Shownotes:
Josh Stamper returns! Another incredibly insightful conversation with Josh as he shares his experiences as a middle school administrator and trauma-informed practitioner. We dove deep into the topic of trauma and its impact on learners, discussing practical ways educators can create a safe and supportive environment for them. Josh shared eye-opening insights on identifying trauma, the importance of building strong relationships, and actionable strategies for integrating trauma-informed practices into the classroom.
About Our Guest:
Joshua Stamper is an author, podcaster, leadership coach, and education presenter. He is also the Training and Development Specialist for the Teach Better Team. Prior to Joshua's current positions, he was a classroom art educator and athletic coach.
Book: Aspire to Lead
Website: JoshStamper.com
Twitter: @Joshua__Stamper
Instagram: @joshua__stamper
About Lainie:
Lainie Rowell is an educator, international consultant, podcaster, and TEDx speaker. She is the lead author of Evolving Learner and a contributing author of Because of a Teacher. Her latest book, Evolving with Gratitude, was just released. An experienced teacher and district leader, her expertise includes learner-driven design, community building, online/blended learning, and professional learning. Learn more at linktr.ee/lainierowell.
Twitter - @LainieRowell
Instagram - @LainieRowell
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Transcript:
Lainie Rowell: [00:00:00] Hello friends, and welcome to a first for the Evolving with Gratitude podcast. We have a repeat, Joshua Stamper returns. Welcome, Josh.
Joshua Stamper: Well, thank you. It's a true honor to be a repeat guest on your podcast.
Lainie Rowell: First one, and I'm gonna say by popular demand because the episode when you were on, episode 14 is one of the most listened to episodes of Evolving with Gratitude.
So...
Joshua Stamper: Oh my goodness.
Lainie Rowell: It's your brilliance. It's how amazing you are, and just the genuine, wonderful person that you are. I'm gonna go ahead and introduce you, Josh, for those who may not have listened to that episode. And for anyone who may not already, be in your orbit, but Josh is an educator, author, and podcaster.
He is also the training and development specialist for the Teach Better Team and just one of the best humans on the planet.
Joshua Stamper: Oh my goodness. Stop it.
Lainie Rowell: Nope. This is my podcast and I'm allowed to just show how much I adore you all I want, but that was just like a very little bit of who you are.
I know that you're a family man. You have so many other things. So please tell us more about what makes you so amazing.
Joshua Stamper: Oh my goodness. Well, thank you so much for that kind introduction. I'm, I'm blushing over here. I know folks can't see me, but that was wonderful. So thank you so much.
Yes, I am a father and a husband, and we are a crazy crew. I have six. Children, we're gonna talk about more about my family later. But yeah, we just had the opportunity to move to the wonderful state of Colorado and it's absolutely beautiful here. We moved from Texas, which we lived there for 16 years.
That was not the intention, Lainie. We were not supposed to be there for that long it. But we finally have made the transition and it has been phenomenal. I'm an author. I have a podcast that's gone on for five years now. Aspire to Lead and hit a couple milestones that I'm extremely proud of. And yeah, it's just kind of taken me down this crazy rabbit hole that I did not anticipate, which landed me with the Teach Better Team.
I worked with them part-time and now I'm with them, and that is my sole purpose now is to work with schools and districts all over this country and I, I get a chance to work with schools with like strategic planning leadership developments and then also trauma-informed practices. And I think we're gonna touch on that a little bit today.
I
Lainie Rowell: definitely wanna dive into the trauma-informed practices. Now I feel like you might've buried a lead. You said that you hit some milestones with the Aspire to Lead podcast. Would you please share what some of those milestones were?
Joshua Stamper: Yeah, I just hit 250 episodes and I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Steve Mesler. He is a Gold Olympic athlete who is now the CEO of Classroom Champions and also hit 200,000 listens. So that's a, a pretty big milestone also.
Lainie Rowell: 200,000 listens!?!
Joshua Stamper: Yes.
Lainie Rowell: Josh. That's huge. That's amazing!
Joshua Stamper: That's a big number and I wasn't anticipating that and I know I said five years of conception, but I switched providers, so I only have four years of data. So in the last four years I've gotten 200,000 listens. And that's, yeah, that was pretty phenomenal.
Lainie Rowell: That's amazing. And I wish I knew some of the podcasting statistics off the top of my head, but it's like most podcasts don't even make it past like, what, six or seven episodes or something?
Joshua Stamper: Yeah, that's true.
Lainie Rowell: So many people start podcasts and don't actually follow through.
So the fact that you've been doing it for five years with 250 episodes and over 200,000 listens. That's amazing. I think that's a reflection of not only what a good person you are, but how you seek out other good people to amplify their voices.
If people aren't already listening, they need to go over and subscribe to the Aspire to Lead podcast, which by the way, you mentioned there's a book too. And your book is celebrating two years.
Joshua Stamper: Yeah, it's almost two years now. And it's been my passion project as far as. Well, I was really coming from the podcast of just hearing all these phenomenal leaders and their stories and then just finding my own voice in that and finding a model that I could construct for those who are wanting to, to lead.
And so in my journey, I was an art teacher going into administration and I had to really break down some doors and some perceptions of what an elective teacher was. And so I write about that journey, but then also, I've had a lot of failures in things that I did wrong in that journey from teacher to administrator.
And so, you know, my, my goal was to be as authentic and transparent as possible for folks to not do the same things that I did and to really shout out the stumbling blocks that a lot of us, trip over. And so hopefully, for those who are looking to get into leadership or maybe an administration someday, that this would be a wonderful guide for you to, to get where you're wanting to go.
Lainie Rowell: Absolutely. So I'm putting it at the beginning. I'm not even waiting till the end. You should check out his book and his podcast. Both Aspire to lead. Now, Josh, let's take a little trip down the memory lane, and could you tell us how you started this deep dive into trauma informed practices? You are a trauma informed practitioner.
Joshua Stamper: Yeah, thank you, Lainie. So when I was a Dean of Students, when I first went from a teacher to an administrator, you know Texas, they have this, this job where you're really focusing on student discipline.
I mean, obviously you have other things where you're assessing teachers and you know, I had lockers and buses and all these other things that nobody wanted, but they gave to me as the Dean of Students. And so working with a campus of 1400 students and having all of the discipline for that campus, I was also in a Taiwan school and I was getting burnt out.
I was working insane hours. I was really just focused on detentions in school suspension and out school suspension. And what I was finding was that the student behavior wasn't getting any better. In fact, it was getting worse. And what I was doing was I was taking the students and I was just pushing 'em back out to the community, and they were just getting into more trouble out there, which then it was like this vicious cycle of just rotating of students getting into different trouble out into the community, it coming back from the campus. And then it was just like amplifying the student behavior. And so I was trying to figure out like what was my purpose? 'cause obviously becoming administrator you wanna make a difference in everybody's lives, and especially with students.
And I just didn't feel like I was doing that. So I was kind of at my breaking point. I was literally sitting in my car after a PD session at the district and thinking like, do I even go in the building or do I just go home? I might just be done here. And at the same time, my wife and I were making a really important decision in our personal life, which was getting into foster care.
So my wife and I, we just ended being foster parents in Texas for the last 12 years. So we've been doing that and so we've had six placements and four of those placements we've actually adopted. So we have six children in our house, two biological, four adopted, and with that process, If anyone doesn't know what it takes to be a foster parent, you have to go through intense training every single year.
There's a certain allotted amount of time and, and things that you have to go through. And one of them is trauma-informed care. I'll be honest with you, Lainie, and when I first started going through this training, I was very apprehensive because it was like, look, I've got two kids. They're being successful.
Why on earth do I need to go to this ridiculous training? And it probably was the best training in my life. It changed me not only as a father, but then also as an administrator. ' We had to go through the T C U program, which was on trauma-informed care. And Dr. Purvis is who was the one that was the researcher.
She constructed it, God rest her soul. She's passed away since since then due to cancer. But T C U still works with that trauma-informed program. But what I was doing was I was sitting there going, yeah, this is wonderful as a parent, but how can we also transition this into the school because the behaviors that were being discussed and the fact that trauma is so prevalent in our communities, I was like, well, I'm seeing everything that they're talking about in regards to these foster kids with my own students.
They're handling it very differently. So why at the school level am I only focused on detentions ISS and OSS? There's gotta be a more creative plan here and constructed for the needs of our kids. And so that was kind of my charge and, and the starting point of like getting into trauma-informed care.
Lainie Rowell: My mind is buzzing.
First of all, I just have so much more to learn about trauma-informed practices and one of the things that was really resonating as you were sharing what happened, and I can see you in that car, not sure if you should go in because I think that whatever your role in education, you've had that feeling of just being ill-equipped.
Joshua Stamper: Mm-hmm.
Lainie Rowell: Like I don't have the tools to do what I feel is necessary to move the needle on this, to make the change and I think this is a challenge for a lot of administrators, especially in AP positions, is they get kind of designated the disciplinarian.
Joshua Stamper: Yep.
Lainie Rowell: And that's not filled with a ton of joy necessarily, especially if it really is all kind of the downstream detention and all of the, these are the consequences kind of things.
Joshua Stamper: Yep.
Lainie Rowell: And what I love is that you saw how there are practices that we're working for parents and for caregivers, and you're like, why can't this come into schools?
And so I think that's really lovely. And you'll probably hear me use this phrase upstream a lot because I do think that we don't always know what's going on. I think actually a lot of times we don't know what's going on with people until we do the, the deep dive. And so, we do end up dealing with things more downstream because we haven't upstream done more, what's going on? What can we help you with? I was watching this Edutopia video. 'cause I've noticed a lot of research on greeting kids at the door.
Joshua Stamper: Yeah.
Lainie Rowell: And how when you greet kids at the door that's your upstream, What's the vibe I'm catching from this kid?
Because I can provide support earlier rather than 10 minutes into class when there's a disruption, a negative, and now, how do I handle that in that situation? So I'm really, really excited to hear more about this. I'm gonna follow your lead as far as where you wanna go first, do you wanna talk about some of the things that you brought into schools or the effects of trauma or like just wherever you wanna go with this, because I'm just here to learn.
Joshua Stamper: Oh, I love it. Lainie. Yeah, as far as, trauma goes , in the research, and I will say I'm not a researcher, this is, coming from companies that I have used as a practitioner. So the first thing as a leader, I wanted to make sure was that with my staff, I wanted to identify what was going on as far as the student behaviors, but to let them know I don't have all the answers.
We're gonna partner in this. And so what I did was I built a relationship action team. As kinda like , a grassroots step-by-step process of like, we're gonna learn together, we're gonna implement things in the classroom, and then it may fail or may be successful. And if it's successful, what I charged them with, and we only started as a group of seven at the beginning of the school year.
So we had a hundred teachers, only seven were participants that I kind of were using as like my disciples. Like, Hey, I know you have the same ideas the same charge. You see the same things that are going on and you want something to change, so will you you be a part of. And unfortunately the nickname of the group was Rats because of Relationship Action Team.
Lainie Rowell: Wow.
Joshua Stamper: I know. It wasn't a very good...
Lainie Rowell: Did y'all workshop that? Was there a focus group involved?
Joshua Stamper: No, I, I really wish there was, because I wouldn't have landed on that, I promise you. But we were the rats group and so we would, you know, bring in some form of research to say, okay, what's going on?
For instance classroom check-ins. A lot of times people think, oh, this is an elementary tactic. It's not something that's secondary. Although in the middle school we're like, okay, how can we change this and make it work for us? And so it originally came and started with a paper form, but the idea was and research shows, it's similar to what you're talking about Lainie, about going to the door and seeing, okay, what's the vibe of my kid before they enter the classroom?
Which we would ask all our teachers that were a part of RATS Group to be at the door to greet. But then also on the secondary piece of, okay, there might be an opportunity for us to gather information about where the student is at and this could be something fun. We used to use like animal memes or now there's like Baby Yoda memes and things like that where there's a number system.
Or it could be a color and it was really up to the teacher on how they wanted to do this for the check-in. But it really was to like get a baseline of where the kid is at. But then secondary was, is there a resource that they need right now? So, for instance neglect is a huge piece of trauma in our country.
It's the most prevalent component. For instance, let's say a single parent is working three jobs. They haven't seen their kid, they're struggling, and there may not be food in the home. Well, most times the kids don't share that in the classroom. And so they're having maybe a struggle of paying attention due to the fact that they're extremely hungry.
Well, if you do a classroom check-in, you can have an opportunity to get that information in a safe space where they're, they're not being called out, they're not being embarrassed. Or for instance you know what? My parents were up all night fighting. I got an hour of sleep due to that. I would love to be able to take a nap.
There's really no way for a child to communicate that in a safe space. So there's just two options here that I provided as far as examples. But we found out a lot about our kids through these check-ins that we never would've known. For instance, the number system, if a kid comes in and says, oh, I'm at a nine.
This is the best day of my life. Well obviously that, that's wonderful. There's probably gonna be a lot of learning that's going on in that classroom. Whereas a kid saying, oh, I'm at a two, well, we know that something else is going on. They may not feel comfortable enough to share that with us. Maybe we're not their trusted adult, but at least we know that when we're talking with them, communicating with them our expectations of the work that's supposed to get done, it's gonna be a lot different.
If we know that they're at a two versus a nine. Right. So it just gave a lot of information. It didn't take a lot of time. A lot of times we, it would be maybe just a couple minutes at the start of the class. But that's just like one of many. But, the Relationship Action Team, you know, we, we tried things out.
If it worked, then what we did was we just shared that out as much as possible. So, oh, you know what? Go to my neighbor in, in the hallway and say, Hey, I tried this out. It worked. I dunno if you're interested and share a little bit more about it. And then if you want to learn more, you can come to RATS group.
So it was like inviting. And so by the end of the year, we almost had half our staff on the RATS group just because they were trying things out. They saw the benefit, they saw the change, they were getting results, and then they were sharing with other people. So when it was year two, as a leader trying to do a top down initiative, we all know that's really, really difficult to do, but on year two, it was like, Hey, half the staff is already implementing these things. It's working. Let's go a step further and we're gonna do a campus squad.
Lainie Rowell: One of the things I was thinking about as you were sharing is just, I'd like to think I've gotten better over the years. I do think I have, but as a new teacher where I was insecure in my skills and I taught kinder, and then I jumped to sixth grade with adolescents. And when there were behavior issues, I took everything personally. Like, this is about me. That was just my inexperience. My naivete as a young teacher. And what I love about the examples that you're giving is we're giving space to find out the stories.
Not assuming this has anything to do with me. I'm not at the center of this, the kid is at the center of this. What is happening in this kid's world and how can I learn about it so that I can help them through it? And I don't know if that's something that other teachers struggle with, but when something's not going well in the classroom, I take it personally.
And so I think these trauma-informed practices are so essential and when you were on episode 14 you did this there, you're very good at leaving no stone unturned. You are very good at thinking from all the angles of like, okay, well here's what this might look like in an elementary classroom, but here's what this could look like with adolescents really appreciating that we're all unique and dynamic and there's not one solution.
It's not gonna be like, Hey, all of our middle school teachers are going to do this practice. It's like, here's what we're trying to accomplish, and here's some ways that you could do that, and please pick the one that works best for you, or maybe you can actually come up with your own practice. That will be helpful.
Joshua Stamper: I'll be honest, as a new leader, I was not probably in tune with that because it was like, I'm the leader, just do what I say. And of course that didn't work very well. So, having to remember like as a teacher, what was my perspective?
There were a lot of things that were initiatives from the administration that I was like, okay, I'll take pieces of this and employ my classroom 'cause this is what my environment needs to be successful. And I just want to give teachers the autonomy because. We can't do cookie cutter this, it's not possible.
So what strategies are gonna work and, and what's the best way for you to implement that? To get, again, the best results? So, we did relationship agreements allowing the students to have a, a chance to have a say in how they're gonna be treated. From teacher to student, student to student, and then student to teacher, which they always loved because they got to say what they expected from their teacher.
But it wasn't a, again, it wasn't class rules like. Don't do this, don't do that. It was more about how we're gonna treat each other. That was super effective from teachers, and so we implemented that campus-wide. So, you know, just finding opportunities for instance, if a student is escalated having a safe space in that classroom and having that set up for them no questions asked.
Finding ways to identify the behavior of the students equaling trauma. And once we've identified that, finding a safe space for them to deescalate and then also to again find a, a safe adult. Teach them deescalation strategies put things in place for them so that they can go back to learning.
I think so often we just like, we're on a timeline, we gotta get to get things done move forward even if you're crying and or extremely angry. And there's a lot of nonverbals of kids that are in complete shutdown with their brain of survival mode. And we just assume that they're gonna like snap out of it within a couple minutes and go back into the learning environment.
And that's just not possible. Sometimes it takes a kid that's escalated 30 to 45 minutes just to get to a state of mind that they can function and even listen. It's just trying to educate our teachers that these are what's happening in the brain. And I didn't even speak on that Lainie of just like the effects of trauma in the brain, but it literally breaks down the pathways and deconstructs cells and even immune systems are broken down and kids get sick all the time.
So there's just a lot of chronic stress and trauma that occurs in our students' lives. And 70% of our kids have at least one form of trauma, and it's only increasing, especially with the pandemic. So my, my charge was like, Hey, to my staff, this is not. Something that a few kids have, this is the norm.
So when you're addressing a kid in the hallway, you better have all your tools because if you're just expecting a kid running down the hallway and you don't have any relationship with 'em, you're gonna yell at 'em and tell 'em to stop. You're probably gonna get an adverse reaction. You're gonna get a kid probably cussing you out because they don't have a relationship with you.
There might be some other things going on. So there's gotta be a better way to address a child, to communicate. So we were really focused in on. More strategies than just , this is poor behavior. There was the proactive, I think you said upstream, right? It was all these strategies of building relationships, trying to figure out what's going on in the student's lives so that way we can address it early instead of, okay, we are now reacting to an extreme behavior and now we're trying to uncover what's going on in the life of the student.
Lainie Rowell: Thank you for giving us all that info. I almost get a little overwhelmed to be honest, because I just go, oh my gosh, for some kids, school is the safest place they're gonna be at for sure.
Joshua Stamper: Well, we go on break and we'd be like, Hey, you know, did you have fun? You know, what'd you do?
Those types of things. And it was extremely sad to hear, no, I didn't want to go home. I'd much rather be here. And it wasn't because they were a fantastic student, it was just because they were in a safe space. They were provided food. Mm-hmm. They had good, healthy relationships with adults. And it was kind of heartbreaking to hear, so many times that kids just wanted to be at school just for that, that safe haven.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, California's Surgeon General is Dr. Nadine Burke Harris. And I've listened to her and I've read some of her stuff and she was probably the first one who really, the way she articulated it about a healthcare provider might see a kid once or twice a year, and who are the adults in a kid's life?
Joshua Stamper: Yeah.
Lainie Rowell: That can be there for them and for a good portion of kids it is going to be the adults at a school. Yeah. I wonder if you could just quickly tell us how do you operationalize that safe person at school? How does that happen so that we make sure everyone has at least one person they can go to if they're in trouble?
Joshua Stamper: Yeah, we would run a survey through the school multiple times, and one of the questions on that survey to get feedback from kids was, do you have a safe adult? And if so, who is that person? And so a lot of times we would get that information from that survey and that feedback.
But for us, we had a lot of administrative folks there, the counselors, we had coaches and things like that. But if there was a student that was really having some struggles in their life, we would always ask them, Hey, who's your safe person? So for instance, I can think of a couple times of, of students sharing out to a nurse administrator or counselor, something horrific that was going on in life and they needed support from resources outside of the school.
We bring that safe person with and actually, provide a sub, for the time or someone to cover that class so that way they could stay with that child and work through that really difficult situation with the, the folks that they needed to be with at that time. So for us, we always wanted to make sure that every kid that walked through our campus at least had someone that they had a healthy relationship with.
And it didn't matter who it was in the building. Just making sure that we knew who it was and finding As quickly as possible. So that's why we, we ran the survey. And then of course if there was a kid that didn't have a trusted adult trying to work through that to, to make sure that there was someone that they were connected with.
And sometimes it was a kid moving outta state. They were brand new to the campus, didn't know anyone. So trying to get that relationship built as quickly as possible.
Lainie Rowell: One of the things I've been thinking about as we head back to school is, how quickly can we start to make these deposits into the relationship bank accounts with obviously kids and with families too.
Joshua Stamper: Yeah.
Lainie Rowell: So I think that's a great way to start to do that is like, who is your safe person? And so I love that you came up with a comprehensive way of, well, let's first let them identify if they feel like they have it. And then that reveals when they don't. And I'm guessing some kids put multiple people and...
Joshua Stamper: Oh, for sure.
Lainie Rowell: How lovely is that? That kid feels super supported and so I think that's really great that you're giving them a voice and an opportunity to share who they would...
Joshua Stamper: And it changes of the year too, you know, thankfully, you know, having that feedback over multiple times, you know, you could see how that's developed. At the first year, a seventh grader may say a sixth grade teacher that they had last year, but then as they've got a new set of, of teachers, they've built strong relationships where they've got a new person.
We leave the students out of so many decision making pieces, and so they're told no and what to do all day long. And so for, for me, I was really trying to, find opportunities for them to have a voice, but then also to share out as much as possible and be a part of the decision making of the campus.
Of, you know, we had 'em on committees, we had 'em presenting information at staff meetings. I mean, we were trying to find student voice as much as possible, and I think that's extremely important, especially for students that may feel like in their life they don't have any control. And for those who have trauma in their life, that's exactly what's happening.
And so to create environments where they have choice, where they have an opinion, they have an opportunity to be a part of those decision making processes is, is huge. And so, I, I would just say that anyone listening right now, please make sure that you, you have student voice as much as possible.
Lainie Rowell: I totally agree that that sense of no control in so many aspects of your life. We can only control so much. They already have agency, but sometimes that gets stripped away.
Mm-hmm. And so just to make sure that they retain that at least while they're on our campus, I think is really important. And Josh, I really wanna know what your thoughts are on how could we use gratitude? You know, I have to bring it back to gratitude, although I would of course very easily draw lines to connect the things we've talked about to gratitude.
Even like the example I gave of greeting at the door. To me that's a thank you for being here. You start the day with gratitude. Thank you for being here. And so I would just love to hear from you as a trauma-informed practitioner, someone who knows the research and is actually doing these things.
What kind of role can gratitude play in supporting our kiddos and adults who have experienced trauma? And, like you said, we know it's a significant number of people on our campus. What can we do with gratitude to help support them?
Joshua Stamper: Of course. I was talking about this before about teaching mindfulness practices and I think a lot of times we just assume, especially with some of the older students, if they're an eighth grader, some of 'em look like they should be driving and they have a wife and kids. I mean, it was ridiculous.
They were taller than me. We just assume like, oh, you have these skills to calm yourself down or to work through an adverse situation, work through stress, whatnot. And a lot of times, even though they look like adults, they don't possess the same skills as an adults. And so we would teach gratitude in gratitude journals as a mindfulness practice.
And if someone needed some time to kind of get their head straight Or to calm down emotionally. That was one of the practices that we shared. Sometimes it was breathing through blowing bubbles. If you ever wanna see something hilarious, just find a group of eighth grade boys blowing bubbles in the hallway.
It's really hilarious, but also extremely effective because they don't realize that they're actually doing a breathing exercise. They're just having some fun. So, finding ways to teach students this is what's needed at the time. You talked about anxiety. Obviously there's depression.
There's a lot of things going on in our students' lives that we may not identify. But if they have these skills and are able to identify their own emotions, I think that's really half the battle there. And so we would use gratitude quite a bit. I mean, you share in your book too, and just the research of like how it affects folks in regards to gratitude and obviously the brain chemistry too, that that's happening.
When you get that. So I will shout out my sixth grade science teacher, Ms. Harvey. She was fantastic about just going around the classroom and her communication was always positive and everything that she did, even if it was like, I need you to sit down, sweetie, you know, she would always, as soon as it happened, was sharing Gratitude of, thank you so much for doing that and then explaining why it was needed.
And so she had mantras, they would sing, they were interactive. Her communication with gratitude was consistent and just the positive interactions that she had. Everybody, every kid that I stuck in her class was, was flourishing. And it didn't matter how much trauma was in their life, they were successful.
And I really, truly believe it was because of how she treated each student and the amount of positivity and gratitude that she had with each student.
Lainie Rowell: Thank you for that. And I love the connection to gratitude and mindfulness, and that is, the research has very strong support for one of the ways to get out of that trauma response all the cortisol pumping and you're just, Really freaked out is to get into that mindfulness.
So I love the examples you're giving, the breathing through bubbles that's a new one to me. That's amazing. I love that. And by the way, I cannot stop picturing middle school boys playing bubbles in the hallway. And that's a lovely, lovely picture I now have in my head. One of the things I was thinking about as you were talking is I recently heard Dr.
Marty Seligman, who is the founder of Positive Psychology. I know you know that Josh. He was on the Happiness Lab with Lori Santos, and I say recently, but I've gone back to this episode so many times it might've even been a year ago. . But I've re-listened to this episode a bunch of times because my psych degree was earned really still at a time where studying psychology was all about studying misery and how can we put a label on whatever is wrong with you. And that was really still the bulk, but it was just starting to turn that corner with positive psychology as I was finishing up my degree and so I am so grateful to Dr. Seligman and the social scientists who have been looking into positive psychology, because to me it is very empowering that we can go from even when we've experienced significant trauma, we're not done. There's things that can help us. Right? And so one of the things he said on this podcast that I thought was really interesting is he is like, think about response to trauma on a bell curve. And on one side of it, you've got the post-traumatic stress, which is the ugly stuff we've been talking about. Depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, worse. Now the vast majority of people are gonna respond with some form of resilience. Maybe it'll be a little bit of resilience.
Maybe it'll be super high resilience, but like 95% of people should respond with resilience. Typically lots of shoulds and typically, 'cause of course, things happen, but then there's a 2.5% that respond with post-traumatic growth. And when I show this graph to people, I'm like, the graph doesn't show the nuance.
It doesn't show the fact this is fluid. It doesn't show the fact that three months after post-trauma, you're in stress and it's bad, but that doesn't mean that a year later you're not in post-traumatic growth. And so what I really appreciate about you, Josh, and the work that you're doing and all the other trauma-informed practitioners and researchers and experts that are out there is, it's not a, this is terrible and we're all in trouble. It's this is terrible and we can actually do things about it and we can respond differently and we can, I know I see upstream all the time, but to me that's what's so critical is that we're not doing all the punishment and discipline and consequences downstream.
It's we're upstream trying to identify how can we see what will help these kids and adults so that they can really get to that. What is their best, and I love the word flourishing. Thank you for using that. So this is all so wonderful, Josh, any other thoughts? And I talked for a bit, so feel free to respond to any of that.
But what, what else do you want us to know about trauma informed practices?
Joshua Stamper: No, I think what you're talking about, I love the idea with administration specifically folks talk about like punishment and discipline matrix and whatnot, and when there's a skill that is non-existent or there's something that's going on in their life that is causing stress, trauma and whatnot, we can't just punish it out of 'em.
Or we can't punish a skill to exist. And I think that we have to understand that when we're talking about discipline, discipline, the root of that is a disciple meaning to learn. And so as much as we teach math and science and history, we also need to talk about teaching student behavior. And that also goes with emotional resilience and identifying what that is and how to calm down.
And some of those things that really we know are important, but we haven't found a place for that in the educational environment. And so that was something that was really important for me because if anyone out there right now is having difficulty with student disciplining in their classroom, you know that it's really hard for students to master the content until you get that addressed.
And so it is important. We need to make sure that the skills that we have for the instruction, right? We have thousands of things that we rely on to make sure that students retain the content. But when it comes to student discipline, we only use like three different tools. And for my teachers, all they wanted me to do was use the hammer.
And I'm telling you right now that every kid is not a nail. So we can't just assume that the hammer's gonna work. And I will say I'm giving you permission to be creative and define solutions that are going to be what's right for that kid. Consequences look like many, many things, and I would ask that anyone that's in charge of student discipline, teacher, administrator, make sure that you are doing your due diligence in research and finding out what consequences may be successful for that student based on what their experiences are. Cookie cutter doesn't work. Putting a kid in a box does not work, so make sure that you're finding something that is going to teach the correct behavior moving forward instead of just sit in this room for eight hours.
And I'll say, when I talk about the trauma informed training that I had to do for a parent, if I told you Lainie, like if your kid does something wrong, put 'em in a room for eight hours at your house. I mean, I can already see your face. Like, no way. Like as a parent, you would never do that.
But when it comes to the school environment, we're okay with that. Go ahead and stick 'em in a room. Take 'em outta that educational environment for that long and just let 'em suffer, right? So I don't understand why it's okay in school when it's not as a parent. And so that was that relationship, right?
So, if it's my own kid, let's say, one of my boys, God forbid, hits another of the children. , I'm not just gonna stick 'em in a room, not tell 'em anything. Of course, as a parent I'm gonna teach 'em what's the correct behavior and find consequence that is related to the behavior that was exhibited.
And so I just hope that everyone that's listening is, is also doing that at, at their school campus.
Lainie Rowell: Everything you said a hundred percent, and one of the things that stuck out to me is, and I'm paraphrasing here, but you basically said, we can't punish a skill into existence. And that is so true.
And even as a parent, I will say that I have to constantly remind myself that when my child is in an escalated state, raising my voice does not help that at all.
Joshua Stamper: No, it does not it.
Lainie Rowell: It's also not going to be the teachable moment. That teachable moment will have to happen in a calm conversation later on.
And so we can't punish a skill into existence, I think is a very important takeaway and really kind of shines light on how, it just doesn't make sense the way that discipline has been handled and not, not an indictment on any one individual. It's more of the system.
Joshua Stamper: Yeah. And I will say, I'll go back. A lot of times we default to our experience. Mm-hmm. So, for instance, when I was a brand new teacher, I taught like how I was taught and it was not effective. And so I had to make some drastic changes. When I became an administrator, I was an administrator like I had been administrated and it did not work right.
And so I had to find my own way. And as a teacher, a lot of times we just default, especially with discipline because when we go through those programs, they'll teach you all day about all of the academic skills that need to be taught and how to do that. But when it's classroom management, typically it's like a day.
Mm-hmm. Maybe two, on how to work with students and their student behavior. And so a lot of teachers are ill-equipped, no fault to their own. And so they default to how they were taught. And so these are traditional practices and unfortunately, over time I've been on multiple campuses, multiple districts, multiple states, and I've always had the same concept with teachers just holding on to this idea of these traditional practices as if they're going to work when data and the research shows that that's not the case, and so something has to change.
We can't just default to what we experienced potentially 30 years ago. Yeah. We, we have to change, especially as the data shows that more and more students, especially with the pandemic, have gone through trauma.
Lainie Rowell: Not to be all sunshine and roses over here, but to end on a positive note.
Joshua Stamper: Please.
Lainie Rowell: I do feel like we've come a long way in
Joshua Stamper: Yes.
Lainie Rowell: Raising the awareness of the practices. And that's why I'm so grateful for the work that you're doing. Obviously you have your hand in a lot of different topics and you are a practitioner who has a lot of talents and knowledge and wisdom to share.
But I do feel like we have come really far and maybe part of it is our own as education, post-traumatic growth that we're realizing, there were things happening we didn't, maybe know about pre pandemic and they got brought to light. And when you said that neglect is one of the biggest forms of trauma, I think that really came to light a lot more during the pandemic when we were seeing so many kids either they're not making it on the Zoom or they're on the Zoom and we realize they're five years old in a home alone.
So that's, that's some, some stuff that we saw that we were like, Ooh, wow. So has this. You know, is this just because of the pandemic? And in some cases it was definitely not just because of the pandemic. So thank you for helping shine a light. Thank you for giving us solutions, practices, and permission. I hear you giving permission to be creative and I think that's something that we all need.
And so there's no one size fits all. We take the science and we take the practices and we make them our own. And so thank you so much. Now, Josh, you're my first return guest, so I don't, I don't know if you wanna do another shout out, but I'm gonna give you the opportunity if you wanna give a shout out to anyone.
Joshua Stamper: Can I shout out you?
Lainie Rowell: No.
Nope. Not allowed.
Joshua Stamper: Why not? Has anyone shouted you out on your show?
Lainie Rowell: No. And if they did, I'm the host. I would edit it out.
Joshua Stamper: Don't edit this out. Goodness, sakes. No, I wanna lift you up because to have me back on the show, that's such an honor. And then also just, I know the folks don't know like our friendship, but you've spoken a lot into my life and both personally and professionally, and I just wanna thank you just being a wonderful friend.
Lainie Rowell: Well, that is also how I feel about you. So as long as we, as long as we agree, we're that for each other.
Joshua Stamper: Well, you talk about repeats, you've been on my show multiple times. I think I owe you a jacket of some sort as one of the most visited guests on my show. So, Kudos to you for that too.
Lainie Rowell: Well, I mean, we should probably just talk on the phone every once in a while.
We don't always need to hit record and publish it, do we? Although we have. Not to say that we haven't, but, but I just love learning from you, Josh, and I'm so grateful to you and thank you for sharing your personal journey, your professional journey, and you're just such an amazing human. I know I always say that.
But I just really appreciate this work that you're doing. I wanna make sure people can connect with you if they're not already connected with you. Double underscore us, Josh. Hit us with the double underscore people. You have to listen to the double underscore. That's an important thing.
Joshua Stamper: It is. I don't know why I did that, but yes. @Joshua__Stamper. That's on Twitter and Instagram and. If, if that's too difficult, of course you can go to JoshStamper.com. That's a lot more simple. It's got all of my social media accounts on that, and then of course, the podcast and you know, the book and whatnot.
So that's probably a better way to connect with me.
Lainie Rowell: Well, I'm gonna put it all in the show notes so people can just touch on the double underscore and not have to type it in. But yes, and, and who knows if we're even still, I mean, Twitter is now X and they keep, they keep pulling Twitter from everywhere.
And if they take away the twitter.com links, I will be crushed 'cause that will break links in the thousands potentially for just me. And so, we'll, we'll hope but across the socials, @Joshua__Stamper. You can check out the book, check out the podcast. This man is gold or platinum, whatever the most valuable element we can come up with, but, Josh, thank you so much for this wisdom and thank you for the work that you're doing, and thank you for being a guest again.
Joshua Stamper: Well, thank you so much for having me, and I just wanna thank everyone that's listening for all the hard work that you do. I know, especially the topic that we're talking about with trauma-informed practices, it's not easy. It takes a lot of time. But I just appreciate everyone that's taking that charge.
And if you need any support, please let me know.
Lainie Rowell: Love that. Please do reach out because Josh is amazing, he supports so many. So thank you all for listening. Have a great, whatever it is. Day, night, morning. I don't know. Have a good one.
