Immigrant children face unique challenges in the classroom. Many are processing recent upheaval, working through academic material while learning a new language, or adjusting to new cultural norms. This episode of Policy Outsider, coordinated by the Institute on Immigrant Integration Research and Policy, explores how emotionally responsive practice can be used in the classroom to support children navigating adversity. Guests Margaret Blachly, co-director of the Center for Emotionally Responsive Practice (ERP) at the Bank Street College of Education, and Romelle Moore, a mental health specialist at the Center, join the show to discuss how their work at ERP can help teachers and students connect in a supportive environment that promotes resilience.
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Joel Tirado 00:02
Welcome to Policy Outsider presented by the Rockefeller Institute of Government. I’m Joel Tirado. Immigrant children face unique challenges in the classroom. Many are processing recent upheaval, working through academic material while learning a new language or adjusting to new cultural norms. On this episode of policy outsider, we explore how emotionally responsive practice can be used in the classroom to support children navigating adversity. Guests Margaret Blachley, co director of the Center for emotionally responsive practice for ERP at the Bank Street College of Education, and Romelle Moore, a mental health specialist at the center join the show to discuss how their work at ERP can help teachers and students connect in a supportive environment that promotes resilience. That conversation is up next.
Joel Tirado 01:12
Margaret and Romelle. Thank you both for joining me on the podcast today.
01:17
Thank you for having us.
Romelle Moore 01:18
Yeah, thanks for having
Joel Tirado 01:19
Of course. You know, I’m really excited to talk about the work that you are doing at Bank Street. And I know when we spoke that I mentioned that I’m coming to this pretty fresh. You know, you did some you did a presentation for the Institute on immigrant integration research and policy where you shared some of the work that you’ve done, Margaret, I know you were there, so why don’t we start by just talking about the work that you’re doing at Bank Street, the specific program that you’re involved in, and maybe Margaret. I’ll just kick it off to you first.
Margaret Blachly 01:55
Great. Thank you. Bank Street is a big organization. It has a lot of components. It has a school for children. It has an early childhood center that’s an inclusion special ed program. It has a head start. Has a program for teens. It has a Graduate School of Education where teachers and principals and Child Life workers go to get their master’s degree. It has an education center that offers professional development large scale, and within the Graduate School of Education lives the Center for emotionally responsive practice, and that is where we’re coming to you from today. It is a small group of practitioners that has lived in Bank Street College for about 25 years, that was born really a sort of brain child, or maybe not even a brainchild, I think, and it evolved. It emerged over time with the work of Leslie Coppola, who is the founder of our program, who is a renowned child therapist. She was practicing in schools and noticing that teachers, more than anything, needed support, knowing about the whys behind children’s emotions, behind children’s behavior, you might say, the things they did, the things they felt. And Leslie started offering professional development and coaching to teachers in a way that helped them see the children in front of them. Build relationship. Think about their stories and also understand them in a developmental way. So thinking about social and emotional development from her therapist perspective, we now say that ERP, as we call it, is almost like putting on a pair of glasses where one lens understands the developmental moment of a child and all the developmental moments they’ve come through. And I’m talking about social, emotional development, and the other looks at the child’s whole self, including the many components of their stories. And their stories include their family, their experiences, their culture, their personality, their likes and dislikes. And when we look at children through these two lenses together, we we can have a deeper understanding of what’s making them tick, and we can think better about how to set up an environments where they’re going to feel welcome, where they’re going to feel calm, where they’re going to feel connected, where they’re going to feel interested in being there and in learning. I’ll pass it to Romelle, who maybe will catch something that I missed.
Romelle Moore 04:57
Oh my goodness, Margaret, I think. You, you’ve said, you’ve said most, you said most of it really just to elaborate, even on the cultural aspects of ERP, right? It is, it is. It is not separate from the work we do. It’s, it’s integrated in the work we do because we are, we are learning from we’re learning from children themselves about their stories, about their identity, about their culture, and we are informing educators on how to on how to integrate that into their into their classwork, into their pedagogy. So it is a very ERP is a very, how can I say it’s an organic way of of approaching children, socially, emotionally,
Joel Tirado 05:52
so, so ERP, then is, is working to train educators? Do I have that right?
Margaret Blachly 05:59
Yeah, that’s right, we we train educators, we also support educators. So those two things for us go hand in hand, and we consider that to be a parallel process of what educators are doing for children. They’re both teaching them content and skills and they’re supporting them as whole people. So we come from a really beautiful interweaving of mental health practitioners and classroom practitioners who we inform each other about what it means to be a human, a human adult teacher, and the particular kinds of challenges that teachers face, and we also know that when that you know we say you can’t you can’t give what you don’t get. So we consider it just as important to provide a supportive space for the adults who care for and teach children to be cared for and taught the things that we bring to teach, but the the adults also teach us. So I think we always want to elaborate when we say something like training teachers, because it’s really different than training a dog. The training involves deep learning and also deep connection, and that’s what we’re asking them to look to develop with the kids that they work with.
Joel Tirado 07:32
Yeah, right, right. It’s a, it’s a more kind of reciprocal. It’s a, it’s a give and take of of learning interesting. So, so in the, you know, in the setting. And again, I’m just sort of exploring my own interest here, and then I, you know, we’ll turn the conversation to other things. But is this a classroom setting that you are training educators? And are there, are you bringing in young students? Or is it that, you know, these are educators, and so they already have experience with students, and you’re helping them sort of process those experiences they’ve had. Talk a little bit to me about sort of what the setting is like in which this learning is happening.
Margaret Blachly 08:14
That’s such a great question. I can hear your wheels turning, and what’s so obvious to us is you’re just trying to imagine. So we work with a school, we work with a program, we work with the district, we work with an organization, and we do a couple of different things when we do something called professional development that’s getting in a room with grown ups, whether that’s a Zoom Room or a physical room. Sometimes it’s a fancy room that the school has rented for this day of development. Sometimes we bring them to Bank Street, where we have a classroom for adults, and sometimes it is a cafeteria in a school. Sometimes it is a crowded table in the teacher’s lounge with people squeezing in. Sometimes it’s the gymnasium. So the places where our work takes place really varies according to the circumstances and needs of particular programs we work with. We pride ourselves on meeting their needs. If they can’t get there physically, we can do a zoom session. If they don’t want to travel. We go to them. If going to them means sitting in their gym, we sit in their gym and we can, we can do what we do in all different kinds of settings. We also do something called coaching. And coaching is when we actually go into their classrooms and we come in as respectful observers. We come in as thinking partners. We come in letting the teachers know, explicitly and implicitly, that we are there not to judge them, but to get to know them, get to know their kids, and offer some thinking. Partnership, about the classroom climate, about the relationships they’re building. So when you think of what does it really look like the PDS are just with grown ups. We never bring in a group of kids, and then the coaching is in the settings where they actually work. We do have a video library, and the video library contains maybe around 30 different videos that were filmed in actual classrooms. And so we do use this in our teaching to show teachers what does this look like when teachers are practicing emotionally responsive practice in real life, and our videos are imperfect. They’re very real life. And we find that to be really helpful for teachers who usually say, Oh, I see it. It’s it’s okay to be a little bit messy in the way I do this, it’s okay to try things out, because when you know you can have the perfect script, but the children never know the lines that you were thinking, and you might come out and, you know, say the perfect thing that is emotionally responsive, perfect phrasing, and what the child in front of you says back to you completely changes, and you have to go into improv mode. And so we we really try to help teachers know that emotionally responsive practice is an art. It’s a in the moment reaction, it’s an in the moment processing, and then it’s also a reflective practice where you go back, reflect on moments and plan, plan accordingly. This happened with a child. This is the story they told. This is the thing that made them upset. So tomorrow, I’m going to bring this activity. Tomorrow I’m going to sit with them and have a conversation, or make make a little drawing with them, or tomorrow I’m going to read a particular book to the whole class, because the the ideas in the book are important to be recognized by everyone,
Romelle Moore 12:08
and also too, if I can add to what you’re saying. Margaret, I think it’s also important like that teachers like, Okay, this has happened. It’s also really important for for them to look within themselves. Oh, how did I personally respond, respond to this situation? How did I respond, you know? Oh, you know, I did great. I responded in this way, or I responded in that way. So that’s again, that’s where the parallel process come come in, and it actually helps the teacher plan for for the response, or how she’s going to handle situation, to help, you know, normalize the situation for that child.
Joel Tirado 12:48
So I have two young kids and and I will be checking out the video library, because, as you say, it is, it is very it is very messy. And, yeah, there’s, it’s so difficult to predict. So I can imagine, you know, as a as an educator, when you are seeing these kids and they’re you don’t have that same level of familiarity that you might have as a parent with them, that that extra bit of paying attention and reflecting, well, you know, we’ll do a lot of important work in in guiding how you prepare for the next lesson and the next series of lessons. That’s that’s very interesting. Romelle, your your background is in mental health,
Romelle Moore 13:34
yes, mental health, yes. I’m a social worker here in the city.
Joel Tirado 13:37
Okay, so in your role with ERP, you your focus is specifically on, on some mental health issues or, well,
Romelle Moore 13:48
yes, I mean, it’s really like what Margaret says is a beautiful weaving of both, right? So as I’m, as my I was, I’m a mental health worker or specialist within ERP. I’m also, I’m also being taught how to, how to teach, like, what, what? What is, how does a classroom look like? So I’m actually trying to marry my, my, my therapeutic side with this new side, learning how to be a teacher in a classroom, and how teachers move within the classroom. Because it would be, I would I feel, in a way, unbeneficial for me to come in and just focus on a mental health situation, I have to focus on the whole right? So the teacher, okay, she has, I’ll give you a good example. She has all of her or his artwork, like pens and pencils and markers, they’re a little too high, they’re a little too high up on the shelf. So as a teacher, you want those things to be reachable for kids. You don’t want them to have to constantly ask you for things and so forth. So you want to build that trust where you can have those those tools and a reachable distance. So So you know, you tell the teacher that as a you know, within, within the within that pedagogy, but as a mental health specialist, you come in and you say, you know, I would feel as a child like this. This environment is truly mine. If I’m able to grab a pencil or grab a marker or have things that are reachable for me, that helps me feel safe in my environment, it helps me feel like I belong in this environment. I’m hoping that makes sense.
Joel Tirado 15:44
Oh, I mean, absolutely, yeah, it’s amazing how early on autonomy emerges in children. Or at least that’s my my experience, that this desire for agency comes out so young. So yeah, when the environment can promote that, that makes a lot of sense. So you know, the it was the folks from the Institute on immigrant integration research and policy, which is housed here at the Rockefeller Institute, that connected us, and they have obviously a specific interest in immigrant children. And so I want to ask you both about, you know, the things that you are describing about emotionally responsive practice are obviously applicable to all children and all learning environments, whether it’s, you know, in school or at home or or in other places. But I imagine that there are specific sensitivities surrounding working with immigrant children, and I’m just wondering how ERP is is approaching that
Romelle Moore 16:56
Margaret, do you go ahead?
Margaret Blachly 16:57
Okay, I’d like us both to answer here, because one thing to know about ERP is that we all go out into different schools, and we bring our whole selves and our whole stories. And I have components of my own professional and personal journey that brought me to think in particular about the needs of immigrant children and the stories of immigrants children, and the strengths and the offerings of immigrant children, and Romelle has others. So I think we might both tell a few stories here the school where I worked as a teacher, actually both of the New York City public schools where I worked as a teacher were dual language schools, English and Spanish, and I’m not a native Spanish speaker, but I grew up having a teacher who spoke to me in Spanish at a young age and had a deep desire to learn Spanish when I went to college that I didn’t really understand until I remet that teacher and found out she’d spoken to me in Spanish as a baby, and I didn’t even remember. And I spent a year living in Ecuador during college, and I lived with an Ecuadorian family, became bilingual and studied and read and wrote and learned in another language, struggled, felt felt frustrated, felt proud, you know, felt all the feelings of being a new language learner, and when I came back and went to teaching school at Bank Street, not really Coincidentally, I decided to get a bilingual license so that I could work, so that I could use the fact that I’d learned Spanish and teach in dual language classrooms that valued that valued bilingualism, multilingualism, Instead of having a a view that bringing a new language was something to quickly fix in the teaching of English, it brought the view that growing up with two or more languages is a gift for any human and I worked in a predominantly immigrant community in that in that school, and really did most of my learning from my colleagues and my and the families of the kids that I worked with, and, of course, from the kids themselves. And I knew that whatever happens in our stories as young kids is what what builds us and the support that we get during those stories makes those stories either a piece of our strength and a piece of our resilience, or it makes it something we we struggle with, and so. So when, whenever kids brought a piece of their story that was hard. I thought about how being supported when you’re going through a hard time or going through challenges is building a foundation for, like, long term ability to cope. I’m always careful with the word resilient. I actually believe in it. I believe that building inner resilience is something we we help teachers and children do. But I worry because people often say kids are so resilient as a way of throwing off a real challenge they might have gone through their experiences, that their experience right? And to say, you know that almost like they’ll get over it, kids are so resilient. And I don’t believe in using kids are so resilient. However, I really do believe that being in a supportive relationship, in a supportive environment when we’re going through the particular challenges of our life, does build a kind of resilience, and that support comes from lots of different places and people, and one of them is in the classroom at school, in the hallways At school, in the cafeteria at school, school is a place where kids spend a lot of hours, so I know I’ve kind of wandered off the original conversation, but I think, I think it was in my first year of teaching in the dual language classroom when I received a new student mid November, When the class was already pretty much established, and she had just immigrated from the Dominican Republic, and she had come with her dad and her brother, but she hadn’t come with her mom and her mom, I think, was planning to come eventually. And the details of why that happened are less important than the fact that, as a teacher, I knew not to give her pity. You know poor, poor Elizabeth is without her mom, but to know that Elizabeth’s mom stayed in a home country and she came here with her dad and brother, that’s part of her schema right now, and it might be something she plays about. It might be something she talks about, and we might talk about missing people, and what do we do when we miss people? And that might be really helpful for her and and it was, and she said, I miss my mom, and she drew a picture of her mom, and she drew a picture of herself and her mom, and she put a heart on the picture, and I put the picture on the wall, or I showed it to the class. I’m sort of conflating various kids over time and the strategies that I would develop, but to be able to say to the class, here’s a picture of Elizabeth’s mom. She’s far away, and she’s thinking about her. She’s in her heart. So we put this picture up here. Then other kids might say, my, my so and so is far away I miss they might say, my mom’s at work. I miss her, right, right? And so all of the experiences are validated, but knowing what I knew about Elizabeth, and that’s a pseudonym, by the way, whenever I tell stories about my experience, we’ll be using pseudonyms that kind of that kind of close connection with real kids, really influenced my thinking when I moved out of the classroom and into supporting other teachers, because I had tried things, and I had been there, and I had been the one making a kind of bridge into a brand new way of life, a brand new weather system, a brand new sensory reality and a brand New Family construct for this particular child.
Romelle Moore 24:01
Yeah, to piggyback on what Margaret just beautifully said, I have to say, I wish I had Margaret as my teacher when I first, when I first came back to the States, because I didn’t, I didn’t have that, that supportive structure. And, you know, this was back way. What was it? 1985 I came back to the States, and I was a hot mess. I was like speaking Swedish, pidgin English, British English, all at the same time, I was starting off my sentences in Swedish, and then they get in English. It was, it was hot mess, and I was made fun of by all of the kids in all of Queens I would say, you know, and the adults, you know, how when people have an accent and you are. Are. Let’s say you are an immigrant and you have an accent. People tend to talk louder at you, either because they think you can’t hear, you can’t hear what they’re saying, or they think that maybe you’re just a little slow intellectually. So I went through that, and, you know, I went through special ed. And I went through special ed all the way to, like, my junior year, until one of my teachers, because we are talking about teachers and the impact they can have on little ones, um, and she in the middle of class, she’s like, RAML, I’m frustrated. I said, I’m sorry. And she said, I Romell Why are you here? Like, why are you in this classroom? I said, Well, that’s, I don’t know. She’s like, I don’t know either. And so she’s like, we’re going to have a meeting with, you know, the powers to be to get you into mainstream classes, because there’s no reason why you’re not, you know, you’re not because I was, I was completing all of my work like before my peers, you know. And I was, I, anyway, she just so she advocated for me. But I was already a junior in high school when this happened, right? And so that feeling of of isolation that I felt as as a as a nine year old back in the States, um, carried through until, you know, until I was in my, in what my my early teen years, right? Um, so and this is one of the reasons why I love what I do, and why this, this, this particular way of looking at social, emotional practices, is so important because it is organic, therefore it is messy, but it’s it’s human experience. It’s human stories, and human stories are not wrapped up in pretty bows, you know it, yeah, and to have people like Margaret in a classroom that is cognizant of that, and where they don’t isolate you from the rest of the classroom. Everybody shares like what Margaret talked about, Elizabeth’s mother’s picture is on the wall, and that’s mother’s picture. I mean, mother is far away. Then you have children saying, Oh, well, my mommy’s all the way and, you know, I’m working on the upper, the Upper West Side, or Pedro’s daddy is all the way in Madrid or, you know, so it becomes, you normalize that feeling for Elizabeth, you you, you normalize that feeling for little Rommel, so she doesn’t feel a part, you know, Not a part, but a part away from everybody else. So yeah, that’s,
Joel Tirado 28:06
yeah, I really, I really like that as it’s an invitation to It’s an invitation to share. And then, as you both brought out it, then it, it, it demonstrates to the children in ways that they probably don’t even realize that all of those emotions are really shared among among them all, even if they exist in different ways for each of them, that’s that’s really, that’s a powerful story. And so Romelle, you mentioned you came back to the States at nine, just, just so we know, you know, can you tell us a little bit about your background there, and you know, where you’re born, how you ended up here, if you, if you’d like to share that, oh,
Romelle Moore 28:52
sure, my goodness, Margaret shadco, from The beginning, we’ll be here forever. Okay, so my my parent, my mother, especially, actually my dad, to a pretty international people that traveled a lot. I I identify mostly as West African Liberian, well, from Mali and via Mali, from Mali to Liberia. And my father is African American. My mother and father, they met in Italy and and so they courted for about four years, and then they got married in Liberia. And then, excuse me, when they, when they, after their marriage, they moved to Queens, New York. And so I was born in Rego Park, and when I was about, oh, I want to say about almost two, about 15 months old, my mother sent me back home to Liberia, and I was there till I. Was seven years old, actually, when I was seven. And so I from, from Liberia, I moved to Sweden, and I was there till I was about nine, nine and a half around there. And then from Sweden, I moved back to Queens with my mother. So I didn’t live with my mother for those for those years after I left 15 months for I lived with my extended family members. And then I came back to the states in 85 I came back to the states in 85 so, you know, in Sweden, you know, and you know, it was another thing, but because back home, I was my early, my early experience of school was really intense, right? There was corporal punishment in school, in school, so if you failed a class, if you failed, if you failed a test, or whatever, it doesn’t matter how old you are, you can be in a garden, you will get, you know, you will get, you know, hit. So I made it so that I never got hit. So, you know, I really paid attention. And so I was like, one of, one of the good students in the school. And when I got to Sweden, I had to learn a new language. I had to learn a new weather, right? This little African girl, and it would snow like, you know, five feet. That was a tiny little thing, right? So I had to learn, and then I had to, you know, and then I had to make friends, um, but my, my my school, my academics obviously suffered because I’m learning a new language, and I’m I’m learning two new languages. Actually, I’m learning Swedish and I’m learning British English, because I was speaking pidgin English at the time, and that, of course, put me back. So I I, I repeated. I repeated the first grade, I believe, twice, and then so when I moved back to the states, I’m nine, I went straight to fourth grade, right? And so I had to learn a completely different system, and so forth and so on. And that’s one of the reasons why I was put in special ed, was because I was, I was delayed in, in learning what you learned, you know, second and third, right, right states, yeah. So I’m sorry, I think I went off the No,
Joel Tirado 32:35
that’s, that’s perfect. I think that’s perfect because, you know, I think it really illustrates how your personal experience can be brought to bear in the work that you do, and it reminds me conversation that we had a little bit earlier about resilience and how you know, you know you clearly demonstrated this resilience, but what you can bring to bear for for in training educators and working with students is that supportive environment to make it so that resilience doesn’t become the cop out. So the to get us back to sort of the thread here, these experiences that you’ve both had, they position you well to work with immigrant children and to help educators who are working with immigrant children. And one of the things that I you know, I’d like to talk about is how those experiences are different. The experiences of immigrant children are different, and what educators and policymakers in the broader world should know about what they are experiencing and support that they need to be integrated and to feel at home. It’s okay.
Margaret Blachly 34:04
I think, if it’s okay, I want to back up a tiny bit, and just absolutely more of a picture of some of the things that we do with teachers and with kids, and I think that it will kind of set a foundation for coming to that question about policy makers, because I think my quick answer is, you know, what do policy makers need to know? They need to have pictures painted for them of experiences, of what, what experiences are, and or, you know, if the policy makers can be in a room where they’re given invitations to be reflective and think about their own stories. That’s my pie in the sky dream. But I want to talk about two things that we bring. One thing that we bring to adult spaces and Kids Spaces a little bit, and one that we bring to Kids Spaces and adult spaces a little bit. And one is an activity that we. Call a community quilt, and many of the ways that we make quick connections and build community really fast is through hands on art projects that we do with teachers and that they do with kids. And the community quilt involves each member of a group, whether it’s a group of teachers at a school, a group of parents in a parent group, a group of social workers in a Social Work Support Group, or the kids in the classroom receive a square of fabric, like colorful felt, and on that square of fabric they can make a sort of fabric collage depicting something. Often it’s a family story. Often it’s you know, for educators, we sometimes do a quilt about what helped you become a good teacher. But sometimes, when there’s a big story that happens in a community, like Hurricane Sandy, it might be a quilt square showing what helped you get through Hurricane Sandy. And if we’re working with a group of adults who are immigrants, we often do a quilt square sharing what you want to share about your home country, about your immigration, story, about your family, and then during the 45 minutes to an hour that people work with materials, a kind of process happens that neurologists could probably talk about in their language, because there’s a brain and emotional connection that happens when we’re working with materials, where we process and things percolate and begin to make sense, and we start representing things symbolically. We might pick a piece of red cloth to symbolize love and a piece of green cloth to symbolize the meadow behind our home. We might choose four buttons to symbolize our four kids, and we begin using these symbols in this representative way, and then are invited to share in the group. And what happens is that as each person shares about what they’ve depicted in their quilt square, it’s phenomenal. I’ve done this probably dozens of times with different groups, and it’s phenomenal how as soon as the first person shares, another person has a connection in to their story, they say, I’d like to go next because something in that story reminded me of mine. And you go around a space and you find these common threads, and by the end of this two hour time, there is this feeling of of community, and there’s this diminishment of isolation. It’s almost like magic, and this kind of project is a fundamentally important part of our work. The way that that looks in classroom practice is through a program that Leslie Coppola developed, that we continue to practice and continue to develop called teddy bears and classroom practice, and maybe some of the listeners will have been in classrooms or have their kids in classrooms where each child has a teddy bear in the classroom that they’ve been invited to, name, personalize and use both as a comfort item and also use as a way to have deeper conversations without being too vulnerable. So one way that we have been using our teddy bear work with schools who are supporting larger numbers of immigrant children is by having a particular invitation to talk about Teddy Bear journeys. And we use the word journey, because for a child with an immigration story, or an adult with an immigration story, that that word journey may be very literal, they may have journeyed over land, oversea, through the air, in many different ways to to arrive at the place where we all are gathered together right now, but kids sometimes want to make up a pretend journey. And we also think that the journey from home down the block into school is still an emotional journey for children. And so this idea of bringing the theme of journeys into a space and having kids tell stories about their teddy bears, it offers, it offers kids a way into the idea of of journeys, being part of a life in a way that that they can really choose and they can control and feels natural to them. So one child might say, you. Teddy Bear is just like me. He’s from Guatemala, and he came here in a bus and walking and in an airplane. Another child might say, My bear came here in a spaceship, and he’s from Mars. Another child might say my bear came here from a magician in a cave. All of those stories would be absolutely welcomed by an ERP teacher using the teddy bear curriculum and the teddy bear program. And I don’t know if these examples are enough to paint the pictures for you. Joel, coming from the outside, but I think it can’t be understated how powerful using symbolism is for human beings in terms of communication, in terms of internal processing, and in terms of healing, in terms of community building. So both of those, both of those examples, I wanted to bring into this space to get a picture of what does it mean when ERP comes into a space, and not all schools want the teddy bears, many do, and we can practice emotionally responsive practice without teddy bears, but when it is, when there’s a teacher or a school that wants it, It’s really an incredible and I use the word phenomenal before because it never ceases to amaze me, what powerful things happened for human beings when, when we create that safe space for using symbolic language, for using symbolic attachment. So I’m rambling on and on, but I wanted to bring that in before we got to policy. No,
Joel Tirado 41:43
absolutely. I’ll say that, you know, everything that you’re sharing there, I’m sort of filtering through the lens of my experience as a parent, and it’s just, you know, I’ve got a I’ve got a three and a half year old son, and, you know, anyone with a toddler knows the challenge of getting them dressed, getting them to go anywhere and and what’s become abundantly clear to me is that the the method of you have to put these on and we have to go now, Is is so ineffective. And but what does work is, is role play or game, or, you know, turning it into something that is, that is fun and story based. And, you know, it takes more energy, and it takes creativity, and it takes, actually, don’t know if it takes more energy. It takes a lot of energy to fight a toddler that does not want to do what you want to
Margaret Blachly 42:42
Joel Tirado 42:45
Oh, yeah, yeah. So, you know, and I think beyond just getting dressed, you know, in for my for my son, when to get him to talk about the things that he’s anxious about and the things that he’s working through, it’s it always works better when it’s done through some kind of role play where he assumes a role, I assume a role. Actually, it’s mostly, if we’re being real, it’s mostly my wife doing all of the really challenging, hard work. And she’s and she’s, she’s very good at it. She’s, she’s a doctor, she’s a governess, she’s a dentist, she’s all these different things to him that that that help him. So when you, when you share that Margaret, that’s, that’s what I see, and I I’ve seen firsthand the the difference it makes in getting, you know, I don’t know if you want to say getting results. In some cases, it is trying to get, like, a specific result, which is, you know, let’s get out the door with your clothes on. But in other cases, it’s just, you know, the result is, Will you open up to me about this thing that you’re confronting right now? So again, that’s, that’s for me, what I see when you when you share that, and then, and then, you know, again, getting back to the sort of the topic at hand, you know how much more valuable that is for for kids who have these things that they are being resilient through, that They’re dealing with right now, and in that setting, in the school, which can provide some added stability that they may or may not have when they leave that that setting. But now I’m starting to talk about the thing that you know better than me. So, so I’ll take a I’ll take a back seat there and and just ask ro if you had any other, any other thoughts to add about the sort of practices in the classroom that are effective for for immigrant children? Or I’m also, again, interested in in what you as a person who’s dealing with a lot of these things firsthand, when you see. Broader political or media discourse, what you feel like is being missed from that conversation. When people are talking about, you know, educating immigrant children,
Romelle Moore 45:12
I think that in today’s society, everybody, at least those in policy, they want results like immediately, you know, they want, they so they come up with policy with that intention, like, we need to see in percentage on points, how how effective this is, or how, you know, yeah, basically how effective this is. And that’s like basically saying we need to see this person is currently sad by Thursday. We need to see the percentage of, you know, how unsat they are, because if they’re still sad, that means that whatever we’re doing is not working, you know. And I feel that, especially with ERP, or even, you know, any type of social emotional process. I just said the word, it’s a process. It’s a process. And I think that people, especially those who are policymakers, need to understand that that trauma one should not be stigmatized, right? Um, a person should not be stigmatized because they suffer trauma. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it makes sense in my head, right? And what is trauma for Margaret may not necessarily be trauma from me, so there needs to be that understanding. You know, when I was in social work school, we talked about the idea that, you know, one gloves fits all one glove doesn’t fit all right. So there are times where we would bring bears to the school, but not all. The kids are going to necessarily join with their bears, but I would say about 85 to 95% of them usually do, right, but some of them would want to, if we’re, if we’re bringing bears. Oh, can I bring, can I bring my, my own stuffy, you know, to school, and the teacher can decide if, you know that’s allowable or not. Um, because, again, not, is not a one size fits all kind of situation. Um, so, in a lot of there’s, there are many activities within, within ERP in itself, that that resonates with some, some classroom environments, and some, some may not Um So, along with, along with the quilting, which is a very powerful, very powerful. What’s the word? I’m looking for, Margaret. Activity, activity, thank you. Activity. There are other. There are other, you know, we, there are other activities that we use, like, you know, art, little me, big me is one of them. We, we, we recently, which is a wonderful activity that we, that we do. One of my, one of our colleagues, introduced it to us, where, during Halloween, we have kids make their own monsters, and their monsters can stay, or their monsters can go away, as a way to normalize, you know, normalize that fear of monsters and giving children that control of what we call power versus powerlessness. So there are many, there so many wonderful ways that we, that we move within the classroom. So in regards to policy making, I think that there needs to be an understanding of childhood development and what that and how that impacts everything we do in a social, emotional level, in an educational level, because if we don’t have a good understanding of that, we will continuously try putting a round peg in a square hole, or vice versa, you know. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Margaret,
Margaret Blachly 49:29
when you’re done, I have, I have a nutshell policy, because I know we’re coming to the end of our time. Yeah, no,
Romelle Moore 49:35
I think I’m, I’m, I think I’m done. And I hope I answered the question. DOL,
Joel Tirado 49:41
no, I think that’s totally right. And I think it’s a, it’s, it’s that, you know, to give some credit back to policymakers, you know, it is difficult, I think, to to, you know, when you’re developing things that, well, how will we know whether or not we’re. Succeeding and and it is one of those challenges in the human development space, I think. And of course, I’m not an expert. This isn’t, you know, my field, but it is one of the challenges, which is, how do we know if we’re doing a good job? And so I think for folks who who don’t have that that training, or just the job of policy making, generally, you ask that question, you don’t have an easy result, and so you end up leaning on things that maybe don’t you know, as you say, provide an accurate picture of the messiness of that process and and the, you know, the ambiguities around time scale of whether or not you’ve been successful. So, no, I think that’s, that’s a really great point, and it’s, and it’s an ongoing, it’s an ongoing tension, and one that I I think, I think we need to continue to have a discourse about between the practitioners and the policymakers and the folks in academia coming together to understand, you know, okay, how do we get there from a policy perspective and
Romelle Moore 51:09
mental health specialists too, you know? And there are obviously our schools that we go to, Margaret, if you give me one moment, I just want to piggyback on what Joel just said, you know, you know principal to ask, Well, how do I know that this is, this is working? And you know what I usually say is, well, you will see it through, through how many you know disciplinary actions is happening within, within the classroom or in the you know, your school community as a whole, when you see that start going down, that’s how you know that partnerships are happening. You know, teachers are listening to children, and children are feeling safe enough to listen to their teachers, and are more engaged in learning because they feel partnered with their with their with their teacher. That’s usually how we how we see and how we can, you know, know that this, this work, is making an impact. Yeah, I’m sorry.
Margaret Blachly 52:11
Margaret, so I know we’re coming to the end of our time, and the policy question is kind of a hard one, but I’ve got maybe two nutshells. And one nutshell is listen to teachers and listen to principals about what their life is like in school, supporting kids, and I think that’ll lead policymakers to advocate for things like not having a family required to pack up and leave a shelter only to be reassigned to a different shelter. And have to pack up and leave a school only to be reassigned to a different school in the middle of the year. Really common sense things when you think social, emotional, well being of all humans, let alone children, listen to teachers who will talk about their heartbreak when the child they had just made a connection with didn’t show up, only to find out they’d, you know, been put on the street with garbage bags the night before and had to move to a different shelter in a different borough. So there are some simple policies that support well being in the emotionally responsive lens, simply by allowing kids to finish a school year with the same teacher in the same school environment, to be able to have a good goodbye, if they have to have a goodbye, to know that the investment in emotional well being is a long term investment for all kids, And you’re asking in particular about immigrant kids. Well, it is an investment to have kids who are arriving here with you know, whether it’s an easy or difficult journey, whether it’s happy or sad to be here, it’s a change, and there’s always loss that comes with change. And so when we support folks through loss, we’re investing in long term well being, and that’s that’s a societal investment, because kids who are supported become adults who can thrive, and kids who are less supported have a harder time thriving and sometimes even struggle in the society. And that is across the board. I’m not just talking about immigration anymore. And the other policy piece that came to my mind is fund, fund mental health and fund, fund supportive spaces for teachers and mental health practitioners to be supported themselves. And by support, I mean listen to, I mean held, I mean given space to to to honor the work they. You and honor the joys and challenges and to keep them from feeling despondent or hopeless. And here’s another simple policy make teaching and mental health professions, professions that people want to go into because they pay well. And that is really obvious, but it’s really simple. There is a shortage of folks going into teaching. There’s a shortage of folks going into mental health, and there’s a reason for it. It’s really hard work. It’s hard, emotional work, and it’s severely underpaid and underfunded, particularly in childcare. And it’s just astounding to me that anybody stays in the education field or the mental health field, and it’s only because of their own resilience or or places they’ve found to get support. So that’s my my my pie in the sky. But I think, I think we can envision it, and we can make it. It’s an exciting profession, and it pays well, and you’re taking care of so that you can take care of people and make our world a better place. That’s my policy in a nutshell. Yeah, love
Romelle Moore 56:23
your policy. Margaret,
Joel Tirado 56:26
no, that’s, that’s, that is really, you know, I have teachers in my family, and so the issues are, are familiar to me. And, you know, I think that, I think that it’s good for us to be having these conversations, always in an ongoing way, and and I really am so grateful to to both of you for joining me here this this morning to talk about this and to share some of the stories that you have from your own careers and your own lives, and I think that really, it helps paint the picture of what it’s like in classrooms for folks who aren’t there and aren’t living that life. So thank you both so much, and we look forward to, you know, finding some excuse to chat again in the future.
Margaret Blachly 57:20
Absolutely, we’re we’re excited to have learned about the Institute, and to have been there at your your first conference, and to have the opportunity to meet other folks with a common vision, but different ways that we’re able to support that common vision. And we invite anybody to look us up center for emotionally responsive practice at Bank Street College. We have a conference every December, and we would love to welcome people to learn more about supporting kids well, being in schools and yeah, kind of end there on that little note. But we are we. We want to build up. We want to build up and bring in and connect more with other folks doing the same with the same long term vision.
Romelle Moore 58:07
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for for inviting us. And this is, this was a very productive conversation, I feel, and it’s the beginning of something quite wonderful. So thanks for this opportunity. To all.
Joel Tirado 58:22
Thanks again to Margaret Blachley and Romelle Moore for joining us on the show to share how their work at ERP can help teachers and students connect in a supportive environment that promotes resilience. If you liked this episode, please rate, subscribe, and share. It will help others find the podcast and help us deliver the latest in public policy research. All of our episodes are available for free wherever you stream your podcasts and transcripts are available on our website. I’m Joel Tirado; until next time.
Joel Tirado 58:56
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