Sheldon:

Welcome advocates to another episode of the Leading Equity Podcast, a podcast that focuses on supporting educators with the tools and resources necessary to ensure equity at their school. I've got a special guest with me today, Ms. Mona Elleithee. She's with me and I am excited to have her, so without further ado, Mona, thank you so much for joining us today.

Mona Elleithee:

Hi Sheldon, thanks for having me on.

Sheldon:

Mona, I'm so glad to have you on the show and we're going to be talking about the discipline divide. But before we get into it I would love for you to share a little bit about yourself and your organization.

Mona Elleithee:

Sure. Well, thanks for having me on, I'm really excited to be able to have this conversation with you today. I've worked as a high school English teacher for most of my career in education. I had the opportunity to teach in Arizona and in Chicago before moving to where I live now which is Columbia, South Carolina, so I've actually worked at six different schools across the United States. Most of my career was as an English teacher.

                And then in the last year and a half of my time in schools I worked as a behavioral interventionist. And that role was more of a classroom management coach. And as I started to unpack some of the challenges that teachers around my schoolwork were feeling and finding, I started going in front of other audiences and talking with different educators about what I was seeing and I'd be invited to their schools. And so as I was going out into different schools I was seeing a lot of the same challenging behaviors and staff reactions.

                And so I realized that there was a big need for support around our State of South Carolina. I built this organization Renewed Harmony with the intent of having equity be the driving force behind it to support educators with the behavior issues that they were having, but really to bring equity into more schools. One of the things that has been challenging is that teachers continuously are leaving our profession, really good teachers, people that I've been really inspired by as an educator. I keep seeing them quit and resign and go sell makeup, leave the profession altogether and that scares me for the future of our students.

                When I became an educator years ago just everything in my classroom was social justice-themed topics of diversity and identity and change and equality, were all conversations that we were having through the themes and the literature that we discussed. And it's always been a driving force in my life to use education as a platform for equity. When I was still in the English classroom I led my school in initiative for cultural competency, I led a bunch of trainings with the folks at my school. And I found that when I switched roles into the role of a behavioral interventionist, more teachers were more responsive to that work with the title of classroom management and behavior and they were responsive to implicit bias training.

                And even though I could do the same professional development, include the same slides and cover the same content, just having a different title, there was no longer the Cultural Competency Team Leader but now I'm the Behavioral Interventionist, folks were more responsive, more willing to have those conversations. And equity was still driving everything that I was saying, but I realized that there was something... I got curious about what were the roadblocks with the other work? So I started to just explore that more.

Sheldon:

You're not the first person I've heard too say they had a certain title that was attached to their role or their name. And sometimes when we represent certain organizations that are known for diversity, equity, inclusion, those type of things, people start to run away when we approach them, because they automatically assume that you have an agenda, that you're going to push your views, your thoughts and try to create this sense of urgency and so they automatically put their guards up. And just listening to your story where you're talking about how your name, your title became a Behavior Interventionist and how people were more receptive to you, even though you were still having the same discussions, having the same conversations regarding equity, but just because of the title, it changed and opened some doors for you. I mean, how does that make you feel in that space?

Mona Elleithee:

I've always been very curious about human behavior and how to reach people. I think what made me effective as an English teacher was I taught students who were labeled as at-risk and I had a lot of results with them because I got really curious about what made them reluctant learners, what was the cause of their skills deficits. I also got equally curious about what was fueling the resistance in colleagues that were struggling with the other title. It didn't hurt my feelings, I've had a lot of training in the world of cultural competency and I feel really confident about the way that I do with those courageous conversations.

                However, it's not about me, it's about what is it that is going to be most effective in reaching an audience of educators that I'm standing in front of. For me, it didn't make me feel anything but more curious and I started to ask better questions to explore the source of that resistance and strategies for meeting my colleagues where they are.

Sheldon:

Well, I'm glad that you took the time to explain that because again, I think that's very important when we're doing this work, when we're doing this equity work. And often I get emails all the time, I have people to reach out to me and say, "Man, I'm doing this work but I can't get my colleagues on board or my supervisor, or my principal. I can't get them on board." Or they feel like there's no problems, that everything's okay. Or they're working on the inclusiveness with our special education and so that's equity for them.

                But there's so many different layers to equity. And I'm glad that we're talking about the discipline divide because that's a big piece with our equity initiatives that are out there, is when we look at the numbers, we look at the data and see who's being referred to the office, who's being suspended, who's being expelled? Who's going through these processes? Are there certain groups, are there certain ethnicities and races that are being represented more than others? And I wanted to talk to you about where are we seeing some of those discrepancies when it comes to maybe teachers and administrators with school discipline?

Mona Elleithee:

Yeah. I think I'm glad you asked that because I have this great piece of research education week and it's a 2019 data. And it talks about the survey they did that 52% of teachers and only 24% of principals say that student discipline is a major source of friction when it comes to the teacher-principal relationship at their school. I often will open professional development on this topic with that number but ask first the audience to make a prediction. And I got curious because in my state there was a huge teacher walkout on May 1st, of last year, and I walked and I saw a lot of signs. And one of the signs I saw was, it read, "We can't raise the academic bar if they continually lower the discipline standard."

                And so what I started to do was I started to survey a lot of the schools that I would work with. I would survey the teachers and ask them a set of questions about behavior. And one of the questions I asked was, "How can we measure the success of a schoolwide behavior expectation? Why do you think some of the schoolwide expectations have not been successfully met by some students?" And when I get the answers to that question, when those start coming in on these surveys that I do, I really start to see some of the vitriol on the part of teachers directed at other teachers and at the administration.

                And what a lot of the statements are demonstrate for me one of the biggest sources of the divide. On one hand I'll see administrators say, "Gosh, I'm processing discipline referrals on topics that I don't feel like should have ever gotten to me. They should have been handled by the teacher proactively in their classroom and they're taking away their power by sending it to me." On the other hand the teacher is saying, "If only the administrator would enforce stronger consequences we wouldn't have these behaviors that we have."

                Or I've heard these quotes from teachers on the survey, "Until 100% of the teachers at this school enforce punishments for IDs, cell phones or dress code, consistently it will be impossible for anyone to teach students anything." And I see comments like that a lot. So I got curious about what's going on in that argument because that argument is not supported by research but I see that argument in these surveys all the time. What I know that research supports is... I have this research that comes from Rutgers University, Anne Gregory is the lead researcher on this. It's called Eliminating Disparities in School Discipline: A Framework for Intervention. Okay, it's Chapter 11 of larger work.

                And the authors list five prevention strategies and four intervention strategies that I want to highlight. One of them, the first prevention strategy is Supportive Relationships. The fifth prevention strategy is Opportunities for Learning and Correcting Behavior, and their seventh intervention strategy is Problem Solving Approaches to Discipline. Research tells us that not only can we proactively lower this disparity in school discipline through building supportive relationships, but that interventions that involve restorative practices actually will eliminate disparities in school discipline.

                We notice, that's based on research, that's one of many research articles that highlights that, right? But it isn't the belief of so many teachers who are angry about school discipline. I got curious about what is the roadblock to believing that supportive relationships can actually be a preventative measure in eliminating this gap? And what I've come to see is that we have teachers with unresolved trauma who are called to the profession in order to be that caring adult that they needed when they were children. But so many of our teachers haven't gotten their needs met first, so when they hear that it has to be student-centered, it's like they're being retraumatized. And I think that's based in codependent mindset.

Sheldon:

I would love for you to unpack that a little bit more because I want-

Mona Elleithee:

Sure.

Sheldon:

... To make sure that I'm understanding. Based off of the surveys that you presented to teachers, you're finding that a lot of maybe some of the classroom management challenges stem from some of their life experiences that might've been-

Mona Elleithee:

I do-

Sheldon:

... Sematic?

Mona Elleithee:

Yes. And of course that's not something that they're going to headline, they're not going to come out and say that, but what the surveys continuously show me in the writing is a misconception of what the word consistency means. And we hear consistency used all the time in education, but when peoples use terms that are all or nothing, they say, "Until we all do this," right? Like I read you that one survey response. Here's another one, "Not all teachers enforce at the same level so students know where they can get away with it." Or another one, "Some schoolwide expectations have not been successfully met by our students due to poor consistency from the entire teaching administrative and support staff. And because our students are clever and know how to maneuver around the loophole in the system when we as adults are inconsistent."

                What I'm finding is there's cognitive distortions in their responses that are actual fallacies in logic, logical fallacies that are being used to build an argument that we have to do it all the same way, and that's not based in reality. I got curious about where's that coming from and I started to see that we have quite a lot of people who are called to our profession, just like in the nursing profession who are codependent. The definition of a codependent is a person who belongs to a dysfunctional one-sided relationship where one person relies on the other for meeting nearly all of their emotional and self-esteem needs.

                A codependent shares in the responsibility for unhealthy behavior because they focus their lives on the sick or bad behavior of another and they make their own self-esteem and wellbeing contingent on the behavior of, the definition says, "Of an unhealthy family member." Well, what's happening is we're transferring that junk from our childhoods into the school house and I think for so many of us it's we're unaware, for so many of us it's unconscious.

Sheldon:

How do we bring that awareness out? And not only that, so with let's say our ACE score, let's say teachers do the ACE score and some are lower, some are higher. How do we connect that and allow our teachers to be able to see it? Because with implicit bias we don't necessarily know what we're doing. How are you able to connect those things? I guess that's the question I'm trying to ask.

Mona Elleithee:

Yeah, great. Okay, I'm glad you asked. One of it is I have a knowledge as a trainer. I pull a lot of my information from the Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families literature. And their literature talks about the long-term effects that those ACEs have on us. It breaks down the dysfunctional side of a dysfunctional family. What are the different things? There's two things that connect us when we are products of dysfunctional families. And when they call it dysfunctional families, that could be, I had a parent that was an alcoholic, an addict, perfectionistic, militaristic. They could have been a parent who was...

Sheldon:

Incarcerated.

Mona Elleithee:

... Hypochondriac or abusive and at the same time emotionally ill. But what the ACA, Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families literature states is that those of us from dysfunctional homes in our childhood share a core wound of carrying shame with us and having a deep fear of abandonment. And that's what I believe is at the core of this discipline divide, is that unresolved trauma. And I can see how our profession calls, I mean, it just calls so many people who want to serve but then our stuff comes up for us and then my stuff bumps into your stuff. And what the ACA literature shows us is there are 14 traits of an adult child, and they call it for sure, adult child.

                When different adult children end up being called into this profession are in the building, what can happen is oftentimes the ACA traits, the list of the 14 traits of an adult child, they've actually adapted that list for a workplace list. They call it the Laundry List, and there's a workplace laundry list and it lists how we operate in our workplace. And that's what I see constantly, is these traits showing up at work and being at the core of some of the biases that are unconsciously at play.

                The biases don't have to be directly related to something with regard to race, or gender, or sexual orientation, or age, or ability, or socioeconomics, the bias can just be about how I do behavior management based on how I was reared. And that's what I like to unpack with folks. And they're willing to do that work with me because we build our relationship, we make it a safe space. Some of the stuff that I do in advance is make it okay for the PD, the professional development session to be teacher-centered for a change. And I open up with the discipline divide and they are like, "Hallelujah, somebody is here to talk to me about what I'm really concerned with, which is how differently I do discipline from my administrator."

Sheldon:

Okay. Now, let me ask you this question, Mona, because I've seen instances where a teacher sends a student out of the classroom to the office for not bringing a pencil or for excessive tardies. Are you suggesting that even the smallest infractions, if you will, and again that can be subjective, but the smallest infractions could be rooted in trauma?

Mona Elleithee:

I do, I do think so. I think honestly, what I've seen is that an adult child of dysfunctional home is a synonym for a codependent and a codependent operates with the belief that they can change another person. When we can't, some anger, some different emotions were triggered. And so that's what I'm seeing. It's like, there's a codependent triangle called the drama triangle where three characters are cast in our drama. The adult child laundry list says that one of our traits is we become addicted to excitement and we also live life from the standpoint of a victim.

                That takes shape on this drama triangle. The drama triangle has three parts. It has a victim, a persecutor and a rescuer. When the teacher tells a student to take out a pencil, the teacher wants to rescue that student who hasn't done what they're supposed to do and the student is disrespectful or does says something rude or whatever the student does to react, the teacher can shift and now become a persecutor. Or the teacher can shift and now become the victim and say, "The student is persecuting me," and then ask that administrator to be the rescuer. And when the administrator isn't then the teacher can now be the persecutor of the administrator.

Sheldon:

I see. That's a triangle. Okay, the teacher sends the child out to the principal and then principal responds in a way... If the teacher doesn't feel like they're getting the results that they were expecting then that cycle continues with the triangle.

Mona Elleithee:

Yes. And what's crazy about the triangle is I've had administrators tell me, "Oh my gosh, everybody in my building is doing laps around that triangle." And I'm like, "I know." Here's the piece about that is, oftentimes the teachers don't know, don't see it in themselves, aren't aware. That's Karpman's work and that's called the Dreaded Drama Triangle. But what's powerful is it can be flipped. The triangle can be flipped and the victim can become a creator who owns how they want to choose their response. This is called the empowerment dynamic. And the rescuer can become the coach, and the persecutor is now the challenger. And in that empowerment dynamic, when we flip it, we don't let ourselves be victims, we're creators and this is where we draw from self-leadership. And I'm not going to be anybody's rescuer, I'm going to be their coach.

                But one of the traits of adult children, trait number nine is we confuse love and pity and tend to love people we can pity and rescue. So many of us want to be a rescuer, that's what we believe is our identity. And what's happening is, what happened in my childhood is replaying. I'm playing it out again in my adulthood. I couldn't rescue or save the family so the school has become like a family and we play out those same dynamics. I might base my identity on my need to fix or change another. That's what I believe our profession attracts.

                And so then when we see that we have disproportionate discipline numbers, so many of us believe that that is the result of implicit bias that's race-related. I know that that's at play, I've done a lot with that, but this work, I just don't think we're talking about this side of this enough. I know you've had some folks on in your podcast who want to talk about restorative justice practices in tandem with social-emotional and I just couldn't agree with that more, I think that's so important. But I think when the social-emotional piece is based in the knowledge of how so many adult trauma survivors operate in a school, it can be even more effective.

Sheldon:

Tell me more. Because I'm really intrigued because I agree, SEL, restorative justice, restorative practices, they go together but I'm really interested to hear when we recognize the trauma that we might have faced as adults, how does that support our discipline, our classroom management practices?

Mona Elleithee:

Sure. Okay, some of the traits from the workplace laundry list from ACE's big red book, one of them is we confuse our boss or supervisor with our, it says, "Alcoholic parent or disqualifier." We confuse our boss or supervisor with something dysfunctional in our past and have a similar relationship, pattern, behavior and reaction that are carryovers from childhood. If I have a need that I think I need, now I have a self-esteem deficit. I haven't met my self-esteem needs, and students do something in the classroom that trigger me and I'm afraid to get what I need, I'm expecting to get what I need from my authority figure, my administrator who runs discipline. And when they aren't giving me what I need and the kids are taking from me what I think I need, then I'm just replaying that dysfunction at work in the school.

                That's one of the traits. Another one is here, so these are some that I think are really impacting school climate and culture with, I think discipline is a huge thing that impacts school climate and culture. Authority figures scare us and we feel afraid when we need to talk to them. Well, we get a negative gut reaction when dealing with someone who has the physical characteristics or mannerisms of our dysfunctional parent. We lose our temper. When things upset us rather than dealing with problems productively, these are all traits of how trauma manifests into our adulthood.

                A lot of trainings I've gone to on trauma-informed trauma-skilled schools limits the conversation to, "Here's how the brain is impacted by trauma so let's understand that about our students' brains and let's be more responsive. Also, "Take this ACEs quiz and note but if you've had it, okay," and that's about it. A lot of the trainings I've seen, but what about the longterm impact of that trauma on the people who've been called to our profession?

Sheldon:

You got me... You're like mind is blown right now.

Mona Elleithee:

For real?

Sheldon:

Yeah. Because this is not a conversation I've had and some I'm so glad you're sharing this. And so now I'm thinking, okay, we've talked a lot about the teachers and the trauma that as teachers might have had and how that corresponds with their classroom management discipline. What about our administrators when it comes to maybe some of the background trauma that they might have faced with how they... If a student does get sent to their office and how they make their decisions with what to do next?

Mona Elleithee:

I'm glad you asked that too. Because teachers aren't the only one with trauma, students aren't always the only ones with trauma, our principals, our administrators have had trauma and so have people in the district office. And so I think one of the biggest challenges how that trickles down in schools where there's really unhealthy school climate and culture, if one of our workplace laundry list traits is authority figures scare us and we feel afraid when we need to talk to them, that's one of them. Or if another one is we are people-pleasers and we want to be liked and receive approval from others, I think what we have is a chain of command of people-pleasers. And so, so many school climates that are unhealthy come from this other trait that we have a high tolerance for workplace dysfunction and tend to stick it out in an unhappy job because we lack the self-esteem to leave.

                We have all of this unhealthy dysfunctional patterns at school that when a teacher is trying to please their authority figure and doesn't feel like they have the tools and then get angry. There's this one that says, "We lose our temper when things upset us rather than dealing with problems productively." So you've got a teacher getting mad, then you've got an assistant principal that's been trained in restorative practices and having a conversation with a student to coach him. And then you have a teacher get even more angry and feel like nothing happened. And they're feeling real retraumatized because of their childhood junk. Then you've got disproportionate numbers and you've got a principal that's trying to change that school and turn the school around, then you've got some principals that use bullying tactic in order to change and control the way the teachers are doing things.

                And I'm not saying all operate that way. I'm just saying I've seen that in some unhealthy environments. Or I've seen something that really triggers teachers which is when an administrator is overly focused on public perception of the institution of the school more than they are focused on the relationships with the people who are there serving. But one thing we know about this strategy for eliminating equity gaps, this first one, it's to build supportive relationships. And when it says build supportive relationships it's authentic connections forged between and among teachers and students.

                How do we do that? I believe it all comes down to leadership training. I believe if look at it as classroom discipline, we're disciplinarians. If we call it classroom management, we're managers. But if we call it classroom leadership we're leaders and a successful leader is one who builds more leaders, who empowers people, who flips that triangle from a place of being a victim to being a creator, from being a rescuer to being a coach.

                I think the healthiest school environments are those that have a whole lot of coaches and teach teachers how to be coaches and know that that's empowering. And so we have to unpack the why behind restorative practices by meeting teachers where they are and looking at what has limited them from getting on board with this. The number one strategy is supportive relationships, but what if I have a skills deficit in my capacity to build healthy and supportive relationships? That's what I think is the gap.

Sheldon:

Okay. And those are some valid points and I appreciate that. I guess my next question would be, okay, how do we get our administrators, our teachers, all on the same page? How do we meet in the middle? Or what suggestions do you have when it comes to, I think there's more than one school out there that has these kinds of relationships that you've mentioned in your responses, how do we get on the same page?

Mona Elleithee:

My strategy has been doing not just a one-and-done session but unpacking this stuff in multiple sessions with the entire staff, you have to be willing to do professional development with administrators to have them aware of this. Yesterday I was working with a team of administrators and we were looking at Ross Greene's work with Collaborative & Proactive Solutions, and he has a really beautiful Bill of Rights for students with challenging behaviors. It's very nicely put together and we read it together, the admin team and I, and then several of them have gone to his training.

                Then I threw them this curve ball they did not see coming. And I said, "What if we wrote a Bill of Rights for teachers?" And we pulled out the ACA laundry list, and we pulled up the workplace laundry list and we looked at how adults trauma survivors tend to operate in the world. And I asked them, "What do your teachers need from you now that you know this?" And they built the most beautiful Bill of Rights for teachers. And they're really excited to roll that out with their teachers to share it with them and to show them that they see them too.

                One of the most powerful takeaways from one of the administrators was he said, "You helped me see that I lacked compassion for teachers because I've been so wrapped up in being student-centered." And another one said, "I can still be student-centered and not forget about the needs of the teachers." But they hadn't had those spaces to have those kinds of conversations. That's powerful. And then rolling out restorative practices has to be done in a way that is scaffolded, knowing what teachers need. I'm saying let's put some of the teachers needs at the forefront and that will drive what needs to be done for equity.

Sheldon:

Could you share some... I don't know if you can, but could you share maybe some of those Bill of Rights? Was it 10? Could you share maybe one or two of those?

Mona Elleithee:

Yeah, sure. They did write 10. And I asked them if they thought when I worked with future schools if I should share theirs or if they thought that the other administrators should write their own. And they said that they thought it was so powerful to unpack the workplace laundry list and the regular laundry list for themselves. They said, "This was the most meaningful work we did because now we know why we wrote these." One of the laundry list traits is that we tend to stuff our feelings. They wrote number one, "Teachers have the right to share and express their emotions and feelings."

                And they also saw that teachers, adults survivors of trauma, it says on the workplace laundry list that we expect lavish praise and acknowledgement from our boss for our efforts on the job. And they were talking about how some teachers lose their identity and lose positive relationships with coworkers because they're chasing praise. We had a good discussion around praise and they said, number two, "Teachers have the right to receive authentic, specific and personalized feedback and praise for certain actions and responses both privately and publicly."

                And I will tell you I have seen other schools do surveys, appreciative inquiry surveys with their teachers and teachers are asking to be acknowledged and recognized. And in schools where there is an unhealthy climate some of that is, I think it's driven by these traits that we have en mass. Another one was teachers have the right to not be bullied by other adults or students. They said, "Teachers have the right to receive compassion and empathy and learn how to be coached through both of these." Those were some of the 10. I was really proud that this team was able to have conversations around what their teachers needed from them when they're running discipline. They hadn't really considered that as much prior to our day of together in that session.

Sheldon:

Wow. Mona, you have definitely delivered a wealth of knowledge and have gotten me thinking about a lot of things. And again, I'm so thankful that you're here and I consider you as a voice in leading equity. What is one final word of advice that you could provide to our listeners?

Mona Elleithee:

I think remembering teachers in the discipline conversation and thinking about teachers as advocates for their children, who may also have some lagging emotional skills and recognizing that if we don't change our approach with teachers, we're going to continue to see them leave the profession. Having more compassion for where they are emotionally and some of their limitations in areas in which, how they cope and how they interact, that we don't vilify them as school leaders. Because we're enlightened with our restorative practices, that we will get curious about why even with the information that was research-based, that having supportive relationships and doing problem-solving approaches to discipline and learning and correcting behavior might be hard for teachers to really buy into. So getting curious about what is their roadblock and how are you as leaders of your building scaffolding that for them instead of just doing it in practice without helping teachers understand the why, and looking at their emotional roadblocks that are inhibiting them from getting on board.

Sheldon:

Mona, if we have some folks that want to reach out to you what's the best way to connect with you online?

Mona Elleithee:

Well, my website is renewedharmony.com, and I'm also on social media @renewedharmony. I'm on Twitter and on Facebook at that handle, is that what you call it, a handle?

Sheldon:

Somebody will say a handle, some people say my account, I don't know. Is there maybe an email as well that you want to share?

Mona Elleithee:

Oh sure, it's [email protected]

Sheldon:

And I'll link all of that into the show notes as well so that folks can get in touch with you and learn more about your work. Mona, it has been a pleasure. I really, really, really, really appreciate your time and for sharing your research and some of the things that you're doing working with other schools and really supporting the teacher/administrator relationships and developing that harmony, the renewed harmony. So awesome. Thank you so much for joining us.

Mona Elleithee:

Thanks for having me on, Sheldon. It was a real pleasure.

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