Georgia Focus - School Consultation

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Welcome to Georgia Focus. I'm John Clark and the Georgia
and US Network. The Marcus School Consultation Program rites consultation
and training to educators across Georgia, supporting teachers and addressing
the unique needs of their students and doing so in
a way that sets everyone up for success. Here to
talk about the Marcus School Consultation Program is Jennifer Cardinas,
the program manager. First of all, tell me what you

(00:32):
do right now at the market School Consultation Program.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
So I am the manager of the School Consultation Program,
and we provide outreach to schools districts to build capacity
of teachers to support students with all kinds of learning needs.
So we support kids with autism, kids with other developmental disabilities,
as well as children in the general education population.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
How do you know what they're going to do? What
particular school does something for autism versus something else? Is
there anything I guess more prevalent in a school that
you have to do.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
So we're in a really unique place right now. Since COVID,
I know it was five years ago, but since COVID
it has ended.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
And everybody's back in school.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
We've seen a lot of behavior changes in our students
significantly more social emotional developmental needs, difficulty with communication and
problem solving, difficulty with stamina, and trouble regulating their emotions,
which manifest some behavior challenges.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
So we go into school.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Schools will contact us or districts will contact us and say, hey,
we're having some issues with this, or we have more
students diagnosed with autism.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
Can you help us with this?

Speaker 2 (01:43):
And we utilize the problem solving model to go in
and identify what are the needs of the school or
the district and how can our services best support building
the capacity of the teachers who are supporting the kids.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Oh so that's going to be challenging though you work
state yes, sir, Oh so that's challenging state wide. How
do you do that?

Speaker 3 (02:04):
That's amazing, It's fantastic. We love going to our rural communities.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
I've been doing this work for over twenty years in
some capacity or another, and our rural communities really need
a lot of support. They're very underserved and under resourced,
and so being able to help them build their capacity
and them be able then to outreach to their neighboring
communities is really really rewarding.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
So if one. I don't know, Middle Georgia somewhere, I
don't know where, Fort Valley. The school there has somebody
that's more into has autism. You have to be able
to do that, have somebody there who can take care
of the autism more so than anything else. Or how
do you work well?

Speaker 2 (02:51):
School aren't really designed that way anymore. So they have
self contained classrooms where students with higher needs might be placed.
But what we do is we pair our consultants with
five teachers in a school, five to six teachers in
a school, okay, And we work with those five to
six teachers to help build their capacity, their ability to

(03:12):
identify what the source of the challenge might be.

Speaker 3 (03:15):
Help support regulation of the student, and help that student.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Be meaningfully included in whatever instruction is happening in the
setting that they're placed in.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Okay, So so you consult the teachers, yes, to do it?
That's okay. So how do you do that that? I'm
amazed by that much stuff. You have that much stuff
and that many schools. How many people do you have
on your staff currently?

Speaker 3 (03:38):
I have three?

Speaker 1 (03:39):
Three people, yes, three people have to manage the entire
schools myself included. Yes, Oh, gosh, yes, how do you
manage that?

Speaker 2 (03:48):
We utilize, like I said, the problem solving model, and
we have a hybrid approach, so we do. We have
a specific rubric that we utilize for observations. We meet
the teachers, we get to know them through invational interviewing
and what their needs and personalities are. Then we go
in and do an observation and follow that up with
some individualized coaching, again utilizing motivational interviewing techniques, which is

(04:10):
just we want our teachers to feel the ownership in
what they're doing because they're the experts in their classrooms,
and so over time they become more confident and competent
at identifying This is the challenge that we're facing. These
are some possible solutions. And not only is this going
to help Johnny who's having trouble, but this is also
going to help ten other kids in my class.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
Okay, are these teachers special needs teachers?

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Some of them are, some of them are general education teachers.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
So there's three primary settings in public schools.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
You have your self contained classrooms, which are students who
have higher needs. It might be behaviorally, it might be academically,
it might be physically. Then you have a co taught
class where there's a special education teacher and a general
education teacher, and then you have genet classes where it's
just the single teacher and their responsible we're all eighteen
to twenty four kids in the classroom.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
Golly. So do you work with every school or not
every school in the state.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
Or we work with whoever comes from last they come
to you. Okay, sure, So we work with larger districts.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
We've been doing a project with Atlanta Public Schools pre
K for the last couple of years, and then we
work with teeny tiny districts. So we are working with
Stuart County, Georgia, which the entire school has less than
four hundred students the whole district from pre K through
twelfth grade, less than four hundred students in one building.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
Oh wow, how do you work with them? How do
you do something with them?

Speaker 2 (05:35):
So we go down there, we spend a whole day
on their campus, supporting their teachers, and then we come back.
We do our observations, we have conversations with them, get
to know them in the community and their students, and
then we come back and we do some of our
own problem solving. What steps might we want to help
the teacher to take and then we do telehealth coaching

(05:56):
with them. Okay, so we follow up forty eight hours
later and do telehealth coaching. They get to ask us questions,
We're providing them with ideas and support, and then we
continually monitor that until we go back in the next
time and do another observation.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
I guess that department that school system down there Stuart County, Yes,
would be difficult because they really they don't have many
anybody down there. They have very few teachers I imagine, correct, correct,
So you really have to help them a lot is
that we do.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
We do And what's fun is that because I've been
working around the state for so long, I understand how
the different networks of communities operate, and I'm able to say, Okay,
well you do this in Stuart County. What does Equipment
County do? Which is another very very small district down there.
And it's fun to get them to problem solve and
think outside the box and come up with different ways

(06:46):
that they can meet the needs of their students. Because
things that we might think are very common that occur
here in Metro Atlanta don't always happen in those outlying districts.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
That's true, and I guess then you use equipment to
it too, talk about Stuart and so forth.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Correct, So then we might connect equipment with Randolph County.
It's another small county, so it's interesting to find the networks.
We've done a lot of work in Baldwin County public
schools and so we're working to connect them with some
neighboring districts as well.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
So it's fun.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
Now you said during the during the pandemic, the needs
increase in these schools from then? Is that what you've
been talking about earlier.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
The needs of our students have really changed, and there's
a lot of research to support that. So during COVID,
we had increased stress of parents at home, so students
and children weren't necessarily getting all of the same developmental
inputs that they might get when they're in a school setting.
One of the big things that was lacking was something
we call language nutrition, and that has to do with

(07:50):
the amount and the quality of words that a child
is exposed to, and that really decreased because parents were
working multiple jobs or they were working while they were home.
And so what we have found is that these students
who are coming back to school really struggle with self regulation,
self awareness, and as a result, it leads to quicker

(08:12):
escalations of challenging behavior or behaviors of concern that disrupt
the flow of a classroom.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
Okay, so, and then you are concentrating on the children
that have an issue, a particular issue that stands out,
not just every student. Really correct, you're concentrating on.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
So we predominantly are called in because of a diagnosis
of autism, a suspected diagnosis of autism that hasn't yet
been identified, or other disabilities that can impair language, self regulation,
and behavior.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
Also recognizing that.

Speaker 2 (08:54):
We have a lot of kids that are being identified
right now that are going through the special education process
because they also are having challenging behaviors or behaviors of
concern in the classroom. So we help the teacher cast
a wide enough net that they're not only meeting those
emergent needs of that particular student that they might have
called us about, but they're also able to help everybody

(09:15):
in the class.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
So is autism the biggest thing you deal with right now?

Speaker 2 (09:21):
Primarily that's what we started with, but now we're finding
again that so many kids have not been diagnosed or
that are going through the eligibility process to be identified
in the schools as having autism that impairs their ability
to participate in the classroom. That we're finding there are
it's autism and other things.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
Now, really autism is it? Is it? I know the
spectrum is huge, so it can be huge. It can
be you know, something minor that may not be They
just have you seem normal too, yelling and streaming and
out of control totally. How do you? How do you?
How do you work with that?

Speaker 2 (10:00):
So we help the teachers see things from a slightly
different lens, So we help them look at the whole
child and everything that might be happening with a student,
recognizing that that student who's externalizing behaviors, there might be
a peer right across the table who is internalizing those
emotions or feelings or struggles that they're having.

Speaker 3 (10:21):
And so we help the.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
Teacher identify ways to support the students to self regulate,
support the student's sensory needs very common with students diagnosed
with autism, to help the students be able to meaningfully
participate at their level in the classroom so that they're
getting the most they can out of their education, okay,
and we do that by asking a.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
Lot of questions.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
Yeah, bit a bit.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
Yeah, it's a constant question asking situation.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
You have to constantly talk about a certain student and
ask you a question about that student constantly.

Speaker 3 (10:53):
So, yeah, it's really interesting.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
We get teachers that are very focused on Johnny again,
for example, and we'll say, well, Johnny does this. I
noticed this when I was in your classroom, So how
do you think those two things? I'm wondering if those
two things might correlate with each other. Or sometimes teachers
will say, just help me fix this problem, and we'll say, well,
what do you think would fix it?

Speaker 3 (11:16):
And they're like, well, I thought you would.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
Tell me, and we'll say, well, no, you know your
student's best, so what are some ideas you have? And
if they can't come up with anything, we'll ask them
what would it look like if you tried putting Sarah
next to Jacoby?

Speaker 3 (11:33):
And Sarah is really strong with her.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
Language and Jacoby tends to have some difficulty expressing himself.

Speaker 3 (11:39):
I wonder if they could be good peer models for
each other.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
So those are the types of suggestions we come up
with based on what research has told us works. Well
for students based on what we have seen in the
observations that we do. Our observations are highly structured, they're
strength based, and they give us an opportunity to really
dig into what's happening in a classroom that can support.

Speaker 3 (12:04):
The teacher to be able to meet the student's needs.

Speaker 1 (12:06):
And you deal with that by going to this class
and watching what's going on.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Yes, we spend time in the classroom and we take
qualitative and quantitative data, which means we take numbers and
we take notes. I like to say we turn hugs
into numbers for a living because we use all of
that information to help us tell a story about what
is actually happening in the classroom.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
And these are again that they're special needs classes pretty much.

Speaker 3 (12:32):
They're both.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
Yeah, So we have such a huge teacher shortage across
the board that there are a lot of students being
served in general education or co TAK classes that might
have previously been able to be served in a self
contained class. And so we have to look at a
really broad spectrum of where these students with different challenges

(12:54):
are being served and how we can build the teacher
up to be able to support them.

Speaker 3 (13:00):
Teacher burnout's huge.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
Oh yeah, and that's one of the big things that
we tackle with this particular approach.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
What do you do with that? We see?

Speaker 2 (13:07):
So we are completely strength based, So we don't go
in traditional education goes in and looks for what is
the problem and how are we going to fix it?
And we go in and we say, this worked really
really well. How can we make this help this student
or this other group of students work?

Speaker 1 (13:25):
Okay? Now, is a parent involved in any way?

Speaker 3 (13:29):
No, we don't have any parent involvement.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
Our primary service delivery model has to do with the
observations and the coaching, so it's hybrid.

Speaker 3 (13:38):
It is traditional.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Professional learning training that's very engaging and interactive, paired with
the observation and coaching cycles. And then we also offer
individual consultation. So I provide that to administrators and district
level personnel to help them be able to best support
their teachers.

Speaker 1 (13:57):
Okay, now I just thought of this. Do you work
with any of the athletics, any football, big football programs
or something that something's going on with football? Do you
work with them in any way?

Speaker 3 (14:07):
No, we don't, but we certainly could.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
Okay, So that's an opportunity because at the end of
the day, we're focusing on engagement and regardless of what
a student's disability is, regardless of what is being taught.
If a student is engaged, if they have a good
relationship with their teacher, if they're connected to the classroom
and feel like it's a community and they belong, and

(14:31):
if they feel like they have something to contribute, they're
more likely to have a meaningful experience in whatever that
might be. So we could pair athletics with the classroom
by saying, Okay, the student's doing really really great on
the field, but maybe they're really struggling in the classroom.
How can we support this teacher to build up their

(14:51):
athletes so that the athletes can perform equal to what
they're doing on the field.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
Oh, that's what I was thinking, Because how do they
perform the clas asked versus how they do an outfield,
How they do an outfield versus how they're doing the
class It rolls in together, yes.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
And so we really help tie those threads through right
by looking at what is what is the student really
passionate about and how can we bring that into the classroom,
because it might not just like this one student on fire.

Speaker 3 (15:20):
It might light a whole lot more.

Speaker 1 (15:22):
What are you working on right now? If you like today,
when you leave today, what do you go work on?
I got to work on this again. What is it someday?

Speaker 3 (15:28):
When I leave today? I am doing outreach right now.
So I'm trying.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
We are winding out down school year twenty five, the
twenty four to twenty five school year, and I'm reaching
out to districts to let them know we're here and
we want to serve them, and we have a very
unique individualized model that will meet the needs of their students,
that will help with burnout and hopefully increase pretension. We

(15:55):
know that our model improves behavior and discipline outcome. It
has ties to positive academic outcomes, particularly with literacy. It
creates a stronger sense of belonging and involvement in the classroom,
which can also translate into increased attendance as well. Okay,
so while teachers are thinking and districts are thinking about, wow,

(16:17):
this was a really big struggle for this year.

Speaker 3 (16:19):
What can we do next year?

Speaker 2 (16:20):
We want to get them right now and say hey,
we have some ideas that might help.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
Since since you work with Children's Healthcare Atlanta and you're
very closely with them. Do you have a situation where
maybe it's a medical problem that the students are having
a problem with learning that can't because they got a
medical problem.

Speaker 4 (16:37):
So maybe so if we come into situations like that,
what we really do is encourage the school and the
teachers to connect with the child's doctor, to connect with
the child's provider.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
If a student has perhaps been here at mbH for
a period of time and then they need to reintegrate
into the school, if it's a district that we're purchasing
fading in, we could potentially help with that. It's something
that you know, again, people don't always think to call
school consultation when they're bringing a student back into the classroom,

(17:12):
but that would be something that we could definitely provide
some consultative support for.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
What are the teachers themselves that because you know, you
say that not not really special ed or not specially ed,
just teachers. What questions did they have normally that did
you start the year out by well by asking them
questions about what they're going to need this year and
what are I mean, I know you work with them

(17:38):
all during the year, but what do they start out
as saying what do the teachers need.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
So we work with both special education teachers and the
general education teachers. And when a school says, hey, we
need your help, and the district you know, contracts with us.
We start by asking lots of questions. We want to
know what's happening with the teacher and what their perception.

Speaker 3 (17:57):
Of their needs are.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
Most of the time they will say, how do we
fix this? Give me a way to solve this problem
right now, tell me what to do, and we.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
Say we're not going to tell you what to do.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
We want to work together to figure out what's going
to be best. Because there is no one size fits
off for behavior management. There are some best practices and
evidence based strategies, but at the end of the day,
the teacher has to be able to do what's best
for not only that one student, but all the other students.
We have to change our adult behavior if we want

(18:32):
to support kid behavior, and so to best meet the
needs of the students, we have to be able to
get the teachers to open their minds and think of
additional possibilities and feel confident that they can do that
and be.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
Supported in that.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
Now, on your staff, you say you have four with you,
four with me? Do you want more people to help?
You want more people?

Speaker 3 (18:53):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (18:53):
What we need we.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
Want to support more schools and we want more staff
to be able to do that. So being a consultant
is unique work.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
It has to be very purpose driven, it has to
be very passion driven. We do have some travel involved
in our program, but we've worked really hard to minimize
that by incorporating the telehealth into our practices.

Speaker 3 (19:18):
I want people who care.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
About educators and care about students and who can think
outside the box, that are willing to problem solve, but
not be the superhero. Our superheroes are our teachers and
they're the ones who are helping the kids. And so
that's what we're looking for.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
Do you get a lot of applicants?

Speaker 2 (19:41):
You know, I have not posted anything since I took
over this role really so yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:46):
We've changed what we are looking for a little bit.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
So the school Consultation program previously only hired board certified
behavior analysts.

Speaker 3 (19:55):
Oh wow, I would love to bring some educators on
boards and educators.

Speaker 2 (19:59):
Who maybe need break from the classroom and want to
have a different, fresh look. I think that would help
reduce some burnout and hopefully bring them back into the
field with a refreshed and renewed perspective on things. I
think that former educators or educators hiatus educators are really good.

Speaker 3 (20:16):
At helping each other. So I would really love that.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
I would love some social workers who need a break
from the case management process.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
We don't expect.

Speaker 2 (20:28):
Our consultants to be here for ten or fifteen years.
There's so much forward facing work that we do.

Speaker 3 (20:35):
It can be challenging.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
But what we want is people who really care about
education and care about teachers, and most importantly care about kids.

Speaker 1 (20:45):
And you don't need somebody with a medical background, really yeah,
because just children doesn't mean you got to be in medicine.

Speaker 4 (20:51):
Correct.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
So we are a very unique department program and that
we will consider anybody who would be a good fit
for the role as long as they meet the qualifications.
So we would like to hire some master's level employees
because there's some independent thinking that's involved, there's some strategy
that's involved, some very high level problem solving that's involved

(21:14):
as well, and being able to support other people is yeah,
it takes a special skill set.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
We were there Marcus School for Consultation program. Yes, I
know Marcus is a school for autism too, and they
have various schools. This is non medical, sta, but why
do you do it? How did this come about? Is
what I'm trying to say, because it's non medical, but
yet it is medical. How did it come about? So

(21:43):
we have.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
Multiple clinics in the market, Marcus Autism Center, and we.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
Know that there is a need to support these students.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
Who are in the community, in their community schools to
be able to stay in school and to be able
to access their education meaningfully. It might be a student
with a severe case of autism who's very high needs
on the spectrum, and what we want to do is
be able to keep them in their classroom with their peers,

(22:13):
learning in the environment to.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
The best of our ability.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
We know we can't take clinic based practices and apply
them in a classroom. So we take that knowledge, not information,
of clinic based interventions and adapt it and incorporate other
practices with it psychology, social work, etc. Trauma informed practices
and use that to help us provide our services to

(22:36):
the teachers.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
Okay, do you have anybody's psychologists or psychiatrists to work
with you? Here?

Speaker 2 (22:40):
We have a school psychologist postdoc who is on our
team right now, and we have two BCBAs. Interestingly, my
background is in conflict management, have a master's in conflict management,
which is surprisingly.

Speaker 3 (22:53):
Useful in this role.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
But the whole name of the game is collaboration and
so so it helps all of our different disciplines and
backgrounds that we bring help us provide a really comprehensive
foundation to be able to go out and meet these needs.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
It sounds like you know that the difference you've made,
but have you made a difference so far in the
lives of these students out and about in the hinterlands
or Georgia.

Speaker 3 (23:19):
I think we have.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
So some of our districts we have been tracking. We're
taking new metrics now, so this next year is going
to be really exciting for us to see how our
new measures and metrics will what story they'll tell for us.
But previously we've been able to track reduce discipline referrals,
which means more student time in the classroom, which increases

(23:41):
their productivity, their sense of belonging, et cetera. Reduces rates
of out of school discipline by loss of instruction, which
means that we're reducing that's cold to prison pulp line.
Long term increase literacy rates. And we have seen that engaged,
highly functioning classroomsoms that are very inclusive and whole child

(24:03):
supportive through our work also increases the uptake of literacy.
So when we're looking at map scores and we're looking
at milestones, we're looking at I Ready scores, which are
all different testing modes for measuring progress. We see that
those classrooms that make progress towards higher engagement, towards more inclusion,

(24:24):
et cetera, have correlating increases in their testing scores.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
So you're doing a great job. Then obviously you're reaching
out to Stuart County and Randolph County and so forth.
They need it down there, they really do, and so
I'm very appreciative you of doing it. Where should you go?
Where should people go to find out more about you?
Where's a website?

Speaker 2 (24:46):
Go to the Marcus web page and then click on
school Consultations. So if you follow the drop down menus,
I don't know exactly where it is because there have
been some pages to some changes to the website. You
can also email school Consultan at Choa dot org.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
Right and you can find out if you if you're
in school and you're not these people are not helping you. Yes,
you can get in touch with them, right.

Speaker 3 (25:08):
Yes, please please let us know.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
We want to support any any size school, any any needs.

Speaker 1 (25:14):
Yeah, I guess it's good. It's good program. Thank you
so much for being on today, Ashley.

Speaker 3 (25:18):
Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (25:19):
That's Jennifer cardenas program manager of the Marcus School Consultation Program.
You can find out more about them at the Marcus
Center Marcus dot org. For questions or comments on today's program,
you can email me John Clark at Georgeannewsnetwork dot com.
Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you next week right
here in your favorite local radio station on Georgia Focus