The Kids Who Aren’t Okay with Ross W. Greene Ph.D.

Mark Taylor 00:00:45

Hello and welcome back to Education on Fire. Today I'm delighted to be chatting to Dr. Ross Greene. Now, he's a clinical psychologist and the originator of the innovative evidence based approach called Collaborative and proactive solutions. Dr. Green was on the faculty at Harvard Medical school for over 20 years and is currently adjunct professor in the Department of Psychology at Virginia Tech. He is the founding director of the nonprofit Lives in the Balance, devoted to ensuring that all kids are understood and treated in ways that are compassionate, effective, non punitive, non adversarial, proactive and collaborative. Now, over the past two decades, societal change has made it much harder to be a child. Now, while lots of kids are still doing okay, many more than ever are not. And Dr. Green's latest book, Kids who Aren't okay, is a resource providing hope and guidance as schools navigate this new normal. He argues that our current situation demands that we renew our focus on developmental variability and meeting every child where they're at. These changes include shifting to interventions that are proactive rather than reactive, solutions that are collaborative and focused on the problems that are causing concerning behaviour and solving them rather than the behaviours themselves and modifying them. I really hope you enjoy this really enlightening conversation that I had with Dr. Ross Green. Hi Ross, thank you so much for joining us here on the Education on Fire podcast. Mental health well being is such an important thing, I think, for anyone in education, anyone who has children. And I think I'm fascinated by how this has changed in the last few years. I know the last couple of decades have been integral, I think to the change in what that looks like, but also about the conversations around it. So yeah, really looking forward to diving into to your book and what you're going to be uncovering for us today.

Dr. Ross W. Greene 00:02:41

Me too, and thanks for inviting me to do this.

Mark Taylor 00:02:43

So let's talk about that timescale then. First of all, what is it about sort of these recent years which has made have made the difference and how does that sort of impact and the relationship between that and maybe that sort of the previous decade or two before that?

Dr. Ross W. Greene 00:03:00

Well, I guess my time horizon is about two or three decades. If I'm looking at the factors that have made it harder to be a kid and the factors that make may account for why we're seeing such high rates of depression and anxiety and concerning behavior and suicidality and chronic school absenteeism in our kids. There have been lots of factors that have occurred over the last two or three decades that have made it much harder to be a kid. There's so Many of them that we tend to forget about them. But they're there and they're affecting our kids and therefore affecting how our kids do in school.

Mark Taylor 00:03:54

So in terms of that thing about how they're doing in school, I think any of us who've been involved in any shape or form know that there's a real problem, yet it doesn't seem to be a problem that's big enough that anything meaningful is happening to change it in a scale that maybe we think it should do. So. Yeah, take me into your thoughts on that.

Dr. Ross W. Greene 00:04:19

Well, I don't know how big the scale needs to be before people start to take notice. Educators are certainly taking notice. Parents are certainly taking notice. The kids are telling us through their behavior and through their mental health that they're not doing so well. You know, it's a fast paced society. We tend to forget things the day after because there's the next thing that we're paying attention to. But this has been chronic for a while. People are thinking this has occurred only since COVID These trends were in motion way before COVID So there are people who are paying attention. Whether our leaders and legislators are paying attention is another story.

Mark Taylor 00:05:06

And so take us into how this works. In terms of the premise of the book, what is it that you're sort of articulating through that? And you start with those problems and obviously as that goes through to the solutions as well.

Dr. Ross W. Greene 00:05:20

Yeah, well, if a lot of kids are not doing okay, and I still think most kids are doing okay, but a higher than ever number are not, then we need to start thinking about the ecosystems in which the kids are operating. School being one of the biggest, you know, families, another big one. Community is another big one. But we can't ignore school and whether there is a culture and climate and practices we should be striving for in our schools that are responsive to what's walking into the door and the fact that there are a lot of vulnerable kids walking through the door. So what that tells me is it can't be business as usual. This may be the new normal and we have to adapt to that. The good news is it's not that hard to adapt to it. But it does take some shifting of mindsets and some shifting of practices.

Mark Taylor 00:06:20

And so do you think there is any flexibility within the system to do that? If you had to sort of take a teacher that's sort of seeing like, okay, we need to make this different in this next semester or this next term. What can I do with the reality of how education is structured now, as opposed to can we change the fundamental way that we're doing it to make a bigger difference longer term?

Dr. Ross W. Greene 00:06:46

Well, number one, I would say that there are some very rigid structures in place that point us toward doing things that aren't necessarily best practice for kids. So there's sort of systemic rigidity. There can be educator rigidity. There are some teachers who are very flexible, very open to new ideas, very open to different ways of doing things and seeing things. There are also educators who are less flexible in that regard. So we've got some rigidity to deal with. You know, what often breaks through rigidity is necessity, and we have the necessity now. We have many schools and school leaders and educators saying what we're doing now is not working. We have got to figure out a different way. Unfortunately, I'm not sure they've been presented with a particularly compelling different way. A lot of the different ways that are being thrown at them are not really different ways. They're just repackaged old ways.

Mark Taylor 00:07:51

That's a real problem, isn't it? And I think so much of education now is about what educators need to do for the education system through no fault of their own. You know, they're answerable to the system. They're answerable certainly to obviously the. The politicians and like, say, the governments and those things as well. If we sort of take a step back and say, okay, what do these children. Well, what do children generally need, first of all? And then certainly those that are really struggling, like I say, that's going to look very, very different, whether it's the amount of time that we can focus on things that, you know, not doing this academic lesson now, because we need to have a proper conversation about, you know, the most important thing in your life, which is being okay in inverted commas, whatever that looks like. Now, how do you think that could look if we could sort of wave a magic wand, as it were? Do we sort of separate the children that need that immediate help and keep everyone else who seems to be okay on the surface going in the new norm? Or is there a way of kind of blending that in some way?

Dr. Ross W. Greene 00:08:56

Well, you've just hit on the title of chapter two of the book, which is Meeting every kid where they're at. And that needs to be the definition of good teaching. A lot of times the definition of good teaching is almost exclusively oriented around academics. And as you just said, in different words, academics are not always going to be possible for some of our kids, are going to be not paramount for some of our kids. We have an expression among me and my colleagues, stabilization comes before education. Now that doesn't mean we're turning educators into social workers. It doesn't mean that we are turning them into mental health professionals. But it does mean that educators, quite frankly, as they always have been, are on the hook for helping to solve the problems that are affecting kids life, including the problems that are affecting their learning. And not all of those problems are academic. And so I like meeting every kid where they're at as a broad framework for thinking about every kid's different because of another term that I like talking about a lot, which is developmental variability. Seldom do I hear developmental variability talked about in schools or even quite frankly in teacher training. But what's amazing is that's what's walking in the door. Fancy way of saying every kid is different. All right, now meeting every kid where they're at makes sense because if every kid is different, then good education has to mean meeting every kid where they're at or you're going to leave a lot of kids behind and you're not going to be responsive to what's walking in the door. So I think that's broad enough to tell educators, you know what, you're not just about academics. That doesn't mean you're a mental health professional, but you're not just about academics. Quite frankly, educators have always been among the most important socialization agents in our society. When we push them to only focus on academics, as high stakes testing did in this country and some others, it explains why a lot of educators have said to me they've taken all the humanity out of my job. Meeting every kid where they're at means putting some of the humanity back in. Being responsive to the developmental variability that's walking through the door means putting some of the humanity back in.

Mark Taylor 00:11:34

And so in terms of some of those things which, to use that term, we've taken that humanity out. What are some of the things that have happened in the last couple of decades or so which have caused that, do you think? Or some of those important factors.

Dr. Ross W. Greene 00:11:50

High stakes testing would be very high on the list. You know, telling educators that their job performance and job security was going to be pegged solely to high stakes test was a bad idea right out of the gate. A bad idea right out of the gate for kids as well, especially the most vulnerable made lots of educators leave the profession, made lots of educators and kids feel less good about being at school. I would say that the other that I talk about in chapter one of the book is zero tolerance policies, which Became, and by the way, there's a few dozen in chapter one of the book of the societal changes that have occurred over the last two or three decades to make it harder to be a kid. But as it relates to schools specifically, zero tolerance policies were what we did over here in response to Columbine tightening the vice grip even further with consequences supposedly to make things safer. Not only did zero tolerance policies not make things safer, they made things worse. And I gotta tell you, zero tolerance is not going to be what's needed for kids who are depressed, anxious, even those who have, concerning behavior, believe it or not, suicidal, chronic school absenteeism. I would say that zero tolerance is the exact opposite of what those kids need.

Mark Taylor 00:13:33

And I think for me, I sort of, sort of picture sort of from my, my experience of kind of, you know, you have your children at home and you have your children that go to school and at home you try and create an environment which is supportive and healthy, conversational, like you say, individual. You know, one child that might have this sports club because they're into football is not going to be the same one that's doing basketball or whatever the sort of interest is, or wants to do music or whatever, whatever that sort of mix is going to look like. So the one size fits all just seems a little bit ridiculous anyway. And one of the things that's come up in our recent series with Professor Dr. Gay Grouse was the fact that he often goes in and asks, you know, to a child, you know, what, why are you at school? What are you doing at school? And like 80 say, because I have to. And it's just like, well, okay, so immediately I'm just here because I have to, you know, and that's, you know, that's like a, a prison sentence almost as I'm only here because I've got to do that in with all the greatest educators in the world and trying to make that look different. If you're starting at that point, you're, you're on a relatively losing battle. And also you can see how the snowball starts to get going.

Dr. Ross W. Greene 00:14:48

No doubt about it. I wonder, though, what percentage of kids would say that if we were less enthusiastic about punishing deviations from the norm, less enthusiastic about getting all of them over the same bar by the end of the school year, more attentive to the developmental variability that's walking through the door and knew that the definition of good teaching was meeting every kid where they're at. I wonder what the percentages would be. I would love to do that. Experiment. Yeah.

Mark Taylor 00:15:22

That's amazing, isn't it? And it's interesting. Like you said about the end of year testing. Two of our children are summer birthdays and one of them was a September birthday, which is early, early in the UK here. And we had the same conversations with teacher every year at parents evening. It's like, I can't tell you, you know, since the Easter holidays they've come on leaps and bounds and it's like, yeah, because they're just turning the age that the kids who started the year who are almost a year older started that academic year and when they're only 5 or 6, that's 25 of their life or 20 or whatever it happens to be, you know, and you just think that just makes so much sense. How can it, you know, how can you not see that and, and expect like say, despite the fact that everyone develops generally differently anyway, despite their age, you know, I mean it is, it is a bit of a nonsensical thing for it to happen. And so that always just sort of reminded me of that. We, luckily for us, we kind of knew it and had experienced it and seen it enough to kind of go, it's fine, they, they'll be okay, they're going to grow up, they're going to experience these things going through. And so that personalized learning for us was very much kind of, yes, you're only this age, it will all be fine, don't worry.

Dr. Ross W. Greene 00:16:34

And you know what, here's the good news, here's the, here's the only hitch to that. If it's not fine, we need to know what to do. And with kids who are not fine and are communicating they're not fine in ways that are hard for us adults, we tend to think of consequences as the way to deal with it. I don't think consequences are the way to deal with much of anything. And yet that tends to be the knee jerk reaction. That's where detentions and suspensions and expulsions and over here hitting kids on the butt with a two foot peach of piece of plywood at school, which we still do in this country in 17 different states. Many people don't know that.

Mark Taylor 00:17:30

Yeah, I thought that had gone.

Dr. Ross W. Greene 00:17:33

Indeed not in those 17 states. So a lot of this comes down to how is the kid communicating that they're struggling, that what we've done to try to help didn't work? And is what we're doing now getting the job done or is it making things worse? And is there a way to involve the kid in the process of making things better, rather than us adults thinking that we have to fly solo on that. So people know my work, know my answers to those things. And by the way, meeting every kid, whether or not is where they're at, is not unheard of in education circles. That's where differentiated instruction comes from. That's where personalized learning comes from. But those are academic. We need to be just as differentiated when it comes to students social, emotional and behavioral functioning.

Mark Taylor 00:18:37

And I guess there's. There's a life cycle of this, isn't there? Because there's the. If someone's coming into my school today and they're really struggling, then what can we do to help? And like I say, if they're really, really, really unwell, then it might be a question of phoning somebody and getting them professional help. It might be a conversation, it might be bringing the community together, whatever that happens to be. But I guess if people are listening and they're having these conversations and we're realizing what, what some of the systemic issues are, can we then start to put things in place so that the next people coming through my academic year group in five years time hopefully will feel different? Because we can change that narrative early on. And I guess that's something which is a positive thing to do. If it's entirely possible.

Dr. Ross W. Greene 00:19:26

It is entirely possible. We've done it in a lot of places. The first step is to help people change their lenses. A kid's concerning behavior is their frustration or distress response. It is not manipulative, attention seeking, coercive, unmotivated, limit testing. It is the way kids and other human beings communicate that they're struggling, period. We'd be so much further along if everybody knew that. Because number one, then punishment would make a whole lot less sense and even rewards would make a whole lot less sense. What's causing those frustration responses? Expectations. Kids are having difficulty meeting this mindset. This, this could take a week, right? So I don't have a five year plan for a school. I have a one year plan for a school. But changing lenses comes first, right? And that's the fastest part. Many people think it's the hardest part. But I've learned over these many years that many people who are among the most opposed to this model when they first hear about it, become among its most ardent advocates in the end. Right? We have to help people interpret concerning behavior accurately. We then have to help them learn how to use an instrument called the assessment of skills and unsolved problems that helps them identify the expectations. Kids are having difficulty Meeting a lot of the time, the checklists and the rating scales that we're using in schools, but also everywhere else, are focused on their frustration responses, their concerning behavior. And as you can tell, I use those two terms interchangeably rather than on the problems that are causing those frustration responses. If we want to solve them proactively, we've got to identify them proactively. Otherwise, as I always say, we're always going to find ourselves in the heat of the moment dealing yet again with the kids concerning behavior. We need to get the assessment of skills and unsolved problems, which by the way, is free. This is not me sort of pushing for people to buy something. It's free. It needs to become the standard pre referral triage instrument in schools, especially for the kids who are struggling the most. In every school, it's the same 10 or 15 kids who are accounting for 70 to 80% of the discipline referrals and all of the punitive exclusionary disciplinary practices that take place after those discipline referrals. And then part three is those problems got to get solved proactively, meaning not in the heat of the moment. The good news is those unsolved problems, as we call them, are highly predictable. We just proved that by making a list using the assessment of skills and unsolved problems. But the problem solving is also collaborative, meaning the kid is an indispensable integral part of the problem solving process. In schools that do that, kids and staff do way better. There are no more detentions, suspensions, expulsions. No one's getting hit. Problems are getting solved. And here's one of my favorite expressions. It's only unsolved problems that cause frustration responses. Once they're solved, they don't. For so long, we've been focused on behavior and modifying it, which is why the pile of unsolved problems for our most vulnerable kids just got bigger and bigger.

Mark Taylor 00:23:13

And I, I sort of just struck me then that sense of most people's anxiety in life generally comes from the unknown, doesn't it? It's that sense of, I'm not sure how this is going to pan out, I'm not sure what's going to happen. And so my, certainly my anxiety levels go up as well. And you times that by a thousand when it's kind of, I know there's something going on, but you're not talking to me about it, or I can't express what I'm doing, or I'm not part of that conversation, then it's like you, even if I do know and, and it's not just the unknown is the fact that I can't do anything about it anyway. And so I often think, you know, if, if you're in that situation where I kind of think I know how it could be and I know what I could do myself is a, as a pupil to make this better, but I've got a hundred other people telling me it's going to be different. How do you break through that noise? And like I say, it's just that kind of wearing down of, of your, your understanding of yourself and your, like, say, your mental health and your well being and like, say, then you start to get all those problems spilling out at the end of that.

Dr. Ross W. Greene 00:24:14

No question about it. You know, I could make an argument, this would not be a perfect argument, but I could make a convincing argument that depression, anxiety, certainly concerning behavior, suicidality, chronic school absenteeism. I could make a very compelling argument that a high percentage of those issues can be traced back to problems that were never identified and never solved. Now, a lot of educators might hear me say that and think, yeah, but we can't do anything about what's going on outside of the school. Are those the problems you're talking about? And the answer is no. Talking about the expectations students are having difficulty meeting while they're in the building six hours a day, five days a week, nine months a year. If you're busy finally identifying and solving problems with those kids, even if they're going home to something that is less than ideal, about which you probably can't do much, you're giving this kid a lifeline because your school is now a protective, nurturing, safe environment in which the kid is now thriving. And by the way, there are a lot of kids in the building who are doing okay and are going home to environments that are not exactly ideal. So I don't buy the argument that home has to be okay for school to be okay. There are lots of instances in which school is okay and home is not okay. And that's a lifeline for those kids.

Mark Taylor 00:25:53

And I think that's when those conversations about what's the most important thing that's happening in your classroom, you know, it's about being kind, it's about being interested, it's about understanding, like, say, where everyone is at today, you know, and understanding that maybe the home life's not so great, or knowing that there's an illness going on or whatever it happens to be, because, like, say, maybe if you can't practically do anything about it, you can certainly be aware enough to Kind of make that difference. And I think it's where the in person learning is incredibly important as opposed to the online elements of these things. Because sometimes you just need to be looked in the eyes and someone tell you that it's going to be okay.

Dr. Ross W. Greene 00:26:34

And I think that a high percentage of the educators I know want to be that person. They may not feel like they have the technology to be that person. I think that this model provides that. They may not feel like they have permission to do that because they've got high stakes testing hanging over their head and that's their job. And then there's another percentage of teachers who just don't feel it's their job to do it. But I don't actually think that's the majority. I think the majority would love to do what you just described. Some are not exactly sure how even though they're trying to, and some feel it's been taken away from them.

Mark Taylor 00:27:16

And so if we're able to sort of amplify this message, you know, because I think anyone listening who's involved in education goes, well, of course, this makes so much sense. Why can't we do this like you say, this week, ready for this academic year? What do they do if they feel like they're not able to do anything within their environment? Is it a question of speaking to some of the leadership? Is it a question of speaking to their colleagues? Coming up with a plan that says let's move the dial in a way that we think we can do.

Dr. Ross W. Greene 00:27:45

Now, one of the co authors in the book, Ryan Gleason, is a principal in a school and he talks quite a bit about something called leadership density. He feels, and so do I, that leaders can come not just from the top. A leader can emerge from anybody in the building. Leadership skills. We've got to get somebody in the building getting the ball rolling. Sometimes that's a small effort. Maybe a book study with five or six interested parties trying ideas on for size and then having the discussion about this would be good for our building. And supposedly in our building we are about continuous improvement and we're losing some kids still in our building and we're not good with an 80% success rate, especially if it means losing kids. Why don't we try some of these ideas and practices on for size? Because what we're doing for those kids clearly isn't working. They are still taking up an enormous amount of time. We're saying we have no time. Solving problems with kids takes significantly less time than having those problems go unremittingly unsolved. Let's do this. Sometimes that starts small. Often it starts with school leadership. But we got to get the ball rolling. We're still losing a lot of kids because we're stuck.

Mark Taylor 00:29:21

So do you think from a legislation point of view, a government point of view, a policy making point of view, why do you think this isn't happening? Is it financial related, is it political related? Because it seems to me it's not really benefiting and benefiting anyone that you're not getting children to come out the other side of education fit for a world of work in terms of their personal growth, their understanding, maybe their even their sort of academics, if that's the important part. Apart from their perception, certainly not from their well being, not for the skills that they need, the amount of time and money that's going into to support education in a way that's not supportive. Because like I say, you're firefighting, you're not actually putting something in place which is helping everybody. It doesn't seem to make sense on so many levels. And yet not just in the US but around the world, we're not doing anything significantly different enough. And I don't quite understand why. I'm just curious as to why. What you think that might be.

Dr. Ross W. Greene 00:30:18

Well, one reason I think it might be is that most legislators don't know that much about education. So it's hard to move off the dial when it's an arena in which you don't have a great deal of familiarity. But I also think that educators themselves are not exactly sure what to do. Their unions are listening to their constituents. Which is as one example why the two largest educator unions in the United States have yet to get behind legislation to dramatically reduce or eliminate the use of restraining and secluding kids in school. Restraining meaning pinning kids to the ground? Secluding meaning throwing them into a locked or blocked closet sized room. Educator unions listen to their constituents and a lot of constituents think they still need those practices. I'm hoping that this book galvanizes people to say, yes, this is who we want to be. This is what we should be doing. These are practices we want to adopt. That's my hope.

Mark Taylor 00:31:43

And in terms of people who you should be reading the book, who's the person that's going to make the big difference? Is it a question of galvanizing the troops across all of those things we've spoken about, from the teacher to the leadership and, and sort of beyond?

Dr. Ross W. Greene 00:32:01

Well, I don't want to wait for legislation to make it happen because that's an extraordinarily slow process. If you want to talk about rigidity, there's much to be found there. This is for anybody who works in or with a school. So that's superintendents, special education directors, principals, staff, paraprofessionals, ed techs, school psychologists, school counselors, school social worker, bus driver. You know, I've had bus drivers say to me, I'd be happy to pitch in here, but they're just throwing kids on the bus at the end of the school day. I have no idea what happened to the school during the day. And they're losing out on the bus. Right. This is for parents as well. There's a chapter for therapeutic facilities in there because, well, a lot of kids who end up in therapeutic facilities are the same kids who end up in special education classrooms and things didn't go well. This is about our kids, and anybody who cares about kids should read the book. Do I hope policymakers will read the book? Yes. Do I have much hope that that will be the primary focal point of change? No. I think that people need to think that. That we're going to do this in our building, and we're going to take this on as a building and do things differently.

Mark Taylor 00:33:28

And that gives you hope because it's like you say, you can take whatever that step is, to do it collaboratively. Having had those conversations like we spoke about before, and if there's one takeaway that you'd like people to take away from the book, is it that sense that change is possible and we can make that difference?

Dr. Ross W. Greene 00:33:48

Totally. There's a lot of inertia in the system. There's a lot of rigidity in the system. We are structured to be reactive. We are structured to be unilateral. Just because we're structured that way doesn't mean it has to be that way. And as I said earlier, desperation sometimes helps us start to move. Right. And where I think the desperation is these days is there's just way more kids who are not doing well than there were, and the system has become overwhelmed. The system sort of was able to get by when the number of kids who weren't doing well was lower. The system can't get by anymore. Okay. Doing things differently doesn't just work for. For the kids who are currently not doing okay, it works better for the kids who are currently doing okay. No downside.

Mark Taylor 00:34:47

I love that. And I often think that when you sort of think about a range of children, like, say, the people that get the attention are the ones that are obviously struggling or causing something which you deem to be problematic that you need to deal with. There may be people that are prepared to support the high flyers because there may be opportunities there which other children don't get. And I think some of that middle ground of children that get left, they're doing okay. And that's fine. Because from a statistician's point of view, in terms of a grading point of view, they're kind of ticking the right boxes. But we know we're not supporting them either because they're getting by, because they've got the tools to enable them to do that. But we want them to thrive. We want a system which is supporting them so that they want to, to go to school, they can understand why they go into school and how as part of a society, whether that's their family, their school, their community, and how they perceive that to look like beyond that has a positive effect. And I think not only do we solve the, the initial problem, like say, as a society, hopefully that conversation is going to be beneficial to us all, which I think we can all tell at the moment is something that's going to be an important factor and a positive thing moving forward for sure.

Dr. Ross W. Greene 00:35:59

And let there be no doubt, there are lots of kids who are getting good grades who are still very depressed and very anxious. So if academics are the only metric, it looks like that kid is doing fine. What we do for the kids who are struggling works even better for the kids who aren't.

Mark Taylor 00:36:22

And I think one final thought I have on this always is the fact that you need to see these things with the perspective of if you do it the right way, and I'm not saying there's a right and wrong way, but in a way that's supportive of kids, that gives them that identity and that ownership of what they're doing, they will hopefully have a good support system within themselves and their local community. They will thrive academically, they will thrive, thrive in their interests. They will thrive as a community member. Because why would you not? That's what we all want to live by. And I think giving schools and teachers enough time to put those things in place. Let's solve the issues we need to today, but create that environment. We need to support everyone going forward. I hope makes the biggest difference. Because like I say, you can ring the towel really, really tight and that might produce good grades in a, you know, a shiny looking school which everyone's really happy with, but we know the, the detriment that comes with that.

Dr. Ross W. Greene 00:37:19

Let there be no doubt. And if you ask me to what's the top skill I want a kid leaving their education with mine would be problem solving. Yes, algebra is big, trigonometry is big. I don't know if they're going to use algebra or trigonometry in life. I know they're going to need to solve problems and they're going to need to solve problems with other people. That's number one. The good news is it doesn't have to be either or. You can do them all together.

Mark Taylor 00:37:52

I love that. And I think taking away, taking away the pressure of it all needs to be different because the world's different and there's all these new tools and I need it to look like this and I need to behave in a certain way. I think understanding that inherently all human and we want that connection and like you say, having the skills to have a conversation, that means that whatever I need to do today will help me tomorrow. And the fact we know the world's going to look so much different in 5, 10, 15 years time, that gives me hope that actually that world will look better in 5 and 10, 15 years time. Because actually we've got those things in place.

Dr. Ross W. Greene 00:38:24

You know, I think that if we squint our eyes, we will see some recent events notwithstanding, but maybe even recent events coming into play because of how the world has reacted to them. I think the world is moving in the direction of being more responsive to individual differences. It's creaky, slow, more responsive to developmental variability. And I view that as a very positive sign.

Mark Taylor 00:38:58

Now, the acronym FIRE is really important to us here. And by that we mean feedback, inspiration, resilience and empowerment. What is it that strikes you when you, when you read that? And certainly in relation obviously to what we chatted about today?

Dr. Ross W. Greene 00:39:13

Well, I gonna go with two of them. I certainly hope that people are inspired by the belief that change is possible. And I hope people feel empowered to create that change. And I think that we are also trying to empower kids to be involved in solving the problems that are affecting their lives so they can show up in school so they aren't thinking of harming themselves so the frustration responses and the depression and the anxiety subside. That's an empowered kid, that's an empowered educator. I hope people are inspired by that possibility.

Mark Taylor 00:39:58

I love that. And I think, I think for me and is always the case on the podcast is that you can look at the COVID of a book, you can read the testimonials, you can see a website, but there's nothing like actually chatting to someone who's involved at the heart of what that is, to hear that we're just people having conversations, knowledgeable people that can actually make a difference. And we're here to share that wisdom. So, Ross, thank you so much for being here today and sharing all of that. Thank you for doing it, most importantly. And, yeah, keep the great work going.

Dr. Ross W. Greene 00:40:31

I appreciate you doing what you're doing, and I appreciate you having me do this.

Mark Taylor 00:40:36

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.