Creating a Culture of Dignity in Your Schools with Charlie Kuhn

Hello everyone. Welcome to today's event titled Creating a Culture of Dignity at Your School with Charlie Kuhn. I'm Greg Peterson, content manager for CrisisGo. I'll be your moderator today.

During today's event, we'll be focusing on how to transform the way we understand youth culture and how to create communities where children can thrive. Some of the main points we'll be covering include highlighting the importance of social emotional learning in communities, defining dignity and respect, offering realistic definitions of bullying, bystanding, teasing, drama, and social conflict, and identifying dynamics that lead to social conflict.

If you have any questions throughout the presentation, I welcome you to submit those via the questions panel. We'll be conducting a short Q and A at the end of today's presentation.

Our guest speaker today is Charlie Kuhn. Charlie's the co-founder and CEO of Cultures of Dignity. He's a social educator, facilitator, and education consultant. Charlie's had a tremendous career working with young people and he's here to help educators and professionals who work with kids make a positive impact in their community through concrete common sense strategies. So without further delay, I'll let Charlie take it from here.

Okay. I think I did it right. Thanks Greg. Appreciate the introduction. It is a little bit odd because I'm on the receiving end of this conversation, but I'm not able to see anybody. So I'm seeing that we have 38 or so people. Again, thank you for being here. It's really meaningful. So it is a bit odd to be on this side, but, and it makes me a little uncomfortable because I'm used to seeing other people and working through their questions or watching their face. But without that, we're going to have to really rely on those questions. So again, just to reiterate what Greg said, please do submit questions. They should be in your control panel. If you're having trouble, you can chat in and someone on our side will help you out. So let's get rolling.

Hi. You made a choice to be here. Really appreciate it. Cultures of Dignity is an organization that's composed of educators, consultants, authors, and counselors. We are out in the world creating more dignity, finding more dignity, building more dignity in education. So what that means is working with 12 to 18 year old students, their parents, their teachers, and administrators to help them successfully navigate those wonderful teenage years.

So as you know, these challenges are not limited to but include things like how to handle bullying, what do you do when you hear gossip and rumor about yourself or about other people, what is the social media influence and how is it shifting your perception of self, maybe perception of others, and then how to ask for help?

So those are some of the things that we do as an organization. I really want to check in with you guys first. So I'm going to read off a set of statements here and would you please ... You're all on your own, so I trust that you can do this. Just if they resonate with you or if you see yourself in the statement, just keep track on your hands. So here you go.

First one, I have felt overwhelmed by young people's problems. Number two, I haven't said anything at work in the workplace discussion because I was afraid to be wrong. Number three, I didn't know the answer to a student's question so I made up an answer. Number four and the final one, I have seen another adult disrespect a young person and I didn't handle it in the way that I would have liked to.

So some of you maybe are like, "I'm full four on this or there's one that's really striking me." We know from the audience that we have superintendents, team counselors and I can give a shout out because I'm pretty sure that my mother's on the line. So hi, thanks for being here.

So we have a wide range of experiences and working with young people can mean different things to different people, but these are all aimed at adults, right? So us as the folks that are helping young people through these. These four are examples of what it looks like to have social and emotional learning in action. We sometimes say this phrase and break it down into these quadrants. Then we sort of approach this in a much more rigorous or, not necessarily rigorous. That's not the right word that I'm looking for, but onerous way and mechanical that we can break it down and insert what these things mean.

But in any one of these four, you can see the nuance of where am I in the workplace? What am I afraid to be wrong? What's at stake? What am I afraid of losing? There's a lot to understand and breakdown. We have seen that when adults can model these and work their way through these difficult situations, students will grow closer to them in relationship and see them as a trusted adult that they want to work with.

So all of our work at Cultures of Dignity is to help people create better relationships and then sort their way through the mess of what it means to be an adolescence or those that are supporting adolescents.

Now I want to start with happiness and frame this in schools because we often forget about why people go to school and what are the goals. Of course academics are a part of it without question and I'm going to skip over that because we're here to talk about social emotional learning. So I want to break down the definition of happiness.

We see happiness as that you're doing something beyond just yourself. That you have a hope of success, not a guarantee. There is social connections so that you are having meaningful relationships with those that you are around, that you are accomplishing work that you see to be satisfying and that you are working on getting better at. And what we're finding to be more and more important is a place to process and find peace.

Now this is the basis of all people's needs, right? We want people to be happy and it doesn't matter where you come from. If you're in a public, private, charter, suburban, rural school, all people want happiness. We see these are some of the indicators for happiness.

Now on the last one, finding a place to process and find peace is such an important factor because we have screens in front of us all the time. Screens are distracting, they are designed to keep us hooked to them. So we want to step back and encourage people to put the phones away. Just relax, take a breath, reflect on what happened during your day and then also think about what you want.

Charlie Kuhn: Now the other thing before I move on beyond happiness, is that if you're sitting there thinking about a young person and they are spending a ton of time on things that you may not think is really useful to their success, might be video games. A video game absolutely ticks all of these boxes minus the finding peace. But it is a place, you are doing something for some or part of a group. There's absolutely a lot of failure. You're doing it with people that you enjoy and you have a similar desired outcome and that you are continually improving in the game is showing you that. It can be really tricky. So let's not lose sight of what makes us happy.

Now we can't always just believe that happiness is what we're going to have. Conflict is inevitable. In Cultures of Dignity, we absolutely have to come to terms with helping people through this. So this wonderful quote, I'll read it out loud. “If you have no conflict in your life, one of two things is true. Either you're dead or you're not paying attention to the people around you.”

So it has so much to do with recognizing that people have different desires, different wants, and conflict is a part of our life. We have to normalize this for young people and it happens at all levels. It's important to know for adults for how to help young people through the conflicts and for them to recognize the conflicts around them.

Now a close cousin to conflict is these two ideas for respect and dignity. So respect as when we look at it, we pull back from the original Latin root, which is respectus and meaning “to look at”. So we see respect as something that is closer to admire and we see that respect is something that's earned. Where on the other side, dignity, the Latin root comes from the word dignitas, which means “to be worthy”. So we see dignity as a given. Respect is something that is flexible, where dignity is for all.

So the reason why we spend so much time talking about these two different ideas is because they're often really closely related or, say it this way, that respect carries the weight that dignity needs to also share. So let me say it this way. I was raised, and again my mother's on the line, she knows all too well that we were raised to respect our elders. I think that that is such a common idea that has been passed down, is that we need to respect our elders. I'm absolutely agreeing with that. The difference is we also need, we need to respect the position of the person, but we also need to respect the behaviors that they show.

So when we frame this for a young person, there have been many times and they seem to just really resonate with the idea that respect is earned because they see so many people in positions of power abuse their power or treat somebody poorly, and then be told that I have to go and respect that person. It gets really confusing and that's where they don't necessarily want to engage in that conversation anymore when they're just told, “You must respect them.” Whereas when you bring in the concept of dignity, respect carries more flexibility to be used to identify something that you disrespect for good reason most likely, and you still have to treat them with dignity.

So how do we find dignity amongst conflict? How do we find dignity amongst disagreement? That is what we strive for as an organization and helping other schools and communities find that. So just check my notes to make sure I got everything right. Respect to me ... Let me say it this way. There've been times when I've been observing a classroom or working in a school and I've heard a person of authority say to a young person, “Use the word respect.” and I think it's much closer to what they're really quoting is, respect is a kin for obedience. You must obey me is the feeling and the sentiments that's coming across as opposed to I want you to look at my behaviors, I want you to watch how I conduct myself in front of the classroom, in front of other people so I can earn your respect.

That's one of the fundamental differences. Notice where respect can be replaced with obedience. If it can, we've got a different set of challenges that we want to work through. So how do we find dignity amongst this? I've rolled through a couple slides pretty quickly. I'm going to take a quick pause because I want this to sink in. This could be a time where you ask questions. Again we'll get to them towards the end. But these are big concepts. I also want to be respectful of your experience because you may be feeling different about this and that's okay. We are trying and finding ways for more dignity in the world.

Okay, onward. The next is part of why you showed up. It was in the description. So I better cover these two terms. Drama verse bullying. What is the difference? So we see bullying as a repeated abusing or threatening to abuse power against another person. So we again, using the definitions that we just use, bullying is stripping somebody of their dignity. Whereas drama is a conflict that's serious to the people involved but not taken seriously by other people that are entertained by it.

So this is not as black and white, these two definitions. But there's a lot of reasons why we are providing this language because when we use the word bullying, many, many states now have legislation in place that create a domino effect of what needs to happen from an administrative perspective.

So we can help students be more accurate in describing what the situation is, we can use our resources in a better way and we can allocate these resources more smartly. So we want to teach kids that drama is absolutely uncomfortable and we want to avoid it. In some schools, they use mean behavior as opposed to drama. Whatever works for you. But the idea is that bullying needs to be treated differently and it is stripping somebody of their dignity. Whereas drama is again, something that is entertained, people are being entertained by this act.

Now I also needed to be very clear and say that drama can absolutely move into the realm of bullying. Without question. There's a gray line it's not just so black and white. Stepping a little close to this is the idea of teasing. Again, by giving students more language to identify what's going on around them, we think that they will be able to identify and bring adults in this support when they need.

So here's our ideas. The first is bonding teasing. We see teasing and bonding teasing as something that you like it. There's equal amounts of put down amongst the group and if somebody says, "That's enough where you've crossed my line." that it'll stop. I really think of this as like equal opportunity bonding, equal opportunity teasing, where everybody can tease one another. If it's not the case and there's somebody that's doing most of the teasing or on receiving end of the teasing, we see this closer to annoying teasing. Which the group doesn't really know how you feel and when you're asked for it to stop; in response, you'll get like, “I was just joking.” Or “Relax. Don't worry about it. It's not a big deal.”

That's really much harder to deal with and one closer step to bullying is malicious teasing, which is you're teased for your insecurities. “You're uptight. We were told that you're uptight.” Or you're told that like, “We don't want to hang out with you anymore.” It can be relentless and in public.

So we offer these three definitions to students because teasing is so complicated. Sometimes it does feel good, but then maybe it doesn't. It's gone too far and how do you say that? So in a bunch of our activities, we break down teasing and allow students to respond and come up with what are examples of each.

So here's a picture of two boys that we were working with down in Texas. They renamed bonding teasing to playful teasing. People laughing at you, Yo Mama jokes, make fun of you just for fun is what shows up on their list for playful teasing. It was really interesting because with this group, Yo Mama jokes showed up in all three categories. So we had a rich conversation about how could that be the case? What is the point of all of this? How complicated this is? It allowed for students to really be able afterwards to name for themselves like, “Hey, that is malicious teasing. You've gone too far.” Instead of just saying, “That's enough. I don't have any other words to say.”

So let's see. Moving on beyond this is how we see bystanding. So bystanding for us is something that looks at two different categories. One, it always requires a split decision. Pardon me, let's see if it ... Here we go. Sorry that came in in a wonky way. So here are the two different types of bystanding that we see. So in the moment it requires a split decision and you have to act right then. You have to be comfortable in your skin to step up and step into the conflict. That takes an incredible amount of, one, social awareness and two, what we say social courage, which is that you understand the risks that you were putting on the table. It could be popularity, it could be getting in the middle of a conflict that you aren't exactly sure what all of the pieces are.

Then the second type of bystanding is when you're witnessing a type of behavior. So this gives you time to prepare for what you want to say to whom and where you're going to say it. So this is where we coach students and have a curriculum in place to teach students a framework to get ready to have this difficult conversation. Because on the other side of naming it, the other person is not like, “Geez, thanks Charlie. Really appreciate you calling me out on this behavior or this thing that I had no idea I was doing.” So it slows down the person and identifies what they want, who am I going to say this to, and then what is the surroundings?

Bystanding is incredibly complicated as well and we think that it's so, when a lot of young people get turned off is when people, when adults come in and they have some sort of lecture or some sort of lesson where it's just so simplified that bystanding is something that only young people do to others. We don't acknowledge it as adults, How often we do this in our lives and the cost of getting involved into a situation that you might not know about.

So we see bystanding as something that's much more complicated. Once we take the time to lay this out with young people, they start to move towards the conversation and they add to so much more nuance. They add so much more nuance to how this goes.

The conversation goes. So again, I'm going to pause. Covering a lot of material, make sure that we're feeling okay. Let me see if I can check these questions now. So next is how you come back after bystanding?

We have to tell people, we have to tell adults and young people that it's never too late. We share that sometimes if a teacher recognizes that they've teased a student in the classroom and the impact was greater or different than what they intended, that they need to go back and it's never too late to say, “Hey, that thing that I said the other day, a week ago, I've been thinking about it. I'm really not sure how it landed on you or it felt really uncomfortable, but I just want to apologize. I should've done that differently and I wish I would've done it sooner.” So it's never too late to go back.

Number two, it's almost always hard and uncomfortable, but it's something that we can get through and adults can model how to do this. The next is that people don't always laugh when they think something's not funny. No, let me see. There's lots of stories to go along with this.

I think that what we often will laugh at situations because we are unsettled, we don't have the words to get through and we are conditioned to just giggle it away because we want this moment to pass. So if somebody is laughing on the receiving end, they might actually want to do something differently but they are not sure how. So when we give them the steps in order to get there, you will see a lot more bystanding happen, a lot less bystanding happen.

The next component of bystanding that we want to acknowledge is that getting involved shouldn't depend on how much you like a person. So this gets ... when thinking about friend groups, sometimes you like the person a lot and you don't want to tell them that their behavior or their actions are disrespectful, uncomfortable, flat out mean.

Then on the other side, sometimes if you don't know the person at all, you feel more entitled to jumping in and saying, “You're a jerk.” We see this in the news all the time. So getting involved really shouldn't depend on what you think of the other person. It needs to be grounded in your values, in the community's values and we all have the responsibility to act when we see something that is disrespectful to us.

It's so easy to say that without providing the next context of why is it difficult? We need to acknowledge that these are true and what are the words that you can share? So the final part of this is what is one small act of courage that does make a difference?

In the culture that we live in today with superhero movies coming out, it feels like every month, the courage has taken on such a huge, huge idea that I have to say ... It went from saving a city to saving a country, to saving the world, and now we're saving the universe, right?

So we need to bring the idea of courage back to saying hello to somebody, sitting next to somebody at the dining hall that you maybe don't know, inviting someone to join you. This is what we need to remind people that a small act of courage does make a difference.

Okay. The final idea that I want to share is that dignity is sometimes quite uncomfortable and inconvenient because seeing each other's worth is such a paramount for how we want communities to be. CrisisGo is a wonderful partner for us because they have developed a platform to take the crisis handbook and put it in an actionable way. The reason why we were working with them is we will never be the crisis handbook. But what we will do is we will continue to provide content and curriculum for things that happen after a crisis, but then also to prevent crisis from happening. We see that and culture of dignity is something that needs to live, breathe, and find time for explicit education. We can all practice these skills. If we're going to call them social skills or soft skills, then we have to consider that we can improve, we can practice and we can get better.

So social skills are something that aren't just innate in us and that we all need a reminder for how to get better amongst the complex situations that come to us during our days, education, and outside. So lastly, just a little about us, if you'd like to stay connected we have a phenomenal newsletter and we really pride ourselves on two things. One, not giving out or let me say it this way. Providing a newsletter that has meaningful content. Then secondly, doing it so it doesn't just overwhelm your inbox. We're on a cadence of roughly once a month.

The second is we offer consulting services, so if you have challenges or if you're thinking about improving a program in your school, we are absolutely here to help that along. Our blog is a resource that we are very proud of because it's a place where we absolutely encourage students to write. We have three different avenues to bring students along. So we have, one is an internship program where students show up in our offices. Two, is a cultures advisory council. So these are typically college age students that are out living in their lives informing us about thoughts that they're having, conversations that they're having with their friends.

Then the third group is an editorial council that helps update, keeps us informed about what's going on in high school lives. So the blog is a place to see all of the outcomes of that network. With that, I believe that I'm right up against my time. So Greg, I'm going to turn it back to you and open it up for questions.

Hey everyone. Greg back again. Just like to say, wow, that was a really powerful message Charlie. Thanks again for sharing. So while we give Charlie a moment to catch his breath, maybe have a drink of water. I want to share with you how CrisisGo started working with Cultures of Dignity.

So about a year and a half ago, CrisisGo launched our safety awareness system, which allows schools safety leaders to send engaging safety content to school staff members through the CrisisGo app. The content is packaged in a digital card form that we call safety cards, like the one you can see on the screen now. School stakeholders can easily open, read, and share the content from their smartphone or computer.

So we are really excited about the ability to empower school districts and spread safety awareness, but we are also in need of expert safety content that touch on the social and emotional safety issues that students face. So we encountered Cultures of Dignity's work and we were instantly impressed with the depth of their vision and their ability to convey their knowledge in a relatable way.

Since becoming a content partner with CrisisGo, Cultures of Dignity has applied us with amazing content that we've shared with our clients who in turn have shared amongst their own stakeholders. Some of the great topics that Cultures of Dignity has shared include five ways to get young people to take us seriously about bullying prevention, drama verse bullying, putting feelings to words, conflict management strategy, dignity versus respect, what to do when you've tried everything and the bullying won't stop.

So our clients have responded very well to the content Cultures of Dignity has provided and we're proud to continue to partner with them. Providing a safe learning environment where children can thrive personally and academically is critically important to both of our organizations. At CrisisGo, we're happy to offer features like our safety awareness system, our specialized students safety app, and our bully and safety tips reporting tool, to help educate students and staff about safety risks and solutions and to help prevent emergencies before they happen.

Now that Charlie's had some time to catch his breath, let's see what questions you've had during our presentation. Let's see. Someone asked to see the previous slides again. So after the questions we can kick it back over to you Charlie and if you want to get, have this early in the presentation and cycle through maybe some of your earlier slides to refresh that.

Sure.

I also asked if the whole recording will be available and it will. We are actually recording this now. We're going to send it out via email to everyone afterwards so you can watch it, share it. Someone asked, “I'm a psychotherapist and have some questions. How can they set up a consultation?”

Great. I'm not seeing the question show up so I appreciate you Greg sharing these. So I will, let's see, there's a couple of ways to get a hold of us. One is, on our website we have a form. The second is curious@culturesofdignity.com is a generic or just our general email. I'll turn my camera on because you can at least see me. So mine is charlie@culturesofdignity.com or the curious@culturesofdignity.com will also bring you right to us.

Awesome. So also a printable copy of this information will be available. We are going to have a video available that we can send out afterwards. We'll be having a follow-up blog. We might have some parts of the transcript including that as well. Someone asked, “What kind of programs do you offer to middle schoolers?”

Middle School, we have a curriculum that is called Owning Up and will be taught in ... it's typically taught in middle schools, although we are seeing more and more schools bring it to ninth and 10th grade and also down to fifth grade. So Owning Up is our curriculum. We do consultations around existing programs. So one of our strongly held beliefs is that a school is in the best place to identify what their needs are. They might already have a set of curriculum and we don't need to go in and just simply replace it, but we can improve on it. Then that's where professional development comes for teachers because look, lots of teachers signed up for the sake of they love the pack.

They are so passionate about a particular subject and we want them to feel really comfortable. Once they open up these doors in advisory class or homeroom class that they feel comfortable addressing, but then also being a bridge to bring some of these concerns to the counselors because teachers are taught very definitely. Their background is not in counseling and we need to again respect that and give, create a bridge from some of the issues that might come up in your classroom and then bring that over to the professionals in your building that can help with that.

So long winded way of saying our consulting work surrounds both system protocols and procedures. It can help improve on existing materials that are being taught in your school or also we come in and provide some professional development so we can increase the skills for the adults.

All right. Next question. How do students respond to discussion of respect versus dignity?

One of the things that I thought about doing was, how we get into this topic. So similarly we would, in the curriculum we asked teachers or the person leading or when I do it myself, is that you open this conversation and you say, “What does respect look like to you?” Then, let me take one step back.

The whole goal of these conversations are to bring people together and not sever relationships. So in that light we ask a lot of what students' opinions are. Then we provide the definitions just like you saw today. The activity is to then draw what respect in day to day look like to the students.

So we've seen everything from respect is a handshake to respect is getting on top of a mountain to respect is picking up trash in respect for the environment. Students have drawn for dignity. The one that comes to mind right now is such a simple drawing, but it was so powerful.

A sixth grader drew a little hill, a tree with no leaves, and then a stick figure pouring water on the tree and then had the quote “One day”. So this young person, because middle schools, that time in life where you're, have all different kinds of students that some are along that neuropath developmentally where they are starting this grapple with larger concepts. The idea of drawing brings the concepts down to something that they can remember. Then also learn from one another to build out a more holistic idea of what respect in day to day are.

So I hope that paints some picture for just getting students to engage in this because they've been told for so long this idea of respect and it means different things to different people and sometimes they have felt very disrespected. So it gives them an opportunity to talk about that and then really materialize these concepts into something that they can take away.

The next question is, do you know of SEL programs for elementary students that would bridge well to Owning Up?

Great question. So elementary teachers. I learned so much from elementary teachers right out of the gates because their orientation is, well, what we are seeing a lot more of in middle schools and high schools, is teaching to the whole child, right? Young elementary teachers seem to be doing that just innately. I don't mean innately because it's part of their education and how they show up in the classroom.

I don't know of a curriculum that is better than another for elementary kids. One of the things that we're working on is supporting fourth and fifth grade teachers to bring the curriculum down to a developmentally appropriate level for that age group.

So we are well aware of this transition time because look, fifth grade, sixth grade, eighth grade, and the ninth grade are tricky times. It's something that we are well aware of. But in the middle schools that we've worked in, second step often is prior to us, some of the strengths based work is more and kind of runs parallel.

So I would say that we are working on this and that lots of elementary curriculum lend itself to our work anyway because we're talking about friendships, we're talking about dynamics amongst bullying. How to deal with breakups and how you go and ask for help? So a lot of those topics are crossover in the elementary world.

All right. The last question we have is, have these programs been used in a cyber-environment?

Great question. The answer is sort of. Nothing done from us. The way that we've, we have yet to put out an online curriculum. It's something that we're very interested in because we think for both teacher learning perspective as well as accessibility for students and also could go into the home first and have … We dream of a product where parents can work on something like this. Although there's a lot of challenges with that. Well, for all the good reasons, challenges that sometimes teachers, administrators, and counselors in this school have a different opportunity to reach young people than their parents do. That's okay.

Especially in later on adolescence when it literally is a breakup. You are breaking up with your parents and that's an okay place to be. Sometimes you need other adults to come support that work. So an online platform is something that we are interested in developing. The reason I said kind of is because a number of the schools that we're working with have implemented a survey tool at the end of a weekly lesson to understand what the students learned or how deep the understanding has gone. So depending on the survey results, the administrator or the owning up champion will slow down the pace of the curriculum or move on, if they see the results as something they would expect.

I didn't mean to cut you off there Charlie. We actually have a couple more questions. Is there a parent caregiver facing component to the Owning Up curriculum?

We think that at the moment we see a lot of parent and caregivers using the Owning Up curriculum as something that will inform their conversations with their students. We haven't set out because we strongly believe that the parent caregiver relationship to the young person in their life is unique and has its own set of main love, right? You can show and display love very differently in your home than you can in a classroom. So we need to be mindful of that. Although I will say that the parents that have picked up Owning Up have been really informed by the work.

We have two other books that really sink into this realm, which is Masterminds and Wingmen, which was a book that the other co founder, Rosalind Wiseman wrote. Which is a book exploring male dynamics and was the parallel to the predecessor, which was Queen Bees and Wannabes. So those two books explore dynamics and help raise young people much more from a home perspective than a curriculum like we have for schools.

Next question is what are the signs that kids are being bullied and schools and parents should take notice?

Great question. So the signs of bullying, so parents in schools, so I'm going to answer this in a couple of different ways because this is a big question. I'd say the first one is from ... I'll answer it from home first of. If your child is showing a little bit of reluctancy to go to school, explore that. They could be reasons for like, “I'm just anxious for the project that's coming up or this test.” Or the bullying component. I really believe that when you are able to ask a young person what's going on without judgment, what will, actually, we just sent out a newsletter that's said, “Stop asking so many questions.”

One of the things that we find is that when a student gets home from a day of school or gets in the car during the pickup line, that one of the things that most parents will do is just pile on questions after questions of questions. How is this test? Who did you sit next to at lunch? Where do you have, how much homework do you have?

At the end of the day, it's really nice to just sit back and decompress. Now say this, in our adult world, which is we have a partner at home and you came back from a long day at work and your partner said, "Did you get to all your emails? How was that condescending colleague of yours? Did you talk to them about that yet? Did you do these chores that we talked about from last weekend?" Right? And you're like, "God, just give me a break."

So there is some type of parallel of like, "Let's just let each other breathe." During that moment of breath, you might find that your child would share what's going on. So the signs could be, again, they're anxious to go to school or not willing. They're severing certain relationships. So if you are aware of you're spending time, your child has a good friend and now they're not spending so much time with them, instead of coming in and accusing or assuming what you know, ask what's been going on with them.

Now from a school's perspective, we see a lot more of isolation. So watching kids in the lunch room and seeing where kids are sitting. We see that showing up and willingness to participate in the classroom. Because once we see social and emotional learning really done well in school, we see a lot of benefits. That includes people want to be there. They have a higher sense of belonging. They feel more connected to the adults in the room or in the building. Pardon me, and it increases academic performance.

So it's something that there's a lot of things that we look at that are displaying, well not pro social behavior. We want to see pro social behavior where students are looking out for each other. So teachers really do know and this is where we encourage teachers to have these skills because it shows up in the classroom and in the hallways where the teachers are much more often than ... We want teachers to be able to manage these issues before they just send them out the hallway or things bubble up.

Now the last piece of this answer, and again, thank you for letting it be so long winded, is that we often will just tell kids to go ask for help. One thing that we know from, especially my experience, is that students believe that adult involvement always makes their life worse. I say always because that's the language that they use, right? So they always makes life worse. So what that means is when something comes to an adult, it is significant enough that we need to have trusted adults behave well and bring them down this path of solution alongside of the child and not just take it away from them.

So what we encourage kids to do and have part of our curriculum is for the students to identify when should they go ask for help and then identify who is the best person to go to. Because those are some of the components that are skill building in saying, "Okay, this is a little bit beyond me. I need to go ask for help and here's how I can do it."

Our next question is, do you train people on Owning Up?

Yes, absolutely. Owning Up, and it's one of my most favorite things that we do as an organization, is when we have a chance to train people on how to teach this curriculum, we find that adults feel more comfortable with it. It can shift some of their own, what's going on in their lives.

If you take a step back and see some of the relationships that you have, they might need some improvement. If it's a loved one or if it's a friend or a colleague. Now we find that when we're able to teach, it absolutely impacts the classroom, but then there's a longer legs for how it goes out into their lives. So yes, we do teach curriculum.

Here's a good one for you Charlie. The next question is, "My sixth grade students watched this with me in our counseling class. They enjoyed it and learned some great info. They're wondering if you are outside or if you have a green screen behind you?"

Such a great eye. I meant it. So glad that you guys are watching together. So thank you, first off, sixth graders. Appreciate you being here. It is real life paper. It's not a green wall, but I wish I was outside. It would be a beautiful setting. It's wallpaper. That's what I was trying to come up with. Wallpaper.

That was our last question. We'll see if anyone has another one. While we're waiting, I just wanted to show some contact information. If you want to get a hold of Cultures of Dignity, you can visit their website culturesofdignity.com. As Charlie mentioned, email him at curious@culturesofdignity.com. Their Twitter handle is cultureodignity. If you want to learn more about CrisisGo, you can visit our website crisisgo.com or you can email us at marketing@crisisgo.com. Our Twitter handle is @crisisgo1.

I'm not seeing any more questions. Charlie, do you mind if we kick it? I'm sorry. We have one last one. Is Owning Up evidence-based?

The answer's sort of. So the previous version was we are in a relationship with the university to explore ways for it to be evidence based. We are also partner, we have a partnership about 19 months or so, just under two years of working with a large charter school network in Dallas, Texas to help it become evidence-based. So those that know the process, it is long, arduous, and expensive. One of the things that we're looking forward to next year is having the beginning of control groups and experimental groups. So it will be, and we were on that path just I can't say 100% yes at the moment.

Charlie, if you don't mind, the first question was to go through some of the slides again. So would you care if I kick it back to you and we can cycle through those?

Surely. I would happily share my slide deck with you, Greg, if that would make things easier to send out to the list of participants. So we can do that afterwards as well.

Sure. Thank you.

Start from the top. So here are the set of questions. Maybe I'll just spend couple seconds on each slide. How we define happiness. The reminder that this is what keeps people going. Conflict. The difference between respect and dignity. The difference between drama and bullying. Remember bullying is stripping somebody of their dignity of their worth. Three types of teasing to provide more detail in what's going on because teasing is such an overarching term. An example of modifying bonding teasing into playful teasing.

This wonky slide. Types of bystanding that we see in the moment, and then witnessing a pattern of behavior that you're not willing to name. Then why bystanding is difficult to overcome and, but important to. And that's all.

Wonderful. Well, thanks again to everyone for attending and participating. We're going to be sending out an email later this week with a link to the recording in case you'd like to share it with your colleagues and friends. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you.