Dr. Maggie Broderick who serves as a faculty lead for Social Emotional Learning at National University converses with Steve around the need to develop schools where staff and students build emotional well-being and develop interpersonal skills. What teacher dispositions are crucial? What roles do instructional coaches and leaders play in creating learning environments that are equitable, inclusive and emphasize student social-emotional well-being?

Visit the National University website here.

Email Dr. Maggie Broderick: mbroderick@ncu.edu

Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!

Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:00.300] – Steve [Intro]

Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you are tasked with guiding continuous teacher growth to create student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from experienced guests, as well as my own insights that I’ve gathered over the years. I’m thrilled to have you with us. Thanks for tuning in.

[00:00:29.480] – Steve

Leaders Responding to Staff Social and Emotional Needs. I’m pleased to welcome Dr. Maggie Broderick to our podcast today. Dr. Broderick is an assistant professor at National University, where she serves as a dissertation chair and as a faculty lead for social-emotional learning and curriculum and instruction. She is also the Director of National University’s Advanced Research Center and the editor of the Journal of Online Graduate Education. Maggie is an active scholar, presenting at many conferences and publishing book chapters and journal articles, often in collaboration with colleagues and former students. She received her PhD in Foreign Language Education at the University of Pittsburgh, and her BS Music Education, and her MS in Education Degrees at Duquesne University. Welcome, Maggie.

[00:01:27.200] – Maggie

Thanks so much, Steve. I’m delighted to be here today.

[00:01:30.270] – Steve

I’m wondering if you can start with a little history on National University’s focus on social and emotional learning.

[00:01:37.650] – Maggie

Sure. Well, a lot of people have heard of SEL, social emotional learning, these days. Being at National University, we went through a merger in 2022. We have a plethora of programs that speak to it, which makes me really happy because I think it’s sorely needed at every level. We have PhD, EDD, education doctorate, education specialist, master’s degrees, SEL is infused, and a specialization in all of those, let alone also in some of our other courses in specializations like leadership and curriculum and teaching. Really a ton of graduate degrees in various flavors with just a little bit of SEL, a medium part of SEL, or if you want to completely get your degree, we have master’s and doctoral degrees. Our numbers are really up because people are really paying attention to SEL. So I’m noticing that our programs are really thriving, so it’s great to see that, Steve.

[00:02:37.140] – Steve

How about personally – what drives you to an interest in SEL?

[00:02:43.910] – Maggie

Well, it’s interesting because I think a lot of people have the same experience where they were doing something in their heart or naturally. For example, my Mom would play the piano by ear, and then she would say, oh, there’s a word for that. When I hear this thing, there’s an agreed upon framework for this. That’s true for SEL. I feel like I was always doing these things in my heart, but I didn’t have a word for that. I’ve had a circuitous path. My background wasn’t in music, like my Mom, I got into it, and there’s a lot of feeling in teaching music. Then also I went into teaching languages, German and teaching ESL and teaching teachers of languages. There’s also a lot of human stuff there. Then you get into teaching. Back in the ’90s, I was starting my journey as a young teacher, you see this life in schools of rewards and punishments and a lot of the sage on the stage teaching. You do this because I say so, and all of that. I felt like, hey, I don’t know how to translate this heart inside of myself, this feeling of just human connection, where we have things that are more like that.

[00:03:57.780] – Maggie

It was a journey for me to understand, hey, what I’m trying to do is actually called SEL. That’s actually what it is. We’re starting to see that now. When I went to school, I didn’t have a class in classroom management. I didn’t understand how to do any of this. It was sink or swim. Now we’re starting to see people saying, hey, we need to understand how to connect with those humans in our classrooms. What was in my heart all along, there’s a word for that, and it’s called social emotional learning. It’s not just a tip or a trick or a classroom management checklist or a red yellow green, the thing that I used to put names on and all of that. It’s much more about reflection and self-awareness and helping students learn that over time, which is a much more holistic thing. I think about it sometimes as a Mom, too. I’m a Mom to two adult children and one teenage child. My philosophy continues to grow as well. We have to meet people where they are as human beings, which takes a lot of time. It takes a long time to grow humans.

[00:05:04.140] – Maggie

It’s very iterative. I think about how we learn through teachable moments and while we’re also learning the content. Sometimes my favorite example as a Mom is I go to the grocery store with a small child and say, oh, we’re learning vocabulary about apples, oranges, bananas. We’re learning about some customs and ways of doing shopping. We’re learning math, and we’re also learning how to manage our emotions. We don’t get what we want. We can’t have this thing or whatever. And that is not something you learn in a second. It takes a lifetime to develop these skills. And that’s what SEL really is.

[00:05:36.700] – Steve

So question to ponder about this. There’s certainly a strong voice out there of teachers needing to be able to support the SEL needs of students. And is today’s student population in greater need of that support than earlier populations? Or are we just better aware of the needs of students that we didn’t have that awareness on what I went through teacher at and I started my career?

[00:06:09.940] – Maggie

I think you’re exactly on it, Steve, with what so many people are thinking. My answer is both. I think you might get people saying either or, but I think if you really think about it, it’s both. I like to take a look at the framework that does actually give the language for this now. There are many, but I like CASEL. That’s the recognized leader, C-A-S-E-L, if people want Google that, if they’re not familiar yet. And CASEL has been around for decades, but it’s just becoming more widely known now. Lots of folks really want to understand that, and then it’s a good way to dive in. And if they want to even go deeper or maybe even look at research literature starting there. But I think the pandemic was a huge turning point for us for so many things, for everything in our lives. It was just turning our worlds upside down, and it made us acutely aware I can think about my own family and kids and what we went through. It wasn’t that long ago. We’re talking four years ago, that this was 2020. Yeah, a lot of things. Kids have had some traumas and some difficulties and some emotional things to go through and a lot of upheaval, and so have the adults in their lives.

[00:07:19.490] – Maggie

There is a strong connection, and we look at this at National as well, with trauma-informed educational practices. Kids may have gone through all kinds of things in their lives, not just COVID, maybe things that are generational. We need to understand the roots of behaviors and issues they may be struggling with. Families and communities, it’s not just the kid, it’s the whole system. The need was always there. I I think now we have the agreed-upon language, which is really helpful. We’re also all looking at that. It’s not just out there in some research, like there’s a language, but nobody knows it. But I think it’s more acute. Also, different things are expected of kids. I’m looking at my 13-year-old and the world she has to navigate with technology and expectations and just so much. It’s noisy and fast and constantly changing goalposts. If we think about both SEL and trauma-informed, I think about fight or flight, personally. I think about if a kid is in that mode and things are busy and just noisy, and they’re in fight or flight, and maybe there’s trauma, they really aren’t able to learn. I’m thinking of things, very unfortunate things, like school shootings that they’re thinking things are happening, and Alice drills, and all of this.

[00:08:36.570] – Maggie

Even in language education, we have this thing from Stephen Crashen. It’s another Steve. He’s great. Stephen Crashen has the effective filter hypothesis. Basically, what he says is, if you want to learn a language, you need to have input and output from the language if I’m learning German. That’s true for lots of things. My colleague, Dr. Bedford, Laurie Bedford, has started doing some work exploring this beyond language. No matter what, if you’re in fight or flight, you can’t really learn. And so SEL really helps with that, too. And understanding like, hey, the world is busy. There’s a lot happening. Maybe there’s some trauma. And this kid inside is maybe in fight or flight mode. What can we do to help them to move forward so they can learn the content and so much else?

[00:09:25.270] – Steve

So as part of supporting students, to what extent do schools and school leaders need to be focused on the emotional well-being and the interpersonal skills of their teachers?

[00:09:39.320] – Maggie

Well, I mean, that’s the thing. It’s for all of us, right? It’s not just for kids. It’s interesting Because when people hear the word, the buzzword, SEL, they’re like, oh, this is just a new buzzword. It’s the pendulum swinging, but it’s so much more. It’s everyone. It’s from birth through our eventual time on this world. For our world and for grownups, a lot of my colleagues and I have started focusing our work on adult learners and SEL, and specifically in online classrooms. How do they feel? What’s it like to be one of those adult learners? They’re busy, they’re juggling things. That includes our teachers. The school climate and culture that actually maybe helps teachers with their SEL is really a huge key here. If you have a culture that stems from leadership down and supports the staff and the teachers, then that can trickle down and hopefully will infuse. I think about going to different places. Like I said, I love language and culture and all this, and I know you do, too. The idea that if you step into a country or a place, you get the vibes. My kids would call it the vibes, right?

[00:10:51.240] – Maggie

How does it feel to be there? Leadership has a huge role there. If they treat the teachers a certain way, that really helps. Then it also connects with teacher dispositions, which is something we think about a lot these days. My colleague, Dr. Amy Lynn and I, wrote a chapter, a book chapter about how SEL, the Five CASEL competencies, align with what we want in teachers. But dispositions are hard to define. What do we want? We certainly want them to be inclusive and understand diverse student needs. We also want them to have a positive affect, but it’s a squishy soft skills. But SEL does align. If we think of SEL for that, how are our teachers doing with their SEL? The competencies are self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, relationship skills, and social awareness. If we think about that for our teachers and their dispositions, that can trickle down from top down, and then hopefully also bottom up. And that’s the way it has to go, both directions, I would say.

[00:11:57.040] – Steve

So if school leaders and instructional coaches were focused on having a school environment that we would labeled as inclusive, equitable learning environments, and a focus on students’ social emotional well-being, those school leaders being in and out of classrooms, observing and giving feedback, what are some of the things you’d suggest they be paying attention to and providing feedback on?

[00:12:27.840] – Maggie

It’s tricky, right? This is one of those things where if you say, hey, you’re a math teacher. These are the common core standards. And are you reaching mastery? And here’s a test score. That’s a quantitative thing, right? It’s about math, and it is math, and we can math it. It’s not so easy with human things. It’s much more of a feeling. It’s just like the other thing we were thinking about with fight or flight and busy lives and everything, it takes time and reflection and, I would call it almost reading the a thing. Like I said, my kids use the word vibes, or maybe they don’t need more, but they were using the word vibes. These things move fast. But so when we think about it, I think it’s both top to bottom. We said, looking from leadership infusing that culture. Then from the bottom up, you may find a teacher having some things in their room where they’re connecting with students. Maybe it’s through some a buddy up where they foster some two people working together collaboratively in an emotional space, a social space with interpersonal and intrapersonal types of things, or maybe a classroom meeting is happening and things like that.

[00:13:42.470] – Maggie

But it really is more of a feeling that is contagious. I did do also with Dr. Lynn an edited book. It was with IGI Global. Many chapters from our colleagues all over the world were about all kinds of… these were adult online learners, but all kinds of learners from diverse backgrounds. We had chapters on Native American learners and chapters on LGBTQ+ learners, all sorts of different groups, and then just in general about feelings of belonging. It’s true for any age, if you think about what it is to truly have that sense of belonging, you can feel it. You can see that person is engaged and wants to show up every day for that classroom, as opposed to, oh, no, I don’t want to go to school. I have to because I’ll fail the or somebody will be angry at me, or extrinsic rewards. My Mom will buy me ice cream, which I’m guilty – very guilty of the ice cream trick. Trust me, I am. But it’s got to be deeper, and that’s what we’re looking for. It is super, super hard to know. It’s almost like a read the room thing. But we do have to watch because things like teacher attrition and burnout are incredibly prevalent.

[00:14:54.030] – Maggie

If we’re not watching and seeing, hey, is that vibe right? Is it feeling like things are… does the student and does the teacher really want to be there today? That’s what we’re looking for. How the teacher does that might vary quite a bit, and the students are going to vary quite a bit, but it is almost a read the room, which is really hard to define.

[00:15:10.930] – Steve

I’ll tell you, as I’ve listened to you, I’ve changed my question. It’s striking me as I’m listening to you that I really should have been asking, what are the elements that we’re discussing and exploring with teachers more than observing and giving feedback on? What’s the teacher seeing and hearing? What’s the teacher thinking about what she’s seeing and hearing? I can share my vibes, but I need to get the teacher’s vibes.

[00:15:42.900] – Maggie

Yes, that’s it.

[00:15:45.080] – Steve

Yeah. It’s almost modeling the relationship with the teacher that we’re looking for the teacher to have with the kids.

[00:15:52.930] – Maggie

100%. And this thing takes time. This isn’t something that’s just you say, oh, there you go. Here’s your instructions and your standards and your outcomes and your test scores. It’s so much more human and so much longer term.

[00:16:05.680] – Steve

Time and focus. If leaders are working in communities that don’t have a SEL curriculum, or I guess we got some places now where they can’t have one, how would you suggest they guide teachers in meeting students’ needs?

[00:16:27.220] – Maggie

It is tricky these days because it It really depends so much where a person is. I live in Pennsylvania. I’m in the city. It’s a different place than, I don’t know, if I were somewhere else in a different state, in a different place, maybe a rural area, all different kinds of… Our country is diverse, not just in terms of individuals, but in terms of geography and political, all kinds of things. I do think there are ways to start small. The word you use modeling, I actually think exactly that’s totally it. You can call something by a different name. It’s still just human. Like I said, I was doing SEL things in my heart and in my values before I had any clue that there was something actually called SEL. A lot of good humans, and I’d say probably most teachers, because most teachers are really great humans, are already doing that. They just need to understand it and think about it cognitively. Same with leaders. There’s a couple of good resources. I would go to primary sources. It’s an issue where so many things these days become hot topic, hot button issues, and get conflated.

[00:17:38.060] – Maggie

But if you go to the primary source, it helps. So CASEL website, fantastic stuff. Then doing research on Google Scholar for things if you want to go deeper. Then we have something at NU that’s a wonderful partnership with Harmony Academy. They actually have little kits and free things, professional development things, tons of… You could spend hours just free, go down the rabbit hole and see, hey, would this fit in my school? What is realistic and what could I do and under what name? They do have some of the things I mentioned earlier, something they call the buddy up or having a meeting time, a classroom meeting or a school meeting where you set that tone. Like you called it, Steve, it’s modeling. I actually have a very niche thing in my own lens because I taught what I call less commonly taught content areas. I taught music, German. I taught in a German magnet school. I taught music in German in a K-5 German magnet school. It’s niche. Then I also teach ESL teachers. Those aren’t the math and English language arts teachers. They tend to be a small pocket. Sometimes the beautiful thing that can happen in those small pockets is that it’s this beautiful place where flowers bloom.

[00:18:58.930] – Maggie

It could be a safe space for students who are feeling a lack of belonging, or even a teacher who doesn’t feel a sense of belonging. The art room, the music room, language classes, maybe it’s gym class for a certain type of kid. I’m not athletic, but I can see how that could be their special place. It can spring up a beautiful story of a space where people are creating a sense of belonging and doing things to foster inter and intrapersonal skills in these quiet spaces away. I’ve talked a lot about my own kids. My oldest benefited from an art teacher in an art program that was way up on the fourth floor of the school in this little corner. That was where they could go if things just weren’t doing so great. The teachers were like, come on in, do some art, have your lunch here. These are beautiful pockets in schools where you might not even know SEL is happening, and sometimes for our most vulnerable kids. And it’s just a wonderful little tiny garden somewhere that you don’t even realize is blooming.

[00:19:58.430] – Steve

I have this sense that you, in many ways, answered what I was going to look at as a question for closing us out here to give us a picture of the learning environment you hope for and work for. I guess the belonging where it seems to be coming through strongly as I’m listening to you. And as you spoke about pockets, is it a place where everybody can find the pocket?

[00:20:29.780] – Maggie

Yeah. I I love that. The small spaces and pockets of goodness there, and then hoping that the whole thing trickles down from the top and also from the bottom. SEL is holistic. It’s a little squishy, but it’s human. It’s in all of us. You want to involve everyone in trying… You start small if you have to, but create and maintain that culture of empathy, help people with their self-regulation, their emotional skills. Then if you can begin with the leadership, super ideal, right? Then everyone has buy in that this is what we’re doing and infuse it into everything. It’s not a class you take. You don’t take like, hey, here’s SEL class, here’s math class, here’s gym class. That’s not it. It is just much more of a vibe and more than a program. It’s a way of thinking about relationships and the culture of a school beyond the school. Even hopefully, ideally, you’re imparting this into the people who then leave the school and go into their communities and have self-regulation and empathy. Self-awareness is key. That was a huge thing Dr. Lynn taught me in some of our work together, that that’s the center.

[00:21:38.570] – Maggie

If you’re self-aware, then you can think about your inter and intrapersonal stuff and reflect. We want teachers to reflect. I think it takes a lot of time and effort, but it’s well worth it.

[00:21:50.320] – Steve

Well, Maggie, I really appreciate your time and comments. What’s the best way that listeners might be to be able to follow up with you with questions or comments that they’d like to share?

[00:22:05.370] – Maggie

Sure. I love to. I really enjoy engaging with folks. I am on LinkedIn. Just find me there. Email is mbroderick@ncu.edu. If you want to go down the rabbit hole and do some scholarly things, I’m on Researchgate, which is a cool Facebook place for researchers, and Google Scholar. You could just Google Scholar me.

[00:22:26.400] – Steve

Alright. We’ll be sure to stick your email into to the podcast lead-in, make it easy for folks. Thank you so much.

[00:22:35.310] – Maggie

Thanks so much, Steve. It’s a pleasure.

[00:22:38.810] – Steve [Outro]

Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn at Steve Barkley, or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.

Dr. Gretchen Stewart, a long time public school teacher, instructional coach and teacher educator, shares insights from her dissertation research which involves working with worldwide experts in brain development, learning, cognition, and movement, leading to the identification of 27 elements that experts felt should be included in an inclusive school where movement is a central part of how all students maximize learning. As she prepares to put her learning into practice in a new school, Smart Moves Academy, Gretchen highlights directions for coaches and administrators in all settings.’

Get in touch: gretchen@smartmovesacademy.org
Visit the Smart Moves Academy Facebook page here.
Visit the Smart Moves Academy website here.