Kelley Munger and Megan Marcus on SEL for Teachers

You’re listening to the Getting Smart podcast, where we unpack what is new and innovative in education. I’m your host, Jessica, and today, team member Rebecca Middles is sitting down with Megan Marcus and Kelly Munger of Fueled, professional development consultants that specialize in social-emotional learning and relationship building.

Megan is the founder of Fueled. She started her career in research and helped lead the research efforts for the book, The Social Neuroscience of Education, written by Dr. Lois Casolino. She is also an Ashoka fellow. Kelly completed her PhD in early intervention in special education at the University of

Oregon and is a researcher and licensed therapist working in areas of trauma, adult attachment, special education, and human development. Let’s listen in as they talk about the intersections of whole child and SEL, how to best develop teachers and leaders, and where educators can start. Megan Marcus and Kelly Munger, welcome to the Getting Smart podcast.

I’m so happy to have you here. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation. Perhaps we could start with how you two met in this work. Oh, great question. So great to be here as well.

Thank you for having us. So Kelly, I had met, started Fueled in 2012, and Kelly and I met by way of Dr. Lois Casolino, who was a really, obviously a huge inspiration for starting Fueled. I had worked with him on the book, The Social Neuroscience of Education. And Kelly actually, through a contact of hers, had reached out to Dr. Casolino, who pinged

her over to me. She started as a trainer at Fueled and now it’s full time doing research and development with our team. Wonderful. Do you have any more to add to that, Kelly?

I’d like to add to that when I read Megan’s bio and Fueled’s, sort of, I think it was a pitchy little flyer that someone sent me. It was love at first sight because it really brought together all of my passions in the field of education, attachment and therapy. So the rest is free.

Here we are. Wonderful. I’d like to start off with, I think, a question out there related to the work that you do that always comes up. The difference between social and emotional learning and trauma informed practices, and

let’s throw in one more, whole child and a whole person work. Perhaps you could tell us about how you see those as different or how they’re connected. It would be helpful to think about how we move through the rest of the questions. Sure. Okay.

So we thought that was a really great question. And what I would say, first off, is that social and emotional learning, generally speaking, has focused a lot on behaviors and skills, right? Really, really critical social and emotional skills that kids and teachers alike need to flourish in life.

But where I think that trauma informed learning and even whole child, sort of a whole child focused, really takes almost a different emphasis or maybe even broadens SEL, is that trauma is bringing in the story and the history that a student and or a teacher bring into the classroom. And so, of course, we know just through the science that there is a critical relationship

between the attachment history and the trauma history, what a student has gone through, what a teacher has gone through. There’s a critical connection between that story and the social and emotional development and skills that that teacher and student bring into a classroom. And so, when we make that leap to whole child or whole person, we realize that we can’t

simply provide direct instruction skills training to a child who doesn’t feel safe. And we can’t ask a teacher to teach SEL skills when they themselves are completely overwhelmed or stressed out in the classroom. And so, you know, through the work of brilliant people like Dr. Cosalino and Dan Siegel, who is a really important figure in this field, we have learned that making sense of that

history, the trauma history, being truly trauma informed involves telling a story, involves receiving empathy for that story, and that’s a relational experience. And so, we kind of almost look at the whole child perspective or the whole educator perspective as an enzyme or like yeast in a bread, right? You’ve got to have it in order to make those SEL skills rise and grow.

And so, yeah, at Fueled, I think we try to incorporate all three lenses in our work because they all bring a really important and core critical set of skills to people. You touched on life history in a way, correct? I mean, I think I heard a little bit of that and the ability for learners to tell their story and adults to know their story.

Could you tell us more about that? I think that you have mentioned this before when you were talking about attachment, but maybe you could add a little bit more to that. Sure. So, our attachment stories, right?

The stories of how we received early care, of how we learned that, who we were, how we learned that we’re special, that we belong to someone, to a parent, to a family. This story is so, so important in setting our early relationship patterns, how we relate to one another, right? So, you think of an infant and a parent typically every day when that infant cries, that parent

comes to the infant, sees the need, meets the need, and that child moves from distress to calm, right? This happens a million times a day when you have an infant. That process is called co-regulation and it’s foundational to developing self-regulation, a sense of competence, a sense of self-esteem, we might call it, a sense of feeling worthy

in the world, which we know is critical to being able to learn, grow, and explore. And so, if there were disruptions, gaps, needs in that early cycle of co-regulation, that becomes a story that is embedded in the biology of that child, in the way that that child learns and interacts in the world, and certainly how that child interacts with others. And so, the cool thing about attachment, we would call that attachment, right?

That relationship, that those early critical relationships that create safety. The thing that’s really cool about attachment is that it can change across the lifespan, and so, part of our work at FuelEd is to help educators really experience secure attachment, if they haven’t already, later in life, to have that experience of telling that attachment story, making sense of it, creating coherence in the brain, integrating the story, receiving empathy.

We see that almost as like a bank transfer, that it moves a story of loss or lack of safety into an experience of relational trust and safety. And so, of course, that makes it sound really simple, but that is a powerful idea that we see in the science that I see in my clinical work and that we see with the teachers we work with. I think that’s really important for us to call out often.

We talk about the journey of the learner, and what you’re really emphasizing is the journey of the learner before they came to us, the journey of the learner after they leave us, and the journey of the teachers in front of the learner. So, I see that that really ties into also maybe even deepening the understanding of what we mean when we talk about identity and how important that piece is with the new work around that.

I think that’s a natural lead into also maybe talking about the differences with SEL practices for adults and students. I like to call learners, but where they’re similar, where they’re different, if they are different, perhaps you could tell us about that as well. Great. I can jump in there.

I think that there are some differences currently in practice today, but in an ideal world, they really shouldn’t be different. I think that’s a great point. I will say that what I’ve seen as a big crux in the world of social-emotional learning is this focus on skill building that happens through a curriculum.

Certainly, there’s a nod to that relationships and environment are part of it, but I think when folks most often think about it, it’s like, what worksheet can I do? What 15 years of work can I do? I think that’s a great point. Most often think about it.

It’s like, what worksheet can I do? What 15-minute chunk in my classroom? How can I use advisory to do this? It’s this add-on, something that gets woven in, and something that’s quite cognitive and behavioral. I think that’s the present-day state for social-emotional learning for kiddos.

The truth is that social-emotional skills like self-regulation, relationship skills, empathy, problem-solving, these don’t get developed. These aren’t taught and learned in the same way a cognitive skill like math, memorizing facts from history. That’s not the same way that our brain learns.

All of those social-emotional skills are actually developed. The way they’re developed is early relationships and or subsequent relationships. While I do think there’s certainly benefit in direct instruction about skills and behaviors for children, the most powerful way that children can learn and grow socially, emotionally is actually through the relationships they have with those around them.

I’ll just demonstrate an example of that. Can I add to that too before you do that? Yeah. It almost seems to like the role modeling, right? So that if you have the, so yeah, okay.

Yeah. A lot of people think of it and teachers oftentimes do say, yeah, like if I want my child to be respectful, I need to be respectful. And it’s slightly different than that because it’s not like, you know, you do what I do. It’s almost more this symbiotic relationship. Let me give an example.

Let’s think about one skill that’s needed to build a secure attachment, empathy. Right? We need an educator to have empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand another person’s emotional state. But the real power of empathy is when we can communicate our understanding. So imagine you’re a secondary teacher and this child comes crying about a fight on the playground,

really upset, really mad, and you’re able to pause, breathe, stay in control yourself and say, you can see you’re really upset about this. In that moment, when you as an educator respond to that student’s distress with empathic understanding, utilizing those mirroring statements to reflect what that student needs, what they’re feeling, what they’re thinking, what are their problems,

all of a sudden what happens? It increases the student’s self-awareness of their own needs, thoughts, feelings, because someone’s put words to my own experience. Now I have the emotional vocabulary to name what I think feel and need. It helps the student self-regulate, self-manage.

And we’ve all experienced what this feels like. When we’re understood, we can breathe easier. Problems feel lighter. On a brain level, we’re actually moving from operating in the right hemisphere to activating the left hemisphere and getting integration.

It enables responsible decision-making and problem-solving. Because empathy is calming, it puts us in a better state of mind to solve our own problems. And lastly, it grows social awareness. Because understanding our own self is the foundation for understanding others. So as I walk through all of those competencies, it looks a lot like the many frameworks we see out there

for social emotional learning for children. But what the example demonstrates and what the very common frameworks we believe are missing is how creating an education system capable of developing such competencies in students is not as simple as equipping educators with a curriculum on their own. A curriculum on grit or a scope and sequence on self-control.

Because social emotional competencies, they’re not learned like other cognitive skills. So no amount of flashcards or lesion plans or pop quizzes will go nearly as far as a teacher’s warms, empathic understanding, acceptance, and honest communication. So it really is like lock and key. This experience of the educator’s emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills

are what creating moments of nurturance and care that essentially catalyze a cascade of social emotional learning for students. And builds trust, right? Yeah. And builds trust in this virtuous cycle where all of a sudden now that person is,

I’m a safe person to you. Not only were you able to come to me and I didn’t either judge you or problem solve or dismiss. Now you’re going to come to me again. You’re going to share more of your story. Now I can build my classroom environment in a way that’s more attuned to your needs.

The relationship grows. The learning grows again in that virtuous cycle. To speak quickly to you said, how does student SEL differ from educator SEL? I think the truth of the matter is ideally both are really about providing students and educators with secure relationships so that they can grow.

Because in the same way that social emotional learning for students isn’t cognitive, it’s not a worksheet. My fear is that as the field of educator social emotional learning grows, that we’re just going to copy and paste a cognitive approach. And that is not what educators need.

We need relationships, secure spaces, secure schools, secure principles to be able to build these secure relationships that can help educators thrive and grow into the best versions of themselves. I’d love to throw in a little personal story of my young learner SELF in the third grade. One of my most vivid memories of the education system was when my third grade teacher shamed me for my lack of self-control.

And I remember it was so stressful for me, the experience that I remember exactly where I was, that the lighting was low, was standing beside the water fountain, and we were supposed to be in line. And I was scurly out of line, apparently, jumping in and out of the line. And my teacher grabbed me and said, you’ve got to learn self-control with a really harsh voice. And I look back on that, and I’m sure she was just frustrated with me, and perhaps the whole

class, and maybe stuff was going on with her at home. But I internalized that moment, not as a moment of, oh, and now I’m learning to control myself and my impulses, and now I’m regulating myself. I remember as a moment of, I am bad, there is something wrong with me. And so I think that, wow, I think back, what if my teacher had said, hey, Kelly,

oh, it seems like you have a lot of energy in your body today. How can we calm down together? We’re going to sit in line. Right, that if she had been able to tune in to me, look beneath that, how differently I would have experienced that moment, and how that would have contributed to my SEL growth. She knew what skill that I needed. She just didn’t know how to give that skill to me.

Hey, listeners, we’ll get right back to Tom, but first wanted to tell you about a new Getting Smart report about what’s next in learning. Over the last few months, the Getting Smart team has been working on identifying 20 invention opportunities in learning and development, and have pulled all of that together into a report that was made possible by the Walton Family Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

These opportunities have the possibility to completely shift what we talk about schooling. Check out our recommendations, insights, and more at the link in the show notes, or at GettingSmart.com slash invention opportunity. All right, let’s get back to the show. So many things I’m thinking of that you’ve both have brought up. I’m hearing some dos and some don’ts, which is helpful in some examples. I’m also thinking about, I’d love that you brought

up a secondary example, because often in this conversation, there is the talk about the predisposition that elementary teachers maybe have more equipped for this, or maybe have thought about it more, and I would argue maybe they were drawn to it because they had it. I don’t know that it was explicitly taught, but it certainly comes up in secondary in the same way that teachers would often say, this isn’t something I was trained to do. It’s not something I came to the profession to do,

and then there’s often that conversation about choosing content, or are we choosing learners, and then content. And so with those in mind, I’m thinking about these are great ideas about how to teach the skill and not just expect it, because it can be another kind of gotcha system, right? Like just like behaviors and discipline. If it hasn’t been explicitly taught and expectations, or hasn’t been role modeled or given space for conversation, or some trusting relationships

to grow, sometimes it can seem like a punitive structure that kids don’t know what’s expected, and they’re going to keep trying until they figure it out, or at least have someone have some straight talks with them. So what are some dos and maybe some don’ts? And you don’t have to do a long list, but just to give us an idea, we can always find out more from you, that you would maybe call out for teachers in thinking about that, because that was a good example of a don’t,

with an example of potential do. When you’re thinking about SEL, what are things that you might hear out there that kind of like, cool, maybe I would change the way we do that? Like here’s your chance. What would you share with us? Oh man, there’s this is our moment to share. So, you know, I know we did already allude to this with that last example, but it’s so, so, so important that do mirror your students’ experiences.

I think I really, really believe that is the one most powerful intervention that is untapped inside of schools. And I call it an intervention. It’s a skill that’s rooted in self-awareness, but the ability to tune in, oh, it seems like you’re having a hard day. I can see that you’re frustrated, or even, well, I can see that you’re so excited, you know, celebrating those sharing joy with students. So, do share joy, do share sorrow, loss, disappointment, frustration with students.

And I don’t know if this quite answers the question, but I want to say do go to therapy for the educator. When I’m thinking about educator SEL, and about adults being able to really implement SEL inside the classroom, I’m very, very aware. I don’t know if you, if we mentioned this, I am myself a therapist. I’ve been practicing for a decade. I’m very aware that the more any educator can receive empathic understanding for their own story, the more they can name their own triggers

and grow in self-awareness, the more SEL becomes an organic process that unfolds in the classroom. And so that may, it’s not really a do and don as in the classroom, but it’s a powerful practice. Learn to mirror and make sense of your story. Meg, do you have any do’s or any do’s to add? I think a do to add is bringing yourself into the classroom. I think a lot of times there’s these these kind of rules, I guess, that educators have, like, never don’t smile till Christmas, right?

I think Virgil Hammons from KnowledgeWorks just posted an article about that. Like, when he was going through his pre-service, he was told, don’t smile until Christmas or they’ll eat you alive, right? And how that was not helpful. So I appreciate that you called it out. Because humans are social creatures. So throughout human history, we’ve survived the relationships and any learning that we’ve ever done has been through relationships. No single person

exists in nature, right? You’re actually better off developmentally to be in an abusive relationship than to be a single person alone in the woods, essentially. And so think about that and the fact that so much learning happens to the relationship. It’s the only way that we can turn on learning. And so one way to do that is tuning into your students, making them feel like a person. But the other thing that’s going to turn them on is to see you’re a person too.

And that goes as far as saying letting students know when you’re frustrated, letting students know when you’re upset or off kilter. And I think the key to the self awareness journey here is when we don’t do that deeper self work about our past and our present relationship pattern. Sometimes the way that we express ourselves genuinely is not so healthy. So many words, we might either repress our feelings or they’ll come out without the warmth and the vulnerability that’s needed

for it to be effective. It’s very easy to the nuance difference between feeling really frustrated here, here guys, I don’t know what to do versus I’m frustrated and right, like one can bring about a feeling of shame in the students, they need to perform for this teacher, they’re responsible for the teacher’s feelings versus, whoa, my teacher who cares about me is a little off like, what can I do to get in line so that we can have the right get our relationship

right. The relationship is the educator’s base of power, which means that we don’t have to not smile till Christmas, be this bring the power externally when the power can come from the relationship. And the only way it can is if we share, meaning share listening share our own stories, it’s the balance between sharing ourselves and giving other space to share and really mutual relationship with a lot of mutual trust and honoring of the individuals, both the educator and the

students. I think this really aligns to something I believe Megan you said, but you probably both said this, that the best professional development or professional learning for a teacher is that personal work, which you’re further emphasizing here. And I think about how that, you know, you’re trying to help people in schools do that, and you’ve got some counselors ready to support that it’s wonderful setup. I think you’ve also both of you have probably mentioned that that

would be really great for scale work to have it as a prerequisite for or a requisite for preteachers that are getting ready to do the tough work ahead of them and really connect with learners and create these learning spaces. Other pieces that you would add for scaling that would be helpful as people are listening to this conversation. Yeah, you’re pointing to Rebecca, the kind of inception of Fueled was because I had wanted to be a therapist myself. And when I was

working with Dr. Cosalino on the book, the social neuroscience of education, I realized the power of relationships when applied to the education system, coupled with this gap in educator preparation that whereby educators focus on content knowledge instructional skills, but nothing about relationships. And yet here was this field of study counseling and psychotherapy that has a lot of great practices for growing your relationship skills, growing your self awareness so that you could

put that in service of helping others grow and learn. So I was like, well, why don’t we just adapt or translate some of these best practices, including not just therapy for therapists so that they can get healthy and whole before doing the work, but counseling or psychotherapy for educators. In terms of other kind of scalable avenues, I 100% think that this ultimately needs to be a gap that’s filled in educator preparation. If we want to redefine what it means to be an educator,

so that it’s more aligned with their actual day to day work, which is highly emotional, highly interpersonal, and actually aligned with what the science says is effective, which again, emotions and relationships, then we have to make the systems of training, pre-service training, as well as in service support and school culture to be aligned with those things as well. So more strategies to nurture those relationships between adults in the building,

to also support that work that they’re getting prepared to do and how we honor them within the leadership and school-based structure, correct? We already have a lot of those structures in place. It’s a matter of a little rearranging the furniture a little, right? Even in pre-service, which I was a master supervisor for four years during my PhD program, and our pre-service program was essentially a mentorship program,

right? And so I was mentoring young teachers, getting ready to go out in the field. And so had we had more structure around creating relationship-based practices within that training, that I think would be a powerful and beautiful shift in what it means to become an educator. It’s not, it’s something you’ve become. And as a therapist who’s gone through therapist training, that was a hard, long, but extremely valuable journey of discovering myself, of experiencing

healing. And I think we can provide that for educators. Yeah, I think, so obviously we’re talking about a really important topic that a lot of people, it’s on their minds. The pandemic has brought up a lot of topics and awareness and topics that have always been in need, one of them being anti-racist teaching. I would love for us to bring those two together with you, ways that we can talk about how anti-racist teaching is supported through the work that

you’ve been talking about, social-emotional learning, professional learning, but also just in the spaces that you’re making for those relationships to grow. Could you speak a little bit more about that? Sure. So like you said, it’s been quite a year of surfacing a really long, long-experienced racism in this country, a massive shift in perspective and awareness. And so it just so happened that I feel that in our internal culture, back a year,

more than a year ago, we had begun to do our own storytelling around our own DEI initiative, our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiative inside of Fulett. And we had a very powerful experience together in which we, and we are a very diverse team, shared our stories of who we are in terms of our identity around gender, around race, culture, et cetera. And by creating a safe environment to share our stories, our collective stories, it deepened our relationships internally.

And so that really began as things in America this year began to unfold, the collective trauma that Americans have been through this year. We began to talk about, wow, what is the integration between we want to be a part of anti-racist movement and anti-racist movement, and how does that work with what we’re doing? And one thing that we’ve realized is that when we experience attachment and trauma or stress, we don’t just do that in our individual stories.

We do that in our collective and historical stories. I would even say generational stories. And so when we do the work of the self, we also have to do the work of acknowledging and receiving healing and empathy for our collective traumas, whether that’s racial trauma or trauma related to other identities. And we have to, if we’re going to grow as anti-racist educators, we have to be able to take the perspective of someone who’s experienced racial trauma,

if I’m speaking as a white educator. And so growing and self-awareness, along with growing in perspective, taking and empathy, doesn’t just include the story of an individual. It includes the collective and historical trauma that is embedded inside that experience of that long experience of not feeling safe, of not feeling known, that many BIPOC people in the United States have very clearly expressed. And so for us, part of acknowledging

the power of attachment and empathy is acknowledging that it’s also part of what we need in order to really see and heal wounds of trauma around race and identity in America. Appreciate you sharing that your organization took that on and the process they went through. Helpful for others to hear and think about those ideas. I’m sure that you might be able to share more about that on your site that we’ll share out later, that folks are interested in doing

something very similar. I think that would be helpful. And I also appreciate that you recognize this may be a newly aware challenge collectively, but is in no way new. So appreciate that you’re bringing that up in ways that we can combine the efforts and not have it feel like an add-on. In addition to that, I would love us to think about the year that we have had people go through. You touched on it just now. You definitely talk about the pandemic and the changes and the mediums

that we were asked teachers to do and all of the kids that we’ve lost in this process. And we don’t know where they’re at. And those impact those students certainly, but they impact the teachers who are looking for those faces or wondering where those kids are. So ways that we can talk about how we would address that kind of large-scale trauma, as you said, collective stories, that people have experienced this year. Ways that we could help educators. Some ideas.

Right. Well, one practice we’ve used that we really initiated in the wake of this trauma beginning in the spring is called, we call it empathy circles. And so we offer empathy circles regularly. And it is a time and a space to come together and to feel safe to actually digest the trauma, the emotions, the experiences that folks are having everywhere right now. And so I think that that’s a very scalable practice across systems where, you know, it sounds really

simple, but to create safe time and space is not actually a given. It’s not something that’s a given inside of a lot of educational systems. So again, simple time and space where people can resonate with one another. And even better if those people are equipped with the basic skills of empathy, right, so that they can listen to how. And so our spaces are facilitated by a really skilled trainer. So that that modeling can be provided. But I think that there are ways to create that kind of those

kinds of trusting circles and other spaces. Meg, would you add anything to that in terms of how we’re going to address and digest that the horror of this year? Yeah, I just think I want to take the moment to attune to the educators out there, not just the teachers and the principals and the district leaders, but the parents who’ve become educators. Already parents are educators, but even more so bridging into this moment, just this immense amount of stress and overwhelm

that the system and all the individuals in it have been under. And yeah, just really wanting to say we see you, you know, we see that all that educators are doing right now to hold up so many aspects of our society that have just collapsed overnight, you know, not just from the school, but all the after school web of support that usually holds our students and educators are doing so much. And I think what Kelly said is just right, we need every educator needs at least one person

or one space to go to where they can feel heard. So in addition to circles, peer support, how can you pair the educators in your building to provide what we call stewardship to one another? And we kind of launched, we have a program that teaches folks how to set that up. But it’s something that anyone anywhere can do, whether they’re an individual educator who says, I need this, I need to find one educator that I know to create this cadence and regular connection. Or if you’re in a position

of power in a school and can set that up for a wider range of folks, important to think about the safety of the folks and safety comes from some of that skill building and empathic listening. But there’s a lot that we can do to support and hold one another through this. And that’s what humans do well in times of crisis, we huddle up to get through tough times. Important for us to make space for that. I appreciate the different ways that you talked

about that. I’m definitely it’s on our mind, students have returned in many cases, certainly now on the West Coast, we’re getting there, are starting to return to school. And personal agenda inserted here, warning. The best thing I think we can do is not talk about learning loss, as those students and families are sending their children back, and really addressing and giving space for them to have these types of conversations with the teacher they know now, whether that’s

remotely or they’ve had the hybrid all year, or in person in some cases, but making space for that certainly not forgetting that though, as we start the year next year, with new faces potentially, and new teachers, how you still give space for that. And how you have ways to role model and make relationships happening in your sphere of influence. And how we can bring staff together first to get ready to receive those families as they get ready for what may potentially feel,

I don’t know if I want to say normal because I have issues with the school system as it is now. So I would say as best as it can be, in our personalized learning sense, where we truly meet kids where they’re at, advocate for that certainly in school systems across the country, in the academic side that you mentioned. But I would say ultimately more important, in what we’ve been talking about today, how can we meet kids where they’re at,

and help them learn more about who they are and build that those skillset. So really appreciate what you guys have shared today. I know you can tell us a little bit more where we can learn from, where we can go to and reach out to you. Please do. Yes, we’d love to be in touch if any of this resonated with you. You can visit our website at www.fueledschools.org and we’re on social media at Fueled Schools. And we have lots of great free resources like webinars on our website,

as well as our blog. And then if you want to engage with us further, you know where to reach us to. Thank you both. Thank you. This has been really wonderful. Thank you for having us. A big thanks to Megan and Kelly for being with us on this week’s episode. We appreciate their leadership in the ever-evolving field of SEL. To hear more about SEL in action, check out episode 308, where Shawnee from our team chats with some all-star educators who are doing

one-on-one advisory check-ins with their learners. All right, that’s it for today, listeners. Thanks for tuning in. Before you go, please be sure to leave us a rating and review. It helps others find us and it helps us get better. For the Getting Smart podcast, this is Jessica, signing off.