Sucheta Kamath: Welcome back to full PreFrontal exposing the mysteries of executive function. I'm your host. Suchetta Kamath, I think you all know our mission, mission is to bring the findings from neuroscience, psychology, education, philosophy, maybe even anthropology and social cognition, so that everyday transformations can become more transparent to all of us, and all of us are propelled towards personal and collective growth. This podcast has specific three goals, as you know that one is to explain what is the nature and scope of executive function and how crucial they these set of skills are for our our personal development, but also those children that we are responsible for, so that they can move towards self sufficiency and Even the ambitious project or the key to moral development is very strong, PreFrontal cortex, so maybe we can make connection there. The second is to help motivate the current self, which is always bogged down by the needs and pressures of the current moment, to investigate the blind spots and the true nature of the needs of the future self, and so kind of create a pathway from current self to the future self. And the last thing is to really help all those who are tasked to help children, particularly since we are responsible for our children, and if we are the, you know, educated. Educators or stakeholders we need to know what does it take to create a personal playbook for a personal success by mastering executive function, and what kind of lens that we need to activate to inform that worldview? So with that, I am so honored to have a dear friend, an incredibly brilliant mind and a leading expert in his own area of Education, Dr Gary mcganey. He's the chief of operations of health security dynamics and executive director of government programs at Sharecare and a consultant for United States Department of Education. He was the Deputy State Superintendent for Georgia Department of Education for 14 years. He serves on the Behavioral Health Reform Commission, state juvenile alternatives to detention committee, council on alcohol and drugs and Georgia parent support network board. He is a prolific author and a deeply thoughtful person and a poet. I'm going to say he also co founded the Georgia education Climate Coalition with a membership of over 80 organizations. He has several professional journal publications, and as I mentioned, several books, particularly, I am very interested in him sharing his wisdom from his second edition the psychology of school climate. But he has also written several other books and papers, and he's the leading thought leader in helping us understand how we can engage students. So welcome to the podcast, Gary, how are you?

Garry McGiboney: Good. Thank you very much. I'm honored to be here.

Sucheta Kamath: Well, every presentation I have heard you speak and every conversation I have had, I have felt incredibly inspired. And so I want to start with you from your younger self. When you were you were a child in K to 12 education. When did you become How were your executive function skills, your ability to formulate goals, persist, focus, make plans. And when did you become more self aware student and more in charge of your learning.

Garry McGiboney: Well, it was quite a journey. I was born into, I won't say poverty, but our family did not have a lot of means. My brother, who was six years older than me, and passed away several years ago, was was the first person our family to graduate from high school. I was the first one to go to college, but interestingly enough, in elementary school, I was a very good student, straight A to sit in the front of the class, but I did not adapt to adolescence in a very smooth fashion, I see so when I went. To high school, and the high school we had, we did not have middle school. We had a K-7, elementary school, and then 8-12, high school. And when I went into high school, it was a different journey. I did not have the best experience with the with the teachers that I had when I first entered high school, so I dropped out of high school.

Sucheta Kamath: What kind of experiences did you have that made you not connect with your schooling experience?

Garry McGiboney: They were just disinterested in in the students. And I can't say it was all the teachers fault. I just did like I said, did not make a good transition into adolescence, and I see I was not a I was not a discipline problem in school, but I lost interest. Got into trouble with juvenile court, really, because I was, I was prone to get into fights pretty quickly, not in not at school, a few fights at school, but not anything major, but in the community, I was hanging around the wrong crowd and got into some pretty serious fights. And so I was locked up four times and put in juvenile sent to juvenile court four times back in that day in the county and the community I lived in, they did not have a juvenile court. You went to the Superior Court, and they really did not have juvenile detention. So I was I spent time in adult jail cell. One time I was there, and I, a 21 year old, was put in the same cell with me, and we got into a fight, and that's how I have a broken nose and a cauliflower ear. It's from that fight. 

Sucheta Kamath: Oh, my goodness, Gary.

Garry McGiboney: But I had, I had an angel of sorts in the court room one day, and it happened to be a motorcycle police officer. Really came out of court with my father, who's the one who would take me to court, and came out of the courtroom and the motorcycle cop that we didn't know, his officer Burgess said, what's going on with you? And I said, Well, yeah, I had kind of an attitude, so I'm sure I said something and I shouldn't have said and he said, Well, we'll talk sometime in the future. Well, the meantime, I got in trouble again. Went back before the juvenile superior court judge, but this time, I made it worse, because I smarted off to the judge. Oh no, yeah. So he said, Okay, I'm gonna give you a choice. You can go back in school or you can go to adult work camp. So whatever you want, judge just had an attitude. So you can see why the teachers did not relate to me very well anyway. So I went to adult work camp. I had my own guard who told me he would, he would blow me in half with a shotgun if I didn't behave. So I worked, I behaved, and I worked with the adults, and that was very difficult. That was physically challenging and emotionally challenging. So when I went back to the judge three weeks later, he said, Now, what do you want to do? Go back to the work camp. Do you want to go back to school? So I said, I think school looks better now. The motorcycle cop, Officer Burgess was kind enough to come by the school once a week, and we just talked. And to make a long story short, I'll shorten it, I graduated from high school some way. I just barely got through but in those days, this was in the DeKalb community, the community college had an open door policy, so it didn't matter what your grades were in high school, as long as you had a diploma, you can go to college. So that's how I got into college. Was through that door, and when I did the placement exams, my scores were so low I had to take remedial classes for a year. Wow. And I was working full time, working at night, well into the night, menial jobs, labor intensive jobs, and going to school during the day as much as I much as I could. But I made it through the first year of the remedial classes. I had a lot of help from the teachers, just for fantastic teachers at the community college, very patient. So after the first year of remedial classes, I was taking, quote, real college camp courses the second year, but I was still struggling, and I was taking college, you know, the basic College English class, 101, and it was taught by a professor, Dr Zenobia Lyles in. Who actually was the department head of English at Ohio State University at one time, but she retired and moved to DeKalb County to be with her her family, and she was very intimidating. But for some reason, she stopped me after class one day, and she said, Do you need help. And I said, Yes, I do. She said, Well, come by my office. So I did. I went by her office, and bless her heart, she tutored me. I wouldn't have made it without her. She tutored me in her class, but also she tutored me in math and social studies and whatever class I had, she was my tutor, and without her, I would not have made it through. So then my third year in the two year college, because, you know, community college is basically two years, but took me three years the second my third year there, I realized I could do the work, and I excelled and made the Dean's list every semester that third year, and that's what got me into Georgia State University, where I also had just fortunate to have wonderful professors. And from that, realized that I had, because I was told that I had a different perspective on learning than some of the professors had seen with some other students, so they encouraged me to keep going, to keep going. So when I got my bachelor's degree, and remember now I'm still working full time because my family didn't really have the means to pay for my college, so I had to pay for everything, so I lived in a basement apartment, working full time. Get home about one or two o'clock in the morning from my job, get up and go to class at eight o'clock in the morning, nine o'clock in the morning. But that was okay, because I was focused. I had a purpose. I found it challenging, and it wasn't a burden. It was really kind of inspiring. Because what I what I lacked in high school and what I found in college was a challenge, hmm, and high school, and what drove me to fight was a challenge. I needed a challenge, and so it was redirected, and the college professors were wise enough to see that in me, that I needed a challenge, but I couldn't do it alone. I needed some skills to rise up to the challenge. Just like you need skills to fight, you know, you need skills to rise up to the challenge intellectually. And so they gave me those skills to rise to the challenge intellectually, so I can move to the next level. So from the went to the bachelor's degree to the master's program, and when I finished that, I was able then to get a job teaching, but, you know, I really want to do more than teaching. So then majored in psychometry and got the master's degree in psychometry, which led me to school psychology, which led me into an interesting career when I went into the cab school system, which is a school system that I attended. I graduated from the cab school system, and then I ended up going back to the cab school system as an employee, but I went to school and got when I got the master's degree in School Psychology, and then Specialist degree in School Psychology, I became a school psychologist, and I love that job. It was. I love working with children. I love solving problems. I love helping them solve their problems, which many of them were somewhat like me, and that they needed to be challenged, but they needed the skills to rise up to that challenge.

Sucheta Kamath: I mean, I think Gary, Sorry, continue.

Garry McGiboney: Then it led one thing led to the other, and then the administrators in the DeKalb school system said, well, we need for you to move into administration. And I really didn't want to. I enjoy being a school psychologist, so that's how I went directed into administration. Was because I was recruited to go into administration, and that, in itself, is a different story. But anyway, each level was a challenge, so I ended up getting into the doctoral program.

Sucheta Kamath: Well, thank you for taking the time to really, really explain your journey, I think this has direct bearing on executive function conversation we are having. I do think that I love the statement you made, and it's you your older self looking back at your younger self, and you said I did not adapt to adolescence. Yeah. I think this can present itself in such a sometimes self sabotaging way, and only a mature adult, or adult with psych wise adult can actually recognize that. Because a young man in elementary was getting straight A's and suddenly is declining, his intellect has definitely not fallen off out of his brain. But I also what stands out to me is these two amazing humans. You know, psychologist Julius, I forget his last name, who, in 70s, talked about this concept of presence of a charismatic adult in a child's life from whom the child draws strength. And you had officer Burgess and and Dr lows louse, I went to OU, by the way, so I just think that somebody paused and said, Do you need help. Somebody said, Why are you getting in trouble? And even when you did not know why you were getting in trouble, you can verbalize now that you needed a challenge. You were getting bored. You This was too petty, simple, not relevant, that an adult recognizing has transformative power. But the last thought comes to my mind, and I would love your wisdom before we dive into your expertise, is I had a many years ago, many years ago, I had a expert, Dr Horatio Sanchez, and I was telling him a story of somebody, a child growing up in poverty, and how she overcame and became this of great success, and he said to me, he stopped and said to me, Sucheta, I appreciate the story, but we should not focus on exceptions. We should actually treat every child that has that potential and not really have success stories. Look back and say, I rose above it. So can everybody else, but that help is what we should focus so I'm just curious, and I now see deep and love and caring you have for students, particularly systems that can accidentally or intentionally exclude them from having a phenomenal learning experience. I'm just curious what you think about the this cat. What can we do at a systems level, or maybe that that's too advanced a course question before we get into other parts of it, but I think you responded well to Officer Burgess. And I'm just curious, what was it? What primed you to be that way? Like, Was there enough suffering already you endured? And you're like, Okay, I don't need this. Or is it nobody really cared for you so carefully asked you that compassionate question, like, what can we do to intercept when we see struggling students, children and parents can do that. Teachers can do that.

Garry McGiboney: Well, it was my relationship with Officer Burgess who, by the way, became the police chief. Oh, really, many years later, my relationship with him developed organically. It wasn't wasn't quick and developing. It developed over time. But what I appreciated the most with him is that he shared his difficulties with me. It wasn't just what's wrong with you, or what do you need, or what, what's the matter with you? Or what can I do for you? It's well, let me tell you what I went through. And he didn't. He had a very difficult childhood. He had a very loving parents, but he had, they had difficult times, and so he shared of himself, not only his time, but his story. But I know you know now, looking back, the reason he shared his story is because he was telling me lessons he learned during his lifetime. And so he was sharing lessons with me through his stories, because he knew that I had probably he he heard the judge lecturing to me, and he probably knew that my parents had lectured me, because my parents were wonderful. I mean, we didn't have we didn't have any money, but my parents were wonderful. My mother was an angel, and my father was had the patience of Job. They were wonderful. So this is not any reflection on them whatsoever, but Burgess was one of these people that knew that... 

Sucheta Kamath: What hardship were you going through at that time as a young adolescent?

Garry McGiboney: Well, I was bored. There were. Relationship with other other teenagers was kind of strained, because, you know, we're it's a adolescence is a social dance. You're dancing around and you're not connecting. You're just dancing to see how you fit. You're dancing to see how others fit, and if you're an adolescent, you make a connection. Sometimes, that's the exception and not the rule. It's just a lot of dancing around, and I got tired of the dance, so I pretty much isolated myself from the dance and disassociated myself from that social you said, this is not for me. I said this is this is really not I'm not learning anything. It's not my scene. This is not my thing. It's not a challenge to me. So disassociated with that. But going back to Officer Burgess, he was willing to share his life and what he learned, lessons he learned from his life.

Sucheta Kamath: Well, that brings us to this topic. I love that. You know he shared, and sharing is not just time. He actually opened up. So psychologically he was wise. He shared his story, so it was not a one time thing. He also kind of shared his lessons. So he kind of he primed you to even receive his lessons through time and his personal relevance through a story, and he humanized himself in front of you. He was not this superior being. I'm an adult. I know more or you know less, which you sound like you respect it.

Garry McGiboney: Her And Dr Lyles was different. She didn't share stories about herself. What she talked about was, let's talk about your skills. What are you good at? What do you have trouble with? What do you like? She made a distinction between what do you like and what do you enjoy. Wow. And so she probed a little bit more into my intellect and into my emotional status, but she didn't share a whole lot about herself, which was okay with me, because we were talking about the challenge of what can I do next this? Okay, you can do this, but what, what else can you do? What can we focus on as far as strengths, and what do we need to work on as far as weaknesses? And she was the first one to tell me that many times a weakness is not a lack of skill, it's a lack of exposure, it's lack of experience. And I had not heard that before, and that was to me, a very defining moment, because sometimes we make students unintentionally, make students feel stupid, and when what we're really trying to tell them is that, well, you just haven't learned this yet. You just haven't had the experience yet. And that's why I'm here to not only help you learn, but also to give you that learning experience. Because learning is an experience. It's not a thing. It's an experience. And I'm here to help you have a learning experience so you can improve your skill set. And sometimes I think we make children feel like they're not adequate enough, that they're they're they're missing something that we set expectations that they feel like they need to reach without the skills to get to that level. But Dr Lyles was just a different approach, but it was appropriate for that time. I didn't really need her story. I didn't really need her personal life story. What I needed was what she actual skills.

Sucheta Kamath: Yeah, and, you know, so interesting you're saying, because I think both these adults met different needs of your milestone of development, I think you were much younger when you met officer Burgess and actually just focused on creating a relationship that could rope you back into the engagement piece. But when Dr, I'm not pronouncing her name, Lowe's. She actually showed you the specifics about how to succeed in learning, and what a slight differentiation, but profound impact on your ability to then run with it, because you've got, you have the ingredients within you. You know, that brings me to this topic that we I want to focus on. And this again, listeners, you might be wondering, are we getting into the thick of executive function, or how does this all pertain? But if you are interested in how learning happens and how learning happens in the interpersonal spaces, Dr mcgibney is our man, and he's going to help us understand the true nature of this, this idea of the biggest struggle, and all the data that I'm reading Gary is about how kids are not engaged. They are not liking their schooling experience, and that immediately is impacting teachers, feeling. Of burnout. They're feeling that I'm not honored or respected for the very profession I call teaching, and the kids are feeling the way you are presenting information or what it is is not making any sense to me. So I think we are nicely I think we are situated to talk about school culture and climate. So maybe if you can help us kick off within, from a psychologist perspective, what gets kids engaged, or what is engagement to you as an expert?

Garry McGiboney: But before we get to that, I think we need to explore a little bit of what is required before you can be engaged 

Sucheta Kamath: I love it. Okay, let's do that. What's expected of children? 

Garry McGiboney: We talk about you here, now, and in the news and in the professional ranks, a lot of reference to literacy and focus on literacy. And Georgia created the literacy commission, and from that, we hear a lot about the science of reading. Everybody's talking about the science of reading. We need to be talking about the science of learning. And even before that, talking about that, yes, and even before the science of learning is the science of engagement, or science of motivation. And even and even before that is the is the science of language development, we kind of skip over the language development, and we also skip over the engagement, and we also skip over the learning to get to the science of reading. And we need to back up and start from we just assume that all children have language skills. We just assume that that's something that we don't even really need to talk about. But the research is especially research in the UK. They're way ahead of the United States in the research on language development. They have found that lot of children, lot of children, have a deficit in language rich environments, they just have not been in language rich environment used to be at one time that was primarily children living in poverty, where there's just not a whole lot of dialog in the home, but now they're finding it's spreading more into the middle and upper class because of smartphones and tablets, and we're not engaging in conversation anymore. So that lack of language development now is is becoming more widespread. And when I talk about language development, we're talking about expressive, receptive and pragmatic language.

Sucheta Kamath: And as a speech pathologist, this is my wheelhouse. Yes.

Garry McGiboney: There you go. 

Sucheta Kamath: And you've been talking about this so deeply, but it's completely out of the conversation unless you have a disorder like language developmental delay, which is, we're missing the mark on it.

Garry McGiboney: We're not even talking about disability. We're not talking about delay, we're just talking about experience and exposure to language. But you imagine, as you know, a student, regardless of age, even adult for that matter, if you have good receptive language skills, but you have underdeveloped expressive language skills. In other words, you understand everything that's going on around you, but you have a difficult time expressing yourself, asking the right questions, or even asking questions. Imagine how frustrating that would be, and that's not going to lead to very much engagement in learning or engagement in the classroom. So I think we need to back up and do some type of assessment of what can we do in the classrooms to understand the language? Of our of our children, and there's a way to do that. There's I work with Emily Rubin, who is a speech and language pathologist, and Arianna Weldon, who is an epidemiologist, and we develop language as a missing link Toolkit, which is available for anyone on the Sandra deal Literacy Center website at the Georgia State College and University, and it doesn't really talk about developmental delays. It's not based on age bands. It's based on kind of flipping the script, where this is where children are with their language if we don't communicate with them at their level, they're not going to move to the next level. They're less likely to move to the next level. Instead of us looking at the deficit model, we're trying to look at the strength model. So it's on us as adults. It's on us, not on the children, but on us to find out what is their communication level, and let's communicate with them at that level, then they can they're more likely to move to the next level, and as their language develops. And can I be engaged in learning?

Sucheta Kamath: Sorry, can I just highlight a point that you made? Yeah. One our assumptions were, when a child comes into school, school, they have age appropriate development of language, and that corresponds to grade level demand on their language skills to process and participate in learning. And you just highlighted the current data that is showing that it used to be the language gap, or the vocabulary gap, used to be profoundly accentuated in poor communities because of lack of exposure, but we are now saying seeing a huge shift of that into middle class and and it no matter what parental wealth children are behind. So that can you just for a moment. I think people need to digest that, because two things are happening, and I wonder if you, one is when you don't process information that is a vehicle to complete or execute. That means I need you to, like I give this example all the time, close the door only if the window is open. In order to take this is a simple sentence, right? But it has this clause that changes the direction of what you do first you have to check the window. But if the child does not have working memory or does not have the capacity to process this linguistic code they're going to be behind and the classroom assumption, and I'm not saying faulting teachers for that, but they feel I'm ready to teach. Are you? You must have brought all the skills to learn. So I can you tell us, is this measure that is freely available? Language is a missing link. Tool available to educators is this being prolifically used and applied?

Garry McGiboney: It's been used pretty widespread in the UK. In fact, Emily Rubin does training around the world. Her expertise has is in autism. She was at the Marcus Center for Autism for several years. She's the primary trainer. She's the star of the show, but we have school systems that are doing the training, and the training includes an engagement ladder.

Sucheta Kamath: Which I have seen your engagement letter. 

Garry McGiboney: No teacher can measure or determine a student's engagement level, and many times it is related to language. And we're not talking about a referring a child to an SLP, we're talking about making the classroom more language rich, yes, for for all the students, but it's also using the latter to determine which students are engaged in learning on a scale of zero to five, and what you can do for those who are not engaged, because there is a way to find out why they're not engaged, but we tend to especially with children who are quiet, who don't really engage in class, we think, well, they're learning. They must be learning. Maybe they do okay on exams, but it's not as well as they could be doing. So the engagement ladder does give the teacher something to work from, and it's again, tied back to the language, and then also embedded in that is the climate of the classroom and the climate of the school, because you have to create conditions for learning. You have to create conditions for engagement, and there's a lot of preparation that goes into creating conditions for engagement. It doesn't occur if there's a negative school climate. 

Sucheta Kamath: Can we pause in since you're moving to the second topic? So I think what I'll just summarize for our listeners that Gary is talking about that when, when we come there's a lot of conversation about science, of reading, but there are precursors, which may be more visible, set of skills, and the science is so deep and wide that we may or may not have adequate training offered to the teachers or even parents. May not be aware. But the hierarchy I see it is the science of developing, of development of language, science of motivation, which is same as science of engagement, and then science of learning, and then come science of reading. So now you are also talking their conditions that are conducive to that promote that engagement once the language is appropriate and the exchange between teachers, teacher and students is at par with the level of competence that the students are developed showing correct did I summarize it so now, if you don't mind, tell us, since this may be a new term for some listeners, what do you mean by climate? And also, because the term comes from climate, and people need to distinguish between what. They're in climate, but how much agency people have over climate? So I would love for you to kind of maybe start there.

Garry McGiboney: Well, let me start with a lesson I learned the hard way, many years ago, when I first started talking about school climate, I was accused of talking about a left wing agenda, that it was something that was too liberal and people did not understand really what I was talking about. So when I talked to rotary clubs or talked to teachers, even I was not doing a very good job of communicating with them. So I realized this, and I changed my approach when I first started doing the presentations. I started talking about workplace climate, and I said, now let me explain what workplace climate is. And most people nodded their head when I asked, Do you know what workplace climate is? They said, You know, they're nodding their head Affirmative. I said, So workplace, make sure we're on the same page. Workplaces like this, if you go to work, you feel safe, you feel secure, you trust your colleagues. You can communicate with your colleagues. If you're upset with your colleagues, you can work it out. You have a leader who can facilitate any disagreement. The building's not too cold to build. The room is not too hot. Your furniture is not broken, your computer actually works. If you're out sick, somebody checks and see how you're doing when you come back to school, come back to work after you've been sick, somebody asked, Well, are you okay? Is there anything I can do for you? That's workplace climate. That's also school climate. The school is a workplace. If teachers don't feel comfortable at school, if they don't feel like the leadership in the school supports them or understands them or cares about them, then how do we expect teachers, then to transfer that to caring about students? If their classroom is hot and students are falling asleep, how does that affect learning? We want kids to be engaged and want them, therefore, to learn from being engaged, and want teachers to be good at teaching. But how is that possible? If the classroom is hot or cold, or the desks are broken, the desks are old, or the equipment is not new, it's not up to date. So the climate of the school is more than just, you know, it's the physical part of the school. It's the attitude of leadership to the teachers and the teachers, to students and teachers among themselves. At last count, I've been in probably 800 schools around the nation, and one of the first places I go to is the teachers lounge and just sit and listen. What do you look for? I'll just listen. And not to oversimplify, but if I hear something like this, all the students here or the same way, all the students here just are acting the same way, if I hear that, then the climate of school is probably not very, very positive, but I've been in a lot of schools for even in areas just impoverished communities where I really didn't feel safe in the community, but the school was wonderful. Students were happy. Teachers were happy. Very, very little staff turnover. All those conditions have to be in place for us to really expect learning to take place. Because you think about if you don't feel safe in the school, you're not going to be engaged in learning. If you're afraid to go in the hallway because there's bullies in the hallway, you're not going to be engaged in learning. So we have to be aware of the climate of the school, then I'm often asked, What's difference between the culture and the climate? Culture is what you have. Climate is why you have it.

Sucheta Kamath: Oh, I see.

Garry McGiboney: Culture. We care about each other. We understand each other. We're sensitive to different cultures in the building. We are sensitive to change that may take place in the community. We are sensitive to how kids react to changes at home and changes in the schedule and changes in how the you know, the school operates, but the climate is, is what holds it up, is climate is what protect is what creates the culture, and what nurtures the culture, and what protects the culture. And we cannot take any of that for granted and then expect children to learn and we can't. ExQ. Children learn unless they're engaged, and they're not going to be engaged if they don't feel comfortable in school, if they don't feel like somebody cares about them, and if they don't feel challenged.

Sucheta Kamath: You know, I think the I want to highlight something you're pointing out here when we think about outcomes, when we think about success for every child, we are so focused, the only way rather to gage child's progress is through grades, and it's a very tedious and terrible or performance on a test, whatever, whether it's a statewide Nash or, you know, national standardized test, and what you're describing is maybe almost considered irrelevant to learning. You know what I mean? Like nobody gets up and says, let's see if I have a good curriculum to teach. How is the climate? How is the culture? So, what? What is happening? Where? Where do you think this needs to be housed? Because you're describing something that is almost feels like a precursor to learning to occur, but, but I think a sing, can single person do it like it's not a teacher who comes prepared then kind of completely loses his or her mind because there's total chaos in the classroom, or the three kids who are the ruckus creators, and they're now giving the teacher hard time. That is not isolated. It's housed in that hallway. It's housed in that school. It's housed in that district, is what you're saying.

Garry McGiboney: Right the way to approach this would be what Georgia has done, not saying it's the best way necessarily, but it's, in some ways, been effective, and that is to, first of all, to highlight the importance of school climate by measuring school climate. Yeah, so Georgia has created, and did create, several years ago, the school climate rating. So every school in Georgia with grades from grades three to 12, there's a school climate rating of the school on a scale of one to five. Five being a positive climate, one being a not so positive climate. In fact, a negative climate. And it's made up of four elements, the Georgia Student Health Survey, which is the anonymous survey given to students, if for the younger kids as a teacher assistant, but it's, it's still anonymous and that they can, they take it online the that's about 25% of the school climate rating, and then attendance is another 25% of the school climate rating, both the teacher and student attendance and discipline data. 

Sucheta Kamath: Can I ask you to elaborate on that so we may miss quickly make a judgment that somebody student is not coming because the conditions at home, but you're also saying it could be that because the child doesn't want to come to school, because of the conditions in the school itself.

Garry McGiboney: Could be but regardless of the reason,

Sucheta Kamath: but absenteeism indicative of that component,

Garry McGiboney: and we could talk about, we could spend a whole session talking about student attendance, because I facilitated a group that studied student attendance for six months. We met every two weeks for six months, and the result was an 8081, page report. If you'd like to see it, I can send it to you.

Sucheta Kamath: Please do and I will definitely include in the show notes as well. What can you give us a quick highlight about what's what came about?

Garry McGiboney: Well, the this, the study committee, was created by the George get Georgia reading cabinet. They felt like the focus on improving literacy, obviously was is well intended and necessary, but there might be some elements that were overlooking, like engagement we talked about earlier, but also attendance. In looking at the data, 25% almost 25% of Georgia students were chronically absent. So we can do whatever we want to about improving literacy, but we were going to have to focus some attention on attendance and 25% chronically absent. What does chronically absent mean? That means they've missed at least 18 days of school per year. 

Sucheta Kamath: Out of 180 days, right?

Garry McGiboney: That's, you know, that's a lot of that's over three weeks of school.

Sucheta Kamath: That's a lot of missing school. 

Garry McGiboney: So, you know, improving literacy rates without focusing somewhat attention on attendance is not going to get you wherever you need to be. So we look. Looked at data. The report includes a whole section on data. One question that came up that I asked the Atlanta Regional Commission to look at was something that I hadn't heard anybody ask about. I mean, I was curious about it is, well, okay, we have some attendance issues, but what would happen if we improved attendance? Maybe it's not that important. So I asked the regional, the research director of the Atlanta Regional Commission, this question that said, if we, if we reduce chronic absenteeism by 5% what would be the outcome? It raised the reading levels by over six almost 7% so that you know, Georgia is at 38.5% of the students are reading proficiently into the third grade. That would go to over 45% which would put Georgia within the top 10 nationally by improving attendance.

Sucheta Kamath: That is the magic bullet right there.

Garry McGiboney: Well, it's, it just shows that it's important. That was my point. Was trying to find out. Well, is it really that important? We're assuming that it's important, but let's, let's validate that also. Research It was done by the Department of Education a few years ago, found out that learning is significantly impact after the fifth day of absence, and exponentially after that. Oh, wow. And yet, we have parents, because part of the study was the Technical College of Georgia did a study including over 100 parents about attendance, there were 10 questions about attendance. And parents think that if a student misses one or two days a month of school, that's not so bad. They don't realize that after the fifth day, learning is impacted and one day a month over the course of nine months of education, you know, you're losing some significant learning. So most of the rest of the report we focus on, what does impact attendance based on research is heavily, heavily based on research. It's like, my goodness, there must be, I think there's over 150 footnotes and probably 50 to 70 references. So it's very, very heavily steeped in research. But what I think was most significant about the report, in addition to the data, is that we look for what's working? So we looked at schools around the nation that improved attendance. We looked at school districts around the nation that improved attendance. We worked with a national organization called attendance works to identify strategies that have been working around the nation. So the report, half of the report, really is focusing on what works, instead of just focusing on the problem. I'm always I'm a firm believer of appreciative inquiry. And you know that that that concept appreciate is, let's focus on what works and really understand why it works, so that we can perhaps replicate it, or at least see where and if it could work in certain situations. So that's a quick summary of that report. I'm proud of the report for the work that the group did, because of the focus on really digging into the data, but also, like I said, finding those, there were 19 categories of elements at work, elements that need to be addressed in the chronic in developing a comprehensive plan. School Climate is one of them. There's working on engagement, improving language skills. You know, that's part of it too. Having appropriate Ward systems. There's a there's a long list of things that can be done that are effective.

Sucheta Kamath: And you know, you're highlighting that if the problem was not created in one day, the solution also is going to require many people, many stakeholders, to come together. But I love that you are saying that really by focusing on what's working the discouragement we are feeling around the nation about so many students are struggling and as if it sounds like the way sometimes it comes across that it's unattainable goal, almost. And I love that you're concretely saying, no, no, this concerted effort, specific strategic effort, can really work. And that's how like, to me, it's activating our own executive function to solve a problem that's. In front of us, the part that I think also struck out for me that so you pointed out that if we are thinking about culture and climate, we need to measure it. And so you have specific tools to measure it. And once you measure it, can you talk a little bit about the teacher's relationship to the process of teaching, when teaching can pose a challenge. I mean to me, I often say to students or explain to educators, when they are dealing with students, that learning by design is not knowing. So anytime you go about knowing anything, it is going to create anxiety. So if we don't have a proper mechanism to educate our children, the distinction between this incessant worry without any reason, but really appropriate worry and concern for not understanding. We can keep them motivated that you're absolutely right to feel anxious because this is so tedious, this is probably not making sense, because it requires you to think about that. You know, I think there's a way to distinguish. So I'm just wondering, maybe you can share some of your thoughts about a role of educators and parents when it comes to...

Garry McGiboney: What you just described, in a very beautiful way about students that applies. Just take the word student out and put teacher in there. Or what you just what you just said, is that we you know, what, what? What? What appeals to you. What are you struggling with? What do you need? Too often, it's been and this is you've heard this before, but I just want to emphasize it when I was in schools, and I was a principal of an alternative school where we had 600 students that were sent there by a discipline tribunal. All 600 were sent there by discipline tribunal. Now that was a challenge, and we had, when I first got there, we had tremendous teacher turnover, because you can imagine, I mean, you put all your discipline issues in one school, my goodness, but it was better than them being expelled. That was the philosophy. But I asked the teachers we had, we met every day after school, what worked today and what went wrong. What do you enlist? And we kept, we kept a note of each one of those daily debriefings. We call them debriefings, what worked today and somebody we we made notes of what worked. We kept an ongoing diary, as it were, or dialog related to the diary of what actually worked and what didn't work. And many times, what didn't work was when it was top down. What worked most of the time is when the teachers are creative enough to think of something that made perhaps, you know you have to have standards, you have to have assessments, you have to have, you know, all those things obviously, for that make a school system operate and make them functional and make them accountable. But too often, I just don't think we're asking teachers, what do you need? What is working for you? What doesn't work? Why does whatever work? Why does it work? What are you having trouble with? And so the professional development needs to come from the teachers up, and then that needs to be transferred to the University System and teacher preparation programs. Teachers are really interested when I talk to them about climate, the culture and climate of their classroom, the climate of the school. This is what to look for. This is how it's being measured, and the feedback usually is interesting, related, related to that, but also how they are expected to perform and the training that they receive. Many of them, and I'm not, I'm not a criticized universal system of Georgia, some of them think that the training program could be, could be more relevant. You know, our students are telling us that school needs to be more relevant, and teachers are telling us their training needs to be more relevant. So maybe there's a there's a common theme there.

Sucheta Kamath: And also time to edit, like one of the conversations I was having about even the concept of executive function, like how students take responsibility for their own learning by activating skillset, being organized, managing their time, focusing needs to be taught to teachers and every higher ed institution, I wouldn't say every. But most that I have spoken to, the answer is they don't have time. They do not have any place they can insert this. So my question really is, what can you remove that may not be relevant anymore, but I don't know, does that kind of edit happens.

Garry McGiboney: Well and thus, but you're hitting on an important point. Is what, what is important for the and what is the role of the teacher training program, but also what is the role at the local school level, those local school districts in Georgia and in other states, many of them have the capacity to do additional training or provide additional support for teachers. Coaching is with a lot of teachers, they really, really like the concept of coaching. They feel like it really helps them, particularly the teachers who are relatively new to teaching, that I hear time and time again, how much they appreciate having a coach that they can go to and just run ideas by, but also learn again, a shared experience from the coaches. You know, when I was in class, I did this, and when that situation came up, this is how I handle that and and I'm even asked, when I go into some schools, they'll ask me, Well, we have a teacher who's having some classroom management problems. What should we do? And I tell them, Well, I can't tell you what to do, but I can tell you, when I was a school psychologist many times, many times, I was asked to go into schools and work with a teacher who had classroom management problems. And I said, you have to give them something to do this very tangible, very concrete. First, not just talk about but just give them something that gives them the sense that they have control. And so I would tell them, Okay, wonder we're going to divide the class up into smaller units. Your class is not now a class of 20 students. This a group of four students made up of five students in each group. So it was kind of the, you know, the old divide and conquer, and teachers felt like they were in more control immediately and then. And from then, from that point, you could talk about some of their skills, some other strategies they can use when they're interacting with a student who's missing, misbehaving, but trying to give them some small success right up front was so important that they do have some control. And that was just an example of that, because, as you mentioned earlier, and I'll talk about map, M, A, P, quite often, motivation ability and prompt, you know, if you're not going to change, unless you're motivated to change. But even if you're motivated to change, if you don't have the ability to change, you can't change. And even if you're motivated in the ability, there's no prompt to change. If you're not prompted or encouraged to change, it's not going to happen. And that applies to students, and applies to teachers and applies to administrators as well. Sometimes I go into schools, I'll be honest with the problem is right in the front office.

Sucheta Kamath: So Gary, I think the, you know, I could keep you here for hours, watching listeners, listening span. I wanted to close out with this really important question. You know, there's been a lot of conversation about learning recovery, but we know it's not work. So one, if you can just quickly explain to our audience what that is, and what are your thoughts about that?

Garry McGiboney: Well, these are my thoughts about that we came out of the pandemic, and our children lost a lot of learning time, and we spent and the focus was and teachers are really encouraged. In fact, they were pressured for and I understand why to recover that learning that was lost as if the pandemic never occurred.

Sucheta Kamath: Yes, we have to pretend that it came in the way. No, it happened to all of us. 

Garry McGiboney: So our children went through the worst health crisis in 100 years, and we act like it didn't occur. We have children who lost friends or relatives or neighbors, parents who lost colleagues, friends, neighbors, relatives. They were traumatized. I mean, you're talking about adverse childhood experiences. The pandemic was an adverse childhood experience. We should have focused on the mental health and the mental well being of our children as they came out of the pandemic first, but we expected them and our teachers to get every. About engaged in learning. When they're they're recovering from a pandemic, they're recovering from loss. They've been through a traumatic look, how traumatic it was to us. I mean, we are isolated for two years for all practical purposes, and we're just gonna act like, well, that's, that's the past, don't worry about. We've got to focus on learning loss. Let's focus on the Mental Health First, yes, and then engagement would come later. The engagement would kick in once the children feel somewhat repaired from that traumatic experience that they went through and at least acknowledge that it happened. We have teachers who are still struggling from the what the pandemic did to their families, and yet we're asking teachers what just forget about that you've got to focus on learning loss. You got to and wasn't that like three years ago? Wasn't that kids get caught up? Come on now, get with it.

Sucheta Kamath: I think you you're bringing up something profound, which is, I like this analogy I use, like, you don't tell a diabetic this, you know, produce insulin. Like, that's never like something you say. But here we are, anything in the domain of mental health, you're absolutely saying, Oh, but that was pandemic. What did it do to you? And get over it. Like the mental health is almost like on a some sort of timer or time limit. 

Garry McGiboney: And we didn't. We failed to notice this too. Is that the all indications were an increase in mental health issues with our children before the pandemic? Yes, that trend was going up as far as increasing mental health concerns that was going up before the pandemic. 

Sucheta Kamath: It's the straw that broke the camel's back, which was the pandemic. 

Garry McGiboney: Not only have we ignored what happened from the pandemic, we ignored what was going on even before the pandemic.

Sucheta Kamath: So Gary, as we wrap this up, the kind hearted psychologist that you are and a warm hearted poet that you are, leave us with some message of hope you have every juncture have been talking about you have always noticed things that always work. So if you have a message for all our listeners, and particularly if, to me, that, like the mental health crisis, is the heap of it all. Top of the heap is that, if we made children feel grounded and not so anxious and wired, I think there's likelihood of they're becoming learning ready. What are your what's your message for us?

Garry McGiboney: Well, it's a message of hope, because I do see things that work. We hear and we're just so inundated every day with the news of something negative. If you watch the news frequently, you're just going to come away with a negative attitude about everything, because it just seems like nothing is working. Everything is falling apart. Nothing is built to last, and that's just not true, as long as we continue to care about each other and support each other and understand their strengths and weaknesses and build on what works and build on our strengths. And it's not I'm not a I'm not being naive about it, because my life has not been a very diff. Has been a very difficult life in a lot of ways. But I still maintain this, and I will For from now on, that I will maintain this attitude that we have to remain positive because things do work. We can make things better. We just have to have the will to make things better. And while it's okay to be task oriented, it can't be at the at the expense of being purpose driven. We just stay task oriented. We will always find their tasks that we can't do. We always find the checklist that we can't complete, and it's okay, like I said, to be task oriented, as long as we're still purpose driven.

Sucheta Kamath: Love that still purpose driven. And you know, I think I don't know in this world What greater purpose than leaving the next generation better prepared. I'm so grateful to you for the work you have done, most inspirational, transformative, but one of the best qualities in you and the way you deliver your life's work is in extreme clarity. I think that, to me, is palatable, understandable, but also applicable. Like, it's not like a heady talk, some abstract notions that maybe consider, if your heart opens, no, no, it is very specific. It's very clear, and it's very, very hope driven, hope centered. So I deeply thank you. I. All right, folks, that's all the time we have. I know this was a little bit long, but I thought it's worth your time and attention to listen to this very, very meaningful conversation. And if I know you care about our educational system, educating children of America is something very we all collectively need to take seriously, and I thank you for joining us on that journey. Thank you Gary again for being a guest, and thank you listeners for being a participant in this important journey. Please, if you enjoyed this session, share this with your colleagues, friends, your neighbors, leave us a review, because that helps people to find us. And once again, please lead with PreFrontal lobes. Those are the two best gifts we have. Gary, thank you for being here today.