Host: Heather Volchko
Guest: Waddell Hamer
All right, welcome back. We are going to pick up right where we left off from last week and take kind of the conversation of what compassionate care is, and how is that overlapping with emotional intelligence. We had a conversation about choosing to kind of engage in the uncomfortable so that we can then choose to see what’s possible behind whatever might be going on. And that’s compassionate. Right. Extending that compassion. So this week, the goal is to make it tangible.
Let’s kind of get sticky with some strategies, some ideas of things that could happen in classroom spaces, could happen just in educational systems. There’s all kinds of different angles that this conversation may go. So I’m excited to jump back in with you, Waddell.
Same here.
So what are you thinking? I mean, this is your life. You live this, breathe this. What are some of those top strategies that you are thinking of that would help people just do one more thing, right, but do what they’re doing in this compassionate way?
If you talk about it from a personal, so you got to think about it two ways. You got the personal, but you got the systems. Right.
Cool.
If you think about it from a personal standpoint, the strategies that you can do, I feel, is be intentional about having friendships and building communities with people who are different from two years I lived in this town just south of Indianapolis and I was the complete opposite of 90% of the people in that town. It was a very small, it’s what I call real Indiana.
And living there, I made it my duty to; I was intentional about having those friendships, not just with the others as far as race, but as far as political, economic status, yada, yada, yada. You have to have those friendships. You have to have those relationships with people who disagree with you or whatever, as far as systems or whatever. When we’re talking about school systems.
Kind of the same thing being intentional. But that looks different on a systemic level, right? Yeah, it does. One of the things I was thinking about before we hopped on was a few years ago, I worked at my internship at a county jail and it was easily one of the more, I always tell people that was one of the more depressing experiences of my life, and I got to go home every day.
Right.
Just seeing everything that was there. But one of the things that we did towards the end was we talked about what does it looks like to have trauma-informed prisons or trauma-informed jails or whatever. I did a bit paper about that, translating that to having a trauma-informed school. So, making sure that all the teachers and staff are trained on what trauma-informed school looks like. Things that…there are things that you can do on a systemic level that doesn’t cost money.
Thank you.
Because, of course, everything comes down to money. So, for example, let’s say you’re a kid from a particular neighborhood that has a lot of violence or whatever the case may be, right? You want that kid to come to school every day, and it’d be peaceful. You want that kid to come to school every day, and the school to be a sanctuary, a place of peace. So, I mean, that could be anything from painting the walls a certain color, that could be anything from fixing the lights in the school so it doesn’t blink on and off, or whatever. That could be anything from clean bathrooms.
People always think that it has to be like these huge, crazy systemic changes or whatever. But even those crazy systemic changes start with small stuff.
Here’s a silly example. It was way more meaningful to the students than I had anticipated. But I was working in a district, and there were certain populations that were given what I would call the dumpster dive classrooms. And I say that with affection because I was always one of them. One place I was working, it was me and the teacher, and we were literally working with the custodian to dig through leftover furniture and things that were hiding in random corners and all kinds of places to be able to build their classroom, because that population wasn’t being resourced as much as everybody else was. But one of the things that we did at a systems level was we said, you know what?
Can we try to make this classroom at least look and feel like the ones that it’s next to? Clearly, students have different needs. They’re here for a reason. But can we in some way try to mirror some of those experiences? Because they look next door and they think all the things, and they look at their own room, and it’s like, what? So we literally went down the hall and said, Do you have any extra desks?
Different classrooms had different populations. They’re all given kind of a standard set. Like, given your current rosters and your current kids who are coming and going, do you have any extra desks? If you do, can we borrow them? And so we literally were able to collect enough extra desks from other classrooms and put it into this classroom. And when the kids walked in, they were like, what? They didn’t understand.
We get this? We’re allowed to use this? Can I sit here? And it was just this moment where I was like, do it at your desk. Yeah, of course. Sit down. It’s your space. Make it your own. If not here, then where? We literally took out the dumpster dive option. There’s no other option to sit on or space to claim as your own. Right. But it was something that was truly zero cost. It was the resources that were already in the building. The same as the dumpster dive stuff that we had been working with was also in the building.
But it had such a crazy impact, and I didn’t understand that for me, I was just like, well, same, right? Like, what they get, what we get, let’s figure it out and work it through. But there was such this ripple that came through that, that they were like, wait, how did we get these? What’s going on? And they had all these other bigger questions that I was just like, it’s furniture, right? It’s just furniture.
But to them, it was so much more. It was so much bigger.
That reminds me of where I go to. That is, I think, too often people don’t understand just the psychological damage that is done to a kid who is clearly brought up into a quote unquote “less than” environment. You may not always be able to articulate it. You may not always be able to verbalize it or whatever the case may be, but the damage that it does on a person knowing that everything in society points to them being less than.
Yeah, and it’s wild. Like the assumptions. The assumptions that are made on both sides, right? Like people who’ve walked through things, people who haven’t walked through those things, but just the natural way of seeing the world, the natural way of the conclusions that are obvious are just not. They’re just simply not the same.
And that gets back to what we were talking about before, as far as assuming that kids are… They know. Kids know. I don’t care how young you are, you could tell when stuff is not.
Well, let’s be real students who are walking through stuff and having to make sense of their own world in maybe adult kinds of ways, right? They’ve got, if you want to call it, the 6th sense, the spidey sense, the whatever. And there are tons of academic terms that we can wrap around this, but they can read bs a mile away. Right? I don’t know. When I think of what does compassionate care looks like in schools, I’m thinking, like, we’re just demonstrating it. We’re modeling it, right? Like, by how we are choosing to attend to them, what they’re dishing out, and how we’re dealing with that. If it’s through our words, through our actions, just in general, we are choosing to be good humans.
Right.
Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to automatically turn around and they’re going to be amazing. Right back to you. Right. Like they’ve walked through some stuff, and they’re going to need to figure out that you’re not just a words person, that you actually mean and are genuine in what you’re kind of putting out there. But it truly is just like I think you were saying last week, be who you want them to be to you. Right? Like demonstrating that golden rule, like treat others like you would want to be treated. And then it is up to every individual person to make those choices. But we don’t have to make those choices for them.
We get to position ourselves so that they could actually make a choice as opposed to just giving us back maybe what we’re dishing out.
Right. Absolutely. And you pitch it to the higher-ups that, hey, this is some stuff you could do systemically that will make an impact, that will show that compassionate care in school. And guess what? It’s free. 99.
Yeah. Well, and I mean truly we’re having this conversation about classrooms and teachers and students, typically, or at least staff and students, but there is something to be said for also colleague to colleague, administrator to teacher, teacher to administrator within the adults that the same thing I think is true, that if we’re going to turn around and tell people who are interfacing with students, you need to be acting, doing, being this kind of way, then we need to also be creating a system and modeling in our own interactions or our own demeanor, our own professional choices amongst adults, so that we are then treating each other that way as well. And that to me, sometimes in education, I feel like we can be “do what I say, not what I do” people, where we put those expectations out there, but we ourselves are not maybe living those out.
And I think that’s where, I mean, last week you were like, thank you, teachers. Right? Like my gracious, there’s so many things, right? Like, thank you. But I think part of that is because they are the ones expected to do, and then simultaneously they are situated in a system that is telling them what to do, but they themselves are not experiencing what they are turning around and being expected to provide as an experience to their students.
Right. So my question for you is, why do you think it’s so difficult?
Yeah. People are just stretched too thin, that there’s too many things, too many demands. If I may be so bold, in the education system, there’s always a new mandate, and you can’t even finish the old one before the new one comes out. And most of them, if not all of them, are underfunded or rarely or not at all funded, and all the expectations are still there. All of the expectations are still there.
And so when you’re trying to figure out, like, okay, so I have to do all of these things. Is anyone actually looking at all of those things collectively? And so I can say that in different roles that I have had, part of what I have done is said, okay, let’s look at, okay, this is your expectation of this program, this staff, this building, whatever, and, okay, got it. Go to someone else or some other department or some other entity, some other reporting component.
This is what those expectations are. Here’s what the requirements are. Do that again. Do that again. Do that again. Literally, wherever those things are coming from, and then look at all of it. And there’s so many times that there are expectations or mandates that actually contradict or could not actually be done together. Like, if you’re doing one, by definition, you cannot accomplish another, but yet all of the expectations exist. All of those metrics, all of those things are still there. And then all of a sudden, that teacher, that team, that program, that building, that district, that whatever is on the hook for speaking to all of the things when in reality, all of those things are coming from individual kind of like siloed or splintered entities, and no one’s standing on the receiving end turning back around and going, y’all, some of this stuff doesn’t even play nice together.
Like, how are we supposed to do all the things? Because the two of you, we can’t make both of you happy, so do we just need to make choices?
Kinda like the left hand and the right hand aren’t talking
Exactly. And then that experience, right? You never feel like you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing, because no matter what you do, someone is going to have a true critique of whatever it is because you’ve gone with one and not the other, and just kind of navigating that experience.
I mean, as a professional, who of us wants to show up at what we are choosing to kind of invest in our lives in that professional capacity, and that’s where we’re putting it and walk in and out every day knowing that no matter how amazing you are and how much wonderful things have happened, it’s still going to be counted as a failure in someone’s tally list.
Yeah.
And that’s where I think, oh, sure, be nice. Oh, sure, model compassion. Oh, sure. All these things, right? When there’s a kind of environment that’s set up against that, if I might be so bold, because it’s one of perpetual failure no matter what you’re doing, it’s one of high stress because there’s all the high stakes around different things. And then all of a sudden, we have to be nice in the middle of it. Like, next week we’re going to talk about self compassion and how do we walk through something like that.
But my opinion, in terms of schools, everybody’s stressed out, burnt out. We were talking last school year, it’s September and it feels like April, right? It’s a lot of things from a lot of directions, and everybody’s trying to make sense of it on top of less and less resourcing and more and more mandates.
Right. The reason I asked you that question it’s not just in education, right? It’s in social work.
Exactly. Human services in general.
Human services in general. At a certain point, the people that, I don’t know if it’s like a personality type, I don’t know if it’s like a, I have no desire to be in management. I have no desire to be in management whatsoever. God bless people who are in management, but that’s not for me. And some people may say, Oh, well, maybe you would be great in management. No, I would lose my freaking mind in management. I’m trying my best not to curse on here. What I really want to say.
But at a certain point, those administrators, the people that make a decision, you know, they come from, usually not all the time, unfortunately, but where do they lose that ability to be compassionate once they get to the upper level? What are we missing here, people?
Well, I think I’ll speak on behalf of some of the teams that I’ve gotten to work with across the years. I think the administrators who have walked through the classrooms and they are continuing to choose to be present in the halls and pop into rooms, not just for like a publicity stunt, but truly because they care for their people and their people being their staff so that their people can care for the little people.
Those are the dime a dozen, right? Those are the ones that are practicing what they preach. They’re the ones who are saying, this is what you should be doing. And I’m going to turn around and do that, too. I’ve met administrators that do that that are both kind of walked through the classroom and they’ve walked into administration and they are turning around, trying to do some of that systems work so that maybe their life as an educator could have been different or would have been supported in a way that they felt would be more effective for their practice, right?
The reality is there’s also a lot of systems around administrators, and they have their hands tied. I’ve been behind closed doors with admin, with desires and parameters that they have not been able to kind of work through a workaround, or they’re having bigger desires and dreams than what they can get the yes for or what is acceptable for whatever reason. And so, behind closed doors, administrators, even with those big, compassionate hearts, are still themselves situated in systems, not just the classrooms. And the students… go for it.
Yeah, you’re right. I know that on a logical level.
Yeah. It just feels like you’re in a position of power; therefore, you should be able to wield your power, and it’s not that clean, right? Schools are bureaucratic systems. They are a federal entity. That’s what they are. And so it’s just a matter of how we can do. I know, but that’s where I think some of these conversations we’re having. Yes, I will agree with you. They’re just human services things, right? Parts of this show up in behavior analysis, where we’re talking about within clinics and how clinic managers are treating their employees or their contractors or their service providers, and how are they managing with insurance and how insurance is actually driving some service provision.
And that happens in social work and just things like that, right? There’s systems. So if it’s a federal entity, if it’s an insurance entity, if there’s some kind of oversight, that quite honestly, then is typically connected to funding, which is then driving where the money flows, right? But so it’s still a systems thing. So that even the people that are the most compassionate and the biggest advocates, not just for those that they are serving, but those that are doing the serving with them as well.
Even with all of those things, sometimes, and I think a lot of times, there is an aspect of systems kind of around that. And sometimes the art, in my opinion, is understanding those systems so intricately well that you can then bend it without breaking it, and you can stay within the parameters, and you’re not going to get in trouble. You’re not trying to completely upend the table of the system, which you know me sometimes I’d love to, but can we get so familiar with it that we now can find those loopholes, we can find those angles, we can find those ways that we can do right by the people that are within that system. If that is administrators in a district, and we’re finding that loophole so that they can do that outreach event that they would prefer to do, or they could do this staff support that they’ve been dreaming of, but they’ve got these stop gaps in why they can’t actually do those things, right? Like, can we use the system by getting so intimately familiar with it that we can then find those little gaps and try to work on that on behalf of those people?
Yes, of course, you know me while we’re trying to fix the system, too, but can we work within the system while we’re almost kind of working against it?
Do you play chess?
No.
Like, what you said reminded me, I use chess a lot with my clients. I use chess almost every day with my clients. Obviously, a lot of times we’re talking about impulse control, making the right decision, stuff like that. But when you talk about playing within the system or whatever, chess popped in my head, and it’s like knowing what pieces to move, when to move. The pawn is like my favorite piece on the board, because you think the pawn has no power and has no leverage.
Yet if you know how to play it right, the pawn can be the most powerful thing on the board. It can change the game. It can ultimately end up winning the game for you or whatever. At the end of the day, we’re pawns. We’re pawns. So it’s like, how do we maneuver within a system? How do we learn the system? How do we position ourselves to maybe get to the other side of the board and become a queen or another piece that’s lost, or maybe get to the other side of the board? and check or checkmate, or whatever the case may be.
One of our people in the consultancy did amazing work before joining the consultancy, and then was leveraging those skills within school systems. And they were like, Heather, this isn’t chess. This is 3D chess, because it’s like, yeah, you’re playing chess to do what we’re there to do, right? But in order to actually do that in a sustainable and long-term, impactful way, it’s the whole other dimension that you’re playing 3D chess in to kind of work within systems.
Yeah. And you have to look at. Yeah, you’re right. You’re not just looking at one board. You look at it like three or four different boards at the same time, and they all affect each other or whatever. That’s why, like I said, paint the walls, fix the lights, and keep the bathroom clean. Simple things that humming noise that is annoying. You’re like, yo,
I can’t make this up, Heather. I can’t make this up. During the summer, between my junior and senior year of high school, a huge portion of the building collapsed.
Yeah. And that’s. I mean, you’re speaking to one corner of the country, but that is a very real experience. And if I continue on the system soapbox, right? Like, local funding is from the locale, right? So whatever the community resources are is what enables the school or the district, whatever entity you want to call it, but that public schooling option in that locale is contingent on the resourcing that is available in that region, right?
That’s why you see so many charter schools pop up.
Absolutely.
Because there’s just no funding to do anything respectable. And of course, charter schools come with a whole ‘nother system and a whole ‘nother. Always a system. Always a system. But at the end of the day, systems are people. Systems are made up of people. It’s like, how do we reach those people? Regardless of the system, how do we reach those people who make up that system? Let’s take a step back and let’s figure out a way to better design this.
I’m a big believer in Einstein’s theory of insanity. We’re trying the same things over and over, expecting different results, and we’re surprised when different results don’t come. It’s like, what are we doing here?
Yeah, I don’t know. I think as you’re talking through that, one of the things that is popping up for me is just like a feedback loop, that sometimes in systems, it can seem one-directional. And quite honestly, in some systems it is, right? It’s typically in systems going to be top down, top being from whatever the governing or authority entity is, down to anybody who’s maybe responsible for implementing that. And that can be pretty much any system, but effective systems or systems that can be responsive or can grow and change, and then, quite honestly, then stay relevant and functional over sustained periods of time, there’s a loop.
And so that means that then it’s bottom up. There’s feedback that is provided from the bottom, up the system that is then honored, and then things are adjusted or what can or can’t be fixed or at least something is tried differently. It doesn’t even have to be corrected, but can there be an adjustment? And then that is now permitted, and now that flows down, and then that either works or doesn’t work out, or there’s pieces that do or don’t. And then the feedback flows back upstream for additional adjustments, right? Like that feedback loop.
That is what we expect of our classrooms. We expect that teachers are creating a system in which students can learn. And then if that is or isn’t working, they’re looking at their students and they’re trying to figure out what’s not working, and then they’re adjusting their system in order to be able to better meet the needs of their students. That feedback loop is expected. And then at the building level, to a certain extent, there is also a sort of feedback loop, right? Where teachers, educators, classroom, or staff can then provide feedback to administrators as from the administrators' expectations. But then, a lot of times, administrators are more middle management, where they’re actually just the conduit through which district expectations are coming.
And so then building administrators can provide some of that feedback back to the district to advocate on some things that may or may not be impactful in sort of shifting the situation. And then it’s up to the district, and then by proxy, then the building administrator, to be able to flow that back through and see if it actually resulted in anything. And then that same, you just get bigger and bigger and bigger as that magnitude expands. But it seems like at some point there’s a stopgap. So either it’s a teacher who says, no, I’m good at what I do, and the kid is broken, so I’m fine. The kid’s the issue.
And then you can literally take that exact same perspective and make it bigger. Right? So then it’s the building administrator that goes, no, you’re the issue. This is fine, I’m fine. Like you’re being filled in the blank, whatever, right? And then maybe it goes up to the district. No, that’s just you. That’s just your building. That’s just your corner of the community. And it. There’s a stopgap where the feedback may be provided, but it is not honored, and then there’s no adjustment. And so there you go. Einstein’s relative insanity. So it’s just going, at what point can we take that potentially one-way system and actually have an effective feedback loop that keeps that system effective, and that it’s actually sustainable, and it can be responsive to what those needs are?
We expect it at the classroom level. And then it seems like the further and further and further out from there that we go, either the harder it is or the less responsive it is or what? But it doesn’t always have a true, genuine feedback loop that is honored with those adjustments and then continues to perpetuate that feedback.
And that’s true of every system. That’s true of any system. If you don’t have that consistent, you’re listening to the people who are on the ground, the people who are in the school setting. Of course, that starts with the students themselves. It starts with the students themselves. If you’re not listening to the students themselves, it’s like, what are we doing here?
Especially in school systems, right? Aren’t we designed to serve them? Gosh, there’s a lot of messy stuff to make that happen, isn’t there?
Oh, my God. Yeah. No, I’m always trying to think of just different ways to. And that’s probably why I don’t want to be in middle management, because I don’t want to be a part of it, right? I want to be the person on the outside looking in, just being like, what can we do differently? Not even coming at from always a judgmental lens or whatever, but...
It's the same way of looking at anything. What’s working? What’s not working? If it’s working, cool, not broke, don’t fix it. And then if it’s not working, okay, what are our options? What are our angles? And I share that because that’s kind of my professional trajectory, right? Like, I started in the classroom, and then at a certain point in my career, I kind of realized what is impacting my ability to do what I do is bigger than me.
And that came from walking through some situations with some students, that I was like, that’s just not right. That’s not. Okay, so how can I? What position do I need to have to be able to impact something bigger than what I can control in my four walls? And that’s kind of where I’ve grown, right? Then that’s the work that I kind of continue to do in a whole bunch of different capacities. But it is very similar to you in that perspective of going, like, I can control what I can control, right?
But if there are other things outside of me that are actually undermining my ability to do right by whatever it technically is within my control, well, then it’s not actually. And those are the things that need to adjust. Not even correct. Like, just shift. And that kind of goes back to what’s working, what’s not working. Cool. Keep what’s working. And if it’s not working, what about it isn’t working?
What are some other angles that we could do? I’m not saying just throw it out, right? But what else can we do that still aligns and abides by whatever parameters we have to live within, but can maybe result in different impacts on different people, to potentially then have different outcomes?
And that’s why I made a comparison to chess, right? If you play a game of chess and you keep doing the same dang thing over and over again, and if you keep on bringing your queen out too early or whatever, and your queen keeps getting taken. But that’s idiotic, a stupid strategy, right? If you are planning a certain way and you’re not paying attention to the way your opponent is playing, that’s idiotic. That’s stupid.
You’re going to lose all the time. So we have to just look at the whole thing, look at everything, every moving piece, every moving part of it, or whatever, and recognize that each part, each piece, has value.
Right? But I think that goes back to last week’s conversation. We were saying, treat each other as humans, right? So, how do we treat each other as humans? Right? How do we engage in compassionate care? How do we demonstrate empathy? How do we leverage emotional intelligence? I mean, it comes down to just be nice. Just be nice. Treat each other as humans. But I think this week’s conversation, we’ve really centered a lot on the things that are maybe outside of our control, and kind of those systems around our practitioners.
So I’m excited for next week to talk about what does that looks like. What does it look like to do what we can do and sit with that dissonance of things that we can’t do or things that are just hard, are really hard to walk through? Do we do that as practitioners and choose then to still, in the midst of that heaviness, show up and demonstrate that compassion and remember that everyone around us is human when we ourselves are also walking through it and struggling as well?
Yeah. All right. I’m looking forward to it.
All right, see you next week.
All right, see you. Bye.
