Life Skills AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT Featuring Jane Bluestein and Tom Hierck FEATURED RESOURCE How did your individual experiences and perspectives in education complement each other in writing Creating Emotionally Safe Schools? Tom: Our primary connection and the foundation for our writing was based on a shared belief in the importance of relationships, connectedness, and support in schools. We’re both familiar with the pressure to get through course content while recognizing that there are many students who don’t have the skills they need to be successful, and others who are bored and need more of a challenge. We have also seen the impact on commitment and cooperative behavior when kids’ emotional, social, and neurological needs are not supported. Our priorities were similar and very much in line, recognizing the human aspects in educational settings as opposed to simply striving to reach benchmarks or higher test scores. Without the foundational skills of emotional safety, it’s hard to reach the achievement goals. Your book emphasizes helping both students and staff feel emotionally safe and supported. From your perspective, what is the foundational shift a school must make to move from “safe enough” to emotionally safe and thriving? Jane: It’s a critical distinction as “safe enough” could still be unsafe for many. We started by looking at different ways a sense of safety could be compromised, areas that are often overlooked or discounted as “soft,” extraneous, or irrelevant. At that point, we could explore “safety” from a variety of angles, with specific ideas and strategies to make that shift, expanding our perspective from a focus on physical safety (guns) or the pressure to conform and achieve to a broader and more comprehensive perspective. A foundational shift will necessarily include attention to how students (and staff) interact and treat one another, as well as physical and emotional needs that may not be met (or may be threatened) outside of the school setting. Over your work in helping schools build emotional well-being, what have you found to be the most persistent barrier to change, and how have you helped schools overcome it? Jane: Clearly, getting past all-or-nothing thinking has been the greatest challenge, the idea that anything that doesn’t look like a big-hammer approach is soft, permissive, or chaotic—that we’re getting “soft”. We’ve spent decades looking at ways to run down the middle, creating a win-win structure in which teacher authority does not strip students of their need for autonomy, choice, or control. There is a way to successfully address academic and cognitive requirements as well as social skills and a sense of belonging/inclusion, emotional needs and self-management, and differences in how children learn. This book delivers on that premise. For a school leader or teacher who wants to take immediate action from the book, what are two concrete practices you’d recommend implementing this week? Tom: The important thing is to start somewhere. There is a survey at the end of the book. We’d recommend having staff and leaders give an honest assessment of each item in the survey, as it is the successful achievement of all of these goals (or as many as possible) that can lead to positive shifts in the culture of the school/district. As a bonus (and for a real awakening), we also recommend having students answer the same questions and look for discrepancies between adults’ perceptions and kids’ realities. As we state in the introduction “educators have the ability to create the kinds of schools, environments, and relationships that will support learning, achievement, and cognitive growth, as well as compassion, creativity, resilience, commitment, productivity, self-understanding, and self-actualization.” Our willingness to stretch our sense of what safety is to include the numerous factors that contribute to this climate/culture will likely lead to positive outcomes—not just in the “feel” of the place, but in the students’ curiosity, contributions, and cooperation that make schools enjoyable and constructive places to be, work, and learn. Featured resource: Creating Emotionally Safe Schools See page 60 for details.
