June 27, 2021 • 46 mins
This week, I spoke with Ellen Mahoney, CEO and founder of The Circulus Institute. Ellen is passionate about fostering educator's social and emotional learning so they can support themselves and their students. We talk about the gaps in education for teachers and implications in the classroom.
You can find out more about Ellen's work and The Circulus Institute at @CirculusInst on twitter.
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Episode Transcript
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Heather Woods (00:05):
Hello, and welcome. You're listening to the
SEL in action podcast thepodcast where we discuss social
and emotional learning andprofessional and educational
settings. I'm your host, HeatherWoods. And today we are talking
to Ellen Mahoney, from thecirculus Institute. She's the
CEO and co founder, and reallyexcited to talk about what
(00:26):
circulus is and how it came tobe. You know, how she started
this to fill a gap. And thankyou so much, Ellen, for being
here. And yeah, thank you somuch. I really appreciate you
taking the time to speak with metoday. So tell us a little bit
about circulus.
Ellen Mahoney (00:46):
Sure, yeah, we are. So circulus Institute is an
organization that essentiallyhelps educators develop their
own Adult Social and Emotionalcompetencies. And we do it
through professional developmentcourses. But our the main meat
of our work is what we call theiseq, which is the international
(01:07):
social and emotionalcompetencies certification,
which is a year long learningexperience focused on skill
building for teachers, schoolcounselors, admin, and they work
on a few different competence,main competencies, that are kind
of umbrella competencies. Soself awareness, social
(01:28):
awareness, and culturalresponsiveness. All the while
they're they're getting feedbackfrom their own students in the
in the school to help theirlearning and help their skill
building. And ultimately, theysubmit a project that takes all
of that learning and that innerwork and personal development
that they've been doing, andputs it into action. You know,
(01:50):
what kind of change can you makein your community now that you
have embarked on a what we hopeis a lifelong reflection journey
as an educator. So yeah, that'swhat it is. And we work with
people from all over the world.
We're not just in the US, butwe're got an international
focus.
Heather Woods (02:10):
Excellent. So you mentioned that you focus on
Adult Social and EmotionalLearning. So it's quite the
shift of a lot of the focus ofsocial emotional learning,
right. Although the the castledefinition mentions, you know,
children and adults, most of theresearch and implementation
(02:31):
really focuses on students,right. Yeah. So how did you come
about kind of focusing on Adultsocial emotional learning?
Ellen Mahoney (02:40):
Yeah, I was out in the field working, I have a
sister organization called seechange mentoring. And even
though my background is inpublic educate my initial foray
into education was in the publicschool system in the US. But the
last seven years, I've workedwith international schools
overseas. And specifically, mywhole focus for the last almost
(03:03):
20 years has been onrelationship skills in schools.
And in particular, adultsability to connect with young
people appropriately and developeffectively. So that kids can
learn and be well. So that'swhat I was doing. And I was
visiting all these schools andhelping them design mentoring
programs and advisory programsand training everybody on that
(03:25):
work and helping them see theirchildren through the cultural
context and all that kind ofstuff. And I just felt like I
was hitting a wall, you know, Icould, I could design a perfect
or I could design a really greatmentoring program. And I could
do some great professionaldevelopment for everybody and
forming relationships witheducators and make them feel
safe, etc, etc. But if they, ifthey weren't willing, or if they
(03:50):
weren't given the space and timeand supports, to work on their
own inner stuff, you know, theirtheir own personal development,
their own relationship skills,and I can only get them so far.
And I just felt like we weremissing an opportunity to have a
greater impact on students. So Ithought, well, I'm going to
(04:11):
spend the summers is a few yearsago, I thought, let me spend the
summer reading all the research,I can find there must be a
solution here. And what I foundwas that number one, that most
pre service training programs inthe world don't include any kind
of dis personal work, personaldevelopment, social emotional
(04:32):
skill development work foradults, at the time, just three
years ago, and it's still kindof the case. There's very few
professional developmentopportunities for that kind of
emotional work. And, you know, Idove into Patricia Jennings and
you know, Mark Greenberg's workon Adult SEL in particular. And
(04:54):
I was, you know, looking at alot of the stuff from the
learning Policy Institute herein the States. And all the
research was saying that, yes,this is a gap. It's a gap in
research. It's a gap inpractice. And it is absolutely
necessary if you're going toimplement SEL effectively. So
there was just so that was bothfrustrating. And then it also
(05:17):
was like the, you know, theimpetus for me to say, well,
let's try and make a littleheadway here or, you know, so
that was the idea. And,ultimately, yeah, I were I
partnered up with this womanthat has similar ideas, and kind
of actually came with exactlythe same place at the same time
as I did. We joined forces meand we started developing this.
Heather Woods (05:41):
Fantastic. So you mentioned getting student
feedback during their learningprocess. And so what does that
look like? And what impact Haveyou seen that have on, you know,
your participants and learnersexperiences?
Ellen Mahoney (05:59):
Yeah, well, it makes me think of a story I, we,
so the, we are actuallylaunching the international of
the iseq. This summer. So we'regoing to see what that impact
looks like. And we'll see whathappens. But I'll tell you a
story that kind of is one of thethings that's informing sort of
(06:20):
a inspirational moment I hadwith a student that informed
some of this work. We were I wasworking in a school and in China
in Beijing, so the InternationalSchool, predominantly Chinese
students, but also some foreignstudents as well. But faculty,
all Western, mostly white, andthen a Western curriculum, just
(06:44):
to give you some context, so. Soprior to circulus, I, usually
schools would call me when theirmentoring advisory programs were
going terribly. Or, you know,they tried something and it
didn't work. And it was reallymessy. And then they hired me to
come in and clean it up. Theysaid, they called me said,
Listen, we have this increasewith mental health issues with
(07:06):
our students, which, you know,we're seeing around the world.
And they said, We don'tunderstand, because we actually
have a lot of counselors,they're great. They're lovely
people. You know, our teachersreally care about the students.
And we keep telling them, if youhave a problem, come talk to us,
but they won't come talk to us.
And we think it might be becausethey're Chinese and so that
maybe they don't value this kindof work. And I just thought, I
(07:28):
don't know about that. But youknow, what? You go in with an
open mind, I have a feeling it'snot that but we'll see, you
know, so I went in there, and Ispent a week with students just
getting their feedback, which isoften a step that's completely
missed. When schools arecollecting evidence on on how
their programs are going, theymight collect data, but I find
(07:50):
this stuff that's missing issitting down with the students
and saying, you filled out thesesurveys, does this telling you a
story, what stories is tellingyou what are we missing, you
know, get your point of viewfrom your own words. Anyway, at
one point that week, the studentsaid to me, miss, we love our
teachers, they're great, youknow, counselors, they're great.
(08:14):
But have you seen how stressedout they are all the time?
They're running around? Totallyirritated? so stressed out? Why
would I come to them with one ofmy problems? You know, and just
further burden than they canhandle. And it was such an eye
opener for the school, you know,and that just really caught that
was the sentiment that all thekids were saying. So anyway,
(08:36):
that really was an eye opener, Ithink if I were to come in just
directly and say that thisschool, you need to work on
Adult social emotionalcompetencies. And you know,
here's how you do it a, b, andc, it wouldn't have, I don't
think that the faculty wouldhave been as invested as
actually hearing the studentssay, I'm not I'm coming to you,
I'm not coming to you notbecause of a cultural reason,
(08:58):
but because of what maybe aschool culture reason, but you
know, but because of what I'mseeing in the adults, and it's
keeping, asking for help. So
Heather Woods (09:12):
that's, yeah, that's so powerful. And like you
said, like, we don't often delvedeeper into those kind of survey
responses, right, and figure outthe reasoning behind them. I
mean, I see it in research allthe time, when we rely so much
on surveys, as opposed to, youknow, more qualitative
discussions. But yeah, it's sointeresting to see, you know,
(09:37):
that there was almost on theteachers part, some self
awareness lacking right on howthey're coming across. And yeah,
it's so impactful. So you talkedabout certification. So what
kind of would build that looklike for educators and anyone
(10:00):
that wants to take it?
Ellen Mahoney (10:02):
Yeah, we're playing around with some things.
I mean, right now it's availablefor individuals. And but we're,
we think that the impact wouldis would be much stronger as far
as impact on the actual schoolcommunity, if we, if if
educators do it as teams. So ifyou have like a whole department
(10:24):
or you know, an SEL committee orsomething like that, where,
because change obviously, ismuch harder to do if it's just
you if you're the sole champion.
So, so we're looking at, we'relooking at that model, and we're
looking at strategicpartnerships for work that can
help us do do that provide thatopportunity for whole teams, in
the meantime, had some knownvisuals, and we just were
(10:44):
working with them, the school inVietnam and a school in
Malaysia, right now, that willstart the process with us,
although it's open to everybody.
So, so the, you know, what itlooks like is, I think that
people will probably come intothe certification from two
different angles, one, which wethink will be most of the case,
(11:08):
in the very beginning, will bepeople that already loves social
emotional learning and love thisword like, Oh, I get to spend,
yeah, I can't wait. Yeah, youhave to start with those people,
the champions that can reallyget the momentum going, of
course, you want this foreverybody, we want as many
(11:30):
people as possible to have theopportunity to really work on a
skill building. And then I thinkthat we'll probably find some
other people that are, you know,quote, unquote, doing social
emotional learning in theirschool. And, and, you know, the
schools decide, we want them tokind of, you know, get a start.
(11:52):
And the way that thiscertification works is that the
first course is is focused onself awareness. And it's a
small, it's a short course, it'sonly three days. But the idea,
we're giving them a general ideaof what adult social emotional
learning is. And then we'rehelping them think about how do
you practice? How do you createa reflective practice, as an
(12:15):
NGO, we're just getting themstarted. And then there's some
other self awareness work thatthey're doing, including a lot
of personal personal assessment,personal inventories that they
can use, we're kind of givingthem the tools, we're setting
them up to get going. And atthat point, they can continue on
for the rest of thecertification. Or they can say,
not for me, and we'll try andfigure out how to get them on
(12:37):
board later. Yeah, yeah, that'ssort of the general idea they
collected, you know, it'scompetency based. So the idea is
that if we really focus on theskill building, and not just the
content of adult SEL, that theywill have more agency in their
work, there'll be more equity.
You know, they, the, the hope isthat they will transfer these
(13:02):
skills to all parts of theirschool environment and their
lives in general, which isinteresting to evaluate. Because
the transfer part is reallydifficult with adult social
emotional competencies you canbe, you can have great self
management skills in one contextand fell apart. And the other
and we all know that this year,though, so yeah, and so they,
(13:25):
they, but they collective, theyhave a portfolio that they keep
all your and they're documentingtheir learning, we also put them
in small, what we call peersupport communities. So a team
of other educators from aroundthe world or within their
school, and they all worktogether and encourage each
(13:47):
other in the work that they'redoing in problems. And then they
have a coach as well, thatsupports them throughout the
year. And, you know, providesfeedback and encouragement and
connects them to resources andthat sort of thing. So our hope
is that we have these courses,they're online, but we use all
of the best practices and adultlearning, which is another gap,
(14:09):
I find them a lot ofprofessional development for
adults, you know, so in my mypartner, Christina has amazing
adult learning designer, she'sreally good. So, so she's been
able to really create thesegreat experiences. So yeah, you
know, once you get thecertification, you you can be a
(14:29):
real leader, we say like youbecome an adult SEL leader, and
you go back to your community,and you kind of get the word out
about how important this workis, and hopefully create changes
within your district or withinyour school community. So that
more of them are encouraged todo this kind of work.
Heather Woods (14:49):
Yeah. And it's, you know, I from the research
standpoint that I'm coming from,you know, we see it again and
again, particularly here inCanada with Bonnie Ledbeater,
and the WITS program, you know,you need that one champion, you
need that one person that'sreally advocating for it. But at
the same time, the bestsituation is that whole school
(15:11):
approach, right? So yeah, Itotally see kind of where you're
coming from with where you'dlike to see this go to really
have that impact. And, you know,it's not just about supporting
our students, which is wherewe're, you know, seeing so much
of it come from, it's really, weneed to support our educators to
(15:34):
be able to, you know, do thework, but also, you know, so
that we don't have thatsituation that you're seeing
where teachers are so stressedout, and that's been shown to
the students and you know, thatthey're developing those coping
skills and everything. So youmentioned you start with self
(15:55):
awareness. So I wonder if youcan talk a little bit about the
competencies, because you guystalk about 10 competencies,
which is a little bit differentfrom, you know, the standard
five social awareness. So,sorry, self awareness, self
management, social awareness,relationship building and
decision making. So I'mwondering if you can tell us,
(16:18):
you know, what are the 10 thatyou've kind of identified? And,
you know, how did you come upwith 10?
Ellen Mahoney (16:25):
Yeah, I'll tell you what the 10 are first, and
then I'll tell you the, theGenesis story of it. Okay, so
they are self awareness, wellbeing and resilience skills,
equity and anti bias, education,compassion, efficacy, cultural
responsiveness, relationshipskills, conflict resolution,
(16:46):
perspective taking and activelistening, was a lot. But, you
know, when we were doing thisresearch, or I should say, when
we were consuming all of theresearch, we could to figure
this out, we were reallyinspired by Jennings and
Greenberg's research article,the prosocial classroom,
(17:09):
actually identified slightlydifferent competencies for
adults than what thecompetencies are that castle,
lays out, I mean, ultimately, asa, you know, it's all kind of
the same rate, it's all ideawritten slightly differently,
some, you know, etc. So, butthey identified their
(17:29):
competencies were self awarenessand social awareness, just like
castle cultural sensitivity, prosocial values, which is like,
you know, taking responsibilityfor your actions and being
thoughtful about like, yourimpact on community and that
kind of thing. And then selfmanagement, that's identified
(17:50):
from the available research atthe time, on educators on their
well being and their impact onstudents learning, you know,
classroom management, behavior,all of that kind of stuff. So I
started from there, actually,because there really wasn't any
other. I mean, there was verylittle research out there on the
(18:12):
actual competencies that adultshad to, to really work on. So I
started from there. And then I,I, there's a, there's an
organization called the Globalonline Academy, and they run a
summit every summer, which Irecommend to educators. It's a
design summit. And you can gothere during the summertime with
(18:34):
an idea that you have for yourschool, you have you have a
coach, you have a team, you havecolleagues around you, and you
work on, on whatever you'redesigning, they they influenced
me and my partner a lot,actually, my partner comes from
this organization, that's whereshe used to work. But they were
a major influence, becausethey're all about competencies
(18:56):
and competency based learning.
So but a week, just thinkingabout, here's what the research
says, let's think about the sortof the journey that an educator
goes through in the classroom,and really try and nail down
what these specific competenciesare. So we have 10, because
there's, there's certainspecific things that we didn't
(19:17):
want to get lost in terms likeself awareness, if that makes
sense. So, yeah, in likeperspective, taking is more
specific. Then social awarenessin so that's sort of where we,
we went with it and you know,ultimately, even in our work, we
focus on three buckets, selfawareness, social awareness,
(19:39):
and, and culturalresponsiveness. But underneath
those are the othercompetencies.
Heather Woods (19:48):
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it's so interesting,
because that's one thing again,like we've talked about that,
you know, I'm seeing in my ownresearch, Like, what are these
foundational things? And I'vehad some really interesting
discussions with students andcolleagues. Like one week, I was
(20:11):
talking with my colleague and wewere talking about, okay, so
self awareness is reallyfoundational for self
management, and like, we'remaking that connection. And then
I was talking to one of mystudents, and he was like, I
think self awareness isfoundational for social
(20:31):
awareness, because you need toknow yourself and where you're
coming from. And I was like,Yes. And but then like, it's
just all this thing, like,what's coming first, like,
Where's the horse? And where'sthe cart? And yes, but they're
so interconnected. And I waslike, it really just highlights.
You know, that it's a little bitcomplex, and it's a little bit
(20:52):
messy. But I do like theapproach that you're taking
that, you know, these are thethings that we really need to
highlight. And these are thethings that we need to talk
about.
Ellen Mahoney (21:02):
Yeah, but I would say other like, the the Yeah, I
agree. And those conversationsthat you have with your
colleagues are the sameconversations where we've been
having as well. And I think,ultimately, what we decided was
that kind of what like, whatyour colleague said, is that we
felt that, you know, it's theoxygen mask, like, you know, you
have to put that on first,before you help someone else. So
(21:25):
our thought was, let's startwith the, the more like the
self, the self part. And then wemove to a social part, which is
the, like, the socialrelationships part, which is a
social, cultural piece. And asocial has to come before the
cultural, you know, according toour hypothesis, because how
(21:47):
could you possibly be culturallyresponsive, if you're not
socially aware, if you're notaware of how you come across to
other people, and the impact ofyour words and your emotions on
other people, and yourrelationship skills and that
sort of thing, then you do thecultural responsiveness piece.
But then from moving from selfto social, then we say you move
to community, only then can youreally have the kind of impact
(22:10):
you want to have on thecommunity and really consider
sort of more the systems ofeducation and the systems that
she worked within, in order tochange them.
Heather Woods (22:23):
Yeah, and I think it's an interesting, you know,
like, you're thinking like this.
And castle, I mean, it's like,the main thing in the states
slash world for defining thesocial emotional learning within
school systems, but the recent,I think, was 20 definition
change, to really include thatcultural community piece, and
(22:47):
really being critical of thesystems in place. Right, that,
you know, influence our everydayexistence and how it influences
different people in differentways. You know, and I think, but
then you've got this like, for,like, that's one of your
(23:10):
buckets, is this cultural andpiece, right? And I think, yeah,
it's gonna be really interestingto see how that kind of
translates into the researchinto the practice. And it's
quite exciting. It's so it's socomplex, you know, it's
Ellen Mahoney (23:31):
Yeah. It's almost overwhelming when you think
about the systems piece, butit's critical. And, yeah, it's
going to be I look forward tomore research being done, and I
hope that we can share, youknow, I we look forward to the
opportunity for our work to beevaluated, because we, I mean,
(23:52):
ultimately, this is, this iswhat I want to do forever. This
is so important to me. I justwant the adults heal, you know,
I want Yeah, we're adults toheal whatever they need to heal
from. And then the ones thatchoose to to dedicate their
lives to young people'sdevelopment, I want them to be
supported, you know?
Heather Woods (24:13):
Yeah, no, I think we definitely share that that
passion. I mean, though, that'swhy I've kind of coined, you
know, my research and theneventually This podcast was
added, you know, the SEL andaction kind of project because
they're in teaching and so Iteach in the Faculty of
(24:35):
Education, but I teach graduatestudents. I don't teach teacher
candidates and so I'm havinggraduate students from, you
know, industry, I'm havingteachers, I'm having admin, I'm
having medical professionals,medical educators, a really wide
range of students, and they'reall you know, hungry for this
(24:57):
information and seeing theimpact. They can have in their
their professions from kind ofthis adults perspective. So
right now I teach aboutleadership and social emotional
competencies, particularly in aremote context because of our
current context, right. But it'sso interesting, and it's really,
(25:21):
they want to bring this back totheir teams to their students,
and, you know, kind of shiftthat thinking about who they are
as leaders and the skills that,you know, they can possess and
worked on, and that it's, it's acontinual journey. And I think
that's one thing that a lot ofpeople tend to forget, right, is
(25:42):
that these are skills. They'renot traits. It's not, you know,
something that is said and doneafter you leave, you know, in
the research, sometimes it stopsat grade eight, but or grade 12,
right, like, these are thingsyou can continually work on.
Ellen Mahoney (26:02):
Yeah, that's a cool shift from thinking about
these things as traits andmoving to thinking of them as
skills, which is what they are,is so important to me. And
incredibly, I think it'sempowering when when you help
people understand that it's notlike, Sure, I mean, we their
temperament is an actual thing.
(26:25):
Born with certain temperaments,of course, but these are all
skills that anyone can build.
And that's what's interestingabout that is we, when we got
started as an organization, wewere building this SEL, adult
SEL work, but then COVID hit.
And so we quickly shifted to tojust as soon as possible, get
resilience development work outthere for educators, which is
(26:49):
one small part of adult SEL, Ithink sometimes will equate well
being work with adult SEL andyou and I know that that's, that
is not they're not the same,they're well, being skills is
definitely part of adult SEL,but it's not the But anyway, so
we developed this resiliencecourse called reclaiming your
resilience, and which was awhole other really powerful,
(27:11):
amazing experience. For even,you know, for us, as well as the
educators we all learn together,you know, practicing what we
preach. But the, like, our mainthing with that, too, is that
this is not, it's not that yourcolleague is more resilient,
it's that he or she is takingaction every day, and creating
(27:35):
habits and developing skillsthat allows this person to to
cope a little bit better, youknow, and we all come at
different places, we all Some ofus have trauma in our lives.
Some people don't. Some peoplehave supports in our lives, some
people don't. But this is whatthe research tells you is that
at any developmental stage, nomatter what every person can
(27:57):
develop resilience. Because it'sa skill set, not a trait. And I
think that's really empowering.
And I think back to what you'resaying about your work with your
own graduate students is that Ithink that there's a I think
we're having a moment right now,I think COVID has, you know,
made us get a little closer morequickly to this moment. But I
(28:20):
think we're having him kind ofreflecting on the way we show up
for everybody every day andwanting to be well and wanting
to be healthier, and thinkingabout our impact on other people
and thinking about our ownbiases and prejudices and that
sort of thing. And I do thinkthat people are hungry for it,
you know? And the more we canthink about it as a competency
(28:42):
development perspective, theless scary it is, the less
overwhelming I think thatpersonal development
Heather Woods (28:53):
Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I
think that's one thing that, youknow, that shift kind of
mentally what happens when youstart thinking about a skill,
but then letting them know,like, I, my students will tell
you, I'm very open with that,yes, I teach this stuff. I'm not
(29:14):
an expert at this stuff. Like interms of my own skills. You
know, I, you know, can'tmeditate all the time. I can't
practice mindfulness perfectlyall the time. You know, my time
management may be a littlewonky, so it's, like, it's a
(29:36):
journey. It's just taking thosesteps and acknowledging that
it's something you can work onlittle bits at a time. And, and
you mentioned something reallyinteresting about, you know, the
current pandemic context. Intalking with educators,
particularly in Alberta, some ofthe edge kiters that I was
(30:00):
speaking to, for my research,we're talking about that when
this all happened, it shifted.
It was compassion beforecurriculum. And that kind of,
you know, phrase just reallystuck with me. And I think for
so many educators, like yousaid, it just really flipped a
switch where this needs to comefirst. And, but and I think in
(30:23):
that process, a lot of themrealize that, okay, I want to be
there for my students. But thenhow am I here for myself, to be
able to do this and support mystudents? It's been a really
interesting discussions, Istarted collecting my data,
right, as the pandemic hit. Wow,here in Canada. So it was really
(30:46):
interesting to see. Kind oftheir shift in emphasis and
thinking and, and everything.
I'm still working through thatdata. But it's amazing. And
those those stories, but yeah,it's just I think, yeah, the
(31:07):
COVID has definitely sped up ourfocus on getting to this point,
right. And you know, that, likeyou said, there, there are only
a few kind of schools that areuniversities that really focus
on social emotional learning.
And I think it'll be interestingto see the next couple years,
(31:28):
like, Is there a shift in howmuch we focus on social
emotional learning in teachereducation?
Ellen Mahoney (31:38):
I really hope so, of course, and I hope that, you
know, I was thinking about thisthe other day, that there's a
lot of change that we want tosee in schools, you know, here
in the US, and it's, it'sinternational as well, I think
Lloyd was murdered, there washuge impetus to do anti racism
(32:01):
work. And anti bias work, orit's not just do the work, but
it's, it's sort of have thatlens, as an educator, if you're
working in an American context,for example. And, you know, my
concern with with where we're atright now, with all of that
work, which I which I believe inis that if we haven't had the
(32:27):
support, and the opportunity inthe space to develop the inner
work, it will be a band aidapproach, we will, you know,
when to use an Americanreference, but like, we'll teach
Alice Walker for a semester, andthen we're going to go back to
the white Western canon nextyear, because we haven't done
(32:48):
that inner work. So in order forus to make transformational
change, you know, in order forCOVID, to really wake us up, you
know, I think COVID woke us up,in many ways. And we started to
reprioritize. Or to go back towhat we first prioritize when we
got into education in the firstplace. We have to do the inner
(33:11):
work, which also includes theleaders, because I think the
other thing, that you were justmaking me think about this, you
know, same thing, when COVIDhit, we heard the same thing,
compassion before a curriculumkind of a perspective. But then
also, well, I've got to takecare of myself, in order to take
care of others, which is was sohard to do this year, very
(33:32):
painful thing to have thatrealization, and then be, you
know, having to deal withparenting while you're educating
and, you know, everything elsethat was going on. But I think,
yeah, I think that there's thisawakening, I think what happened
also with teachers is that they,they prioritize, they wanted to
(33:54):
prioritize the compassion, youwanted to prioritize self care.
But then there are these systemsin place structures in place in
their schools that really limitthat, you know, whether it's if
your kids don't have access to,you know, reliable internet, and
so it made it harder to connectwith your kids, or be greater
grading and discipline policiesin your school was not conducive
(34:18):
to supporting the context thatyour kids were were in as they
were trying to learn, you know,etc, etc. So, again, I that's
why I hope that this kind ofcompetency work gets a little
bit deeper and that leaders takethis work as well. So that so
that we can really make alasting shift. And this is not
(34:39):
just a one semester of Kumbaya,we go back to the old way. Yeah.
Heather Woods (34:46):
Yeah, it's a I mean, it makes me think of you
mentioned internet. So I'm partof a digital x equity research
team here in Ontario. We'restarting with Ontario and then
hoping to go national. But, youknow, everybody thinks of the
(35:06):
United States and Canada, as youknow, we have internet, well, we
don't, we don't have very goodinternet. And so what we found
is that so many teachers reallystruggled to connect, because
their students don't haveaccess. And so access included,
whether it was affordable. SoCanada is notorious for
(35:28):
ridiculously expensive internet.
And, as well, just access,because so much of our, within
Ontario and across the country,so much of our population is not
in city centers, it's rural. So,you know, the government may
(35:49):
say, oh, everybody has internet,but we have five megabytes per
second. That is not sufficient.
for, you know, being able toconnect with your students to be
able to host your, your Googlemeats, or whatever platform that
they're using. And really, youknow, see your students connect
(36:13):
with your students, if they'renot able to download things or,
you know, get your messagesthrough, it's a problem in the
current context, in buildingthat connection. But also, you
know, so much of my previousresearch has really focused on,
okay, if we're implementingsomething in the classroom, you
(36:36):
know, how effective is that?
What's your self efficacy indoing that, and what they were
saying is, particularly inrelation to bullying, prevention
programs, and intervention is,okay, will intervene, but then
we report it higher up, and, youknow, things kind of stopped
there. So really what you'resaying, with this, you know, we
need to get the leaders we needto get, you know, bigger things.
(36:57):
in place, I think this reallyhighlights, you know, what
you're saying is, we need tounderstand those systems, we
need to get leaders on board,not only for SEL, but really
looking at those systems inplace, like having reliable
internet to be able to connect,in situations like this, where
(37:18):
Ontario is not going back toschool this year. We're
remaining remote. You know, soso how do we, you know, work
around that, and, you know,really try to connect with our
students, it's quite difficult.
So it really highlights, youknow, that it's not just SEL,
(37:39):
there, there are lots of otherthings that we need to account
for. And I think, yeah, that's,I mean, what gets my brain
going, is looking at thosesystems in play, that are so
much bigger than ourselves somuch bigger than the community
that really needs to beaddressed to do this work
effectively. And think about,you know, what does the remote
(38:04):
mean, even for or virtual mean,for social emotional learning?
Does it change things? I wouldsay yes. In the course I teach
right now, right? Like we'relooking at kind of remote and
flexible work research, to tryand infer what might be the case
(38:25):
in this kind of forced work fromhome situation. You know, and
it's really focusing oncommunication and trust and how
those things have to shift alittle bit. You know, cuz
communicating virtually is not.
Yeah, especially if it's alltext based.
Ellen Mahoney (38:45):
Yeah, we, that's interesting that you bring that
up, because in a previous life,well, not a previous life, it's
still my life. But But before Istarted, my organization's about
seven years, or I don't know, 10years ago, I worked for this
organization in the US called Imentor, which is an E mentoring
(39:07):
a really a, what we would callnow a blended mentoring program.
That is, it's national, but Iworked in the New York City
Office. And the idea there wasthis is sort of before zoom was
the thing that it is now. Soyeah, and we use email as one
way to connect with kids. Sojust to give you a little
(39:29):
context, so we had we workedwith young people in most of the
boroughs in New York City, andall of them came from high
poverty communities, in schoolswith the kind of schools that
that serves young people livingin high poverty. And we we
(39:51):
connected them with mentors,adults, in the city
professionals, and at the timein New York had one of the low
Volunteer rates in the entirecountry in New York City, the
entire interesting, really bad,primarily because people are so
busy working thinking abouttheir own careers that, you
know, there's little littlethinking about other other
(40:13):
folks. So, um, and or Yeah,little time available to do more
than sort of donating or a raceor, you know, a one time thing
on an ongoing trip was a lot toask of a New Yorker at the time.
And so and so we the way that wetried to bridge that gap was
provide some opportunities toconnect solely online. And so it
(40:37):
was through emails that theywould connect, but what we found
was that we ended up doing acombo combo design. So it was,
you would email once a week, andthen once a month, you would see
each other in person, that feltmore doable for the volunteers.
And then the question was, well,is is impactful for the
students. And, and what we foundwas that in the beginning of
(41:01):
their relationship, if ifstudents saw their mentor in
person within the first month,that the quality of their
relationship was stronger,moving forward throughout the
year, and those that they didn'thave to necessarily meet every
single month in person forthings to work, but they did
(41:21):
have to meet in the beginning tokind of establish trust in that
initial connection. And the onesthat didn't, that did not meet
in person, within that firstmonth really struggled for the
rest of the year. So you know,what we found was that the E
part of the mentoring definitelywas impactful, they definitely
could connect, but you had tohave it with some in person
(41:42):
work. also helps too. And thiswould be reallyhard. And I mean,
I'm the mentoring working,Canada's very strong, and I in a
lot of the work is around therural communities, which is
really challenging to reach.
But, um, yeah, they the the onething, one powerful thing, when
you see your students in person,whether you're a teacher or a
(42:04):
mentor, or you know, youthdevelopment worker, is, um,
hopefully you get to see them intheir own community, and
provides you additional context.
And if you're doing your socialemotional work, hopefully, you
know, deeper empathy and respectfor their culture and all that.
Yeah. So it's Yeah, it's athere's a lot for us to learn.
Heather Woods (42:27):
Certainly, yeah.
And I think, you know, this workhas been happening for 20 plus
years. But I think we're stilljust scratching the surface,
right? And, and reallyunderstanding the impact. And,
as you mentioned, really earlyon, like, you need to have the
teachers with their own socialemotional learning, social
(42:52):
emotional competencies. And, youknow, for this to work, and
really get that kind of wholeschool approach. And I think
they're really kind of cool.
There's not quite a lot ofresearch or understanding of
(43:12):
what it looks like in practiceand stuff. So the work you're
doing is quite exciting. Yeah,it is exciting to see. But yeah,
we're really excited about it.
Yeah. And I think, yeah, it's,it's the start of something and
I think it's, it's gonna havequite the impact. You know,
(43:32):
maybe that's just my own biasand, you know, view of SEL. But,
yeah, it's just, I I'm veryexcited to see how things go
with your work, but also, youknow, kind of grand scheme of
things of how they last, youknow, year and a bit has really,
(43:55):
really changed things for us andhow we think about education and
how we think about ourselves andstudents. So yeah, I really
excited that we got to meet andchat about this.
Ellen Mahoney (44:11):
Absolutely. I love I love talking with you. I
love I love hearing about yourwork, too. It's very
interesting. So yeah, yeah, it'sit's good stuff.
Heather Woods (44:20):
Yeah. Any kind of Final thoughts about, you know,
educators and social emotionallearning?
Ellen Mahoney (44:27):
Well, I would just say that, you know, if
you're, if you're gettinginvolved in this work, you know,
whether as an adult that wantsto develop their own social
competencies, which we all haveto do, or as researcher or a
practitioner of SEL, I just wantpeople to be sort of
(44:47):
compassionate towards themselvesand others because the process
No, like you, no one's perfect.
This isn't a judgment and onlyif we can be open and
compassionate towards eachother. And ourselves, will we
really be able to learn? So Ijust I really, that's like my
hope for everybody. It's been ahell of a year. So passion is
we're trying to figure all ofthis out together. Yeah.
Heather Woods (45:14):
Yeah, certainly.
Well, I really appreciate youtaking the time to speak with
me. And it's been, yeah, reallygreat. And now I'm, like, super
excited for digging into my SELwork today. Because it's all I
do. But yeah, thank you so much,Ellen, for for taking the time
(45:37):
today and really appreciate youtelling the story of, you know,
circulus and your yourinitiatives and passion moving
forward. I think that thatcertainly comes through. And
just the passion for, you know,not only our students but
ourselves as educators, I think,and making sure we're taking
(46:01):
care of ourselves and growing.
And yeah, thank you so, so much.
Thank you so much.
Ellen Mahoney (46:11):
Thank you so much for having me on.
Heather Woods (46:13):
Thank you. So you've been listening to the SEL
in action podcast where wediscuss social emotional
learning and professional andeducational settings. Thank you
so much to Ellen Maharani todayfor speaking with me from the
circulus Institute. And we hopeto talk to you soon and keep on
(46:35):
listening. Thank you so much,and have a great day.
Hello, and welcome. You're listening to the
SEL in action podcast thepodcast where we discuss social
and emotional learning andprofessional and educational
settings. I'm your host, HeatherWoods. And today we are talking
to Ellen Mahoney, from thecirculus Institute. She's the
CEO and co founder, and reallyexcited to talk about what
(00:26):
circulus is and how it came tobe. You know, how she started
this to fill a gap. And thankyou so much, Ellen, for being
here. And yeah, thank you somuch. I really appreciate you
taking the time to speak with metoday. So tell us a little bit
about circulus.
Ellen Mahoney (00:46):
Sure, yeah, we are. So circulus Institute is an
organization that essentiallyhelps educators develop their
own Adult Social and Emotionalcompetencies. And we do it
through professional developmentcourses. But our the main meat
of our work is what we call theiseq, which is the international
(01:07):
social and emotionalcompetencies certification,
which is a year long learningexperience focused on skill
building for teachers, schoolcounselors, admin, and they work
on a few different competence,main competencies, that are kind
of umbrella competencies. Soself awareness, social
(01:28):
awareness, and culturalresponsiveness. All the while
they're they're getting feedbackfrom their own students in the
in the school to help theirlearning and help their skill
building. And ultimately, theysubmit a project that takes all
of that learning and that innerwork and personal development
that they've been doing, andputs it into action. You know,
(01:50):
what kind of change can you makein your community now that you
have embarked on a what we hopeis a lifelong reflection journey
as an educator. So yeah, that'swhat it is. And we work with
people from all over the world.
We're not just in the US, butwe're got an international
focus.
Heather Woods (02:10):
Excellent. So you mentioned that you focus on
Adult Social and EmotionalLearning. So it's quite the
shift of a lot of the focus ofsocial emotional learning,
right. Although the the castledefinition mentions, you know,
children and adults, most of theresearch and implementation
(02:31):
really focuses on students,right. Yeah. So how did you come
about kind of focusing on Adultsocial emotional learning?
Ellen Mahoney (02:40):
Yeah, I was out in the field working, I have a
sister organization called seechange mentoring. And even
though my background is inpublic educate my initial foray
into education was in the publicschool system in the US. But the
last seven years, I've workedwith international schools
overseas. And specifically, mywhole focus for the last almost
(03:03):
20 years has been onrelationship skills in schools.
And in particular, adultsability to connect with young
people appropriately and developeffectively. So that kids can
learn and be well. So that'swhat I was doing. And I was
visiting all these schools andhelping them design mentoring
programs and advisory programsand training everybody on that
(03:25):
work and helping them see theirchildren through the cultural
context and all that kind ofstuff. And I just felt like I
was hitting a wall, you know, Icould, I could design a perfect
or I could design a really greatmentoring program. And I could
do some great professionaldevelopment for everybody and
forming relationships witheducators and make them feel
safe, etc, etc. But if they, ifthey weren't willing, or if they
(03:50):
weren't given the space and timeand supports, to work on their
own inner stuff, you know, theirtheir own personal development,
their own relationship skills,and I can only get them so far.
And I just felt like we weremissing an opportunity to have a
greater impact on students. So Ithought, well, I'm going to
(04:11):
spend the summers is a few yearsago, I thought, let me spend the
summer reading all the research,I can find there must be a
solution here. And what I foundwas that number one, that most
pre service training programs inthe world don't include any kind
of dis personal work, personaldevelopment, social emotional
(04:32):
skill development work foradults, at the time, just three
years ago, and it's still kindof the case. There's very few
professional developmentopportunities for that kind of
emotional work. And, you know, Idove into Patricia Jennings and
you know, Mark Greenberg's workon Adult SEL in particular. And
(04:54):
I was, you know, looking at alot of the stuff from the
learning Policy Institute herein the States. And all the
research was saying that, yes,this is a gap. It's a gap in
research. It's a gap inpractice. And it is absolutely
necessary if you're going toimplement SEL effectively. So
there was just so that was bothfrustrating. And then it also
(05:17):
was like the, you know, theimpetus for me to say, well,
let's try and make a littleheadway here or, you know, so
that was the idea. And,ultimately, yeah, I were I
partnered up with this womanthat has similar ideas, and kind
of actually came with exactlythe same place at the same time
as I did. We joined forces meand we started developing this.
Heather Woods (05:41):
Fantastic. So you mentioned getting student
feedback during their learningprocess. And so what does that
look like? And what impact Haveyou seen that have on, you know,
your participants and learnersexperiences?
Ellen Mahoney (05:59):
Yeah, well, it makes me think of a story I, we,
so the, we are actuallylaunching the international of
the iseq. This summer. So we'regoing to see what that impact
looks like. And we'll see whathappens. But I'll tell you a
story that kind of is one of thethings that's informing sort of
(06:20):
a inspirational moment I hadwith a student that informed
some of this work. We were I wasworking in a school and in China
in Beijing, so the InternationalSchool, predominantly Chinese
students, but also some foreignstudents as well. But faculty,
all Western, mostly white, andthen a Western curriculum, just
(06:44):
to give you some context, so. Soprior to circulus, I, usually
schools would call me when theirmentoring advisory programs were
going terribly. Or, you know,they tried something and it
didn't work. And it was reallymessy. And then they hired me to
come in and clean it up. Theysaid, they called me said,
Listen, we have this increasewith mental health issues with
(07:06):
our students, which, you know,we're seeing around the world.
And they said, We don'tunderstand, because we actually
have a lot of counselors,they're great. They're lovely
people. You know, our teachersreally care about the students.
And we keep telling them, if youhave a problem, come talk to us,
but they won't come talk to us.
And we think it might be becausethey're Chinese and so that
maybe they don't value this kindof work. And I just thought, I
(07:28):
don't know about that. But youknow, what? You go in with an
open mind, I have a feeling it'snot that but we'll see, you
know, so I went in there, and Ispent a week with students just
getting their feedback, which isoften a step that's completely
missed. When schools arecollecting evidence on on how
their programs are going, theymight collect data, but I find
(07:50):
this stuff that's missing issitting down with the students
and saying, you filled out thesesurveys, does this telling you a
story, what stories is tellingyou what are we missing, you
know, get your point of viewfrom your own words. Anyway, at
one point that week, the studentsaid to me, miss, we love our
teachers, they're great, youknow, counselors, they're great.
(08:14):
But have you seen how stressedout they are all the time?
They're running around? Totallyirritated? so stressed out? Why
would I come to them with one ofmy problems? You know, and just
further burden than they canhandle. And it was such an eye
opener for the school, you know,and that just really caught that
was the sentiment that all thekids were saying. So anyway,
(08:36):
that really was an eye opener, Ithink if I were to come in just
directly and say that thisschool, you need to work on
Adult social emotionalcompetencies. And you know,
here's how you do it a, b, andc, it wouldn't have, I don't
think that the faculty wouldhave been as invested as
actually hearing the studentssay, I'm not I'm coming to you,
I'm not coming to you notbecause of a cultural reason,
(08:58):
but because of what maybe aschool culture reason, but you
know, but because of what I'mseeing in the adults, and it's
keeping, asking for help. So
Heather Woods (09:12):
that's, yeah, that's so powerful. And like you
said, like, we don't often delvedeeper into those kind of survey
responses, right, and figure outthe reasoning behind them. I
mean, I see it in research allthe time, when we rely so much
on surveys, as opposed to, youknow, more qualitative
discussions. But yeah, it's sointeresting to see, you know,
(09:37):
that there was almost on theteachers part, some self
awareness lacking right on howthey're coming across. And yeah,
it's so impactful. So you talkedabout certification. So what
kind of would build that looklike for educators and anyone
(10:00):
that wants to take it?
Ellen Mahoney (10:02):
Yeah, we're playing around with some things.
I mean, right now it's availablefor individuals. And but we're,
we think that the impact wouldis would be much stronger as far
as impact on the actual schoolcommunity, if we, if if
educators do it as teams. So ifyou have like a whole department
(10:24):
or you know, an SEL committee orsomething like that, where,
because change obviously, ismuch harder to do if it's just
you if you're the sole champion.
So, so we're looking at, we'relooking at that model, and we're
looking at strategicpartnerships for work that can
help us do do that provide thatopportunity for whole teams, in
the meantime, had some knownvisuals, and we just were
(10:44):
working with them, the school inVietnam and a school in
Malaysia, right now, that willstart the process with us,
although it's open to everybody.
So, so the, you know, what itlooks like is, I think that
people will probably come intothe certification from two
different angles, one, which wethink will be most of the case,
(11:08):
in the very beginning, will bepeople that already loves social
emotional learning and love thisword like, Oh, I get to spend,
yeah, I can't wait. Yeah, youhave to start with those people,
the champions that can reallyget the momentum going, of
course, you want this foreverybody, we want as many
(11:30):
people as possible to have theopportunity to really work on a
skill building. And then I thinkthat we'll probably find some
other people that are, you know,quote, unquote, doing social
emotional learning in theirschool. And, and, you know, the
schools decide, we want them tokind of, you know, get a start.
(11:52):
And the way that thiscertification works is that the
first course is is focused onself awareness. And it's a
small, it's a short course, it'sonly three days. But the idea,
we're giving them a general ideaof what adult social emotional
learning is. And then we'rehelping them think about how do
you practice? How do you createa reflective practice, as an
(12:15):
NGO, we're just getting themstarted. And then there's some
other self awareness work thatthey're doing, including a lot
of personal personal assessment,personal inventories that they
can use, we're kind of givingthem the tools, we're setting
them up to get going. And atthat point, they can continue on
for the rest of thecertification. Or they can say,
not for me, and we'll try andfigure out how to get them on
(12:37):
board later. Yeah, yeah, that'ssort of the general idea they
collected, you know, it'scompetency based. So the idea is
that if we really focus on theskill building, and not just the
content of adult SEL, that theywill have more agency in their
work, there'll be more equity.
You know, they, the, the hope isthat they will transfer these
(13:02):
skills to all parts of theirschool environment and their
lives in general, which isinteresting to evaluate. Because
the transfer part is reallydifficult with adult social
emotional competencies you canbe, you can have great self
management skills in one contextand fell apart. And the other
and we all know that this year,though, so yeah, and so they,
(13:25):
they, but they collective, theyhave a portfolio that they keep
all your and they're documentingtheir learning, we also put them
in small, what we call peersupport communities. So a team
of other educators from aroundthe world or within their
school, and they all worktogether and encourage each
(13:47):
other in the work that they'redoing in problems. And then they
have a coach as well, thatsupports them throughout the
year. And, you know, providesfeedback and encouragement and
connects them to resources andthat sort of thing. So our hope
is that we have these courses,they're online, but we use all
of the best practices and adultlearning, which is another gap,
(14:09):
I find them a lot ofprofessional development for
adults, you know, so in my mypartner, Christina has amazing
adult learning designer, she'sreally good. So, so she's been
able to really create thesegreat experiences. So yeah, you
know, once you get thecertification, you you can be a
(14:29):
real leader, we say like youbecome an adult SEL leader, and
you go back to your community,and you kind of get the word out
about how important this workis, and hopefully create changes
within your district or withinyour school community. So that
more of them are encouraged todo this kind of work.
Heather Woods (14:49):
Yeah. And it's, you know, I from the research
standpoint that I'm coming from,you know, we see it again and
again, particularly here inCanada with Bonnie Ledbeater,
and the WITS program, you know,you need that one champion, you
need that one person that'sreally advocating for it. But at
the same time, the bestsituation is that whole school
(15:11):
approach, right? So yeah, Itotally see kind of where you're
coming from with where you'dlike to see this go to really
have that impact. And, you know,it's not just about supporting
our students, which is wherewe're, you know, seeing so much
of it come from, it's really, weneed to support our educators to
(15:34):
be able to, you know, do thework, but also, you know, so
that we don't have thatsituation that you're seeing
where teachers are so stressedout, and that's been shown to
the students and you know, thatthey're developing those coping
skills and everything. So youmentioned you start with self
(15:55):
awareness. So I wonder if youcan talk a little bit about the
competencies, because you guystalk about 10 competencies,
which is a little bit differentfrom, you know, the standard
five social awareness. So,sorry, self awareness, self
management, social awareness,relationship building and
decision making. So I'mwondering if you can tell us,
(16:18):
you know, what are the 10 thatyou've kind of identified? And,
you know, how did you come upwith 10?
Ellen Mahoney (16:25):
Yeah, I'll tell you what the 10 are first, and
then I'll tell you the, theGenesis story of it. Okay, so
they are self awareness, wellbeing and resilience skills,
equity and anti bias, education,compassion, efficacy, cultural
responsiveness, relationshipskills, conflict resolution,
(16:46):
perspective taking and activelistening, was a lot. But, you
know, when we were doing thisresearch, or I should say, when
we were consuming all of theresearch, we could to figure
this out, we were reallyinspired by Jennings and
Greenberg's research article,the prosocial classroom,
(17:09):
actually identified slightlydifferent competencies for
adults than what thecompetencies are that castle,
lays out, I mean, ultimately, asa, you know, it's all kind of
the same rate, it's all ideawritten slightly differently,
some, you know, etc. So, butthey identified their
(17:29):
competencies were self awarenessand social awareness, just like
castle cultural sensitivity, prosocial values, which is like,
you know, taking responsibilityfor your actions and being
thoughtful about like, yourimpact on community and that
kind of thing. And then selfmanagement, that's identified
(17:50):
from the available research atthe time, on educators on their
well being and their impact onstudents learning, you know,
classroom management, behavior,all of that kind of stuff. So I
started from there, actually,because there really wasn't any
other. I mean, there was verylittle research out there on the
(18:12):
actual competencies that adultshad to, to really work on. So I
started from there. And then I,I, there's a, there's an
organization called the Globalonline Academy, and they run a
summit every summer, which Irecommend to educators. It's a
design summit. And you can gothere during the summertime with
(18:34):
an idea that you have for yourschool, you have you have a
coach, you have a team, you havecolleagues around you, and you
work on, on whatever you'redesigning, they they influenced
me and my partner a lot,actually, my partner comes from
this organization, that's whereshe used to work. But they were
a major influence, becausethey're all about competencies
(18:56):
and competency based learning.
So but a week, just thinkingabout, here's what the research
says, let's think about the sortof the journey that an educator
goes through in the classroom,and really try and nail down
what these specific competenciesare. So we have 10, because
there's, there's certainspecific things that we didn't
(19:17):
want to get lost in terms likeself awareness, if that makes
sense. So, yeah, in likeperspective, taking is more
specific. Then social awarenessin so that's sort of where we,
we went with it and you know,ultimately, even in our work, we
focus on three buckets, selfawareness, social awareness,
(19:39):
and, and culturalresponsiveness. But underneath
those are the othercompetencies.
Heather Woods (19:48):
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it's so interesting,
because that's one thing again,like we've talked about that,
you know, I'm seeing in my ownresearch, Like, what are these
foundational things? And I'vehad some really interesting
discussions with students andcolleagues. Like one week, I was
(20:11):
talking with my colleague and wewere talking about, okay, so
self awareness is reallyfoundational for self
management, and like, we'remaking that connection. And then
I was talking to one of mystudents, and he was like, I
think self awareness isfoundational for social
(20:31):
awareness, because you need toknow yourself and where you're
coming from. And I was like,Yes. And but then like, it's
just all this thing, like,what's coming first, like,
Where's the horse? And where'sthe cart? And yes, but they're
so interconnected. And I waslike, it really just highlights.
You know, that it's a little bitcomplex, and it's a little bit
(20:52):
messy. But I do like theapproach that you're taking
that, you know, these are thethings that we really need to
highlight. And these are thethings that we need to talk
about.
Ellen Mahoney (21:02):
Yeah, but I would say other like, the the Yeah, I
agree. And those conversationsthat you have with your
colleagues are the sameconversations where we've been
having as well. And I think,ultimately, what we decided was
that kind of what like, whatyour colleague said, is that we
felt that, you know, it's theoxygen mask, like, you know, you
have to put that on first,before you help someone else. So
(21:25):
our thought was, let's startwith the, the more like the
self, the self part. And then wemove to a social part, which is
the, like, the socialrelationships part, which is a
social, cultural piece. And asocial has to come before the
cultural, you know, according toour hypothesis, because how
(21:47):
could you possibly be culturallyresponsive, if you're not
socially aware, if you're notaware of how you come across to
other people, and the impact ofyour words and your emotions on
other people, and yourrelationship skills and that
sort of thing, then you do thecultural responsiveness piece.
But then from moving from selfto social, then we say you move
to community, only then can youreally have the kind of impact
(22:10):
you want to have on thecommunity and really consider
sort of more the systems ofeducation and the systems that
she worked within, in order tochange them.
Heather Woods (22:23):
Yeah, and I think it's an interesting, you know,
like, you're thinking like this.
And castle, I mean, it's like,the main thing in the states
slash world for defining thesocial emotional learning within
school systems, but the recent,I think, was 20 definition
change, to really include thatcultural community piece, and
(22:47):
really being critical of thesystems in place. Right, that,
you know, influence our everydayexistence and how it influences
different people in differentways. You know, and I think, but
then you've got this like, for,like, that's one of your
(23:10):
buckets, is this cultural andpiece, right? And I think, yeah,
it's gonna be really interestingto see how that kind of
translates into the researchinto the practice. And it's
quite exciting. It's so it's socomplex, you know, it's
Ellen Mahoney (23:31):
Yeah. It's almost overwhelming when you think
about the systems piece, butit's critical. And, yeah, it's
going to be I look forward tomore research being done, and I
hope that we can share, youknow, I we look forward to the
opportunity for our work to beevaluated, because we, I mean,
(23:52):
ultimately, this is, this iswhat I want to do forever. This
is so important to me. I justwant the adults heal, you know,
I want Yeah, we're adults toheal whatever they need to heal
from. And then the ones thatchoose to to dedicate their
lives to young people'sdevelopment, I want them to be
supported, you know?
Heather Woods (24:13):
Yeah, no, I think we definitely share that that
passion. I mean, though, that'swhy I've kind of coined, you
know, my research and theneventually This podcast was
added, you know, the SEL andaction kind of project because
they're in teaching and so Iteach in the Faculty of
(24:35):
Education, but I teach graduatestudents. I don't teach teacher
candidates and so I'm havinggraduate students from, you
know, industry, I'm havingteachers, I'm having admin, I'm
having medical professionals,medical educators, a really wide
range of students, and they'reall you know, hungry for this
(24:57):
information and seeing theimpact. They can have in their
their professions from kind ofthis adults perspective. So
right now I teach aboutleadership and social emotional
competencies, particularly in aremote context because of our
current context, right. But it'sso interesting, and it's really,
(25:21):
they want to bring this back totheir teams to their students,
and, you know, kind of shiftthat thinking about who they are
as leaders and the skills that,you know, they can possess and
worked on, and that it's, it's acontinual journey. And I think
that's one thing that a lot ofpeople tend to forget, right, is
(25:42):
that these are skills. They'renot traits. It's not, you know,
something that is said and doneafter you leave, you know, in
the research, sometimes it stopsat grade eight, but or grade 12,
right, like, these are thingsyou can continually work on.
Ellen Mahoney (26:02):
Yeah, that's a cool shift from thinking about
these things as traits andmoving to thinking of them as
skills, which is what they are,is so important to me. And
incredibly, I think it'sempowering when when you help
people understand that it's notlike, Sure, I mean, we their
temperament is an actual thing.
(26:25):
Born with certain temperaments,of course, but these are all
skills that anyone can build.
And that's what's interestingabout that is we, when we got
started as an organization, wewere building this SEL, adult
SEL work, but then COVID hit.
And so we quickly shifted to tojust as soon as possible, get
resilience development work outthere for educators, which is
(26:49):
one small part of adult SEL, Ithink sometimes will equate well
being work with adult SEL andyou and I know that that's, that
is not they're not the same,they're well, being skills is
definitely part of adult SEL,but it's not the But anyway, so
we developed this resiliencecourse called reclaiming your
resilience, and which was awhole other really powerful,
(27:11):
amazing experience. For even,you know, for us, as well as the
educators we all learn together,you know, practicing what we
preach. But the, like, our mainthing with that, too, is that
this is not, it's not that yourcolleague is more resilient,
it's that he or she is takingaction every day, and creating
(27:35):
habits and developing skillsthat allows this person to to
cope a little bit better, youknow, and we all come at
different places, we all Some ofus have trauma in our lives.
Some people don't. Some peoplehave supports in our lives, some
people don't. But this is whatthe research tells you is that
at any developmental stage, nomatter what every person can
(27:57):
develop resilience. Because it'sa skill set, not a trait. And I
think that's really empowering.
And I think back to what you'resaying about your work with your
own graduate students is that Ithink that there's a I think
we're having a moment right now,I think COVID has, you know,
made us get a little closer morequickly to this moment. But I
(28:20):
think we're having him kind ofreflecting on the way we show up
for everybody every day andwanting to be well and wanting
to be healthier, and thinkingabout our impact on other people
and thinking about our ownbiases and prejudices and that
sort of thing. And I do thinkthat people are hungry for it,
you know? And the more we canthink about it as a competency
(28:42):
development perspective, theless scary it is, the less
overwhelming I think thatpersonal development
Heather Woods (28:53):
Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I
think that's one thing that, youknow, that shift kind of
mentally what happens when youstart thinking about a skill,
but then letting them know,like, I, my students will tell
you, I'm very open with that,yes, I teach this stuff. I'm not
(29:14):
an expert at this stuff. Like interms of my own skills. You
know, I, you know, can'tmeditate all the time. I can't
practice mindfulness perfectlyall the time. You know, my time
management may be a littlewonky, so it's, like, it's a
(29:36):
journey. It's just taking thosesteps and acknowledging that
it's something you can work onlittle bits at a time. And, and
you mentioned something reallyinteresting about, you know, the
current pandemic context. Intalking with educators,
particularly in Alberta, some ofthe edge kiters that I was
(30:00):
speaking to, for my research,we're talking about that when
this all happened, it shifted.
It was compassion beforecurriculum. And that kind of,
you know, phrase just reallystuck with me. And I think for
so many educators, like yousaid, it just really flipped a
switch where this needs to comefirst. And, but and I think in
(30:23):
that process, a lot of themrealize that, okay, I want to be
there for my students. But thenhow am I here for myself, to be
able to do this and support mystudents? It's been a really
interesting discussions, Istarted collecting my data,
right, as the pandemic hit. Wow,here in Canada. So it was really
(30:46):
interesting to see. Kind oftheir shift in emphasis and
thinking and, and everything.
I'm still working through thatdata. But it's amazing. And
those those stories, but yeah,it's just I think, yeah, the
(31:07):
COVID has definitely sped up ourfocus on getting to this point,
right. And you know, that, likeyou said, there, there are only
a few kind of schools that areuniversities that really focus
on social emotional learning.
And I think it'll be interestingto see the next couple years,
(31:28):
like, Is there a shift in howmuch we focus on social
emotional learning in teachereducation?
Ellen Mahoney (31:38):
I really hope so, of course, and I hope that, you
know, I was thinking about thisthe other day, that there's a
lot of change that we want tosee in schools, you know, here
in the US, and it's, it'sinternational as well, I think
Lloyd was murdered, there washuge impetus to do anti racism
(32:01):
work. And anti bias work, orit's not just do the work, but
it's, it's sort of have thatlens, as an educator, if you're
working in an American context,for example. And, you know, my
concern with with where we're atright now, with all of that
work, which I which I believe inis that if we haven't had the
(32:27):
support, and the opportunity inthe space to develop the inner
work, it will be a band aidapproach, we will, you know,
when to use an Americanreference, but like, we'll teach
Alice Walker for a semester, andthen we're going to go back to
the white Western canon nextyear, because we haven't done
(32:48):
that inner work. So in order forus to make transformational
change, you know, in order forCOVID, to really wake us up, you
know, I think COVID woke us up,in many ways. And we started to
reprioritize. Or to go back towhat we first prioritize when we
got into education in the firstplace. We have to do the inner
(33:11):
work, which also includes theleaders, because I think the
other thing, that you were justmaking me think about this, you
know, same thing, when COVIDhit, we heard the same thing,
compassion before a curriculumkind of a perspective. But then
also, well, I've got to takecare of myself, in order to take
care of others, which is was sohard to do this year, very
(33:32):
painful thing to have thatrealization, and then be, you
know, having to deal withparenting while you're educating
and, you know, everything elsethat was going on. But I think,
yeah, I think that there's thisawakening, I think what happened
also with teachers is that they,they prioritize, they wanted to
(33:54):
prioritize the compassion, youwanted to prioritize self care.
But then there are these systemsin place structures in place in
their schools that really limitthat, you know, whether it's if
your kids don't have access to,you know, reliable internet, and
so it made it harder to connectwith your kids, or be greater
grading and discipline policiesin your school was not conducive
(34:18):
to supporting the context thatyour kids were were in as they
were trying to learn, you know,etc, etc. So, again, I that's
why I hope that this kind ofcompetency work gets a little
bit deeper and that leaders takethis work as well. So that so
that we can really make alasting shift. And this is not
(34:39):
just a one semester of Kumbaya,we go back to the old way. Yeah.
Heather Woods (34:46):
Yeah, it's a I mean, it makes me think of you
mentioned internet. So I'm partof a digital x equity research
team here in Ontario. We'restarting with Ontario and then
hoping to go national. But, youknow, everybody thinks of the
(35:06):
United States and Canada, as youknow, we have internet, well, we
don't, we don't have very goodinternet. And so what we found
is that so many teachers reallystruggled to connect, because
their students don't haveaccess. And so access included,
whether it was affordable. SoCanada is notorious for
(35:28):
ridiculously expensive internet.
And, as well, just access,because so much of our, within
Ontario and across the country,so much of our population is not
in city centers, it's rural. So,you know, the government may
(35:49):
say, oh, everybody has internet,but we have five megabytes per
second. That is not sufficient.
for, you know, being able toconnect with your students to be
able to host your, your Googlemeats, or whatever platform that
they're using. And really, youknow, see your students connect
(36:13):
with your students, if they'renot able to download things or,
you know, get your messagesthrough, it's a problem in the
current context, in buildingthat connection. But also, you
know, so much of my previousresearch has really focused on,
okay, if we're implementingsomething in the classroom, you
(36:36):
know, how effective is that?
What's your self efficacy indoing that, and what they were
saying is, particularly inrelation to bullying, prevention
programs, and intervention is,okay, will intervene, but then
we report it higher up, and, youknow, things kind of stopped
there. So really what you'resaying, with this, you know, we
need to get the leaders we needto get, you know, bigger things.
(36:57):
in place, I think this reallyhighlights, you know, what
you're saying is, we need tounderstand those systems, we
need to get leaders on board,not only for SEL, but really
looking at those systems inplace, like having reliable
internet to be able to connect,in situations like this, where
(37:18):
Ontario is not going back toschool this year. We're
remaining remote. You know, soso how do we, you know, work
around that, and, you know,really try to connect with our
students, it's quite difficult.
So it really highlights, youknow, that it's not just SEL,
(37:39):
there, there are lots of otherthings that we need to account
for. And I think, yeah, that's,I mean, what gets my brain
going, is looking at thosesystems in play, that are so
much bigger than ourselves somuch bigger than the community
that really needs to beaddressed to do this work
effectively. And think about,you know, what does the remote
(38:04):
mean, even for or virtual mean,for social emotional learning?
Does it change things? I wouldsay yes. In the course I teach
right now, right? Like we'relooking at kind of remote and
flexible work research, to tryand infer what might be the case
(38:25):
in this kind of forced work fromhome situation. You know, and
it's really focusing oncommunication and trust and how
those things have to shift alittle bit. You know, cuz
communicating virtually is not.
Yeah, especially if it's alltext based.
Ellen Mahoney (38:45):
Yeah, we, that's interesting that you bring that
up, because in a previous life,well, not a previous life, it's
still my life. But But before Istarted, my organization's about
seven years, or I don't know, 10years ago, I worked for this
organization in the US called Imentor, which is an E mentoring
(39:07):
a really a, what we would callnow a blended mentoring program.
That is, it's national, but Iworked in the New York City
Office. And the idea there wasthis is sort of before zoom was
the thing that it is now. Soyeah, and we use email as one
way to connect with kids. Sojust to give you a little
(39:29):
context, so we had we workedwith young people in most of the
boroughs in New York City, andall of them came from high
poverty communities, in schoolswith the kind of schools that
that serves young people livingin high poverty. And we we
(39:51):
connected them with mentors,adults, in the city
professionals, and at the timein New York had one of the low
Volunteer rates in the entirecountry in New York City, the
entire interesting, really bad,primarily because people are so
busy working thinking abouttheir own careers that, you
know, there's little littlethinking about other other
(40:13):
folks. So, um, and or Yeah,little time available to do more
than sort of donating or a raceor, you know, a one time thing
on an ongoing trip was a lot toask of a New Yorker at the time.
And so and so we the way that wetried to bridge that gap was
provide some opportunities toconnect solely online. And so it
(40:37):
was through emails that theywould connect, but what we found
was that we ended up doing acombo combo design. So it was,
you would email once a week, andthen once a month, you would see
each other in person, that feltmore doable for the volunteers.
And then the question was, well,is is impactful for the
students. And, and what we foundwas that in the beginning of
(41:01):
their relationship, if ifstudents saw their mentor in
person within the first month,that the quality of their
relationship was stronger,moving forward throughout the
year, and those that they didn'thave to necessarily meet every
single month in person forthings to work, but they did
(41:21):
have to meet in the beginning tokind of establish trust in that
initial connection. And the onesthat didn't, that did not meet
in person, within that firstmonth really struggled for the
rest of the year. So you know,what we found was that the E
part of the mentoring definitelywas impactful, they definitely
could connect, but you had tohave it with some in person
(41:42):
work. also helps too. And thiswould be reallyhard. And I mean,
I'm the mentoring working,Canada's very strong, and I in a
lot of the work is around therural communities, which is
really challenging to reach.
But, um, yeah, they the the onething, one powerful thing, when
you see your students in person,whether you're a teacher or a
(42:04):
mentor, or you know, youthdevelopment worker, is, um,
hopefully you get to see them intheir own community, and
provides you additional context.
And if you're doing your socialemotional work, hopefully, you
know, deeper empathy and respectfor their culture and all that.
Yeah. So it's Yeah, it's athere's a lot for us to learn.
Heather Woods (42:27):
Certainly, yeah.
And I think, you know, this workhas been happening for 20 plus
years. But I think we're stilljust scratching the surface,
right? And, and reallyunderstanding the impact. And,
as you mentioned, really earlyon, like, you need to have the
teachers with their own socialemotional learning, social
(42:52):
emotional competencies. And, youknow, for this to work, and
really get that kind of wholeschool approach. And I think
they're really kind of cool.
There's not quite a lot ofresearch or understanding of
(43:12):
what it looks like in practiceand stuff. So the work you're
doing is quite exciting. Yeah,it is exciting to see. But yeah,
we're really excited about it.
Yeah. And I think, yeah, it's,it's the start of something and
I think it's, it's gonna havequite the impact. You know,
(43:32):
maybe that's just my own biasand, you know, view of SEL. But,
yeah, it's just, I I'm veryexcited to see how things go
with your work, but also, youknow, kind of grand scheme of
things of how they last, youknow, year and a bit has really,
(43:55):
really changed things for us andhow we think about education and
how we think about ourselves andstudents. So yeah, I really
excited that we got to meet andchat about this.
Ellen Mahoney (44:11):
Absolutely. I love I love talking with you. I
love I love hearing about yourwork, too. It's very
interesting. So yeah, yeah, it'sit's good stuff.
Heather Woods (44:20):
Yeah. Any kind of Final thoughts about, you know,
educators and social emotionallearning?
Ellen Mahoney (44:27):
Well, I would just say that, you know, if
you're, if you're gettinginvolved in this work, you know,
whether as an adult that wantsto develop their own social
competencies, which we all haveto do, or as researcher or a
practitioner of SEL, I just wantpeople to be sort of
(44:47):
compassionate towards themselvesand others because the process
No, like you, no one's perfect.
This isn't a judgment and onlyif we can be open and
compassionate towards eachother. And ourselves, will we
really be able to learn? So Ijust I really, that's like my
hope for everybody. It's been ahell of a year. So passion is
we're trying to figure all ofthis out together. Yeah.
Heather Woods (45:14):
Yeah, certainly.
Well, I really appreciate youtaking the time to speak with
me. And it's been, yeah, reallygreat. And now I'm, like, super
excited for digging into my SELwork today. Because it's all I
do. But yeah, thank you so much,Ellen, for for taking the time
(45:37):
today and really appreciate youtelling the story of, you know,
circulus and your yourinitiatives and passion moving
forward. I think that thatcertainly comes through. And
just the passion for, you know,not only our students but
ourselves as educators, I think,and making sure we're taking
(46:01):
care of ourselves and growing.
And yeah, thank you so, so much.
Thank you so much.
Ellen Mahoney (46:11):
Thank you so much for having me on.
Heather Woods (46:13):
Thank you. So you've been listening to the SEL
in action podcast where wediscuss social emotional
learning and professional andeducational settings. Thank you
so much to Ellen Maharani todayfor speaking with me from the
circulus Institute. And we hopeto talk to you soon and keep on
(46:35):
listening. Thank you so much,and have a great day.
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