In this episode of the Jeff Bradbury Show, Dr. Haley Watson, founder and CEO of Open Parachute, discusses the importance of mental health support in education. She shares her journey as a clinical psychologist and her passion for helping youth navigate their mental health challenges. The conversation explores the current landscape of students post-COVID, the need for teachers to be equipped with mental health strategies, and the importance of training and resources for educators. Dr. Watson emphasizes the role of teachers in supporting students, the significance of having open conversations, and the necessity of creating a supportive environment for all students.
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Conversation Takeaways
Dr. Watson's background shapes her passion for youth support.
Mental health skills should be taught like literacy.
Teachers can empower students with simple strategies.
Training for educators is essential for effective support.
Open Parachute provides accessible mental health resources.
Every student faces challenges; support should be universal.
Conversations about mental health can be simple yet impactful.
Identifying patterns in student behavior is crucial.
Teachers should always refer students when concerned.
Creating a supportive environment is key to student success.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Mental Health in Education
03:22 Understanding the Impact of COVID on Students
06:45 Empowering Teachers with Mental Health Strategies
11:44 The Need for Effective Training in Schools
15:25 Building a Framework for Teacher-Student Conversations
18:36 The Journey Behind 'Finding the Words' Book
21:18 Supporting Students in Crisis
23:27 Identifying and Addressing Depression in Students
27:42 Navigating Identity and Peer Pressure in Middle School
30:54 When to Engage and Refer: A Teacher's Guide
36:56 Open Parachute: Resources for Mental Health Education
39:55 Taking Steps Towards Mental Health Awareness
Dr. Hayley Watson is the founder and CEO of Open Parachute, a Tier 1 K-12 curriculum program that supports the mental health of students, teachers, and parents. She is also an author and Clinical Psychologist and holds a PhD in school bullying interventions, along with four further degrees in the field of mental health. She has been creating and delivering programs for youth and practitioners across the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia for the past 20 years.
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Hello everybody and welcome to the TeacherCast Educational Network. name is Jeff Bradbury. Thank you so much for joining us today and making TeacherCast your home for professional development. This is the Jeff Bradbury Show episode number 59. Today my guest is the founder and CEO of Open Parachute, a tier one K-12 curriculum program that supports the mental health of students, teachers, and parents. And we all know this time of year there's a lot of stuff going on with our students, lots of transitions.
We have students who are trying to get used to a new grade level, new building, new school. So much stuff is going on in the lives of our students. How do we support them as both parents and as educators? It is a pleasure today to introduce Dr. Haley Watson. Dr. Watson, how are you today? Welcome to the program.
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Thank you so much for having me. I am doing well, thank you.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
Well, so much has been said all about, you know, supporting our students, supporting struggling students, helping our students when they are in need. But talk to us a little bit about your background. How did we get here? Who is Dr. Watson?
Dr Hayley Watson (:
So there's a long version and a short version of that. professionally, I'm a clinical psychologist. That's what I did my training in. I actually started in criminology and did a bit of a meandering. But I've always been passionate about working with youth and supporting youth. And the sort of slightly longer version of that is from my own experience growing up. I think this is where a lot of us get into these professions where we want to help people.
I went through some pretty scary things when I was really little and it definitely shaped my mind and the way I saw things and didn't really realize that until I was much older and finally in therapy and going, right, I'm scared. That's why I'm doing these things. And so when I kind of looked at the trajectory of my life, I saw, imagine if I could have learned this stuff.
when I was young. Imagine if I didn't have to make a hundred mistakes and you know have a life that's sort of falling apart to finally start going wait a minute maybe I need to make some changes. And so that's really what drove me to want to support and help young people. But then working as a clinical psychologist really only being able to see one child at a time.
And there are so many kids and students that have so many barriers to accessing that kind of help. So you're really only getting to help a tiny little subsection of the population. And I really have a big passion to help more kids to have this accessible. And that's why I really feel passionately about working with school systems, because it's where we have every single student. And so the whole goal of what we do at Open Parachute and my book and everything is all about
how do we take these really important in-depth psychological skills and allow them to be used by the masses, allow them to not be something that only specialized professions get access to, but really break them down, make them simple, make them digestible so that parents, teachers, students can learn about their own minds, learn about how to support themselves, and really have the resources to truly thrive.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
break that down a little bit because we are in a really interesting time now in education. have kindergarten first and maybe second graders who are post COVID babies. We have that third through sixth, seventh who are you know, COVID was a thing, but it really hasn't been since they've been in formal school. And then of course, you still have the upper kids who they were in middle school and elementary school when all this was happening. Where do you see the student body?
this, you know, right now. And how do you assess that if you're walking into a school district? How do you break all of that down based off of the last six or seven years of their lives?
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Absolutely. So I think the thing we want to remember is most kids are going to be struggling in one way or another. And absolutely, the last sort of decade has been really intense, not only with COVID, but lots of things going on in the world. There's also sort of increasing pressures that kids face. Social media is a really big factor in a lot of kids' lives, and that has implications. And then there's
things going on at home and there's things going on in peer groups. So I think the most helpful thing we can do is to get away from the model where we're trying to sort of separately diagnose and assess each child to sort of figure out which are the ones with the quote unquote problems and really start assuming, well, as humans, we're all struggling. You know, there's not gonna be a single child out there that isn't going through something.
or will go through something in the near future. So how can we get into the space where we think about supporting every child and we think about it as a skillset. That's what we really focus on in our program because just like when we think about literacy, know, and numeracy, we have classes that teach that, you know, if we want students to be able to read and write, we teach them a skillset. And so mental health is no different.
We don't wait until we find out that a child can't read in eighth grade to then start teaching them to read. We try to do the building block. Same thing with mental health. We don't want to wait until someone is really, really at their wit's end or really struggling or we have a diagnosis or something like that. Why don't we just build some blocks here and say, let's teach everyone this skill set so that they can apply it when they face that challenge.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
when we're looking at the fact that many of our teachers have hundreds of students, I I myself right now I have 485 students this year. I can't I don't feel like I can remember every single individual. I can't remember every single individual IEP every single individual 504. What advice do you have for teachers?
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
who, you know, they're working with the student population that they might not know. You know, again, my previous life was as a music teacher. Kids come to me, they go away. I see them for 40 minutes, maybe once a week. But we're all supporting every part of our students, every part of our day. Some teachers get a chance to really get to know the kids. And for some teachers, it's a body in a chair. Thanks. Next class. And that's not the best way to put it, but that sometimes is.
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Thanks.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
The reality of putting in things.
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Absolutely, and I'm really glad you brought that up because it is a real sort of stressor and a pressure that teachers feel to know how to say the right thing to each student and to know what's going on for them. And that's really overwhelming. And a lot of the times it's not actually needed. This is the thing that's the exciting part of all of this. If we focus instead on a simple, generalizable skill set. So if we know, if you know as an educator,
These are some things that are gonna help all kids. These are some things, there are some skills I can teach, there's some words I can say, these are some conversations I can have that really is gonna help every child. And so, those kinds of conversations are really about helping kids self-reflect, helping kids find their own resources, helping kids realize that they are more resilient and capable than they think.
And that conversation you can have with any student, any time, regardless of whether you know their history or not. And I think that's a really important distinction because of course, you know, teachers are not therapists and we don't need teachers to be therapists. We just need teachers to feel empowered and supported enough to know I've got a framework. I have some things I can say that I know are helping, but I don't have to feel that burden or stress that I have to solve all of the problems in my students' lives because
even if you do know your students well, you still can't do that. know, that's not the play, the classroom isn't the place for that. So that's what I would always say is let's empower teachers with simple strategies that really apply to everyone.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
started a strategy a couple years ago and I was teaching my middle school class and basically I started building my entire curriculum around social emotional skills. First couple things that I do is you know tell me 10 reasons why you're awesome and they just learn basically I'm using it to teach bullet points right but why are you awesome? What do you want to do with your life? What is your future look like? And then we bring that into okay now write your autobiography 50 years in the future and those are small technical lessons that I do but
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Amazing.
Love it.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
It helps me get to know the students. It helps them get to express themselves. It helps them use our digital learning tools, if you will, to then, you know, we're making a slide deck that showcases who they are, what their values are, what their presence is in their own world, in their family's world, things like that. I love using those little tricks, those little curricular tricks, to get the kids to open up. I know in all the districts I've worked on, many students are not comfortable.
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Yeah. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
opening up and expressing themselves, you know, maybe they are, you know, one student out of 400 in a building and where do they see themselves? What's your thoughts on keeping curricular activities moving, but at the same time, you have to bring that SEL, meaning you can't just stop the world and do SEL, it has to be a part of everything that you're doing.
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Mm-hmm.
Absolutely, so I would say we need both. So we do need classes where we are explicitly teaching those skills, whether we call it SEL or mental health or whatever it is. Just like, again, just like reading, writing, arithmetic, there is a skillset that we can teach and it's best taught when we're calm and we can reflect because there's some deep thinking that goes on. There's some thoughts around, you know,
Why are people unkind? Why do we act in ways that are not helpful? What is anxiety or stress? Why does it happen? So there's some explicit teaching that needs to happen. And so that's where there does need to be some dedicated class time. But to your point, absolutely, we then need to be reinforcing it. So it's like anything with a skill. If you teach a child to ride a bike, but then they don't get to practice riding the bike.
they're probably not gonna know the next time you sit them down a month later to do your next session with the bike. They're not necessarily gonna remember. So it absolutely needs to be reinforced. And this is where teachers need the resources and the support because it's a lot to ask. And for some teachers, this comes naturally and this is in your wheelhouse and this is the kind of thing that you like to talk about. And for other teachers, this is not part of training, unfortunately. We will get there.
but it's not there yet. So there's a lot of teachers that are feeling really exposed of how do I have these conversations? How am I meant to weave this in? And so that's where we really need to provide those resources and those tools to make it easy to have reinforcement of that learning. So it can be applied in a hundred different ways for a student so they can really get that generalizability. that's...
how I can change a negative thought. That's why I would change a negative thought that relates to my learning, that relates to my friendships, that relates to my self-esteem, all of that kind of stuff.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
If we can pick up on something that you just said, the training is coming. Now, from a coaching standpoint, that's fantastic. But where has it been? But from a teacher's point of view, that's just one more thing you're throwing at me in the middle of a crazy busy day, usually in a 10 minute segment at the end of a Monday meeting before we go to home after a long day of teaching.
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Mm.
Yeah.
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
What does this training need to look like in order for it to be effective? Because somebody like yourself coming into my school and doing a little PowerPoint, that's not going to help the fact that tomorrow, I still have 200 kids in front of me. And I still don't have I don't feel like you know, a 10 minute speech from you is not going to equip me for 300 kids tomorrow, right? Like
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Yeah. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yes, absolutely.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
So what does effective training look like? What should effective training look like? And if an administrator is listening to this, what should we be looking for when trying to conceive of these kinds of skills for our staff?
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Mm-hmm.
It's such a good question. So the first qualifier I want to say is this training should be embedded in teacher training programs. So from the get go, you enter a degree to become a teacher. This skill set needs to be a part of it. So it needs to stop being looked at as an add-on. And that's obviously a societal shift that's gonna have to happen. University is embedding that. So I strongly believe that we need to start there. We need to start on the ground.
But then when we're thinking about the world we live in now, which doesn't have, you know, has a lot of teachers that haven't had that kind of training. The biggest piece that's important is just like the students need to practice their skill set. We need to practice the skill set of how to teach this, how to have these conversations. And so what I would say is any professional development that is a one-off or that is something that you passively take in is not enough.
there needs to be opportunities to practice it. So what you need is absolutely probably a little bit of front loading where you do get a little bit of the concept, but most importantly, you need resources that you can engage with and use consistently. that's one of the things that we do in our program, facilitating the lesson, the teacher facilitating the lesson means that they are practicing the skills alongside their students. So it's like,
professional learning in the classroom. Same thing with my book as a resource. So if you have something you can turn to and you can say, I'm in a moment, let me try to find something I can use here. And then I come back to the moment and I use it it's an iterative process like that, those kinds of resources. So it's really about how do we find things and look for things that can be.
drawn on again and again, and then how do we make sure that there's that support? And this is, when we think about administrators and school leaders, one of the most important things is, are you creating time in the timetable? Are you creating, you know, the resources for your teachers to be consistently reminded and practiced and to sort of practice these skills? And I think that's really important because we can't, again, somebody to hear something once or hear something even 10 times.
and be able to apply it to all of the situations it needs to be applied to. So it's the practice element that's really key.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
It seems like there's a few different stages here for educators. One is being aware that these things exist. And then the second, of course, is, now that I have the awareness, what do I do for it? But then there's that middle section here, which I'm talking to some parents right now of how do you prepare to not have those situations happen in the first place? I know myself, there are some kids that I do not approach one on one.
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Yes.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
without some kind of a smile or humor. And I know that there's some students that if I need to, I will go up and let's have a conversation about things. Knowing which students have certain struggles going on in their lives, that's an important thing. But then also, are we being consistent as a staff? If I'm approaching a student a certain way, is another teacher doing that? Are there things that are helpful for you that I don't yet know about? So it is coming together, I think, and having
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Mmm.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
That conversation I know we have child study teams. I know we have all these different things that are put together But if you're not a teacher chosen for that particular child study meeting You're just getting an email with a huge report
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Yeah, and I think this is where we have to keep coming back to what can I do for students as a teacher and what is, what am I not able to do? And that's okay, letting go of those pieces. Like for all of us, any of us in helping professions, there's a line where...
There's nothing more I can do in this situation. But there are some really simple practical tools that you can use that really help. And I think that's the most important thing because yes, of course we can pick and choose who we sort of open up conversations to in ways that feel comfortable for us, but we also can't predict when all of a sudden a student opens up to us.
or something happens in class or somebody says an offhand remark and you go, whoa, where did that come from? So we actually can't protect against it in a way. What we need to do is resource ourselves with, what are some of the, again, simple things that I know I could say to any student, things like that help build empathy, that help validate them, that help them feel safe with me, that help them.
feel like they have what it takes to help themselves with this challenge. So again, if we can have a framework, it's a little bit, you know, when I talk about it in the book, it's a little bit like having the training for CPR, right? We're not doctors. We don't know how to do a lot of things that are needed in a medical emergency, but we have a framework for if we come across a situation where there is something happening, we can do a few steps that, gosh, that could actually save someone's life.
That's the kind of skill set. Go ahead, sorry.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
You mentioned. You had mentioned resources and for the last couple of weeks I have been reading this amazing book. It's called Finding the words empowering struggling students through guided conversations. It's by Dr. Haley Watson. It's a really good book. You can find out more information over at teachercast.net forward slash finding the words that takes you to our Amazon link and Haley. It is an amazing read. There's a lot of great stuff on here.
Why the book? What made you write it? What made you started? Talk to us a little bit about that journey.
Dr Hayley Watson (:
So the book really came about because so we support schools all over the world with our school mental health resources and in every training I would do and every conversation I would have with educators I would always get asked the question but what do I say in this specific situation? You know I've got a student that's XYZ and I don't know what to say like I need words and language and people really asking me about like can you write me a sentence stamp?
Like, you, you I really want that, that something to hold onto here because I feel out of my depth. And so that really rang true for me. And it really hit home how, you know, we really need to create that structure and that framework and that, that something to draw on, because when we're in the moment, it's so stressful if all of a sudden a student is upset or, or struggling or you hear that something's happened at home or whatever it is, all the stuff that gets dropped on you as a teacher.
your stress response is up and there's that panic and there's that feeling of I don't know what to say so I'm not going to say anything at all or I wish I knew what to say here or I say something and then I go gosh that might have been the wrong thing to say like there's a lot of a lot of stress in that and so that was really the the genesis of the book was let's give teachers something that really gives them that framework.
and some simple strategies that can apply to a lot of situations and let's really give them the sentence stems, the dialogue, what does this look like, what does this feel like, so we can build that confidence level so that teachers aren't alone in this, in these moments where they're encountering these challenges with students.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
This is not a cover to cover, right? This is something that as I've been going through, I've been picking up chapters and I've been specifically reading the chapters not in chapter order because again, you know, I'm a parent, I'm a student, I'm a teacher. There's so many of these different things and as I'm seeing students, as I'm seeing students even, you know, where my kids are hanging out, I go back and I go, okay, let me read up on that. Okay, let me go read up on that.
Dr Hayley Watson (:
great.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
So it is an amazing book and again, you can find it over at teachercast.net forward slash finding the words. Let's kind of dive into a little. don't want to hit some of these topics are like we could do an entire podcast series on each of these topics. But I mean, one of the first things here is helping students who are. I don't even want to say the words sometimes, but you talk a lot about supporting students who do self harm.
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Yeah.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
right. And that's something that I've seen, you know, students in the hallway, students in the playground, and you just realize, okay, some, I don't want to say somebody needs a hug, because that's a weird thing in school. But sometimes somebody needs a hug.
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Mm-hmm.
Absolutely. And these are the kind of situations where of course you're not a therapist, so you're not going to be sitting down and having an in-depth conversation with a student. I mean sometimes they may come to you and disclose these things, but you see, you know, harm on someone's arm or you see these experiences or you hear someone saying something. And how do we support?
that student. And so these are some of the skill set that we talk about in the book, which applies to that as well as every other situation is really about a lot of the things that you probably do already as a teacher. But as soon as mental health comes into it, we get that block where we go, ooh, I don't know that. I'm not a specialist in it. But it's the connection to students validating.
validating the way that they feel in general. We don't even have to be talking about their self harm, but validating them as a person, you know, asking questions about things that are going on in their life, reminding them of the power that they have to help themselves. There's some general things we can do and some really helpful conversations we have that you kind of we go through in the book, as you've seen, that
where you know, okay, I'm helping this student. Even if we're not having a conversation about the thing that's hard for them, I know I'm building a skill set in them. So I can approach that student because this is the saddest thing is the kids that need the most support are the ones that we're hesitant to reach out to because we think, my gosh, I don't want to open up that can of worms. Like I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what they're going to say. So if we can have that simple, supportive conversation as educators,
all of a sudden this kid has five different people in their life, five adults that are reaching out and communicating and connecting to them. That's five more than they had yesterday when we didn't quite know what to say and we weren't sure what was going on for them.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
Another topic deals with working. I hope I'm saying this right. Working with students with identifying students. What I don't know. What is the right way of putting that right? Working with students who are supporting students who are going through some kind of depression or some kind of depressiveness versus identifying them as they're really tired or they're not motivated or.
you don't know what's going on in their house, or they're kind of coming in and they're kind of in that mode. How does a teacher start to differentiate between those things? We all have had students that come in and they just don't have the energy right now. Is it over time? I mean, you can can can a teacher look at a student and say depression or depression after being with them once? Or is depression over, you know, behavior over time?
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Yeah, so usually when we're thinking about a student challenge, depression being one of them, any real anxiety, any of these things, we do want to look at patterns. So, you know, what am I seeing? Is this something that's different than usual? know, different than before is one way to look at it, but maybe this is a student you've never met before, so maybe you don't know what their norm is. But is this a consistent kind of pattern? But the other thing to think about and the reason why I, you know,
that feels so strongly about teachers being such a powerful asset here is that you actually don't need to know if they're depressed or just tired because the skill set is the same. You ask them, hey, how's it going? How are you doing today? Connect to them, validate them, ask them some questions about what's going on in their life. Have a conversation about their schoolwork that's reminding them of how powerful they are.
you know, ask them how they, how, you know, what's going on in their life that's hard or not even. What's going on in your life that's good. So the same kinds of conversations would apply in any instant. And then the student that is just tired, you know, maybe you give them a little pick me up and that's great. And the student that's suppressed, wow, maybe you've actually shifted their life that significantly because somebody actually cared and you made this huge impact.
But it's almost on your end as a teacher, you're doing the same thing in every instance. And I think that's a really important point that we don't always see the ripple effect of the things that we say and the things that we do. And it's not our job to, it's not our job to know what is exactly going on with that child. It's our job to say, I'm gonna show up, I'm gonna have these conversations due to the best of my ability, I'm gonna say the things that I can to the best of my ability.
and then I'm going to really let go of the outcome. And so by doing that, you have no measure of knowing how many kids you're impacting. And that's the power to just keep showing up and saying, I'm gonna have this supportive conversation with every student I encounter. Maybe one of them was going to take their own life and I prevented that. Maybe they were all just a little bit off because something that was minor. If I use the same skillset, I'm always gonna do the most help I can in that situation.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
One of your sections that I found fascinating as a middle school teacher and parent to future middle school students, of course, talked about identity. you've got it, you you've got it broken into different chapters as far as, you know, body image, body language, peer pressure, bullying, gender norms, all of those things kind of wrapped together in one big section. Highly recommend taking that one a couple of times and looking at it. But we are in that point in time where students, especially in middle school.
They're going in multiple directions in multiple ways at multiple times. What advice do you have for that middle school teacher out there that's, you know, one day they're like in red and one day they're like in blue and one day they're like in blue, but people at home don't want them like in blue. How do you go through all of that? And you're still teaching curriculum. You're still having a class. You're still having, you know, responsibilities.
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
can't always get into certain topics and I don't think you should always get into certain topics. But if you can kind of help me wrap up section four, it's a huge one right now, right? Check it out, teachercast.net slash finding the words. But you've got all of those things happening to all of your students every single day. Some of them you don't touch. Where are we with that?
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Yes, that's a big one. Absolutely.
Absolutely. Yeah, and so the great thing about this again is that in order to sort of find your own identity and navigate all of the pressures of growing up, there is a specific skill set that you need as a young person. So you need to be able to notice, what do I like? What do I not like? You need to be able to notice when things are impacting you in a positive or negative way.
You need to be able to distinguish situations that are helping you and harming you. So these are all critical thinking skills and they're skills that require a couple of things, two things really. The first thing is the willingness to look at yourself, to self-reflect, to be able to, and we call it in the book, open the door. To be able to actually acknowledge, yeah, you know what? All my friends really like that.
And I really don't like it. It makes me uncomfortable. They're all doing something that I don't enjoy that takes a lot of guts to be able to just let ourselves feel that and then the second thing that we need to do for as young people is Be able to take actions to help ourselves whether that's setting boundaries whether that's you know Making a choice to say this is who I am and these are the clothes I'm gonna wear even if other people don't like it or whatever it is These are the kind of big major skill sets. So the great news for teachers is
especially in that middle school is that we don't have to talk about any of those sensitive topics to be able to build that skill set in students. What we can do is encourage that within curriculum time. So, you know, that skill of self reflection, you can self reflect in any subject at any time, you know, even something like, well, this, this problem is hard for me. Let's reflect on, I getting into negative thoughts about this? And as that whole thing, me back, or let's self reflect on how this content
How do you feel about this thing that you're learning? Which version of this story do you like better? All of these kinds of conversations are directly related to curriculum, but it's teaching students to look inward. And then the second piece of taking actions to help themselves, we can also do that within curriculum. So you're finding something challenging, what can you do to help yourself? What resources can you use? How can you learn to think differently or study differently or spend your time differently to be able to get the grade that you want?
those kinds of things. So again, it's coming back to what is the skill set we're trying to teach and how do we then focus on that and know there's a ripple effect. So we don't have to solve all of these problems because there's no way. And if you try to do that as a teacher, you go absolutely baddie because it's so overwhelming. But what's the skill set and how do I keep focusing on that?
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
With all of that.
what point should a teacher identify? At what point should a teacher engage? And at what point should a teacher recommend? If I see my student is x, y, and z, there are topics where I don't want to have that conversation because then that'll change the dynamic of other things. There are times where, hey, maybe I mentioned it to somebody in clinical psychology or, know, like somebody in the counseling department, because I want it to be known that this is happening.
But I don't want to break that relationship that I currently have with that student or that class or, you if I put one crack in my classroom, dominoes will fall. When do you know or how should you know or is there a series, is there a rubric for us? We love rubrics. Of when do we get involved and when do we pass it on and when do we follow up and...
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
So really important question. Always refer if you think, if you sense, if you feel, if you have an instinct or you know, or you hear something where a student is struggling or in some kind of distress or something hard is happening and you know it's a pattern. So always come back to, is this a pattern? Is this something that is sort of significant and ongoing and enduring or is this just sort of a passing experience?
Unless the passing experience is really significant. So really trust yourself in that, that always, I would say err on the side of always refer. You can always refer. doesn't, you know, somebody could follow up and it could be nothing. Doesn't matter. Nobody loses out there. If you say, Hey, I'm a little concerned about this student and it turns out to be nothing. Fine. So I would say always refer when you get that feeling and you'll have, you know, that feeling when you go, you know, something's happening here. I would also say.
Always engage. So I'm not gonna answer your question the way they want me to, sorry. I would say always engage with the skill set. So you never need to open up the can of worms where you're asking a student directly about their self-harm or directly about, so you're getting picked on, let's talk about that. You never have to have that conversation. I would say, again, rely on yourself here. Have that conversation if you feel
confident about having that conversation and you feel like it's going to help that student then have the direct conversation. But if you don't feel confident about having that conversation or for all those other reasons you said it's not the appropriate time, there's other people in the class, you have a certain dynamic with that student, whatever it is, if you don't feel comfortable with it, then still have a conversation that helps them. But you don't need to ask direct questions about it. Again, come back to what, you know, if I'm zooming out and I see this student who really has low self-esteem,
I don't want to ask them directly about that because I don't feel confident to have that conversation. know stuff's going on for them at home. That's just too much to unpack right now. But what are the things that I really want that student to learn? I want them to learn that they're amazing. So like you said at the beginning, let's talk about how amazing you are. Let's just have that conversation. So I think that's a really important distinction that because a lot of the times we get caught in that, I don't know the thing to say.
from a mental health perspective or like the, you know, to unpack the real challenge. So I'm not gonna say anything at all. And that's where we sort of set ourselves up to fail the most because students need us to say something to support them. And so that's what I would say. You know, I know sorry, that's not a rubric, but it's.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
But that's also where teachers get in trouble. If they know something and they're not reporting it, that's a license killer sometimes.
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Yeah, so I would say always report, always refer, always anything you hear. Sorry, it's a...
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
But you but if you didn't opens up to you and the next thing you know, there's a psychologist knocking on their door that that creates that environment where I can't trust that teacher anymore. And I think the answer is it doesn't matter. You're here to help the kid.
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Absolutely. And I would say as well, this is a really important point. If somebody opens up to you, so there's referrals where you see something or hear something, that's a little bit cleaner because nobody's opened up to you, you're just reporting what you've heard. If a student opens up to you and they say something that's concerning, absolutely always refer and report, but...
bring them along with you. the way it when it feels like you're breaking someone's trust or when a student feels like their trust has been broken is when you go behind their back to do it. So they have a conversation with you and then you go, gosh, I better follow up on that. But if you tell them, hey, I'm really concerned about what you told me. My most important goal right now is to keep you safe. And in order to keep you safe, I need to involve someone else.
because I don't have the right skill set or the right tools, or I know that there's someone else that can give you something that I don't have. You might not like that, I get it. You might feel like that's a breach of trust, I get it. But I'm doing it because I care about you. Let's do it together. Or who would you prefer, I told? Your parent or the school counselor? Like give them some agency in it. And then it doesn't feel like you're breaking their trust. It feels like, that's hard and that sucks, but you know what?
I understand and I get it and that something's not happening without my knowledge.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
As an educator and as a parent, these topics are very important to have not only in open circles like this podcast, but also in your PLNs, in your PLCs, in your school districts and around even in the neighborhood sometimes. There is an amazing website out there I urge you guys to check out. It's called openparachuteschools.com. We're gonna make sure that we have everything in our show notes over here at episode number 59.
And Henry, tell us a little bit about what we can find on the website. How can a school district bring you in? Get some advice. Utilize your resources. What is open parachute?
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Yeah, so Open Parachute is an online resource that has a series of lessons for students that teachers run. So it's teacher facilitated, it's an online application. On the website, you'll see information about it and then the way people get access is simply, you know, filling out a form on the website and we'll connect to you. But the way this resource can help is it's a series of guided lessons.
that any teacher can facilitate. You don't need to be a mental health expert. You don't need in-depth training. Of course, we do offer training, but the whole goal is that they're really accessible. And a lot of our lessons, the way we get to the depth of mental health skill building is we base them around documentary stories of real students. So students in class are watching a real peer their age talking about a challenge, how they overcome it.
the authenticity, real, that resonance of a real story can cut through. And then it takes the pressure off the teacher to be bringing up some of these conversations. And it's instead of saying, okay, now we're gonna do an exercise on building self-esteem and you have middle schoolers that roll their eyes or, you know, those kinds of things. have content pre-K to 12, but we can actually base it around, here's this real student talking about something. Let's have a conversation about that.
And then it's guided lessons. So again, this is what I was talking about before. The teachers get to learn alongside their students. They're learning a language and a skillset. They're teaching their students a language and a skillset. And we really strongly believe that that's needed at the tier one level. So we do have tier two and three resources too, but if we embed that kind of learning for every student and for every teacher, then all of a sudden we have this shared language. And then instead of trying to...
unpack or figure out, you know, a situation of bullying or a situation of low self-esteem, which is too much as we've talked about, the students actually have their own skill set around that. So as a teacher, you can just remind them, hey, did you learn something in the lesson about this? Why don't you apply one of your strategies now? So it becomes this baseline where we all have that shared understanding. So that's the core of what we do. And then we do have teacher well-being resources as well and parent resources too, because we really do need to
kind of approach this from a whole school lens.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
The book is called Finding the Words. The website is openparachuteschools.com. She is the fantastic Dr. Haley Watson. Haley, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Please feel free to call this part one. The microphone is always on. And if anybody out there listening would like to contact Dr. Watson, check out her website, openparachuteschools.com. It is literally an open book for everything that you need to have here. The program is fantastic. The book is amazing.
I'll give you the microphone here in the last word. What do you want to say to anybody who's trying to figure out all of this for themselves or for their school district?
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Thank you so much. And thank you for all of those wonderful things. It's so nice to be here and nice to be a part of this. So what I would say to anyone that is in that process of figuring things out, it can be really overwhelming to try to navigate this, to try to think, what am I meant to do? There's a million resources out there. What steps am I meant to take? I would say, whether you're a teacher, whether you're administrator,
just focus on the next step. So I think that's the big thing collectively as a culture, as a community right now. We can all be paralyzed by, I don't know what to do, or I'm not sure, or it's too hard. We can all do that. And we can do that personally as well as professionally in an education. But if we really want to, our mission as an organization is to create generational change. And I think that's probably what a lot of teachers and school districts and schools want. If we really want to
raise a generation of kids that are self-aware, that are switched on, that can help themselves and support themselves. We just need to all take one step. So whether it's finding a resource and starting to implement it, whether it's doing something for yourself and your own wellbeing that then has a ripple effect, whether it's role modeling something to your team that really focuses on that, that mental health and wellbeing, I would say just keep taking a step.
Every day take a step, every week take a step, every month take a step, every year take a step. Because if we can keep pushing ourselves towards more of the conversations around mental health, more awareness, more embedding of this in school systems, we're gonna wake up in 10 years and we're gonna have a very different world for the positive. And if we don't do that, if we don't take the steps, then things are gonna stay the same or probably go on a trajectory of continuing to get worse and get harder.
So that's the advice is don't be stalled by the overwhelm because it can be overwhelming, but just take one step, do one thing, do the first easy thing, the first thing in front of you and then watch the ripple effect of how that can impact everyone around you.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
The ripple effect is an amazing thing. You never know what that one thing that you stick in the water is that has an everlasting effect. Even just while we're having this conversation, I just happened to glance at my email and a student just emailed me and said, hey, because of this lesson that you taught me today, I took that skill and I made a birthday card for my grandparents. You never know when your students are watching. You never know when your students are listening. And you certainly never know what effect that you are going to have in somebody's life.
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Mm-hmm.
I love that.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
Dr. Haley Watson, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Dr Hayley Watson (:
Thank you so much for having me.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:
And that wraps up this episode of the Jeff Bradbury show. If you would like to come on the show and feature something that you're passionate about, or if you know somebody out there who's doing some amazing things to change the world, we would love to have you guys check this stuff out. You can head out and check out all of our archives over at teachercast.net slash podcast.
And of course, over there, you can find out only all of the episodes of Jeff Bradbury's show, but also digital learning today and our other podcasts, Ask the Tech Coach. And that wraps up this episode, episode number 55 on behalf of Dr. Haley Watson and everybody here on TeacherCast. My name is Jeff Bradbury. Keep up the great work in your classrooms and continue sharing your passions with your students.
