Shownotes:
Get ready for an exhilarating dive into the heart of learning! In this episode, we unpack the world of the Quantum 10 (Q10), a mega multi-tiered system of support. Join me in an invigorating fireside chat with the dynamic Talisa Sullivan as we unravel the magic that happens when we integrate diverse practices, honor individuality, and foster a thriving, collective learning environment. This episode is your ticket to a world of possibilities, so buckle up and get ready to be inspired!
About Our Guest:
Dr. Talisa Sullivan has served as an educator for over 20 years. She specializes in serving marginalized populations that have experienced intergenerational inequities. She has served as an educator at different levels. Dr. Sullivan earned a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and a Teaching Credential from Cal State Dominguez Hills, a Master of Arts in Educational Administration from Cal State San Bernardino, and a Ph.D. in Education with an emphasis on Urban Leadership from Claremont Graduate University.
Websites: q10equityineducation.com, transformingleaderstlc.com
X/Twitter: @TalisaSullivan
Instagram: @dr.sulli
About Lainie:
Lainie Rowell is a bestselling author, award-winning educator, and TEDx speaker. She is dedicated to human flourishing, focusing on community building, social-emotional learning, and honoring what makes each of us unique and dynamic through learner-driven design. She earned her degree in psychology and went on to earn both a post-graduate credential and a master's degree in education. An international keynote speaker, Lainie has presented in 41 states as well as in dozens of countries across 4 continents. As a consultant, Lainie’s client list ranges from Fortune 100 companies like Apple and Google to school districts and independent schools. Learn more at linktr.ee/lainierowell.
Website - LainieRowell.com
Twitter - @LainieRowell
Instagram - @LainieRowell
Evolving with Gratitude, the book is available here! And now, Bold Gratitude: The Journal Designed for You and by You is available too!
Both Evolving with Gratitude & Bold Gratitude have generous bulk pricing for purchasing 10+ copies delivered to the same location.🙌
Just fill out the forms linked above and someone will get back to you ASAP!
Transcript:
Lainie Rowell: [00:00:00] Hello, friends. I have Dr. Talisa Sullivan with us. Talisa, welcome.
Talisa Sullivan: Thank you. Hi, Lainie.
Lainie Rowell: So this is pretty fun for us because, or at least for me. I won't speak for you.
But this is pretty fun because you and I have actually met in person. And even though we both live in Southern California, where we met was Nashville.
Talisa Sullivan: Right. And it's fun for me too, by the way.
Lainie Rowell: Thank you for getting that in there. You didn't leave me hanging. I appreciate that.
Talisa Sullivan: Of course not.
Lainie Rowell: So we have a group of friends that all descended on the Nashville area. Just had a great time. It was kind of we know each other through education spaces, but we just wanted to go and dance to some music, have a good time. And we did.
Talisa Sullivan: It was great. I had a good time.
Lainie Rowell: Dr. Talisa Sullivan has served as an educator for over 20 years, and there's so much to her I am going to turn this over to her pretty quickly, but I'm just so excited to dive in. This is part of my impatience too.
So, Dr. Sullivan, tell us more about yourself, and I really want to dive into the Q10.
Talisa Sullivan: Okay, cool. Well, thank you, Lainie, for having me, first of all, on this amazing podcast space. You know, I'm not going to really tell too much about myself. I'll let people go and read it because I think I, I'd rather just have a conversation with you.
The one thing I will say is that I have been in education for a number of years, over 20, and I'm really passionate about the work that I do every single day. And the rest of it, we'll let you read it online.
Lainie Rowell: You're so humble. You really are doing tremendous work. And I want to get to that quickly.
So I'm going to go ahead and do the first question, and then we're going to dive into your work, which I am so excited because to me, I see the intersection with gratitude at every point. So I'm very excited to make these connections to your work and gratitude, and I'll kick it off with What does gratitude mean to you, Talisa?
Talisa Sullivan: Well, thank you. So gratitude to me just means being beyond grateful, I'll say, because sometimes you're grateful for something, but gratitude means that you want to show your appreciation by giving back to the very system that gives to you, whether it's a system, whether it's a person, and you're doing it graciously.
It's not like a oh, you did this for me, so I guess I'll do it for you. It's more of a I'm honored to really support you, pour into you, or whatever the case may be. So it just means it's the, it's the highest level of, of thanks that you can give to another individual or a system.
Lainie Rowell: I love that. The highest level of thanks you can give.
Talisa, let's jump in to the Q10, and tell me, the history of Q10, how you came to this work, and, explain to those who haven't heard it before, what is Q10?
Talisa Sullivan: That's a great question. I consider Q10 a multi mega tiered system of support and just because of all of the elements that are involved in the Q10 are multifaceted, and there are levels, different levels of many of them, and I just want to go through them before I go into, more about the Q10.
So we have Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and if you know anything about Maslow's, it has different levels of needs that you go through. And it maybe not all in one line, but at different points of time, we wanna make sure that people have everything that they need before we just dig into having them, you know, start with math, science, or history.
We have trauma-informed practices, social emotional learning, inclusive practices, response to intervention, positive behaviors, interventions and supports, restorative practices, Universal Design for Learning, Cultural Responsive Practices, and Growth Mindset. That's Q10, and it is a fusion of all of those theories, practices, and frameworks, and it's a fusion that causes a synergy to support all learners.
So you know, you look at one or the other, and you have a great practice, but when you put them all together as an amalgamation, you have a holistic approach to supporting all learners towards success, opportunity, access, and engagement. So that's, in a nutshell.
Lainie Rowell: So it's the, sum is greater than all of its parts, if I'm hearing this.
Talisa Sullivan: Yes, absolutely.
Lainie Rowell: Okay, so you're sharing all the ten elements, and to me, I am hearing the best of the best practices, right, I'm hearing the things that we know are a critical part of high quality teaching and learning.
And so we're bringing them together in a way that you said fusion that causes synergy. Can you tell us more about that?
Talisa Sullivan: Yeah, definitely we'll go into depth. And so I also say that it's the idea of intentionally integrating those practices, intentionally infusing them.
And the reason why I say intentional, because when we're practicing, a lot of times people are integrating the practices. Many times I see in many schools, many districts. I do see the practices overlapping. I'll see people working with individuals on great decision making from a cultural perspective, but I don't know how intentional they are about integrating those two practices.
And so the whole gist of the Q10 is be intentional about the integration so that you're working towards a holistic approach. The other thing I want to say is that 8 out of 10 of the Q10 are found in the Every Student Succeeds Act. Okay, and so that is a whole nother point. And they're in there as best practices.
And so, of course, a fusion of those best practices is the way to go in order to create the atmosphere in a school, in a district, outside of a school, outside of a district. That will cover all students and the example I love to give to is we're helping people make great decisions.
We don't want to look at those decision making skills without working through the cultural perspective. We have certain cultural norms that we want to make sure that we adhere to. We've been socialized here in the United States under the idea that certain decisions are better than others when the reality is we have people that come in that are not originally from the United States that have a great culture of their own and they make decisions from a different perspective.
They make a decision based on what the family needs versus the way some other people are making decisions and so integrating those practices are huge or important and that's just one example of integrating the practices.
Lainie Rowell: And for whatever their role as an educator who's listening what would you say is their this is how to get started using this mega system.
Talisa Sullivan: Thank you. Let me give you a little bit more, so that'll kind of give you a little bit of insight on how to get started. If you go to the website, which will give you all that information later, you'll see an image of the Q10, what the Q10 looks like, and in the center, you will see a blue quadrant and in that quadrant you will see family and community engagement, adaptive leadership, high quality instruction, and student centered culture.
And when we talk about getting started, first we get started by looking at the core and including the core in on how you're going to design, learning and how you're going to get started with implementing the framework. And we talked about adaptive leadership, which is 1 of the 4 quadrants.
And we have to have an adaptive leader that really understands that this goes beyond just 1 classroom or 1 teacher, but that this should be systemic. And that could be the principal of a school or a director at the district level, the superintendent at the district level, understanding that bringing all of these practices in to ensure that everyone is well versed in each and every one of these practices first, so that you can start on a journey of integrating the practices for a holistic approach to ensuring that your staff, your teachers, anyone who's going to come in contact with students are well trained in all of these areas, or at least many of these areas, in order to ensure that they can identify when students are in need of whatever that might be. When we talk about Maslows, we know that students have to have their basic needs met first, and a lot of that starts with safety, it starts with psychological safety, it starts with the physical safety, it starts with food.
You know, we have students that come in, and if students come in and they haven't eaten, or not just students, anyone who comes in and hasn't eaten, may not be able to concentrate. And so understanding what that looks like, and why someone might be behaving differently, versus automatically making an assumption that the student is up to mischief or something of that sort, understanding their needs, but being trained in certain areas so that you can identify that.
And I used Maslow's, but I can also say trauma informed practices, right? Being well trained in trauma informed practices so that you understand what it looks like when students come to you with trauma. Even if it looks like they're misbehaving, understand that there may be something that's underlining, right?
And I can continue with all of the practices. If I continue with all the practices, you'll know that helping to ensure that every single person who's going to interact with our learners are trained in those areas to identify when students need support and how to provide that support is vital. And then after all of that comes the integration and understanding what that intentional integration looks like inside of the classroom as well as on the playground, on the field, wherever you might be. What does that look like?
Lainie Rowell: Oh, thank you for that. That was really helpful.
So I wrote an article for Edutopia, The Art and Science of Using Praise for Improvement.
Talisa Sullivan: Yes.
Lainie Rowell: And the literature is very clear on this. Overwhelmingly positive to corrections, right? Five positive to one corrections It's very clear.
Talisa Sullivan: Right.
Lainie Rowell: There's no question about this in every form of relationship, whether it's romantic, business, family whatever it is. And one person, now it got a lot of really, really kind feedback, but one person retweeted it and said, this article should be called the Art and Science of Manipulation. And that kind of reminds me a little bit of what maybe some of the pushback on PBIS is.
So I don't know if that's a conversation worth exploring, but I think what was so important in what you just said, it's not about manipulating behavior to conform. We still need to honor culture and background and all these things, but there is a reality of about...
Talisa Sullivan: ...providing an expectation because that's what we've done here. Now, if we wanna throw it all out, then there's some other stuff we need to do too, because here in the United States, this is how we've been socialized. If I were to go to other places some places they don't even use the word behavior, right?
They don't even consider behavior as a portion of their educational system. But here we do and so if we do, then what are we telling kids? Or how are we getting kids to understand what we expect, even if we do a two way street? So I would suggest that if you're using positive behaviors, interventions, and supports, what you would do is you would include your students in on what those consequences are anyway.
You don't just come up with a consequence and be like, well, this is the consequence. You know, even with my own daughter, when she was growing up, I would be like, well, what should the consequence be if this happens? And my daughter would be like, oh, mom, that's not going to happen. I said, okay, well, I'm glad it's not.
But if it does, let's talk about what that consequence might look like. So that way the students are involved in the decision making when you talk about consequences as it comes to positive behaviors, interventions, and supports. And if we know anything about consequences, consequences are not always punitive.
They shouldn't be punitive. They should match the behavior. And that's what I think we're missing a lot of is matching the behavior. You know, something happens. And as a result, what do we do? And that is, even if there's a consequence to to this, the idea that we're doing this podcast, the consequence is, is that people are going to have an opportunity to hear more about the Quantum 10, more about gratitude, that's the consequence, you know, it's not negative, it's a consequence.
So, yeah, definitely. And, and we can even go into Maslow's hierarchy of needs because we, we know that maslow's may have been influenced by Blackfoot, right? That, that is something that there's research out there that shows that before Maslow's came up with the hierarchy of needs that he visited the Blackfoot and that he got some ideas about self actualization and probably transcendence as well. And as a result came up with this idea. And so a lot of controversy around that one where people were like, Oh, Maslow's might have taken this from X, Y, Z, when the reality is that's possible too.
We take from everything. We just need to give credit, right? We want to give credit to the Blackfoot for their concepts and their ideas and knowing that we probably changed it and morphed it because that's what we do here in the United States. If we do take someone's idea, what we do is we change it, we tweak it, we make it our own, or we do whatever we do to it to make it fit whatever our research might be.
So and we can probably go on and find something about many of the things that we do that might be problematic. But what we do with the information I think is super important.
Lainie Rowell: One of the things that I want to circle back to that you said, because I think this is so important.
Things taken out of context. can be problematic, right? So when we're looking at a system, a program, a practice, and we don't look at the ways that it's intended to be implemented, that can be problematic. And of course, there's also fidelity to programs. We know that too, right? One of the things that I'm thinking about as you're sharing this, and I think this is really getting to the essence of why the Quantum 10 is your passion is because if you try to only do this and you're not doing this, you are failing some kids.
And I know that sounds harsh and I don't mean to be, overly dramatic, but if you do this, okay, well, that's great. But without this, here's how that's going to be missing or not fully serving the learners.
Talisa Sullivan: Yes, yes. And, if we continue on the road, we could actually call it interventions and support with behavior.
We could call it whatever we would like to call it. PBIS just happens to be well known. And so I think what we need to do is take the portions of it and utilize the portions of it to ensure that we provide, collaborative expectations for students. How would we like for students to, to show up every day?
With their input, of course, not just saying, you better show up like this, but showing up with their input, and then utilizing the system, the reward system, the positive portions of it, versus thinking that we want to just control kids, because we really do want to make sure that kids have everything that they need but in schools and districts, there are certain expectations so how do we communicate those expectations, right?
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, and it's not even just schools and districts, there's a social contract. There's just certain things that are just kind of common expectation as we interact in our society, at least while we're here in the United States, right? So I think why that stung so much when I got that, and it was like one negative comment about this article that I wrote versus a lot of really positives and retweets and things like that.
But I felt like, this person didn't potentially even read the article to be honest and also didn't understand my background and the fact that I would never try to be manipulating , for my own advantage. I am trying to do this to help them grow into being even better human beings, and you've mentioned it a couple times, with their input, and that was how it was in my classroom for as far back as I can remember. There was always class meetings. There was always conversations. What should we be doing? What shouldn't we be doing? What are the consequences going to be? What are the rewards going to be? And so to me, this idea of, you know, how do we encourage positive behaviors really comes from the best of intentions. And it's a little worrisome that when things get taken out of context and then dismissed because they aren't in the right context, it's a tricky thing.
Talisa Sullivan: And if everybody just remembers the intentional integration of the Q10 practices, they won't focus only on one or the other element, but people need to be well trained in all the elements. And so if you decide that you want to be trained in some other type of behavior support, I say, do that.
It doesn't have to be PBIS. And I'll go even further to say, if you can find something that will replace growth mindset, you know, we talk about growth mindset, if there's something else along the same lines of helping individuals to understand that you can and that we need to provide you with support as you go to go reach for the stars that we know you can reach and that we want to encourage you.
You don't have to use the word growth mindset. You can use whatever word you want to use. You don't have to use Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. What you just need to keep in mind is that students basic needs have to be met before we can have them to reach self actualization. You don't have to even say self actualization.
You can say students basic needs have to be met before they can actually reach their full potential, or that they can actually, you know really get to a place where they're moving aside the fact that they're hungry and thinking about, oh, now I can reach for that star, right? Or whatever the case may be.
So we can interchange anything that you want. The concept is take these practices, take these theories, take these frameworks, and pull them apart if you want and put them back together, but make sure that you reach every single student because that is what we are here about. We're here to ensure that every single student or learner has everything that they need in order to be successful, to have opportunities, to have access to all these opportunities, and to ultimately be successful in their own whatever they determine successful is, right?
And, and we want them to be engaged. So that's the point.
Lainie Rowell: I appreciate how you made that really accessible and in a sense customizable kind of with the language. So I will give you an example. I have a workshop tomorrow with I think about 80 teachers and I'm having this conversation with their leadership, and I say, you know, based on what you're telling me, I think that the focus of this should be on universal design for learning.
And they tensed up, and there was some pushback. We don't want to introduce anything new. And I said, okay, fine, we won't call it Universal Design for Learning. We're going to call it Meeting the Needs of All Learners. It's so interesting to me, and I don't know if maybe this resonates with you, but we need to have some sort of a common language.
So that we know what we're talking about. It's a shorthand. It's a, I can say UDL and you and I are right there. We know each other's talking about, right? It's not me having to give, a paragraph long explanation of what I'm saying, because you and I, we know what that means, but if that is the barrier for someone, we can call it something else, but at the end of the day, this is a universal truth.
We're all unique and dynamic. You have to plan for that. You have to embrace that.
Talisa Sullivan: Right. You just say, Meeting All Students Needs.
Whatever it takes. Yep.
Lainie Rowell: All right, Talisa, you have a conference coming up.
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Talisa Sullivan: I sure can. I'm happy to tell you about this conference that I expect for all of your friends, my friends, and the whole universe to be at. Q10 conference is coming to Irvine, California. In person for the very first time. We've had three years of virtual FaceTime, and now we're gonna have some face to face time for real, for real on December 7th and 8th of 2023, and we have a pre session on December 6th.
We'll be at the Irvine Marriott, and we're going to have a great time. We have amazing keynote speakers lined up, and Lainie, you'll be one of those. We'll be having a chat like we are today, which I'm super excited about. We have Dr. Karen McBride, who is a psychologist.
We have Wendy Murawski, who works with co teaching. We have Nicole Tucker Smith that's coming out and UDL and some other things that she's really well known for, too. We have my friend, Andratisha Fritzgerald and I'm hoping I didn't miss anyone, but we have, we have a great lineup for y'all, so December 7th, 8th with our pre session on December 6th. We're going to be talking about Q10 integration and for my Footsteps to Freedom individuals from the IE, we have a special session just for you. Footsteps, what's next? Okay, so that's a little bit about the conference.
Lainie Rowell: So if you're up for it, Talisa, maybe we can give people a little preview because part of it, I do get to do a full presentation on Gratitude.
I'm super excited about that. And you and I are going to have a little fireside chat. So I'm thinking maybe we start that conversation now and just kind of play with some of these ideas of like, where do Gratitude and the Q10 come together?
And the theme of the conference is ...
Talisa Sullivan: Getting to the Heart of Learning.
Lainie Rowell: To me, gratitude is a way to get to the heart of learning. Because to me, gratitude, and a lot of these practices that we're talking about, universal design for learning. That is me being grateful for having unique and dynamic learners. Me being grateful that they bring in different backgrounds, different perspectives, different approaches, different strategies for solving problems.
All of these things to me are assets. They're not things I want to get rid of. They're things I want to leverage. Obviously, the connection to SEL is very apparent. But if we went through all of these elements of the Q10, we're going to see gratitude in some way.
In the beginning of this episode talking about behavior supports and it's not about conformity. It's about how do we, through gratitude, honor individuals, but also create the community for the collective. Does that resonate with you?
Talisa Sullivan: I love when you said the community for the collective. That really resonates with me because this is about a holistic approach.
When we spoke a little bit earlier, we talked about some of the things that we would look at some of the elements that may have some other underlining thought processes from different individuals. And I mentioned Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and how and how Maslow's research and theory may have been inspired by the Blackfoot.
And Blackfoot talks about collective, the collective. Self actualization versus what we do here in the United States, or in probably some other parts of the world, and talk about self actualization, which is me, myself, getting to a point where we're reaching high peak of transcendence. You know, and so when you said collective, it made me think of the Blackfoot who would have talked about self actualization as in self, as in a whole collective.
So I, I definitely think that that has a lot to do with gratitude and it is definitely a part of ensuring that all, all individuals feel seen and heard. And I think that that's another part of Gratitude that the Q10, Quantum 10, it's a little nickname it, it is about all individuals seeing, feeling, feeling seen and heard.
So that's another aspect of intersection with gratitude.
Lainie Rowell: And as you're talking about this, it reminds me of a past episode where Dr. Geoff Cohen was on talking about belonging and how it's so important that we honor the individual and protect that while also nurturing this community. When we're using gratitude to make sure that everyone feels seen, heard, known, and valued, that they bring their own special gifts that the collective would not be complete without.
They're special and we want to honor that, and then also, this is how, as a collective, as a community, we need to work together, and those interpersonal skills have to be cultivated, not in a way that forces conformity, in a way that allows for flourishing of the individual and the community.
I don't know if that's making sense, but that's just something I'm thinking about.
Talisa Sullivan: It does, and you mentioned interpersonal skills being cultivated, and I think that that's another intersection with gratitude. Having those interpersonal skills cultivated, and who would not be grateful for that, right?
So thank you for that.
Lainie Rowell: Well, and I think there's so many foundational skills. I mean, there's a lot on our shoulders as educators. We are trying to cultivate these humans that have best possible outcome, we want them to be thriving and flourishing socially, emotionally, behaviorally, academically.
That's not a small feat. And I appreciate this holistic approach that you're offering, and I think that that's something that we can really step back and see the big picture, and then go, okay, I need to work on this.
We, as a team, need to work on this. At the level of educators, but also as students and bringing them into this conversation, you know, what do we need to be working on in our learning community?
Talisa Sullivan: Yeah, Lainie, I'm glad that you mentioned, we need to work on this, and it seems like it's such a huge task, and the reason why I bring this up is because I've had colleagues to say, Ooh, that's a lot.
I would just do one and I'm like, oh no, they missed the mark. You know, we don't want to just work on one because then we, we really just will cover only a portion of students. We wanna make sure that everyone is well trained in all of the areas. And yes, it's a lot, but what it is, is you take your time and you decide what's first.
So the Q 10 is not about picking one over the other or this and that. Where, where are the gaps? Where do you see the needs in your staff in training areas? If people are already well versed in social emotional learning, then we start somewhere else, it's somewhere else on the wheel, and get them well trained in some of the other areas so that we can integrate the practices, so that when students come in and they are experiencing whatever they might be experiencing, trauma, food insecurities, whatever that might be, that we can actually identify that, because I remember when I first started as an educator, I absolutely know that I would not have known if a student was coming in with food insecurities.
I would not have known. And no one ever told me that I needed to be paying attention to that. What they told me was teach the kids this, you know, and then we're just teaching the kids, teaching them this content. I was really teaching a content versus teaching students, or not even just teaching students, but facilitating their learning, right?
And so now we've graduated, that's me and you, we've graduated to knowing that we are not teaching our students Or content. What we're doing is we're facilitating learning, we're cultivating genius, right? So we know that now because we've gone through so many different trainings and those types of things.
All we're asking you to do is be well versed in the areas that's going to ensure that your kids, your learners have everything possible that they need to be successful.
I was working on a campus and this goes to the culturally responsive practices.
And for some reason on the cheer team, the girl kept getting benched and I didn't understand why. So I had to ask the cheer advisor, and I think I was an administrator at the time and I had to ask the cheer advisor, why doesn't this girl ever cheer? What's going on with this student?
And the cheer advisor said she won't follow the dress code. I was like, help me understand that a little bit better. She said she couldn't wear whatever headdress she had on or something. And she came and I was like, well, have you had a conversation with her?
She was like, I told her don't wear it. I said, yeah, but have you asked her purpose for her wearing it on game day, knowing that she's not going to cheer because she's wants to cheer, obviously, otherwise she would be on the team. She's like, well, no, I said, we got to have a conversation with her to ask her about that.
She was like, well, what do I say? I said, let me help you out. You know, I'm not going to have a conversation with her. I mean, I don't know her that well, but I mean, I think I could kind of connect. And so I went and talked to the student and apparently she has some hair issues. So, I just asked the student, so if we were to get you something that was acceptable, would you wear that?
She was like, absolutely. We just have to ask questions. We have to be culturally responsive. We have to look and see and ask questions and not make assumptions as to why students are not following protocol, if that's what we want them to do, right? Or include them in on the protocol.
You know, and so the student was not going to come up and say, well, I'm having a bad hair day today, so I'm just not, you know, it's like we have to ask those questions. So this is what I'm talking about when I'm saying not just in the classroom, but outside of the classroom, being well versed in many of these areas so that we're equipped with asking those questions about food insecurities, about cultural backgrounds, cultural norms, those types of things are vital.
And it's vital that we do this because we have, we have many different aspects. We have neurodiverse learners, we have people that are coming from different cultural backgrounds, different language skill sets. And when I say skill sets, I, I don't mean that they're, they don't have the skill, but what I mean is that they come from, in English, they may not be well versed in the English language, but that doesn't mean that they're not well versed in their own language.
So those types of things.
Lainie Rowell: I appreciate that example. Especially what hits home to me, and I mean, I'm so far from perfect now, and I definitely didn't start out as a teacher perfect, and so one of the things that I think about, while I may have been good about, let's talk about this, let's make decisions together, when there was behavior that would break our community agreement, I would take it personally and I would say they're doing this because they disrespect me, they don't have faith in me, they don't maybe like me, and it sounds like maybe that was the thought of why the cheerleader wouldn't wear the appropriate headdress. All it takes is just asking like, why is this happening? And so, it's a very fundamental shift that can change everything.
Talisa Sullivan: It is, and it's important to be culturally responsive as we're asking why.
Right, it's important because sometimes we're asking the wrong question the wrong way, and our kids are equipped with understanding, and they may interpret it a way in other, other than what you mean, and this is the thing, is that because of the way our society is set up, it could even be someone that looks like them, that's perpetuating those same cycles of inequities because we were all raised in the same society.
You know, those of us that are from the United States are from the United States, and we were socialized here. So we have to really try to get out of our own way and understand the cultural backgrounds of diverse people.
Lainie Rowell: Yes, and I make the connection when you're talking about that to gratitude being sensitive to that because if you were to talk to someone who came from a different culture and you were to say thank you to them, that actually could be considered an insult, because you have implied that they're not the type of person that would have automatically done this.
There's so much nuance to it, because there's a lot of things that go in to form who we are, culture being one of those things. And so really trying to get to it. And I appreciate you saying thoughtful in how we ask the questions, not just asking the questions.
The time has flown by and now I have to let you go. But first, if you would do me a huge favor and give a shout out.
Talisa Sullivan: I would love to give a shout out. I'm going to give a bunch of shout outs. You know, first I want to just say how grateful I am that we connected in Nashville. First things first, and that you invited me to be here today and that we're gonna be colleagues forever, but friends more importantly.
I want to give a shout out to my mentors. I won't name names because I don't want to miss anyone, but I have a few mentors that have poured way into my life. And to my family and friends. I'm talking about gratitude right now because this is all about gratitude. Just gr grateful for the opportunities to just be my daughter's mom and my husband's wife, and my mom and dad's daughter.
I also wanna give a shout out for Q 10 conference. If you wanna go to the website, it's https:// q10equityineducation.com/. And so Lainie, I want to say thank you. And I'm looking forward to our time on December 7th and 8th.
You're on December 8th. And I'm looking forward to having this conversation live, in person, face to face.
Lainie Rowell: Yes, and I can't wait to see where this conversation goes next.
I'm very excited about that. Talisa, I want people to go to the Q10 website. I'm also going to put all of your individual socials in the show notes just so people can connect to you individually, but I'm guessing if they make it to the Q10 socials or the website, they will eventually get to you and vice versa.
Is that fair to say?
Talisa Sullivan: Yes.
Lainie Rowell: Okay, perfect. I will put all of it in the show notes. So friends, it is just a tap or a click away for you, and you can connect with Talisa and learn all the wonderful things she has to offer. And hopefully you can make it to the conference. We would love to see you in person. And if you listen to this and then come, find us and tell us you heard that conversation, and we'd love to be able to connect with you in person.
So with that, friends, thank you for listening. And friend Talisa, thank you for being here.
Talisa Sullivan: Thank you.