last name is Foster. So she’s like, Foster’s do what’s right, even when it’s hard, you know, like that kind of thing. So if you have whatever it is, a phrase that’s on a post-it or your value, I think it makes it much easier to make really tough decisions. But I also think given in the United States and in some states particularly, there’s even language being banned. So you can’t say DEI, short for diversity, equity, inclusion. You can’t say SEL, short for social emotional learning. Like we don’t want our kids to be social and emotional beings. 

It’s really interesting, heartened by like Zaretta Hammond does a lot of really great work around culturally responsive teaching and learning. And she talks about how, you know, it never was about the words. And if you’re about the work, then it’s okay that those words are banned. You can still serve the child and you could still do the thing. And so I think that’s really what is front of mind for me in talking with leaders who are feeling confined by some of the legislation or some of the tension. I also think a third component is the family dynamics. so educators are kind of having someone in their brain of like, but this family might get upset if I talk about this. And I think what I usually say is a couple of things. One, who is the family in your brain? And is it just one family that you’re worried about? Is it a family that has a lot of advantaged identities and actually gets to dictate a lot of conversations in society because I don’t know if that’s like the one family that should dictate what everyone does in the class. 

But also like where are the opportunities for us to bring in families, right? And invite them into the conversations, whether it’s literally in the class or if it’s, you know, we have a family space at school, like a PTA or some sort of grouping where it’s like, actually, this is really an interesting topic that’s hard for adults to talk about why don’t we have a conversation as family members? We’ll provide childcare, we’ll get you all set up and like, we’ll just get to chat about this topic and practice the conversation ourselves so that we’re now more adept at talking and coaching students and children.

Debbie:
So cool. So you mentioned fear earlier as a barrier for a lot of adults to have these conversations. What are some other reasons why adults, whether they’re teachers or leaders or parents, just kind of feel like, I’m not equipped to have this conversation in the first place?

Lindsay Lyons:
Yeah, I had a couple of weeks ago, a teacher say on a very large Zoom PD, confidently say, well, of course I’m not going to talk about whatever because I don’t have all of the answers. And then we had another teacher, which was great when the learning happens teacher to teacher and that teacher said, well, actually, I don’t think we are supposed to have all the answers. That’s not our job. Our job is to cultivate the questions, model curiosity, and try to find the answers as much as we can, but also to acknowledge when we don’t have it, because no one has all the answers. And the kids are constantly, often, I should say, in a state of anxiety over getting an answer right or wrong, of not knowing. I mean, this is really debilitating for a lot of students, just that anxiety of, the teacher is going to call on me, oh, I don’t have the right answer. And our job as educators, I would argue, is actually to create a culture of learning and mistakes. Yesterday, a teacher told me she has a 100 mistakes challenge, where she says, as a class, every time we create a mistake, we put it up on the board, and we get to 100, we’re going to have an ice cream party. And we’re going to celebrate that that’s how we learn. And I was like, that’s brilliant. That’s our job.

Debbie:
Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I love that. Sorry, I need to pause because I was thinking of another guest who changed language around like instead of oops I made a mistake like awesome I made a mistake like yeah I love that. Okay sorry let me get back to where I was because I was like yeah who was that. So let’s talk about the student experience. Again, when you first reached out, I was really thinking about neurodivergent students. That’s always the lens with which I approach any conversation on this show. And as a parent of a neurodivergent student, it’s something I think a lot about. And I’d love to know more about the experience of students themselves in terms of their openness, their willingness, their interest in engaging with some of these hard conversations. In some ways, I think it’s the job of a young person to kind of push back and always be seeking answers with these harder conversations, what do you notice when you’re working with schools?

Lindsay Lyons:
Yeah, that’s such a good question. So I think I have a couple instances that come to mind. So one instance is my second year of teaching. I was teaching students that had really low attendance, really struggled in school for a variety of reasons, a range of IEPs and classifications, as well as students who did not have an IEP and just were struggling. For some reason, the principal said, Lindsay, want you to teach a course and I want you to basically take all the students that are struggling and we’re just gonna put them in that course. And I don’t care what the course is, but you’re just gonna do it. And so I like, I would love to do a discussion-based course on like race and gender. And we called it like intersectional feminism. And I was like, let’s just do it. Let’s just try it. Let’s just try it. And I have to say, students who were silent, like absolutely silent or even didn’t come to school at all once they came one time and saw the dynamic was, I can help, like, I can actually share my ideas. I can help co-create, like, meaning in this class. I can talk about things that, are in the text we’re reading, but also things that I saw in the hallway last period. 

It was wild how, I mean, I’m like, getting worked up thinking about it, but they, these kids who didn’t produce probably a paragraph of writing in the typical social studies course, produce like five page essays. I mean, these are students who struggle with writing immensely and they would be producing. Kids who are absolutely silent, you could not stop them from talking. And I think there’s two pieces to that. One is, this is a space where we’ve all struggled and like all of us in the room have struggled. We’re just gonna be committed to like trying things a different way and it’s not gonna look the same. And I’m gonna mess up as your teacher. I’ve never taught this class before, and let’s just give each other grace along the way. And the content of, wow, this is actually interesting because no one else is letting me talk about this. And this is the place where I actually get to say what I think about the thing that’s actually really important to me. 

And so it wasn’t always like academic discourse as you would put on like a model, know, PD screen or something, but it was absolutely deep and meaningful and literacy rates improved understanding of like concepts improved. mean, their critical analysis, often the kids who do less good at like the performance of school, in air quotes, did really well with, do really well with critical analysis and thinking about here’s an alternative perspective. So I think another thing is like, let’s focus on the assets that students bring, as opposed to this deficit mind we’re always in as educators, I feel like we’re trained to be like, here’s what’s wrong, let’s fix it. And instead say, actually, these students who have felt really marginalized in traditional ways of schooling can absolutely tell you the critical interpretation of what’s the other perspective in any given scenario much better than someone who’s just had an easy go of it.

Debbie:
So I’m just curious with that example or other times that you’ve done this work with students, what do you observe in terms of how the dynamic between students or groups within a classroom, for example, might change? I imagine if they are changing so much in terms of their own willingness to speak up or to write and they are engaged in this way, that it’s going to change their relationships as well.

Lindsay Lyons:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s part of it is the creation of spaces for discussion. And I think I can also get into like, there are various ways that that can look and structures that can support students who excel, for example, as like quiet thinkers versus like common talk, frequent talkers or, you know, small space versus whole group. There are definitely intentional ways that I would advocate for a teacher to support my kid or as a teacher to just like design lessons for all kids and and one of them I think is that you have to and this actually goes back to Diana has his work as well, but she talks about how you really have to connect the personal as Well as like if we’re talking about like this big issue this political thing Like also talk about the experience that led you to come to some sort of like, you know policy stance or something, you know, why do you feel that way? 

Like a lot of our students, a lot of the students I’ve taught and the teachers that I coach right now, the students have just recently migrated to the country. And so like that migration experience is completely reasonable to bring in and leverage as expertise in a conversation about migration or the human experience or, you know, policy, any of that. And I think that’s what also makes students kind of sit up a little straighter and
kind of lean into a conversation where they’re like, I want to know about you as a human. I don’t want to know just what you think about this writing, this text that we’re reading, but I actually want to know about like you and what you value in your experience because that’s, care about you as a person.

Debbie:
Yeah, yeah. Okay, very interesting. So you shared some ways that you can create the optimal space or a conducive space for these kinds of conversations. And I’m just wondering maybe to pivot to something that’s not based on this course that you did. But I’m just thinking like, and maybe this example doesn’t make sense. actually, me do a little, Andrea, cut this out. Do you work with like if a school has gone through something like, gone through something significant or, you know, like, I just think about a school that is navigating something difficult about how to facilitate a conversation to process. Is that something that we could speak to?

Lindsay Lyons:
Yeah, for sure. So like a restorative conversation.

Debbie:
So I’m just thinking about kind of specific conversations that you might be helping to support schools and having. I’m thinking, you know, if a school community has experienced something, a significant trauma within the community or some sort of high profile bullying incident or violence at school or just living in a community that is in the midst of turmoil, intense turmoil right now because of what’s happening on the ground. So when you really want to bring a community together, especially the students so that they can kind of process in a healthy way, what does that look like? How do you advise schools to navigate that?

Lindsay Lyons:
Yeah, I think there’s a range of options here and Dr. Eric Soto-Shed has like a whole framework for how you might approach this instructionally based on how kind of, I don’t remember the language he uses, but something like how intense the emotion is, is how I would describe it and how many students are affected by it. But I’ll say, for example, I’ll give a couple examples. One is the day in the United States that in 2016, I was teaching a high school class and Donald Trump was elected, and Hillary Clinton was not. And we all went to bed kind of thinking the election was going one way and then we wake up the next way. And I’m coming into school that morning to 100 % of the students that I was teaching. It was a school specifically designed for students who were new to English and new to the United States. So everyone has a migration experience. Many students are fearful around documentation and like, how do I approach this conversation? 

And so that one was very much like, we’re gonna give a lot of think time and individual process time. When we share, we’re going to ground in our emotional experience in the moment. So we’re not necessarily going to get all analytical and thinking about policy. Although that was something that later in the day after we had processed the same classes went to another teacher and were curious and had questions because they had done the emotional processing. They got to like talk about what it means to be popularly elected versus like elected in this way, right? And so they had the space for that. But what we did was very much like, how are we feeling in this moment? And I think about a lot of students’ entry points to conversations. So some students would share verbally. They were fluent about emotional language, and they’re great. Others are like, I need like an emotion wheel. I need something to choose from. Can I share an emoji? Can I draw something? Others might not want to share at all, and they can just pass the opportunity. We started with a circle because I think format really dictates kind of the emotional vulnerability in space. So circles being everyone has a chance to speak, we have a talking piece, everyone gets to touch it and then decide if they share. 

That creates an opportunity for every single person to speak. Ideally, no one’s speaking kind of over anyone else or more than anyone else and it also gives us space for someone who is not wanting to speak to actively make the choice to say pass. And it also makes kids feel very vulnerable because there’s no physical desk in between and there’s nowhere to like physically hide. You can’t be on your phone. can’t, you you’re like, you’re there. And so that emotional experience was incredibly like powerful for students. And so we just started with the feeling and then we invited questions. What questions do you have right now? And that actually, I think, led to the conversation with the other teacher. How does this all work? What does this mean for me? But we started with emotions, started with questions, and then we enabled people to share stories. Is there a story that comes to mind? Is there something you’re thinking of? Are you thinking of a family member? Why? And so, again, when it’s really high emotional resonance, our response is going to be really different from a low emotional text. And I often lean into the personal, like, how are you feeling? How does this connect to your values or emotions in the moment? What story can you tell us? What experience can you bring into this? And that often lays the foundation for eventually being able to connect to policy or some larger kind of textual academic conversation.

Debbie:
And are those what you just shared, are those kind of best practices for any sort of hard conversation or are there other things that you know considerations that you would want schools or parents to keep in mind?

Lindsay Lyons:
Yeah, that’s such a good question. I think like one other instance I would say that might be slightly different is a restorative conversation. So you’ve brought up like if there’s a bullying or something like that happening, I would do it a little different. I would say kind of let’s get the facts straight first. So like what happened? What was your experience of the thing? How did you feel? And then I would also invite the question of how would you want the harm to be repaired? Or if you’re the person causing harm, like how could I repair the harm? So I think that’s an important question that certainly could be explored whole class with like a current event that affects someone nationally, but would be a little bit distinct. And then I would also say for at home, I think the general approach we give is like, first appreciate if a student is like a child is coming to you with a question. 

So I’m thinking about like, you know, my three year olds being like, why is that person holding a sign, you know, and they look like they have bags on the street and like describing someone who seems unhoused, you know, like first just appreciate the question, appreciate that they’re coming to you. I think that’s a really big stance in that moment of like, thank you. I mean, I have all the answers that’s going on in my head, like, okay, how am gonna say this? But like appreciation is huge. And then to get curious and respond sometimes to their question with a question, I think is a really good approach, especially if we don’t know exactly what to say, like, oh, what’s making you think about that? Or like, how are you feeling noticing that? You know, do you have more questions, that kind of thing? And then a follow-up could be like inviting, depending on the age, right? I’m thinking about older kids. Like we could certainly talk in more detail. We could do some research together on the computer, open up a paper for a younger child. My three-year-old, might be, you we’re reading a book around that topic. So we just got a book from the library that was like, my best friend doesn’t have a house or something, you know, like, what does that mean? And so I think there’s like certain processes depending on like how the conversation is coming up. Is it taking place in a classroom? Is it taking place one-on-one with your child?

But I think the general principles of like, we’re gonna center emotion and like personal experience and make sure that it’s okay that they know that they don’t have to have like a quote unquote appropriate emotional response or have all of the factual knowledge in order to do the parents or caretakers in that space. And so I think that that would be like the guidance for me, like appreciate all the questions, questions are good focus on the emotion and focus on the personal stories and connections.

Debbie:
So let’s zoom out a little bit and think about school cultures for a moment. And I’m just wondering what this would look like if you were brought into a school to work with educators when the community itself has one or more marginalized groups that is really having a negative experience. It could be a racial group, gender identity, neurodivergence, of course, is a whole, you know, something I’d like to explore. what does this look like when you’re looking to actually shift the culture of a school?

Lindsay Lyons:
Okay, that’s really good. So I think one is just making space. My first thought is making space for voice for those students as well as the caretakers and family members of those students. And so, I mean, there’s a range of things that you could do to just make students, I think, or help students feel more comfortable in spaces. Because one of the things that we say a lot is like student voice, student voice, and it’s great. But if you don’t have the conditions that enable students to share with their experiences, then we don’t really get it very far. 

So I mean, I think all the way from like designing, are we having a whole group conversation where we’re putting a handful of kids in the spotlight to share their experience, right? Like that could be valuable, that could not be valuable. Like it depends on each situation. But it could also be that we are as leaders or as educators or as family members who are curious about this, inviting folks to like, for example, I love this for middle and high school students particularly, like take your cell phone, take a camera and give me a photo journal of your experience at this school. And so it’s not even super written, right? It’s just like here, I am taking a picture of the inside of the bathroom stall, because this is where I eat lunch, because I’m socially anxious or something, right? Or I am taking picture of the kind of perspective of my head down and almost like I’m sleeping in the class, because I am feeling really, really exhausted or I didn’t eat breakfast this morning or whatever the thing is I think there’s so many ways that we can invite voice firstly to center students and also help students have academic success in the space. I mean, also I’m thinking about like how we can often build up to things and we center writing so much. 

Most of my experiences with students with like dyslexia and writing struggles in general, whether that’s language or neurodiversity, there’s so much around the expression. How do I express it? So students who are either verbally anxious to share, those kids are going to do amazing if you just invite them to write their ideas, versus students who are highly verbal and they’re like, you asked me to write something and I’m like, we’re not doing that. So I think the focus, the heavy focus on writing kind of privileges certain types of expression that I just also want us to all rethink. But I think one of the biggest things is finding space for reflection and finding space to point out what we’re noticing. And so one of the things we could do is like a learning walk where we just go in and we kind of observe like, okay, for example, our focus is neurodiverse students. Are there particular students we’re looking for in this class? And so family members, leaders, even students, I would argue can go on these and family members can advocate to do these with leaders. It’s just, we’re gonna come in, we’re gonna let the teachers know in advance, we’ll be here when you’re having a discussion, just sit in the back.

So the discussion, take some notes on what you observe. And observe both the verbal and the nonverbal ways that students are interacting or not interacting across multiple classrooms ideally, because if you’re looking for a whole group, you’re looking not just in this one teacher’s class. But if you look across five, then you might say, you know what? The students in this group were doing really, really good, because this teacher did something distinctly different from these four. And let’s celebrate that and actually elevate that practice because often the answer is kind of in the space already somewhere and we just have to lift it out and showcase it as like positive deviance. So I think there’s a variety of ways that we could do that all the way, restorative circles, like discussion practices and like skill building in the class and having students have success all the way to like we’re actually going to observe as adults and then come up with some recommendations.

Debbie:
Yeah. So I’m wondering what you find, you know, go back to the very beginning of this conversation about, you were saying we as adults can really struggle because we’re so entrenched in our beliefs and our ideas about things. What do you find in terms of the openness to change, to acceptance of others, experience, to just being curious and not necessarily, again, not trying to change people’s minds, but to just I guess ground in a bigger sense of humanity with students. What have you found?

Lindsay Lyons:
Yeah, so I am thinking about the work of change leadership scholars. And my background, my research was in change leadership. And so I had a professor, John Morgan, who talked about this idea of, I’m gonna get this language wrong, but it’s like this idea of a disorienting dilemma. And so this idea that we can create a space for people to recognize, have this thing in my head. I think the world is this way. I think I’m a good teacher. But then we pair that with either maybe it’s the student photo essay, maybe it’s a piece of data about how this group of students is performing, but it disorients them enough to say, wait a minute, that’s not at all what I thought this experience was for these kids. Constructive disorientation, there we go. I knew I would find it.  And he says, there’s a variety of ways that we can come up with this. One of them is actually aesthetic or art based. So I love the idea of pairing this with the student voice via photo journal. Another is just having space and time for reflection. Another I’ve seen work really nicely is when students are actually invited into PLC meetings or after school meetings where teachers are talking about the students and often the students are absent. I’ve even had students co-lead professional learning sessions after school for teachers and the dynamic shifts incredibly. Like, I don’t know if it’s disorienting, or something, but what happens in that room when students are present is like miraculous. Like there is a reduction in like, this kid is bad type of language, or this is the, you know, like all this deficit stuff. And it’s just like, well, I’m obviously not going to say that in front of a student. 

So I’m going to put a different type of like, thinking hat on. And now I’m going to just co-create with them and imagine the possible and well, they’re teaching me right now. So clearly they’re capable of all this stuff, right? And there is a generative something that happens when we just kind of switch up the dynamic when we invite students into these spaces that they’re not usually welcome. And so I wonder about that. Like, where can we create these moments of constructive disorientation so that we really, he says this is necessary to kind of go on the change journey and to change our mental model, is we need this moment of like, I thought this, I now see this, and I want to commit to make a change. Like, I’m gonna go through all these processes, there’s a ton of research on all of this, like, identity, like loss of identity is like a big sticking point for people. If I as a teacher think I’m a good teacher and then I notice these kids aren’t learning well in my class. And then I go into kind of this almost like depressed, like, no, I’m like defensive because I don’t want to be a bad teacher. Like you got to move through all of that. But like the one of the best ways that we’ve seen to do it is that constructive disorientation. How do we have that moment where we then come out of it, are able to play a little bit and explore what could work in partnership with students and families and then commit to like, okay, I’m trying this new way of being in teaching.

Debbie:
Okay, super interesting. I’m gonna just pause for a second, because I wanna refer to something and I’m forgetting the person who told me about it, called positive disintegration. And what you called it was generative disorientation? No, constructive, I love that, okay. I love this idea of constructive disorientation. And my brain, as you were talking, went to this idea of positive disintegration, which I explored with Chris Wells on the show. And I think there’s a lot of overlap there, but it is this idea that sometimes we’ve got to shake things up to make progress. So I really, really like that. And I guess as a way to kind of wrap up, so we have educators listening to the show, mental health and providers and therapists, but also mostly parents. So I’m just wondering for listeners who are kind of sparked by this discussion and they’re thinking about within their kids’ how could I support the school in leaning more into these hard conversations? Do you have any either resources or just ideas of how they could get started?

Lindsay Lyons:
Yeah, I mean, I think there are a variety of approaches to this, but the biggest one I think that would be valuable is offering them your support and just saying, actually do want this. We actually do want our kids to be capable of having conversation and to be able, and I think this is the key piece, to be able to talk across difference without violating anyone’s human dignity. Like, and I think that’s a really hard thing to do. But to say that we support you in this is step one. Because if the family members are saying, actually, we support it, then there goes that fear of the families are going to hate this. And so I think people are going to do a lot more in the education space to make it happen. And then for educators and family members who are excited to partner with schools to do this work, I think there is a range of things we want to do. One is to practice as adults believe firmly that we practice before and alongside students. And so I don’t think this is just like, think kids need to get good at, we also need to practice it. I think we need to model it in home conversations. And so I think that that looks a lot of ways, but I mean, that could even be a colleague told me she used to get the physical paper just to have it at the dinner table to be like, and I mean, even I tried that my three year old is now like, what does this picture mean? I think he’s curious about current events, right, this opportunity wherever it lies for you to just constantly and consistently invite conversation that could also happen in a classroom. Five minutes at the start of class, here’s like some various articles. have the paper up front. Like you take the section that’s interesting to you, we’re gonna talk about it. 

But I also think it is very much like, how do we structure the conversation? And I’m thinking about neurodiverse kids specifically here in like, how do we make sure that those kids feel like they are successful within the conversation when maybe social anxiety is really a factor or executive functioning and thinking about like, just need to know, I want to know the familiarity of what’s gonna come next and this type of discussion doesn’t breed familiar things, because I’m not used to talking about it and anything could happen and my emotions are high and so a kid who struggles with emotional regulation is gonna have a hard time. So there’s all this foundation building. And I would say as much as we can build the foundation for social and emotional kind of like competency around this for creating the space of perceived safety, like we’ve got you, we care about you as humans to our kids, both from the family and the school side. And then also like how do we structure literally how our kids sitting, what’s the prompt we give them? Are we anchoring it in a factual text? Are we just starting with like what’s the student experience? And I think a big thing we skip right over is like, what are the co-created agreements that have how we’re gonna have the conversation. 

One of the really cool things and I, Justin Dulciniasco and Katie Kubano I think are who this comes from, but they talk about a baseline assumption or I’ve kind of rephrased it to a baseline understanding and partnership with some folks in education. But what is the thing we’re not going to have violated? So I used to say dignity, I think that’s it, but it’s also kind of like amorphous, like what does that even mean? So the UN, they have one that’s like, everyone deserves shelter and healthcare and food. And so that could be your thing. So you’re talking about this policy, but you’re saying, no matter what, we’re not gonna violate the belief that we agreed to in this class, that everyone deserves food, water, and shelter. So if we’re talking about policy,
We’re not talking about policy that could unhouse a bunch of people. Like how do we think of it differently? Like things like that, think that are baselines that are like, this is how we’re not gonna violate human dignity are critical before we jump into conversations that potentially could and are gonna help our kids who are really nervous about that have a little bit more perceived safety entering into the conversation.

Debbie:
So fascinating. And I just have to say that the word dignity has come up almost half a dozen times today after me not even hearing that word in weeks and weeks. it’s such a good thing to be considering when we’re talking about raising humans and just this very important work that we’re all doing, all of us listening to the show and thinking about these things is raising kids and protecting human dignity. So thank you for that. Super fascinating. OK, so let’s wrap up. I would love to know if you have any specific places you’d like listeners to connect with you and anything you want to share.

Lindsay Lyons:
Absolutely. So lindseybethlions.com is my website. I am not really on social media, but if you want to check out my website, my contact information is there. I even have a space where people can just grab 20 minutes with me to brainstorm like whatever is on their brains and their hearts. And I actually, in partnership with a colleague we’ve been doing coaching on Slack for teachers for a long time, for years I should say, it’s called Eduboost. And basically what we have decided is, families should do this. Like families should have access to coaching that enables them to say in this moment, my kid just brought up this current event on the drive home. my goodness, what do I say? And like have that ability to talk to a human that’s not AI and say like, actually, we’ve been there and like, we got you. Here we go. Here’s some things to consider. So we’re playing with that right now. And so if anyone’s interested in like helping us test that idea out, we’d love some feedback.

Debbie:
Very cool. Awesome. Well, I just want to say thank you. really appreciated kind of exploring all of this with you. Again, not our typical like parenting show, like here are three strategies for your kiddos or whatever. Sorry, I don’t even do that. And now I just got an emergency alert. So let me say that again. It’s not necessarily our typical parenting show topic, but I think it’s so important to talk about these bigger conversations, if you will, that really impact who our kids are and how they grow up and their sense of self and how they become adults who can contribute to the world in a meaningful way. I just really appreciate it. So thank you.

Lindsay Lyons:
Thank you, Debbie. I really appreciated your conversation. I learned so much from you in this.

Debbie:
Awesome, love that.