Triumph in the Trenches: Dismantling Mentally Violent Spaces in the Classroom (with Rev. Dr. Xenia Barnes)

Renae: Welcome Xenia. I am so glad that you get to join us for your second summit with us, for the TraumaWise Education Summit. Welcome.

Xenia: Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here and sharing the stage with you today.

Renae: Excellent. Well, I've really enjoyed being able to collaborate and partner with you in this work this year, and looking forward to the ways that we'll continue to do this. And so I feel like I've gotten to know you pretty well. But for those who are watching this or listening for the first time, how about you go ahead and introduce yourself to everybody.

Xenia: Absolutely. So hello to everyone who is tuning in locally and globally. I am Reverend Doctor Xenia Barnes, also known as RDB speaks. I am born and raised in Brooklyn, and I come with a plethora of knowledge with over two decades and trauma informed experience as well as research and social and behavioral background, I am happy to be here to share more information about my From Trauma to Triumph framework as well as what does it look like to be present in the educational realm, and what does it look like to be TraumaWise in the educational realm?

Renae: Well, thank you, and one thing that I really appreciate from the conversations that we've had and the work that we've done together, is that you are bringing many different levels to the conversation. So you're bringing your lived experience as a person with a terminal health issue, you're bringing your lived experience as a woman, you're bringing your lived experience as a person of color. You're bringing your lived experience as a person of color that’s a woman with a with a health issue that is moving in the academic spaces. And there is just there's so many layers and intersections here with that, and so I just want to start with asking you one question, which is, what are you currently experiencing or seeing or observing as the greatest barrier for connection in educational space?

Xenia: I would have to say, personally, what I've been seeing from a standpoint of all those things you just named, for myself, what I've been seeing is this disconnect of what is it like to be someone who's disabled, yet able in the in the educational spaces. And then professionally, what I am seeing is this lack of effective and empathetic communication of what does it mean to show up trauma-wise, what does it mean to eliminate violent spaces in the educational setting, And what does it mean to actually prepare educators to have tools and strategies that effectively work in these spaces so that they're not creating pockets of trauma unintentionally because of a lack of knowledge, right?

Renae: And it could even be that they have some knowledge, or that they have some experience. But when we're talking about, not but, AND when we're talking about the culture of the classroom it is not just the educator. It is also the entity around the system, around the classroom. And the fact that each student is their own system. Each coworker is their own system. Each administrator is their own system. And then there is the system of what the school requires for felt safety and connection and learning and expectations. And then there's what the district expects, what the state expects, what the community expects, what the parents expect. There's all of these, these different systems that can sometimes seem to compete. And so is the educator looking at who, who's the stakeholder, right? There are so many stakeholders with these competing agendas; often it feels like or it or is. And so in that turmoil, I kind of think that if we look at that just from a resource place, that it creates a culture of scarcity and fear, because how is one human being going to meet all the needs of all these stakeholders when there's competition for your energy, your time, your resource, your attention, all of those things, plus the 30 children in front of you,

Xenia: Exactly. And so you also have to think about all, right, so what about, as you said, something you said was so key about the intersectionality, right? And so you think about all we have to as an educator, there's all those pockets that you're trying to align, there's all those pockets that you're trying to process and understand. But then there's also this separation when it comes to classroom culture and school culture. So you it's difficult to bridge the gap when you are, as the educator, as a staff member, are not crystal clear on how the two actually align, because when you have that fast teacher development, pre service, before the before students return back to school, what they're prepping you for, and there is more, so test results, all the things educational things that you have to focus on within the classroom. But they're not prepping you on the alignment of like, so this is what the district is expecting of you, right? How does classroom culture align to the expectation from the district now? How does that align to the school itself, the expectations of the school culture, and then the school culture, how that alignment trickles out into the classroom. So until we can bridge the gap between all three of them and help educators understand like, Okay, this is what it sounds like, looks like, and feels like, and these are the expectations, and this is what we're holding, the standard that we're holding to. There's always going to be confusion, because reality hits it, and pre service, there's all adults. So you're maybe doing a train-the-trainer, and you may be breaking up into groups of five and role playing, but you're role playing with adults. When the students come in with their personalities and their likely lived experience of their own, something different, totally different happened. And so now you're dealing with behaviors. Now you're dealing with personalities. You're dealing with behavior and here rolls in those violent spaces, because as the educator you have the standard that you just spent three weeks in this training of pre service of what you know that in a week or so, the principal and the leadership team gonna come in and they're gonna be doing the observation, I need to make sure all these things are checked off. However, my school, my classroom culture is not aligning itself to what the expectation of what I'm going to be graded on as a teacher, right? And so how do we fix that? Because until we can fix that, you have stress and pressure from the teacher of the expectation that's being put on them, which then gets trickled and passed down to the students, which then breaks that trust, it breaks that classroom safe space, and that then trickles into the home. So there's so many different avenues of trauma, of psychological, unsafe and safe barriers that has to be ironed out and until we figure out what this intersectionality looks like as a team and as a whole. We're going to continue to have this break in the educational system where we feel like we're just plugging or plastering holes and there's still leaks, yeah? pieces. And I know educators that have done a great job of saying, this is how we're going to create that felt safety, that connection and that co- regulation atmosphere so that we are able to address the academic, but we were starting with, how do we create that safe space?

Renae: Well, I think you, you know bringing up that the educators are not necessarily evaluated on the success of their students becoming regulated, curious, creative citizens of the classroom. That is not what you're graded on. You are graded on behavior management, and if students can show mastery of skill, and I think there's a piece of this that is the disconnect of the idea that education is about creating outcomes. Where students can meet a milestone for academic, knowledge and application versus, can this student participate in the community? And when we can participate in the community, we can bring our full and authentic self, we can show up, we can find safety and find our safe people. We have strategies, and that's built in community. If we don't have that, it doesn't matter how much information is given to us, we're not going to actually be able to take it in and apply it, because our nervous systems are just not going to allow us to do that. And so there is the, I think, that tension of, are we teaching to test? Are we creating spaces where our people, our young people, get to develop into the humans that they are meant to be. And so I know it's like, it's super stressful because there are these competing And you and I have talked about that, the violent culture is not just students hitting, punching, knocking things over, cursing or whatever, it is about the undercurrent of there not being space for people to exist. The violence of , compliance, right? Of force, and enforcing compliance, and conformity versus the expression of a person, creating it, leaving space for that. That's like suppression, and oppression is violence.

Xenia: Absolutely, absolutely, and so as a social and behavioral sciences this is part of what I bring too when I'm training educators, and when I'm training leadership, the importance of social emotional learning. And so there's ways that, yes, we can still meet the compliance of the teaching to the test while developing full, authentic human beings, while still allowing the child to go through those processes. So if we build in these blocks of social emotional learning, where there are every, let's say, when I was a dean, we did on every Wednesday, there was a block, a 30, a 45 minute block where we had the guidance counselors go in and they taught social emotional learning so the students were able to begin to understand their thoughts, their feelings, their emotions, the reasons why they respond the way they do respond to certain things. How do we change behavior? How do we self-regulate and being able to learn those tools and create community. Where they were able to sit in circles and discuss what they were feeling, process, pass the talking-stick around and understand that this one mic allow your classmates to say and build the things they feel. And it's okay to disagree, but this is how we do that. This is what it sounds like when you disagree. Don't just say I don't agree with you, but okay, we can have a different, difference of opinion. Here's what I'm hearing. You know this? This is, this is what they're teaching. This is what they're teaching to individuals. You're teaching the youngsters these things so that they can begin to self-regulate, so when they're having a difficult time they can raise their hand and say to the teacher, I need five minutes. I need, right now I'm having a difficult time processing it. This is what I need so that I can begin to focus again. When we teach them these key languages, when we teach them these key strategies, they begin to self-regulate, they begin to effectively communicate, they begin to successfully be a part of the community within the classroom. And that's how your classroom culture shifts. That's how you're able to get through your lesson plans. That's how you're able to have safe community within the classroom and being, and feel like, an effective teacher, because you see the work, you see the progress happening. I believe that teachers feel the most successful when their kids enter the classroom, smiling and leave the classroom, smiling, even if they don't get through the whole lesson, the fact that the students are able to articulate something that they learn, something that they feel a little challenged on and they look forward to coming back to your classroom, that's when educators feel the most successful. A four on a test, doesn't mean you feel successful, because I can teach you memory. I can teach you tricks to memorize things, but if I don't teach you the tools how to articulate when you're struggling with something, or how to ask for help, then I haven't done my job as an educator. And so when I train different leaders and different educators and as a formal educator myself, I know that's when I felt the most successful, and when I hear students reach out to me now that 15, 20, years later, and they say, I remember when you were my math teacher, I remember, oh, Ms. Barnes, Dean Barnes, all the different titles that they called me like that's how I know that I've made a mark. Because they remember that experience. They remember that connection. And so that's what it is to create safe spaces in the educational sector, because you allow for that memory and that process to happen,

Renae: Right? And it can only happen when we have created that felt safety. And so, part of that is, how are we setting up the structure, the container where we're communicating expectations? And I think even more importantly, how are we communicating a plan for repair? I think that piece of the there's going to be ruptures, there's going to be disconnects, but putting in the, we're going to practice repairing over and over and over at the beginning of the school year. At the beginning of the week. At the beginning, just to remind you that you, as a human being, are fully acceptable and wonderful, and the behaviors that you show are telling me that you don't have the words to get your needs met, that you can't yet say, hey, I need five minutes, that neural pathway has not fully formed. And your behaviors, they can rupture your trust with me. They can rupture your trust with the other students. They can rupture your trust with yourself. So how do we build in this pathway to reconciliation, to repair, to restoration of relationship, so that we can come back to connection? And that only happens with practice. You we can say it all day long, but it isn't until we're taking the actions and practicing it and modeling it. And then even as adults, part of modeling it is when we screw up, it's really important that we apologize and make it right to our kiddos. We actually don't lose power when we do that. What we do is, we gain trust because they already knew we screwed up. That is not a surprise for them. But if we're willing to tell the truth and then make it right, what we're showing is, is that the coming back into relationship is more important than punishment or punitive pieces, and that we're learning. What we're learning is how can I access my strategies? How can I access my prefrontal cortex? Because somebody has been with me and shown me that there's another strategy, there's another way, and I've repeated it enough that I have hope, that I can lean into that trust that I want to come back into relationship. And that is the smiling coming in and out, is that I know that that's a safe person for me.

Xenia: Exactly. And you hit the nail on the head, right? So this is where I ruffle feathers, but I always tell them, It's a good ruffle, because if you are not uncomfortable when I start this work, then you're not, then you're already not in the right space, because you have to be uncomfortable so that you can get comfortable. And this is something that I teach people when I do these trainings, right? Because the missing piece that happens is we forget about the adults who don't have this naturally themselves. So we have many educators who haven't learned how to effectively communicate themselves, they haven't learned how to self-regulate themselves, and they also haven't learned how to repair, restore relationships. So when we put educators in front of students and we say, Hey, these are the things we expect you to do, they're doing the best of their version of what that looks like. And so that's why it's so important that the training happened beforehand, so that self-inventory can happen. That's the end result, that those aha moments can happen when you know what I didn't realize that I don't effectively know how to communicate. So now I have to process, learn how to do these things, so that I can now stand in front of a classroom and teach youngsters how to do that. And so that's why professional development, trauma informed professional development is so important. Because when they go through the trauma informed professional development, this is when they begin to recognize that these are the things that for myself, that I need to work on, right? And many adults have a difficult time acknowledging that, you know what, I'm not great with handling conflict. This is something that I need to work on, and so I often get frustrated when people challenge me, or I feel that I'm being challenged because I don't know how to handle properly, or I don't know how to own when I've made a mistake, I don't know how to go back and apologize and take accountability and say, You know what, I recognize that I hurt your feelings or I crossed a boundary, and I need to, I want to apologize because, and without saying, it wasn't my intent, but using the correct amount and said, I recognize that I broke your Trust. I recognize that I hurt your feelings, or I recognize I did this and I apologize for having done so. What do you need from me so that we could begin to repair this relationship, and I want to hear you and be present and hearing and receiving and being okay, being okay with being silent for a moment so that he can process and listen with your whole person, and not just listen so that you can respond, but also recognizing that you're not using, not to use your silence as a weapon, because when you don't know how to effectively communicate, when you don't know how to effectively self-regulate and or process conflict, get to a resolution, people tend to use the silence as a weapon. Because I know that this can hurt you, so since I know that this can hurt you, I'm just going to be quiet. I'm not going to speak to you, I'm not going to engage with you, I'm going to isolate you. And you can see that happened from leadership to staff. You can see that happened from teacher to teacher. You can see that even happen in some classroom where teachers silence students. They silence their voice, they silence their presence, they isolate them, and then you have these barriers of I'm going to exclude you from this trip because I don't like the way you did this, or I don't or you didn't do something to my liking or my expectation. So I'm going to isolate you. I'm going to take this from you and I'm going to silence. I'm going to use my silence as this power. So what does it look like? You know, and that's part of the training. What does it look like to not use your silence as valid power? What does it look like to not just have buzzwords of trauma informed, not just have both buzzwords of conflict resolution, not just have buzzwords of, but have actual action policy and tools in place to support that. The leadership team support the teachers, the educators, staff members, teachers, custodians to teach the lunchroom, attendance, family members. It has to be full circle. It has to be full circle, because we are all a community. We are all a community, and it doesn't happen in silos. In order for us to really shape and mold these individuals that are entrusting us with their being when they enter the school building, in order to do that, we have to do so on one accord. We have to build a sense of safety in all spaces so that students can effectively learn, but also so that educators can effectively support.

Renae: Right. I'm sure that if an educator is watching or listening right now, there is this piece of, that I can only do so much, absolutely, and the most important thing, I think you and I would agree is, it is to do that internal work of understanding our attachment styles, understanding what our defaults are when we're in distress, understanding, and you know, if we are experiencing compassion fatigue, all of these different things that can get in the way of us being present and attuned and also seeing that with self-compassion. I think that that's like, very, very important. And nobody chooses their attachment style, that your attachment strategy, your strategy for how you get your needs met, what it was passed on generationally, and it's based on a whole mix of things. And you didn't choose it. It was, it was what you experienced. Formed those neural pathways of understanding and gave you the strategies of how you're going to get your needs met. And the good news is we can change that by exploring new ways of getting our needs met and meeting our own needs as adults and healthy relationships. And so it's that curiosity of, if it feels like I can't be present, what is getting in my way, and taking that time and going, you know, participating in support groups and therapy and self-care practices. I will say, I love me a good face mask. I can look right over there and see I've got a whole bunch of them. I love them 100% and it is what, what am I doing that's going to increase my capacity to connect myself and others and help me to sustain, and that all of that is with, spoken here, with support, not judgment. It's holding the reality of the tension that there is so much that is on you, and it's not okay for the system to expect to use you up.

Xenia: Exactly

Renae: Okay. It's not okay. So we'll hold that it's that part of the system needs to change. And you as an educator, your protest against a broken system, is to actually do this investment in yourself and find your safe people. Find your safe people to do this, have these conversations with, do this work with to build that, to build your own system of safety, so that they can help you to co-regulate, so that they can help to remind you how amazing and awesome you are, and that you have choices, you have strategies, and you can't change a whole system yourself. That is something that we have to do together. But what you can change is your system, your personal system right here that you're inhabiting

Xenia: Absolutely and ,I and to add to that, right? And so what I, when I wrap up my sessions, my training sessions, I definitely tell educators, and for all those educators who are listening in when you think about self-care, in order for you to avoid the burnout when the year begins to get difficult. When you think about self-care, I want you to think about all these things. I want you to think about why, right? Who? Who are your safety group? Who's your safety group? Who are you venting to? Who are you? Who's helping you problem solve, but then also, what are you doing? What is your actionable thing that you are doing so that you are taking a breath, that little breath, that emotional breath, but then also that physical breath that brings you back to your center and bring you back to your why. And so separate the minute self-care of just, oh, I'm gonna go get my nails done, or I'm gonna go get a Massage. But I want you to think about the whole totality of your self-care, your mental, your emotional and your physical self-care, because that's what's going to help you when things really get tough. Understanding it is okay that things get challenging, but then also understanding that you, as long as you have a plan, you can get through the progress, you can get through the progress. So grab your mentor. Everyone should have a mentor. You grab your mentor. Fine, cool. Has a teaching style that that speaks to you, something that you, that you, that resonates with you, that he say, like this is what I'm aspiring to be, right? And then learn, learn those tools and taking big, borrowing, still, what works with tweaks. Some things may work, some things may not work, but put your own spin on it, so that it becomes yours, and it feels authentic to you, so that you enjoy being in the space. When you enjoy being in your own space, other people enjoy being around you. And so that's what you have to think about. You have to think about what makes you smile. I love to say the beginning, the first lesson that you do to students, right? What's your love language? How do you process? How do you like your feedback? These are, this is, this is the inventory that you should be taking in in the classroom, because these are the things that you yourself are going through so and this is how you're going to build your awesome. Because you're going to know that there's not, it's not cookie cutter strategy. Everyone, what will work for one doesn't work for the other, just like what works for me may not work for you, but in order for me to show up and be the best educator and all the communities to show up, be your best trainer, I have to recognize that I have to tweak things. So you educators learn that it's okay to tweak things. You may spend hours putting a lesson plan together, but if you have to scrap it because it's not working, don't force it. Scrap it and do something new. And that's the best piece of advice in order to be TraumaWise and try and present in the space so that you don't burn out. . So you won't burn out in October, because you have many more months to go, and if you burn out in October, its going to make it really difficult to make it to June. So how do you reset? How do you self-regulate? What makes you say, You know what, I can do this and I'm ready to show up again tomorrow.

Renae: Well, well, thank you Xenia, and I appreciate your call out for mentorship and community. And so our hope is that the TraumaWise Education Community, that the online group, which is we're just starting, will be a place where educators and people who are in learning spaces that want to be able to sustain that want to create cultures of connection and felt safety and co-regulation containers where people can show up as their full authentic selves and make the world an amazing place, that they can come together and learn from each other and support each other, and that we could find mentorships in that space as well. So I just want to encourage everybody to be, maybe be open to participating in that community, finding people within, if you're participating in the education summit, to connect with the educators and the people who are here because you are not alone. We are not alone. We are in this together, and you don't have to be all things to all people. And we need you. We all need each other. Everyone's got a piece of the puzzle. So thank you, Xenia, for bringing yours to the summit today, and for sharing from all those different parts of yourself and bringing your wisdom, just really appreciate you being with us.

Xenia: No problem. Thank you for having me, and I look forward to joining in the community. Everyone knows. Please follow me on social media at RDB_speaks and let's continue to connect,

Renae: Beautiful. Thank you.