Joe Fantigrossi 1-14-22

An interview with Joe Fantigrossi centered on trauma informed instruction. Joe explains what trauma informed instruction is and why it is important to schools. Also what can we all learn about human behavior from trauma informed instruction.

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Welcome to education matters, New York. This is your host, Wayne Ackles. I'm very excited today because we have our first in studio guest. And that guest is a good friend of mine colleague, friend, mentor. And that guest is Joe fan and Grossie. I'll introduce him in just a minute. And we're going to be looking at some issues around trauma informed instruction. And I'll talk a little bit more about that as we get into today's show. But first, I want to introduce Joe Joe was the I met Joe working at Fairport, and he was as I affectionately call him, boss number four. That might be another story for another time. But at this point, I'm going to turn it over to Joe to introduce himself and tell a little bit about his path to where he is right now. Because I think he's had a very interesting path. And it's another pathway for those of you that are in education, that if you're looking for a different direction to go, especially as your career goes on, I think it's something that's worth hearing about. And also the work he does is some very special work. So, Joe, welcome to education matters. Thanks so much, Wayne, appreciate being here today and appreciate you giving me the opportunity to talk about this topic, which I'm very passionate about. In terms of background, Wayne, you know, some of it, I followed a pretty traditional path and education for the first half of my career began as a high school social studies teacher. And then I was a building assistant principal, at both the middle school and high school levels, became a high school principal. And for the last eight years, I have been a recovering high school principal, and have worked in the grant world. I've done quite a few different things within the grant confines, but mostly based around intervention, putting in intervention systems, practices and protocols into school districts. And most recently, I work as the director of intervention and professional development for Finger Lakes Community Schools, and I also serve as the coordinator of Seneca County community schools. You know, I think you're being a little modest with your background. And I'm going to fill in just a little bit, I know that a lot of that background is actually taking you across the state. From downstate, to out in the Batavia area. Again, where we hooked up was Fairport, and the Mineral County area, and a lot of your work now is centered around Wayne Finger Lakes. So you've seen a lot of the state. And I bring that up, because when I mentioned free and reduced lunch rates, and poverty and things like that, you know, you have a broad experience that I think lends itself a lot to the work that you're that you do. But before I jump ahead to that, that work you're doing now, tell us a little bit about trauma informed schools and programming and you know, what is its background? And how does it relate to social emotional learning? You know, we've talked a little bit about that in previous podcasts. And I think it's something that's often misunderstood. And we'll get into that more in just a minute. About eight years ago, when I was hired for my first grant related job, there was a term in the grant proposal of trauma informed care. And it was a term that quite frankly, I was not familiar with at the time. And after doing some research, and after talking to some people about it, I came to understand that trauma informed care is really the understanding that many young people experience adverse childhood experiences, and that those adverse childhood experiences shape their lives forevermore. And so we've worked really hard in the Finger Lakes region, to spread the word about the impact of trauma. And even more importantly, the antidote that is resilience, and have spent really the better part of the last six and a half to seven years, going from place to place as often as we can pretty much any place that asks to help people understand the impact of trauma, and also to help them understand how they can help young people become more resilient in the face of that trauma. You know, you mentioned the adverse child experiences aces, and it's a term actually, that you introduced me to and I got fairly familiar with in my last two gigs. When I was leading buildings, could you talk a little bit about you know what some of those things, you know, we talked about there's a aces score that that you can rate childhood trauma by, can you just talk a little bit about that, because I think having and hearing some of those, there are things that I think we hear about in kids lives all the time. And to some degree, we take some of them for granted, and like divorce. But I'll let you talk a little bit more about those. As the ACEs study, adverse childhood experiences, originally came out in 1996. It was the offshoot of work that was being done by an insurance agency in the Western States and California, particular Kaiser Permanente. And really, it was 10 questions that was asked on a survey to some insurance holders. And those 10 questions included household dysfunction, addiction, and as you've already mentioned, divorce or incarceration for parents. Well, when they ran the data, when they first collected it, they thought they had made an error in collecting or running the data, because the numbers were so egregious about the impact of trauma. And I'm not just talking about the social and emotional impact of trauma, which I think most of us can make a common sense understanding of, I'm talking about a physiological impact, impact on greater rates of diabetes, of cancer, of heart disease. And so now we know there's a direct link between the stress that is caused by childhood traumatic experiences, and later, life health outcomes. And I think that's one of the powerful things, we were actually talking about this in my current job. And as I've mentioned, in previous podcasts, I worked for a construction company. And we were talking about the actuarial tables that insurance companies use and you know, we we have this saying, when we're talking about, you know, creating training to help people either do a skill better or be safer, you know, the math doesn't lie. And that's one of the things you know, whether it's young drivers, or in this case, childhood trauma, you know, that math is well researched, and pretty powerful. And I think that's one of the important things to remember that this isn't something that, and I think it's one of the things that I always found to be a powerful piece to this is that this isn't research that started at a university somewhere, it was really something that was done as part of the insurance industry. And I think that gives it a different kind of legitimacy that sometimes has a little more weight in the public's mind than say, a study that comes from a school, or a college or university. And I think that really speaks to people and it's something they can get their head around. I want to shift gears here a little bit though. A couple of weeks ago, we did a segment about social emotional learning and how it often gets confused with critical race theory. And how schools can better explain social emotional learning and its role in the modern school. Why is it important that schools are doing this work? And how do you think schools can help parents understand that work and and its impact and it's important. One of the thing that I think is really critical to the work moving forward is are we utilizing are using language that's understandable to those that are directly involved in education or are directly involved in the work of trauma informed care. And I do think that that causes some confusion. Really, as simply as I can say, it is impossible for a student to learn if they do not have the skill set necessary to have a stable understanding of their mental health. That doesn't mean that a student has to be perfectly happy every day of their lives, to be a successful student. But what it does mean is when a student has overarching mental health or behavioral challenges, the ability for that student to be successful academically is slim, and none. And so, for those who believe that schools place is as an academic institution, I agree with you. But school cannot be an academic institution for many students, if the challenges they're facing outside of academics in their everyday lives are not taken care of. I do have a few colleagues who use a phrase of you have to take care of Maslow before bloom. And I will tell you that I don't agree with that. Because we don't have that much time, we have to simultaneously take care of the mental health and well being and overall wellness of our students, and teach them important academic skills. And so I think there's a natural integration that sometimes we ignore, between social emotional learning and academic learning. And I would agree with that, I think sometimes what happens is that people see that work, and they see it as somehow, you know, mushy, soft, you know, we need three r's and the three R's are important, and the academics are always an important piece to this. But if a student or students are incapable of learning, because they have mental health issues, it really you can't go any further with that student if they are struggling in that manner. And I think that's important for people to understand. Let's talk a little bit about resilience. When we look at the work that we do with social emotional learning, what are some ways that schools can help build resilience in young people and and help them, you know, get some of the assets that they need to be in a spot where they're stronger and, and more receptive or in a better place for learning? Early on in our trauma informed care work, we spent a lot of time helping staff be aware of traumas impact. And we quickly realized, well, that was important. It was just as important to tell people what they could do now. Now that you're aware of it, what do you do about it. And so in collaboration with the trauma and Learning Policy Institute, and Lesley University outside of Boston, we started utilizing a term that was called the arch or the collaboration arch sometimes. So the way we try to help school districts and those who work with young people understand the building of resilience is through that acronym arch, which stands for attachment, regulation, COPPA, competency, and health. And here's what it really means. If a young person by the time they walk the stage to get their diploma in 12th grade, is going to go out and have a fair shot at leading a successful adult life, they really have to be competent in those four categories. They need to know how to attach how to build a relationship, what it means to be a good friend, what it means to be part of a community. They need to know how to regulate their own emotions, and what it feels like to be angry. And then what do I do with that anger instead of punching someone, for example, they need to know what they're good at, and what they're passionate about, or what we refer to as competence. They need to build their basic skill level. And they need to have lifelong health habits. Meaning that it's very hard to wake up at 30 years old, and retool all that, you know, and think about nutrition, about exercise about sleep. So the what we help staffs try to do is think of it through those four lenses, attachment regulation, competency and health. And we provide training for various programs or strategies that would help with that. So if I was giving you an example, when we want to build attachment in a young person, will often assign them a mentor. And that mentor will meet with them on a weekly basis, we'll check in on them and we'll listen to them. And we'll build a relationship with them and show them and model for them what a positive relationship can do for their lives. Sure, those are those are great examples. And and I think it's important to see how encompassing that is, and a couple things I was thinking about is I used to teach a sociology class and one of the things that we focused on was attachment and young people and they use the example after the Berlin Wall fell. There were a number of Romanian infants that were adopted in the United States. And there was a great deal of trouble, many of those babies had trouble as they grew up, because the orphanages had been, for lack of a better term kind of a factory, that just processed amount, there wasn't a lot of connection, there wasn't a lot of human contact. And that led to some some fairly severe problems. So building those skills, and working through that is critical work. So I'm going to take this down to, you know, to the leader level at the building. And, you know, those of those of us that have been in building leadership positions, there's always a lot that's expected. Last week day, Patrick and I spoke about building culture. And we talked about some of the little things to do within building a culture. If you're trying to either move your school, or you're building to have more of a trauma informed mindset, what are some of those first steps because that that arch system that you talked about with mentors, you know, that might seem overwhelming to, especially someone that's just taking on their first building, or a superintendent that you know, is trying to get a budget passed and all the other struggles that are happening? What are some of those little steps that they might be able to take to get them in, get them in a spot where they can feel like they're making some progress there? I think a first step is to understand that creating a trauma informed environment is on a continuum. The first part of that process is being aware of traumas impact, or trauma informed. But that's only the first step in the process. I liken it to if you go to the dentist, and I think there was a commercial like this a few years ago, you go to the dentist, he looks in and says that's a really bad cavity. Have a good day? Well, what am I gonna do with the cavity? So the trauma informed is the first step because you have to be aware of a problem before you can do anything about it. The next step is being trauma sensitive. It's now that we know this thing called trauma exist, and it impacts not just our young people, everybody, then what do we do about it? What how do we create policies and procedures and a culture that is sensitive to re traumatizing or triggering those who have experienced trauma? The ultimate goal in that cultural work is moving past that to create a healing centered environment that not only are we not part of the problem, we are part of the solution, then we have created an environment where people can heal from their trauma. So let me give you a kind of specific question that I first like to ask those that I meet with. It's when you look at someone whose behavior does not match your expectations. One of the first questions you may be asking yourself, Is what's wrong with that person. And Dr. Bruce Perry tells us that the first step in being trauma informed and creating a trauma informed culture is to look at that through an empathetic lens to go from what's wrong with that person, to what happened to that person. But that is not the end, because that is still lions that can lend itself to pity. And so I really liked the work that's been done more recently by Dr. Shawn Jen, right, of the flourish agenda of Oakland, California, and Dr. Generate SSH to ask a third question, what's strong with that person. So instead of focusing in inherently on weaknesses, or what someone is struggling with, let's focus in on what they bring to the table. And let's pump that up. And I think if you think about it for your own adult life, if you have a piece to your job right now, that you don't care to do, or that you don't feel good at or you don't feel competent at. And your boss calls you into the office and says, We know you really don't like in person meetings. So guess what? You're going to do three times as many in person meetings from now on, because you have to get better at it. We do that to young people every day. Things they are weekend, we give them more of it and expect them to react in a positive way to that. So it's shifting that lens and really coming to an empathetic point where you're moving from a judgment, to empathy, to a focus on strengths. Let me say two other quick tie ins to that focus on strengths. There's some really good work done by the Clifton organizers It's the people who do the Gallup polling. And it's called Strengths Finder, I'd recommend that anyone to take a look, whether it be for yourself, or if you have a small team or department or organization. And it rates out after answering a long survey, what strengths you bring to the table, and what strengths people on your team bring to the table. So that's one that I'd recommend. The other thing that I think I would want to bring to people's attention is, is that the work is not just with individuals. If we learn nothing else from the pandemic, and from the recent social justice movement, there is historical trauma in our culture, and in our society and communities. And so, trauma is not just individual, even though it it can be individual based, it can be neighborhood based, it can be societal based, it can be institutionally based. So we have to really look around. And I think the very first step of that is changing our mindset. And then looking at what we're currently doing, and doing an audit of that to see if it's appropriate for those to meet those needs of those who have faced trauma. All of that really resonates. And, you know, a couple thoughts came to mind as you were talking through that. And I remember, you know, the point when I was teaching that I realized that we really had not even told students how their brains work. And in order to help facilitate their learning, even some of the simple things, you know, we talk a lot about the concept of chunking. And that's putting like pieces of information together. That's one of the probably the one of the most basic pedagogical concepts that we have. And you know, a simple way to remember that is, you know, phone numbers, most people think of the area code, and then the first exchange and the actual house number as three separate things instead of nine or 10 distinct numbers. And, you know, the owner's manual, I think sometimes we forget that we as adults, we have navigated so much in terms of our learning, our emotional regulation and all that, that we think that we can just, I don't know, somehow through telepathy, get kids to understand that. And, you know, it's sometimes it takes more than then telling, we have to model that. And, you know, as you said, institutionally, in two different districts, I remember looking at our code of conduct and saying, you know, why, why is this the battle we're fighting? The one that comes to mind is the hat rule. And, you know, I remember in fact, and, you know, I spoke with Dave paddock. And that was one of the questions he asked me when he was hiring me as a teacher in 1996. how I felt about his because he was fighting that battle then. And it was still a battle in two districts that I worked in after that. You know, there's questions of respect. And one of the things that I have come across in that notion of respect is, I think sometimes, we as educators have to get a little bit thicker skin, when it comes to the question of respect, and what that looks like, because understanding where a student is coming from, is critically important. And just a quick story. One of the parts of my job that I had in one of my districts was to occasionally pinch it in an elementary setting. And there was a young man that had, you know, we talked about ACEs, he had a number of them, and we still held him accountable. But it was always in the back of our mind when we worked with this young man, some of the trauma he had experienced, etc. And it's probably one of my favorite stories, because I laugh every time I think of it, and I went to deal with this young man and he was tucked away and he literally had put himself in his cubby where his coat etc was. And as I went to greet him, he he was holding up both middle fingers and here's this young elementary school children child and, and my high school students would never dream as mad as they would be with me. I don't think I ever had a student actually flipped me off like that. But here is this, I believe was seven or eight years old. And you know, knowing where he was Now, did we hold them accountable? Yes, you know, he faced consequences, etc. But keeping in mind where that students journey had taken them, taking him was was really important. So I want to shift gears a little bit, Joe, you've been doing this work across the state, you've come in, and you've spoken to my staff when I had a staff a number of years ago now, and you've kind of been gradually kind of building this work, building your repertoire, et cetera, et cetera. And once you tell me where you're at now, because I think you have, you've reached kind of an exciting point with it. Yeah, I'm really very happy about the evolution that the trauma informed care work has taken. Quite frankly, seven years ago, when we started walking into school districts in the very first school district, we walked into was Naples, banned, invited there by the former superintendent. And people looked at us, kinda like your dog looks at you when he or she doesn't understand what you're asking them to do. With that side tilted look, I'm proud to say seven years later, that just doesn't happen anymore. Awareness is pretty ubiquitous. Now we're talking a lot more about implementation. And what does it look like in action, because what I've found to be true for most human beings, is that they are comfortable being aware of a problem, but not necessarily comfortable addressing it. And so we've really built a few mechanisms to continue to do work like this. The first is Finger Lakes Community Schools, Finger Lakes Community Schools, is an idea that was informally done for quite a while, but became more formalized in the summer of 2019. When my colleague Jay Roscoe and myself, really put a name to it, and really Fingerlakes community schools, provides training, technical support, coaching consulting, for best practices in the Finger Lakes region, we're able to do most of that free of additional charge for school districts because of the number of grants we've been able to secure in the last eight years. Along with that, we also have two consortiums of school districts that do the day to day work of the community schools, one in Wayne County, where it was founded almost a decade ago. And a newly relatively newly formed one in Seneca County in November of 20. Seneca County formed their own Community Schools Coalition. And so we utilize the framework of the community schools work to drive meeting the needs of kids and families with school as the hub. Most recently, for the Finger Lakes region, my colleagues and I were able to secure three school safety grants from the Department of the United States Department of Justice, that will bring about $2.7 million in funding over the next three years to the region. The one quick thing I'll say about school safety is most people, especially those who maybe don't work and education will automatically lead to school safety being about metal detectors or school resource officers. And in some cases it is, but the one we secured in Seneca County has nothing to do with that. It has to do with suicide prevention, because that's people being safe for themselves. And so with that grant money will be providing a series of trainings to lead to a higher level of suicide prevention in Seneca County. And I think that's such an important piece. And I know you and I have talked about that with school safety. Dave and I have talked about it because he you know, recent guests as well. Also, I used to say this to the principals and you know, once we once you put a up your emergency plan into effect, you've effectively lost meaning that that incident has happened. But if you create a culture where students feel like they can give you information where they feel heard, etc. You can you can stop those, you have a better chance, I shouldn't say it's a guarantee, but you have a better chance to stop those instances that we saw recently in Michigan. And, you know, probably the ones that get less attention are the ones that are happening on a probably even more regular basis, as Joe mentioned, you know, suicide, and suicide attempts. And those are critical. And sometimes it is just a caring friend, or someone that sees or hears something on social media that doesn't just sit well. And, again, getting people to understand both staff and their fellow students that working together and give, you know, giving each other the assets and the support that we need, makes us all better. So I'm going to shift gears a little bit, one last time, here is our time starting to wind down Joe. And getting ready for this. We, as Joe and I were talking getting ready for today. The thought came to me and we both have children, and we talk a great deal on a personal level about what they're doing and and how they're doing in their lives now, and what is the work that you've been doing? What is this taught you about raising your own children? And what advice would you give parents a parent, based upon what you've learned? Because I think I know I look at my own children through a different lens with what I've grown to understand than I probably did before I looked at this work. Yeah, anytime you need to make what you know, professionally, work personally, it's a challenge. I always thought that I would have a leg up as a parent being a an educator. And I don't know that that's true. But I've learned a lot of lessons from the trauma informed and healing centered work, a couple of things that really stick out to me. All behavior has a function. behavior doesn't happen by accident, whether it be a conscious choice, or a subconscious choice. When you see someone act or behave in a certain way, they are communicating something. And when people don't feel safe, and unfortunately, that's very common right now, with COVID. When people don't feel safe, they go back into their brain, even past the decision making part of the brain into the pre historic part of their brain, more formally known as the amygdala. And so what I noticed in my own children sometimes is they'll get to that place. And simply as I can say it in a short time, fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, they'll, they'll get to those reactions. And I'll know that it's not a worthwhile discussion at that moment, because they're not really with me, that prefrontal and cerebral cortex is our offline if you will, to use a Wi Fi term. And so if we're going to have any sort of meaningful conversation, we they have to come back from that place. And so I know not to address it in the moment. I think the other thing that I've really learned is that these are discrete skills that need to be taught explicitly. I've worked really hard, particularly with my younger son, to teach him about breathing exercises, and why he would use a breathing exercise, what it means and how it can really help him reset when he when he's upset. The the final piece I would add to that, that puzzle is, I in no way shape or form would consider myself an expert in in parenting. But I do think that you can't help another person regulate or CO regulate with a person. If you're not regulated yourself. And sometimes out of frustration, we go to that prehistoric place. And if we're at that place, then we're not able to address the issue in front of us. If you're interested in more about that work, I would recommend a professor out of Ontario, Canada. Dr. Stuart Shanker does great self regulation work and talks about CO regulation and what that means. So those are some of the lessons I think I've picked But now, whether I can implement them, just because I know them in the moment is not always the case. But I do my best with that. So true. So true. I again, I often, I used to feel like the plumber, they had bad pipes, because I didn't feel like I was implementing what I knew, as an educator and some of the stuff. And I love that term the prehistoric brain because it's easy as a parent to see read. And, again, some of that modeling that we can do for our own children is to count to 10, ourselves before we react to to a given stimulus, shall we say, from our children. And, again, it's every every parent and every child situation is a little bit different. But some of those lessons on regulation and teaching those discrete skills, whether it be through modeling, or outright, hey, this is this is a way to regain your composure, you know, counting to 10, or whatever it might be the different breathing exercises that exist out there, I think are good lessons. Joe, we covered a lot of ground in a relatively short time, I can't thank you enough, both for coming on here today. But also everything I've learned and the work that you continue to do out there. It's important work, maybe now more than ever, as we hopefully I'm hoping by spring are talking about emerging from the pandemic, and truly getting to a life that that resembles what it was, you know, around February of 2019. It's hard to believe that we're talking about, you know, almost three years of this now. But again, thank you for coming on. Thank you for the work that you do. And is there a website that people can contact you if they're interested in finding out more about this? Yes, the best website with most of the information that I talked about today is FL X community schools.org. That's FL X community schools.org. And there is a contact button on there. And that message will will get to me, you can also find me on social media. I'm on Twitter, and Facebook, at DJI Phantom Grossie. Both of those, feel free to follow me and I try to post things like podcasts like this so people can can see and hear about the good work that's going on. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I jumped at the opportunity to come on this podcast, because I have not had the chance to work with someone more genuine in their passion to help kids than Wayne. So I'm glad to be here today. And I think you'll learn quite a bit as you listen to his podcast over the next few months. Joe, thanks for those kind words. And one last No. We both have teams coming up this weekend. So I want to wish you and yours Your 40 Niners well as as we head into this weekend and maybe who knows, maybe we'll see my raiders and your 40 Niners in the Super Bowl. We're both smiling knowing that that's a remote possibility. But hey, one never knows. And that's this week's edition of education matters in New York. Have a great weekend. Stay warm. The storm is I guess coming for Monday and be ready to start digging. And thanks so much for your time with us on education matters.