The Impact of Overaccommodation in K - 12 on Independence in College and Beyond (with Jill Fahy)

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Speaker B: Today's episode is sponsored by Renaissance, which is pleased to introduce Renaissance Intelligence. Renaissance Intelligence is the first education intelligence system bringing assessment, instruction, practice and curriculum alignment into one connected experience. It's a breakthrough category defining model of integrated learning technology designed to transform personalization, simplify teacher workflows and accelerate learning at scale. Research Guided Adaptive AI transforms real classroom data into actionable groupings, recommendations and aligned instructional resources. Renaissance Intelligence connects the entire instructional cycle from assessment to grouping to instruction to practice to proficiency in one unified workflow that integrates seamlessly with core curriculum, allowing teachers to personalize learning with exactly what students need in the moment. Learn more@renairse.com Intelligence this is Dr. Karen

Speaker A: and you are listening to the De Facto Leaders Podcast I on the BE Podcast Network where I share up to date evidence based practices, my own experiences and guest interviews designed to help pediatric therapists, educators and aspiring school leaders design services that support social, emotional and academic growth and set kids up for success in adulthood. Whether you want to learn effective strategies for your therapy session or classroom, be an influential leader on your team or find creative ways to use your skills to advance in your career, I've got you covered.

Speaker C: Hey everybody, it's Dr. Karen and welcome

Speaker A: to episode 262 of the De Facto Leaders podcast on the Bee Podcast Network.

Speaker C: The word accommodation is a loaded term. On one hand, we want to provide

Speaker A: reasonable accommodations in K12 so kids can access their education. But determining what is reasonable and what is an accommodation versus a uh, modification

Speaker C: can be messy and confusing. Both parents and educators can unintentionally over

Speaker A: accommodate in the moment without realizing which over time can impede a child's ability to work through daily challenges and solve problems on their own. And this can be in the context

Speaker C: of adding too many accommodations or modifications

Speaker A: on a 504 plan or IEP. Or it can be unofficial ways that we accommodate in the way that we interact with students. Many of my colleagues who work on college campuses are seeing the impact of this over accommodation in K12 in the way that students are adjusting to their college experience. And many times it's not just with the kids, uh, with neurodevelopmental disorders, it's the neurotypical kids too. That's why I invited my colleague Jill Fay back to the De Facto Leaders podcast to talk about the state of college readiness and the approach upstream impacts of what's happening in K12 and the impact it could have on success both during and after college. Jill is a licensed speech language pathologist and professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Eastern Illinois University and she is also the Director of the STEP Program, a AH transitional education program for EIU students with autism which supports the development of executive functions, social communication, self appraisal and self regulatory skills to facilitate students management of their academic and university living demands. She specializes in the assessment of executive dysfunction, particularly as it is associated with concomitant disorders of language, cognition or social pragmatics. She is the co author of the Source for Development of Executive Functions 2nd Edition and various articles on um, self talk and executive functions. And Jill is actually one of the very first people that I started learning from when I started looking into executive functioning. She is also a returning guest. The first episode on De Facto Leaders is called Executive Functioning for College Students Beyond Checklists and Planners, and I also did an additional commentary on that interview and released that as an additional episode. And that episode title is called Balancing Language, Academic Content Areas and Executive Functioning. Before we get going, I wanted to quickly mention the School of Clinical Leadership, my program that helps related service providers design scalable executive functioning interventions to ensure students get the scaffolding they need across the school day. This concept of scaffolding and the way that we support students executive functioning in K12 is really relevant to this conversation because students do need explicit instruction, but that doesn't mean that we're acting as students executive functioning. So understanding how to design interventions that are appropriate for the classroom to support all students executive functioning as well as support students that are getting specific specialized interventions is really important. So the idea of learning how to scaffold and fade that prompting appropriately so that students are ready for more independent living beyond K12 is really important. So you can learn more about the School of Clinical Leadership to learn how to design these interventions@drkaren dudakbrannan.com ClinicalLeadership now please enjoy this conversation with Jill Fay.

Speaker C: Today I am joined by Jill Fay

Speaker A: from Eastern Illinois University.

Speaker C: So thank you so much for being here with me today.

Speaker D: Thank you very much for having me. This is the second time and I'm really thrilled to get to talk with you again today.

Speaker C: Yes, I know. I, um, we should. So listeners should look at the show notes and see. See the previous interview or listen to the previous interview that we had about executive functioning in college. And then I also have another episode where I did commentary on the original. So they should check out both of them. So now there's three or there will be three.

Speaker D: There will be, yeah.

Speaker C: Yes. So my question for you. I remember when I was first getting ready for college and I was terrified because I had a lot of friends who were either staying back at community college and I was the oldest of my siblings, so I was the first one that went away. And I was really nervous. Like I was not excited. And then I loved it once, I'd say after, after fall break, I was like, all right, I'm good. I was ready to go back. But I was, you know, it was hard at first. And so, yeah, when you went to college, what was your experience like? But also what was something that was like, oh, my gosh, I don't know how to do this. I've never had to do this because I had a number of things right.

Speaker D: My experience was similar. I was the first one in my family to go to college. I really had no prior experience. I felt overwhelmed. I did not have any template for how to solve things. Um, I think I didn't know what I didn't know.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker D: Yeah, I think I did not know what I did not know. And, um. Ah. I remember feeling a little bit like an alien. I looked out around me and I saw people that I. I decided they had older siblings, they had parents, they had aunts and uncles, people who had been in this environment before. And I felt like an imposter. Mhm. And I felt as though from the very beginning I had to portray some kind of facade that did not give that away. And internally I felt panic because I thought, how quickly can I figure out what I'm supposed to be doing? And will anybody know?

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker D: Um, I just remember feeling like that most of the time. Mhm.

Speaker A: Mm.

Speaker D: And yeah, maybe by, uh, maybe by Thanksgiving break, I felt a little more calm. It m. Took a while.

Speaker A: Yeah, I was nervous about there.

Speaker C: It was when I. So I lived in the dorms and it was nice that I didn't have to cook. Um, and then I remember when I moved into an apartment, that was a thing, that was a sticking point for me that I Was like, I have to be responsible for cooking all my meals. And I remember I was anemic for the first couple months that I lived in an apartment and that was in grad school because I was in the dorms and then I was in the sorority house where they would bring in food and so I could still, you know, go to the, you know, the kitchen and get the catered food or go to the dorm. But then when I was in the apartment and I was living off of grilled cheese and pasta, um, that didn't work as well so I had to figure it out. But I love to cook now.

Speaker D: Oh sure, yeah. I remember our first apartment, it would have been sophomore year in undergrad and ah, there was a gas leak in the house next door and neither my roommate or I had really, we had no idea what we should do. Was clearly a matter of urgent safety. We should evacuate. There were uh, police, there were fire trucks and we kind of idiotically stood around looking at everything with the heavy smell of gas in the air. And I remember calling my parents and once I told them what was happening, my dad grabbed the phone from my mother and started yelling at me, you've got to leave. You need to get out of there. And I think back on that sometimes at how ridiculous it seems now. But um, it just felt like I didn't have life problem solving skills. And I think maybe, maybe I might have been too young to be trying to manage an apartment and people and bills and things. But we're still here. So yeah, we survived. We survived. Oh yeah.

Speaker C: I think it's, you know, when you think about, um, how it should progress from elementary school to high school to college to postgraduate, it's like the scaffolding should gradually fade away. And I don't know, I think we're going to talk a lot about that today. The gradual fading or not fading.

Speaker D: And I think maybe just to my other thought about what I felt when I went to college was even though I felt much like an imposter, I also did come with a lot of problem solving experience.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker D: I grew up on a farm and the norm was that you had to think on your feet every day, come up with possibilities, solve things. And looking back, I would agree. And my siblings and I, we all agree we were given a lot of responsibility at very young ages, far more than I think most people at those ages would have now. So I do feel like, um, I think I felt like I had a lot of practice trying to figure things out and I think I relied on That a lot while I pretended to know what I was doing.

Speaker C: Mhm. Yeah. Well you're working at a university now, so I am.

Speaker D: And uh, yes. And every day I'm working with students who are here trying to do just that. Bring some kind of practical experience and their problem solving skills and uh, their ability to cope or anticipate, regulate, uh, plan. These are all daily challenges for college students. Mhm. Um, I've been here, I think this will be the start in the fall of my 22nd year. And so I've seen a lot of changes over time in the college student and there are definite patterns that I've observed in the last five years, maybe even, even more so in the last two to three years that yeah, I uh, see very different kinds of student strengths and more and varied types of things that we worry about for them. Mhm.

Speaker C: I'd love to hear how it's progressed or changed in different, different time periods like when you, when you started. Because uh, because I know your role has evolved as well as you've been in your, your working at the university. But how, how long have you been in the role where you're supporting students with executive functioning and then what have you seen? Just the progression. Like you said, there was the last five years, the last two years and then before that.

Speaker D: Right. So broadly speaking for um, many years I did the typical professor role, uh, both in the academic classroom but then also doing clinical teaching in our department. Um, I'm a speech language pathologist behind the scenes. Um then for the last five going on six years then my role shifted. I'm the director of our autism support program for degree, ah seeking students here at Eastern and then they apply to this program and we provide support and services for up to 30 students in any given year. And that focuses intensively on things such as executive functions and social connections and strategic and effective communication and academic success and all of those things. So I've seen kind of uh, an array of college students, both undergraduate, graduate and now, um, in this role. I think I see a lot of difference in the college students. Their ability to feel comfortable with critical thinking, their ability to settle into the idea that they'll have to learn different ways of studying, analyzing, um, drawing conclusions, um, using and manipulating content. And instead of um, I think now what I see more of is a student who really wants to get the, the right answer and really needs to be told exactly what I want you to do with that information and how I want you to use the information. Um, it's not that they're not capable. But you can see sheer panic.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker D: Um, if a student is asked to compare, defend, explain, frame an argument, apply these three things into a new concept. Those types of assignments which are very common, this is what you'll see in any college classroom. Yeah, strike a lot of fear and panic. And um, so those are some big differences. I also see differences in the comfort level of students being able to write and convey their thoughts in writing. Uh, it used to be the norm that a student might come into college and they would have definitely written a five to seven page paper at some point in high school. That's not very common now.

Speaker C: That is scary.

Speaker D: I mean, that's scary.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker D: You know, and being able to write a paper is more than, of course, you know, there are the details like formatting and citations and all of that. But really writing a paper is an exercise in examining your thoughts, reviewing the knowledge that you have, exploring what you've learned in class, going back and looking at the prompt. Am I supposed to explain something? Am I supposed to frame an argument? Am I being asked to convince the reader of something? You know, so practice framing your ideas and organizing information. Also seems to be more overwhelming now for an incoming college student. And I even will see, you know, assignments have changed. Uh, it's much more common now for faculty to spell out exactly what are specific steps that the student might need to take. And um, to assign papers in sections, write a proposal, write an outline, write a partial draft, write an expanded draft, write a final version. And feedback and input are being given all throughout. And you end up with, in addition, you end up with extended drawn out timelines. And that's also very different. We're experiencing college students now who are unaccustomed to having a firm due date or uh, the idea that it really is due then. And you really can't, you know, get full points for it four weeks from now because you know, we're moving along expectations and requirements and timelines. Um, so I see changes in comfort level with thinking critically, uh, the experience in pondering and writing and explaining yourself through ideas and written work. Um, difficulty feeling comfortable with looming deadlines. Um, honestly, we also see students who are, who think that, that when they leave high school and go to college they might still get to retake exams for a better score.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker D: Which isn't going to happen. Um, so those are some changes I think from within an academic perspective. You know, thinking about the student in the classroom. Um, I could keep going. I don't know if you want me to.

Speaker C: So I'm sure that, like, I also, I know that we wanted to talk about the, the social and the mental health, but I'd be curious what. Because it's, you know, obviously it has to do with things that are happening just generationally, but also things that are happening in K12. And I know that many people have theories about this. I, you know, we're hearing a lot about the impact of technology, which of course, if we're kids are using chat GBT to write their essays and never learning the steps, then that's problematic. And so obviously technology is a factor. But I, I would argue that there's more to it than that. There's, it's, it's a big factor. But then there's other things. And then also thinking about how we're using accommodations, because a lot of the things that you just mentioned are accommodations that are often given in high school or earlier on. And so what, ah, because I. Do you have interactions with the, um, high school staff that are handing them off or how does that look? And what are your thoughts on why we're seeing all of these differences?

Speaker D: Well, yes, lots of variables there.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um,

Speaker D: if I thought and spoke a little bit about technology and AI briefly first, there are many ways that it can be helpful and AI is here and it's not going anywhere. And of course that becomes, um, societal problem to think about and analyze and capture and harness in a way that can, can be beneficial to us and not detrimental. And that is, that is part of an ongoing line of thinking. But at the same time, if you translate that into the student.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker D: And if a student is using an AI feature to get prompts for themselves or to write a paper, um, it's not so much that you couldn't get useful information in that way.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker D: The problem is that doing so takes, uh, away your own brain's ability to exercise your thinking, to exercise your cognitive development. I mean, that's what we're talking about here. We are talking about the ongoing development of cognition in the human brain at a critical period of middle to late adolescence into early adulthood, where what we're hoping for, what needs to be and should be happening, are significant surges in abstract reasoning, in predictive thinking, in, um, critical evaluation of options and possibilities, and uh, generating reasonable solutions, all of those types of things, organizing your ideas. And so when you're using a technologically driven prompt to generate work product, then you aren't exercising.

Speaker A: Uh, yeah.

Speaker D: And it persists in making you more literally prompt dependent and limits your ability to exercise your own independent, self driven thinking in and out. And that just creates not only problems within your collegiate experience, but that will impact the kind of independent thinking that you bring into the workplace and in your own adulthood. Um, so I feel like that is a, ah, negative aspect of AI and that it will be interesting to see in a decade or so or even a a generation. How does that impact that critical developmental moment in time?

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker D: Um,

Speaker A: I'm going to take a quick break here to talk about the School of Clinical Leadership, my program that helps related service providers design programming and interventions to support students executive functioning in school settings. Social skills groups are often seen as the entire intervention and when they're delivered this way, they're often done in an academic format where an adult is leading the session and kids are answering questions or discussing various social rules and scenarios. This is a very small piece of what needs to happen when we think of social skills intervention as just a lesson plan or social skills group. Kids get really good at answering questions about how they should be acting in hypothetical situations. However, they often don't transfer any of those things over to real life. This is because real social interactions are not academic situations. We're actually not working on the skills preventing kids from using the information and knowledge we're trying to give them. In other words, we're not building the executive functioning skills kids need to be successful in social situations, not to mention other areas of life. Before you can successfully implement social skills intervention, you need to have a solid understanding of what executive functioning is, both the internal skills and the external behaviors, what successful intervention looks like and who needs to be involved, and what service delivery models can effectively address executive functioning. This is exactly what I show you how to do in ah, the School of Clinical Leadership. In the program, you'll learn why kids continue to experience anxiety or behavioral challenges even though they're going to therapy or have a behavior plan common mistakes multidisciplinary teams make when teaching executive functioning and how to correct these mistakes, why kids struggle with problem solving and friendships even though they're going to pull out therapy and social skills groups and most importantly, how how to help your team work together to figure out solutions to all of these things. If you are in a related service provider role, if you're a speech pathologist, social worker, counselor, psychologist, occupational therapist, or other professional on a school team supporting students, you can emerge into a leadership role on your team and help to guide these interventions. I help you do that in the School of Clinical Leadership. To learn more about the program, you can go to drcarendudekbrannon.com ClinicalLeadership One of the most frustrating things about educational technology is that there always seems to be a new trend that everyone's jumping on. Which means that people get excited about a new tool, but then realize it's not aligned to teachers or students real needs. It helps to know that IXL is a tried and true product that's loved and trusted by more than 1 million teachers. Allowing more time to focus on learning and providing real time data, helping districts to provide equitable access to high quality instruction. Studies across 45 states show that IXL schools outperform non IXL schools on state assessments. Independent research from Johns Hopkins University verifies that IXL meets ESSA Tier 1 standards. With those results combined with IXL's teacher friendly reputation, what more could you ask for? If you have a goal to increase achievement for all students, make sure to find out what IXL can do for you. Visit ixl.com be for a demo. That's ixl.com be e.

Speaker D: In terms of accommodations, yes, most of the time I am working directly with parents and the high school student as they are coming and visiting college and then visiting specifically with me about our program. And I might spend two hours with that student and their parents or family. Um, what I have seen in those IEP or 504 plans in the past five years and even in the 15 years before that when I might have been doing clinical work within our department's clinic and seeing teenagers. It used to be a clear differentiation between an accommodation where you have, you know, we'll do this so that you can access that environment, access that learning, access that classroom, versus a modification. So there'll be modified ways. You have specialized differentiated instruction, someone that a licensed educator will bring to you in a differentiated way of teaching, cueing, prompting, or a modification where we will alter the nature or type of assessment, the amount or the timing of the assessment, the amount and the timing and the type of homework, and the kinds of support or opportunities. You know, we're modifying. What I see now are IEPs with modifications that are written as accommodations.

Speaker C: I love that you're calling that out because that's a big debate. People just like, I'm glad that we. You're reminding me of this because that's a heated debate sometimes where people are like, no, that's a modification. And usually people just throw it all in the bucket of accommodations. It's really easy to do that. And um, I think that's an important distinction.

Speaker D: It's a Very important distinction. Because when that student leaves the K through 12 world and moves into post secondary ed, there are no more modifications. Unless you are going to a post secondary ed uh, training program that is precisely and specifically designed for a student who needs modified differentiated work. So by and large, so I'm coming from the four year university environment and by and large I'm talking about universities throughout our country where coursework demands are not modified. Mhm. So you go from a student who is expecting or has become used to. I'll have 50% of the homework problems. I will be able to do test retakes. I'll have corrections given to me on my exam, I will make those corrections and then I will get the brain. I will have someone who checks in with me at the beginning of my day and the end of my day to make sure that I have written everything down. I will have a teacher walk by my desk every 15 minutes to do an attention check in with me. I will have a teacher who comes by and they will redirect me to the work. I will have a teacher who comes by and they ask me if I fully understand and they will ask me to retell them in my own words and they will make corrections too. I will have a classroom where um, if I ever feel not regulated at any point in time, I can get up and leave.

Speaker B: M.

Speaker D: Um, these are modifications that don't take place in that college classroom. So um, it comes as a great shock for many of these students and their parents to realize that those things aren't a thing. And that worries me because I feel like the student themselves, most of my students who might have had whatever accommodations or modifications, they may not fully realize that those environmental supports have been built in to their high school world. They may not realize that the teacher who is coming over is using their skilled licensed education as a, as a special educator to come over and teach in a specific way. That student may only view that as the nice teacher they really like. Mhm. And they come here with the thinking that all teachers will do all of those things. Things. So I often spend a great deal of time talking with the student and the family to say, to talk about these differences, to talk about what does not happen anymore in that college classroom, and to clarify and to say things like, you're right, we have tutors. Every college has tutors. You're right, every college will have a writing center, a study center, an academic support center. And some colleges might have an autism program or a neurodiversity program. You're Right. But the difference is they're not built as special education service delivery units. Your writing center, wherever you go, no matter how great and skilled they are, it's not staffed by special ed teachers. You can go to the department, any department, and have tutoring. You can go to any professor's office hours. But you know, it's not, it's not the same kind of support. And I think that really takes a while for people to wrap their heads around.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker D: I often wish that I could speak more frequently with high school school professionals to just gently share, you know, what it's like here. And what are the experiences of those students who come out of this kind of highly scaffolded, highly prompted, highly, uh, modified high school environment and then they find themselves in a college environment and it's shocking. They're overwhelmed. They do not have adequate practice regulating and coping with these types of demands. They don't even know those demands are a thing. So, um, there's a great big, you know, uh, gap between those two experiences. I also find not all, but many families, and I'm talking about highly invested, engaged, participating families. They've been there, they're doing all the things. Parenting is not easy. Uh, being an educator is not easy. Um, you know, so these are people who are in it 1000%. And yet somewhere along the way, the realization that this IEP does not just automatically transfer into that college environment, that, that understanding isn't well known.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker D: No, there is no case manager here. No, you will not be coming to your child's IEP team meeting because there isn't one. Uh, no, you don't simply hand over the IEP and then all of those same things happen here. And I often will have parents. You know, you can see a little bit of panic and sometimes a lot of panic. It's great when families visit when their student is, you know, late sophomore, junior, early junior year, because then I like to talk about, you have a golden year, you have a year and a half, you have opportunity to go back and take a look at this iep, take a look at what kind of help your student has all day long. Who gives that help, how often is that help given? And what would happen if this one piece went away? How much help do I give at home as the parent and why am I giving it and for what reasons? And what would happen if I negotiated with my student and we spent three weeks, four weeks, for the next four weeks we're going to transition one skill and see what happens. Well, you know, if you're going to practice that, then we need two things. We also need to explicitly teach the skill itself.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker D: Because you can't magically assume. Right.

Speaker C: Especially after all that time.

Speaker D: Right. You know, uh, we have to teach the skill and then we have to figure out how we can be okay with the natural consequences when some kind of logical failure. Huh. Occurs.

Speaker C: That's hard for parents, I think, especially. I, uh, think it's hard for the teachers as well. But just so the two things that popped out, I mean lots of things, but the self regulation breaks and the redirection. The, which I can understand periodically saying things like, like are you watching the time? Where is your attention? But encouraging students that that's your self talk that you can be giving yourself. I'm just gonna model it or I'm gonna model how I'm doing it so that you can do it not just continually doing it for the student and um, never fading it. But, but then the self regulation breaks. That accommodation makes me. Well, modification maybe would be a more appropriate word, but.

Speaker D: Hm.

Speaker C: I can think of a couple specific students where it was. Oh, let's, let's give them a break card for a student who already asked to go to the bathroom as soon as they are asked to do anything that requires any kind of difficulty. That makes me very nervous as a solution that's offered in that moment. And like how do you create parameters so that it's not used inappropriately and that, um, so yeah, those two, they really jumped out at me.

Speaker D: Definitely the, the, the break card. Yeah. Um, again, I, I'm not saying that the student doesn't need some kind of momentary break. I'm not saying that that's not a valid thing. What I am saying is that as that student moves through their high school, you know, years and we're all always thinking about where are they going next. Whether it's vocational or certification or an associate's degree or job training, whatever it may be, um, you need to give that person time and the opportunity and the expectation and some tools so they can practice regulating, practice trying to cope for longer periods of time, practice trying some of that internal self talk that we would like to model. Um, practice helping them think in that very moment. Do I really truly, right now, on a scale of 1 to 10, how do I feel emotionally? How does my body feel? How do my thoughts feel? What are some things? Can I regulate this? Can I make a small change here and now? And the answer might be no, I can't regulate it. I do need to get out of here. But the thing you've done is given and required that moment of thinking. Mhm. Because we have every year more and more new students coming and they're getting up and walking out of their college lecture. Other students notice and don't understand what's going on. I hear from the professor, this is disruptive, it is repetitive. This person leaves at least twice a week. This person is gone for 20 to 30 minutes at a time. Uh, this person, not only is it noticed and it disrupts the learning environment, but also if you're leaving, give three clap. You know, you have a Monday, Wednesday, Friday lecture and whatever bio, this, that and the other. If you're going for 20 minutes at a time, two out of your three sessions, you're missing a significant amount of this material. And conversely if you were in a work environment, you know. Yeah, same thing. So yes, the ability to have some practice coping, the ability to have some practice evaluating yourself and thinking about what can I try to do right now? Um, is a worry. And um, we find, I would say it used to be maybe just one student might need some support with that. Now I would say say three to four, five new students every year. And it's a hard time now to just be learning those skills.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker D: There's more pressure now and more consequences. Now you talked about the sensory regulation. What else would you just mention?

Speaker C: Yeah, well we talked about the, just the ability to, to regulate or like how often do you really need a break? Um, and how do you use, how do you use your break card? How do you come back and how liberally do we offer that solution? And then also just the attention, just noticing your attention, noticing how to bring your attention back to where you would want it to be. Noticing when you're off, off task and being able to do that yourself rather than requiring somebody else to do it for you or ask you the questions you should be asking yourself.

Speaker D: Well, uh, and since you mentioned attention and that for me brings me to devices and.

Speaker C: Oh yeah, uh, how, um,

Speaker D: you know, if you're distracting yourself with YouTube videos and you're on discord and you're on tick tock and those seem to be so much more now than a few years ago. Those seem to be students intrinsic coping methods. So it isn't that I am thinking about what I'm doing right now. It isn't that I am evaluating how I managing today. It's not any of that. Coping seems to be. Let me get out of my own thoughts and I'm going to dive into this Other, um, on uh, my device and I keep getting hits of dopamine because I'm scrolling and flipping through things and it compels me. And suddenly three hours have gone by. I'm not sleeping, uh, I haven't been able to. I don't feel awake and alert. My nutrition falls apart. I am sleeping until 11 or noon the next day. I'm missing class. This is just a, it's a snowball effect and it becomes a serious problem. Um, and I'll have students who will say, well, you know, nobody really cared if I was on my phone in high school. And I don't know, I'm not there. And I m, I'm certainly not at all speaking about all high schools, all students. But um, yeah, when you think about technology and self regulation and coping, we have a problem there. We have students who are not getting enough practice trying to regulate themselves. And that comes back to your point about you also need practice regulating your attention to things that may not be our preferred desired, uh, task.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker D: So, yeah, I think we find students coming into college now compared to 10, 15 years ago, even five years ago, who need more direct teaching for things like how to plan, how to organize, how, how to read and answer an email, how to um, locate information, how to set a plan for yourself just all around. I, I find that students are needing more direct teaching for how to do those things and more practice and it puts them at a disadvantage because it's hard enough to adjust to. I'm, um, I'm not living at home anymore. I'm making all of my own daily decisions about what I do with my, my food and my clothes and my time and my homework and who I spend my time with and what I spend whatever money I have on. We have all. It's an open platform.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker D: And um, it can be very overwhelming. And then if you're also still playing catch up for how to cope with myself or how to listen to someone talk for 15 or 20 minutes, you know, that first semester, even that first year can be devastatingly difficult.

Speaker C: I think it's the blank canvas. Sounds appealing on the surface in a lot of ways. I mean, I see it in with, you know, students who want freedom from their parents and home or like even I even think about it in the context of, of people who want to be self employed when you're being your own boss, the, the burden of all those decisions with being made for you and the uh, the burden of freedom and, and having that all be up to you, which is quite overwhelming and

Speaker D: we all, yeah, we, we often talk about daily decision making, uh, and even work on things like how to decide what is urgent and what is not urgent, what is a priority today and what is not. How do I want to uh, frame today's time? Uh, how do I want to require myself to do this work and then provide myself with a reward for having completed said work?

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker D: Those are all very complex high level metacognitive thought exercises and they require self awareness and they require things like predictive reasoning and they require things like prior experience. For the last time I blew off managing any of that and realized at 4 in the morning the day of, I needed to write a 10 page

Speaker C: paper or remembering the prior experience in the moment that would be useful to remember it exactly.

Speaker D: You know, so you have parents saying things like why would you have done that? And the kids like I don't know, you know, I mean we've all been there but.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker D: Um, yeah. So I feel like daily decision making suffers because so many of the students don't yet have a good ability to anticipate an outcome unless they live through it. That brings me to this idea of we need to provide our students in high school as much practice thinking and regulating and managing as possible. And we need to teach them those kinds of skills. Deliberately teach emotion vocabulary to describe how we feel, executive function skills so that I can learn how to plan, update, breakdown, manage, track, confirm, monitor, organize. We need to teach some strategic communication skills so that we can interact with other human beings in real time to negotiate, to collaborate, to clarify. You know, um, we have to teach and we have to have practice and the other thing, we have to allow some degree of real world failure. Yeah, kind of mentioned this earlier and you know, I agree it's hard for teachers to see, it's very hard for parents. I mean I, I am a mom. I do not want to ever sound like I am sitting here saying oh, you know, it's so easy. It's, it's not easy at all. And I would, I would absolutely say that for a number of years I, I over parented and over managed and it was a big struggle to shift out of that and to practice on my part being okay when I saw things falling apart for my child. Because I, I mean we, we help as a parent, we don't want anything to fall apart irretrievably, but we also have to figure out how can we be okay while they are not.

Speaker C: I think sometimes it comes down to, as a parent or whatever your role is in Helping that student, really being honest with yourself about what is really the worst thing that's going to happen. Because I think sometimes we catastrophize like it's going to be the worst thing in the world. And you want, you want them to experience failure, just not life altering failure. Like exactly. Failing an assignment is not a life altering failure. Not having your things and being embarrassed that you didn't have your stuff together. If you don't experience it then, then you're going to experience it to a larger degree later on in your life. Like it's going to be more um, probably more traumatic if, if you let it go so far because then, then there are going to be higher stakes situations when you're not going to have those skills. So I think being honest, I see this with like, so with writing assignments sometimes when, um, when people help too much with writing and do all the prompting for kids and ask them a million questions rather than allowing them to answer themselves, to just say to yourself, what is really going to happen if we don't finish this writing assignment in this 30 minute period? Nothing. Like the whole point is to build those skills. It's not going to be the end of the world if this student does not finish this assignment.

Speaker D: Mhm.

Speaker C: And so I think sometimes it's like

Speaker D: we got to get this done or else.

Speaker C: Well no you don't.

Speaker D: No, I completely agree with that. I like that you um, bring up this idea of we have to get this done right now. There are two different goals that play there. One goal, you're saying to yourself, we have to get this done. But of course, if you pause for a moment and ask, well, what's the worst that can happen? You give perspective to that. But also if you're sitting there for 30 minutes with a student and if you frame it in your mind as a false goal of um, we've got to get this done right then, then you as the adult coach, teacher, parent, what have you, then you are coming from a position of directing. Okay, now do this. Okay, now do that. Okay, now you need to talk about this. Now wait, you've already said that you're doing the metacognitive analysis, you are doing the monitoring and the checking, you are looking back at whatever the assignment is. Conversely, if you're that adult coach, collaborator, teacher, tutor, what have you, if you take that 30 minutes and your goal is to instead model and teach and facilitate the student going through those thought processes, then this is a different outcome entirely. At the end of 30 minutes, this assignment will not be done. However, I hope that I've been able to ask questions to allow that student to think. I'm going to support you while you think you're going to practice coming up with possible outcomes. Let's practice coming up with what are some ways you might want to organize. Uh, let's get several blank index cards and a Sharpie marker and just, I'll just write. You just give me all the ideas that you want to put into this paper. I'm just going to write for you. Here they all are. Here are your paragraph idea blurbs. How do you think you want to arrange them for your paper? And here we go. We can move these index cards around however we would like. And if we do that, that student has created a visual order. And that visual order allows you to then say I like how you put that idea in front of this one. Um, I wonder, tell me what you were thinking. How do these two ideas relate? How do these two ideas relate? Now I've prompted the student to think about correlation, comparison, differences, similarities. Uh, maybe. I am now going into the next note card and I see what I, I can see that's an outcome, but I'm not going to tell you that. I'm going to look at the student and say how are these two related? Now I can prompt them thinking about consequences, implications, conditions, causation. Now I can ask other questions like is that always an outcome? Well, sometimes M. Why is this sometimes an outcome? And why would it sometimes not be the outcome? Now I've directed their thinking off onto some other idea and it just so happens that five minutes ago they commented on that and here we have it already written down on a little note card. And I can pull this one up and say, do you want to put this one up here or do you want to leave it over there? I mean that's a 30 minute session that can have a longer lasting and more invasive I guess is the word impact on shaping thinking. It also I, I feel that it gives that student experience and practice and confidence, you know, in thinking about how to write a paper.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker D: And you become, um, better able to have some sense of control over that assignment. And in turn you probably aren't going to feel so utterly panicked. But I mean those are two very different ways of looking at, um, I think.

Speaker C: What's the outcome?

Speaker D: Yeah. Oh, I think the word you used a little bit ago was over. Helping over.

Speaker C: Helping over. Yeah. Or being, doing the uh, like doing the, the metacognitive

Speaker D: strategies.

Speaker C: Uh, you're for the student, right?

Speaker D: And even if you're the adult and you're trying to avoid over helping, that's stressful because you have to sit on your own thoughts. Mhm. And in your mind, your mind is screaming, don't write that. It makes no sense.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker D: But it's more effective to help the student come to that conclusion and look at you and say, well that doesn't make any sense. Uh, okay.

Speaker C: Mhm. I think it's a, uh, the, the phrase, uh, go slow to go fast. That yes, you want them to get, eventually be able to do the five paragraph essay. But if you want them to be able to do it independently, sometimes you have to pause on the immediate need to feel like you need to do it in that moment, that 30 minutes or whatever that time block is. So what I know before we wrap up and we've talked a lot about, I think it's pretty clear how this would, all these skills would impact the social side as well, but just the mental health. I mean I know we've been talking a lot about things that you could see, how it would impact you academically, how it would impact your ability to just function and have your things together and get places on time and be able to sit through meetings. But what about the mental health, social side?

Speaker D: The mental health of college students is not great. Um, I sit down every Monday morning on a conference call with um, many different offices across campus, the dean of students, our student success center, academic support, um, counseling center, medical and health housing, even campus police. Um, and you know, we, it's a, it's an hour where we can bring together students or situations of concern. The, um, mental health problem is just so overwhelming for students. Um, more medical leaves of absence, more medical withdrawals, more students simply just packing up and um, students who find it difficult to leave their room, not attending classes, unable to sleep, unable to take their meds, unable to manage conflict. And I'm talking like roommate things. Mhm. Um, students with other comorbid mental health diagnoses that override their intellectual and academic readiness for school. Um, unmanaged exacerbations and stress that, you know, bring things like bipolar or um, you know, schizophrenia. I mean I'm just randomly naming various things, but sometimes not even that, just your quote, run of the mill anxiety and or low grade mild depression. Mhm. Exacerbates greatly when the student leaves the structure and familiarity and the predictability and the prompted environment of home. And now suddenly all of those daily decisions are theirs to make and it's so overwhelming. Um, and they don't have great coping skills and things can spiral quickly. We see this happen all the time and it's really tragic because nobody wants that. Nobody, nobody arrives at college with that in mind. Nobody envisions themselves, um, you know, packing up and having to go home. Home. So the problem is more pervasive and um, across all ages and types of students wonder if I have anything useful about how to fix it. I, I, I, I feel like um, for the students in our program, I always say if you have counseling, so supports from home, maintain those and be ready to use those even when you are here. Um, I talk a lot about, you really do need to be able to get yourself to sleep and take your meds and take care of yourself and get up in the morning and eat reasonably well and get enough sleep and recognize when you need more sleep or make decisions about things. Students need practice with their daily self care.

Speaker C: Yeah, with the structure. I think sometimes with structure that can make a big difference. Like you said, eating, sleeping, staying in a routine, sometimes just being able to get like get things started, get up in the morning, get going. You know, how many times have you thought I don't feel like getting up today. But you know, you have past experience, you know, if I just get up and get going, I'll feel better. Because how many other times have I gotten up and felt better? Or there's a couple things that I don't feel like doing today. But I have this other thing that I'm looking forward to after it. To just have some kind of a strategy to move through things that, that don't feel exciting or that feel heavy and overwhelming and just to be able to move through those kinds of things, whereas if you don't have any structure and strategies, it's consuming.

Speaker D: It's consuming. And I think the practice doing that leading up to your later years in high school and certainly right after and in the summer, leading into whatever you're doing next, you need a lot of practice and I, I don't want to sound tone deaf and to completely overlook, you know, the fact that a lot of students, you know, are worried about how they'll earn an income and mhm. What their life might be like and what kind of opportunities are they going to have and how will they fit into, you know, our economy or their workplace or how will they afford. There are any number of very real, very significant stressors.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker D: Any one of which could be overwhelming for an 18 year old, a 19 year old. And I, I think that those are even more reasons for us as people educating or parenting or elevating those students, for us to really try to give teaching structure, support and guidance along the pathway of helping them practice doing as much as they can for themselves.

Speaker B: Um,

Speaker D: you know, we don't want anybody to completely fall apart, but they do need to experience difficulty and what it feels like to move through that difficulty.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker D: And to then be able to look back on that and say, well, that was hard, but I did that.

Speaker C: Mhm. I did even like, I think even with when you, you get into this self sabotage of the quick dopamine, the going on social media or whatever, whatever you do that makes you feel worse because you don't, you know, you've got to motivate yourself to get up and get going and have a genuine interaction and do things that are going to make you feel better, that are going to support your mental health.

Speaker D: Right. Yeah, it's, it's challenging. I don't, there's, I wouldn't even want to pretend that I could articulate all of the different challenges or, or even solutions. But um, yeah, I do, I do feel like somehow we've found ourselves over. Doing over something.

Speaker C: Yeah, well, I think that's the big takeaway. And you know, I know it was a lot of what's going wrong, but I think part of it is understanding, just understanding the problem and then you can figure out what to do about it, you know. So that's.

Speaker D: I would agree. Yes. Sometimes we really need to dig into that first.

Speaker C: Yeah. Which we definitely did today. So where can people go to connect with you, learn about the work that you're doing, um, and uh, some of the programs that you're involved with.

Speaker D: Well, so I'm um, out of Eastern Illinois University. We are located in Charleston, Illinois, um, about three hours due south of Chicago. It's a small, ish state school and I'm um, the director of step, which is our autism support program. And people can just find me at uh, stepiu Edu.

Speaker C: All right, well thank you. We'll link to all those things and share it in the show notes. Thank you for being here again.

Speaker D: Great. Thank you very much. It was great talking with you.

Speaker A: Thank you so much for listening. Be sure to, to check the show notes for all the resources that were mentioned in this episode and be sure to check out the School of Clinical Leadership, my program that helps related service providers put executive functioning support in place in collaboration with their school teams using multiple service delivery models. So I show you how to do direct intervention and I also show you how to coach and train others so that you can ensure students get support across their day. Remember that it helps me so much if you tell your friends and colleagues about De Facto Leaders and if you follow me and leave me a rating or review wherever you listen to your podcasts, whether you listen on Apple or Spotify or another podcast network. And finally, if you're interested in collaborating with me, if you'd like to invite me to be on your podcast, if you would like to be be a guest on Defacto Leaders, or if you have a suggestion for a guest for De Facto Leaders, please email me@, uh, talktomercarenspeech.com as always, thank you so much for listening and I will see you next time.

Speaker D: Sam m. Um,

Speaker C: Foreign. I'm Dr. Gene Kearns with Renaissance and this is a brief reflection on AI.

Speaker B: And I'm Jethro Jones, founder of the Bee Podcast Network, the network that you're listening to right now.

Speaker C: Another way that we can make our going with AI a little bit safer is to watch for products that have been validated by some third party partners.

Speaker B: Uh, there are a wide variety of tools.

Speaker C: There's a mad rush to bring AI uh into our classrooms and one of the ways that we as educators can move a bit more cautiously and a

Speaker B: bit more safely is to make sure

Speaker C: that someone else has provided some type of external validation about the safety around a particular AI tool.

Speaker B: The other thing to realize is that these companies are making stuff up as they go along and need your feedback as an educator. Do not be afraid to reach out and say this doesn't work and here's why and ask them to fix things.

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